Hit Snooze

Rev. Rachael Pryor - Associate Conference Minister

The first Sunday in Advent always feels a little bit like “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” to me. Stay alert! Jesus warns. You don’t know what day the Lord is coming! Unless, apparently, you’re the apostle Paul, who tells the Christians in Rome, “You know what time it is. The hour has already come for you to wake up from your sleep” (Romans 13:11 CEB).

Honestly, Paul and Jesus: two thousand years of hindsight has lessened the urgency a bit. It’s easy to feel like I can get away with a little more of the “partying” that Paul decries in verse 13. I’ll pass on the “obscene behavior and fighting” but confess that I wouldn’t mind sleeping in a bit. Some days, I just feel too tired for the Messiah to arrive. If a savior comes like a thief in the night, I’d be tempted to say, take the TV and grab the LEGOs off the floor while you’re at it — just don’t wake the baby.

Weariness is a thing we’ve come to know intimately in recent years: the weariness of being overscheduled and underprepared; the weariness of constant death and grief; the weariness of dreading that every sneeze or cough or fever will turn out to be Covid. Add to it the weariness of constant inflation, grocery bills that stretch the budget, and rising energy costs that only remind us of the greater climate crisis to come.

Is it possible to be too tired for Christmas? This year has me wondering whether that isn’t precisely the point. 

“For three hundred years, we’ve given them time,” said Fannie Lou Hamer on December 20, 1964 as she stood next to Malcom X at Williams Institutional CME Church in Harlem. Hit snooze? Not again. Not another “you know it takes time” for freedom, Hamer pleaded. “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired,” she famously proclaimed in this Advent moment almost sixty years ago. It might be the most perfect description of Advent ever uttered. Don’t you think Mary and Joseph, and their entire community, were sick and tired of being sick and tired? 

Two thousand years… three hundred years… sixty years later, there’s a transformation that happens when we’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. Churches make radical commitments to canceling medical debt. Black Lives Matter reinvigorates a Civil Rights movement that never really ended. Anti-trans legislation propels a new generation of parents and communities into the advocacy arena.  

And here in the KO Conference, it feels like we’re waking up in a new way, too. We’ve come through three hard years of supporting overwhelmed authorized ministers, re-envisioning advocacy efforts in virtual settings, running online and hybrid meetings, and journeying with local churches through extremely difficult times of transition. The steadfast efforts of our Conference leadership helped hold us together as the world seemed to fall apart.  

But now, perhaps, we are sick and tired of being sick and tired. We’re done just getting by, just surviving until the next meeting or the next Sunday. We’re ready to ask for more. In our group sessions and several one-on-one conversations to offer feedback to Annual Meeting, I was surprised by the turn our discussions took. There were a few comments about highs and lows from this year, to be sure. But for the most part, the responses we heard focused on a clear vision for the future. It was about a sense that the old way of doing Annual Meeting might not work in a post-Covid world. We heard about the importance of spending time in conversation and the joy of getting to know new people in person. We heard that worship together, and more time for brainstorming and planning with affinity groups ranks higher for a lot of folks than hearing speakers or gathering resources — activities we’re now used to doing online all the time. We heard that the value of Annual Meeting has changed in the past three years: it’s more crucial than ever, but for a whole host of new reasons.  

You know what time it is. A new day has been dawning for the church in all the world. Maybe we don’t really need to be wide awake, ready for a fresh start. Maybe it’s okay to show up, bleary-eyed, coffee cup in hand, tired of being tired, and ready for a change.  

Rev. Rachael Pryor
Associate Conference Minister