Staying Woke with Jesus
“Stay woke.” — Jesus of Nazareth
The Gospel reading for Thursday of the 21st week in Ordinary Time (August 31, 2023) comes from Matthew 24:42–51. It begins with a line that sounds like something that might cause controversy today.
“Jesus said to his disciples: “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into.”
Stay woke! So much friction over that one little phrase, but it seems like a lot of folks who take exception to it may have no idea it originates with Jesus.
The maxim traces its modern roots, however, to the musician Lead Belly. His song “Scottsboro Boys” referred to nine Black teens falsely accused of attacking two white women. There were railroaded to a death sentence and were saved only by the intervention of the NAACP. When interviewed about the song, Lead Belly (born Huddie Ledbetter) encouraged people, “Stay Woke. Keep your eyes open.”
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Civil Rights leaders also inspired people to “stay awake.” The expression “stay woke” picked up steam in the 2010’s on social media as a way to encourage people to remain alert to the injustices — especially racial injustices — that plague our society.
Along the way, demagogues got ahold of it and started condemning something they call “wokeism.”
“Wokeism” became a byword in right-wing media, used as a scare tactic to frighten their audiences. Political, cultural, and religious reactionaries stirred up their listeners to anxiously await angry crowds coming after them if they speak, do, or think the wrong thing. Never mind the “wrong thing” includes racist, bigoted, and hate-filled comments and behaviors.
There are a couple problems with the reactionary canard. First, there’s no such thing as “wokeism.” Being woke isn’t an -ism. It’s a call to vigilance against systemic racism and injustice. Second, there’s no angry mob coming to cancel you. People simply want equality, fairness, and justice in our institutions, legal system, and public sphere.
Staying woke was was a key concept for the early Christian desert fathers and mothers. They used the Greek word “nepsis” to mean wakefulness, circumspection, and sobriety. They stayed on alert against their temptations, demons, and passions. They also warned novices — and us — to pay careful attention to their own thoughts, enticements, and desires.
Staying woke, says Jesus in this Gospel, is the key to preventing one’s house from being broken into. You house is your mind which includes the intellectual faculties. The desert monastics called our innermost mind the “nous.”
One fundamental way to protect the mind is to avoid sources of hatred. Catholic theology calls for watchfulness in the Act of Contrition. The penitent expresses the intention of avoiding “near occasion of sin” or “whatever lead me to sin.”
Avoiding the near occasion of the sins of hatred and racism might involve unplugging from cable news, social media, websites that traffic in stirring up resentments, and the countless rage-inducing podcasts that masquerade as news and entertainment.
“But my media outlets don’t do that. They just give me the news and analysis I need.” Alright, try this. Go on a media fast for a week. Spend seven days without any of your media outlets and see how you feel.
During that time, try praying the Jesus Prayer instead.
The early Christian monastics taught the Jesus Prayer as an essential ingredient of nepsis. The basic version is, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.”
You can pray it doing almost any activity or by dedicating a specific amount of time to praying. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of blessed memory gives a helpful primer on how and why to make it part of our daily practice.
The Australian Coptic desert monk Farther Lazarus offers brief advice on how to use the Jesus Prayer to keep you aware.
Through regular repetition of the Jesus Prayer, the intellectual mind can eventually sink into the heart where it can be filled with the love of God. When one’s mind is immersed in God’s love, it cannot hate others for God is love, and true love casts out fear — the emotion that often is the root of hatred (1John 4:7–21).
The desert mothers and fathers might advise us to stay woke by doing everything we can to prevent the passions of racism, bigotry, and hatred from entering our minds, running away with our thoughts, and controlling our actions.
Stay woke, Jesus warns, for you know not when the Lord shall come. Watch and pray. Protect your mind with love.
