Awakening: Difficult But Necessary

Rev. Erik Swanson
February 8, 2026

You can watch the sermon video here.

Last week I found myself lying in bed, trying to motivate myself to get up, while also wondering what in the world I should preach on. There is so much happening right now — so many urgent spiritual issues, so many lessons to teach about prayer, meditation, and deepening our faith. But as I lay there, a simple thought broke through: none of it really matters if we don’t wake up and get moving. We actually have to wake up — to our lives, to reality, to what is true — before anything else can follow.

Living Under A Cloud

Last week I spoke about truth and the importance of pursuing it. This week feels like a companion message, because so often we live under a cloud of excuses that keep us asleep: “I don’t care,” “that’s too big,” “I can’t make a difference,” “I don’t understand,” or “that’s just how I was raised.” These stories keep us lethargic, disconnected, and divided.

What Is “Woke”? Is Injustice Acceptable?

To be “woke,” as Merriam-Webster defines it, is to be informed, educated, and conscious of social injustice and racial inequality. I’ve been reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which tells history not from the perspective of conquerors, but from the voices of those who were conquered. Early on, Zinn recounts Columbus’s own writings about the Indigenous people of what we now call Haiti — people who welcomed him, fed him, and showed generosity, only to be enslaved and worked to death. By 1650, the Arawak people were gone. That is not the story I learned in school. And it’s just one example of how we’ve been taught narratives — both in American history and church history — that make injustice seem acceptable.

The Most Important Thing Is To Wake Up

We still have a great deal of waking up to do. Being “woke” is not merely political; it is deeply spiritual. I’ve come to believe that the most important thing we are called to do is not first to fix the world, convert others, or defend beliefs, but to wake up — wake up to who God truly is, wake up to who we are, and wake up to the deeper connection we long for with God. I can say I follow Jesus, but if I’m not awake to God’s presence and calling, then I may only be following my ego or inherited ideas. History shows us that horrific acts — from crusades to slavery — have been justified in God’s name. God never calls those things into being, and the only way to discern that truth is to be awake.

The Kingdom Of God Is An Inner Awakening and Outward Response

Scripture repeatedly urges us to wake up and stay awake, calling us into a different consciousness than the dominant culture. Religion itself can lull us to sleep. The Kingdom of God, as Jesus lived it, is both an inner awakening and an outward response. It requires us to question false narratives about race, gender, sexuality, economics, history, and power — stories that invite comfort and compliance rather than truth.