Speaker: Anton Flores-Maisonet, our Winter Seminar Speaker, is a co-founder of an alternative community of housing and welcome for immigrants in Atlanta, Georgia and author of the recently published book, Welcome, Friends. 

Scripture: Revelation 21:1-5 and Luke 16:19-31

An adapted sermon, in conversation with Martin Luther King Jr.

I need not pause to say how very grateful I am to be here this morning, to have the opportunity of standing in this pulpit, among a people who have long sought to follow Jesus in the way of peace, justice, and costly discipleship. And I do want to express my deep personal appreciation to the leaders and members of Columbus Mennonite Church for extending this invitation.

It is always a rich and rewarding experience to take a brief break from our day-to-day demands and from the ongoing struggle for freedom and human dignity, and to reflect together on the issues involved in that struggle with concerned friends of goodwill. And certainly it is always a deep and meaningful experience to be in a worship service. And so, for many reasons, I am glad to be here today.

This sermon is offered explicitly in conversation with, and in deep gratitude for, Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 sermon, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” I claim no originality here—only responsibility—to receive that witness, to tell the truth about our own time, and to ask what faithfulness requires of us now.

I would like to use as a subject from which to preach this morning: “Remaining Awake

Through a Great Revolution.”

The text for the morning is found in the book of Revelation, where we hear this promise:

“Behold, I am making all things new; former things have passed away.”

I am sure that most of you have read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled “Rip Van Winkle.” The one thing that we usually remember about the story is that Rip Van Winkle slept twenty years. But there is another point in that little story that is almost completely overlooked. It was the sign at the inn, the sign beneath which Rip lived before he went up into the mountain for his long sleep.

When Rip Van Winkle went up into the mountain, the sign bore the image of King George III of England. When he came down twenty years later, the sign had a picture of George Washington,

the first president of the United States. When Rip looked up at the picture of George Washington, he was utterly confused. He did not recognize the world he had returned to, and he no longer recognized himself.

And this reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not merely that he slept twenty years, but that he slept through a revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountains, a revolution was taking place—one that would change the course of history—and Rip knew nothing about it. He was asleep.

And one of the great liabilities of life is that so many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new moral commitments, and the new ways of seeing that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.

There can be no gainsaying the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today. In many ways it remains a triple revolution: a technological revolution, now intensified by artificial intelligence, surveillance, and automation; a revolution in weaponry and policing, with instruments of war increasingly deployed both abroad and within our own communities; and a human rights revolution—a freedom struggle—that continues to press forward, even as it is resisted, criminalized, and rolled back.

Yes, we live in a time of deep and rapid change. And still the voice cries across the centuries,

“Behold, I am making all things new.”

Whenever anything new comes into history, it brings with it new challenges and new opportunities. And I would like to speak this morning about the challenges we face as a result of this great revolution in our time.

First, we are challenged to develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone. No nation can live alone. And anyone who believes they can secure their future by isolating themselves from the suffering of others is sleeping through a revolution.

The world in which we live is geographically one. The moral challenge before us is to make it one in terms of human solidarity.

Modern technology has shrunk distance and collapsed time. We can see suffering instantly, across borders and across oceans. And yet, while we have made of the world a neighborhood, we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a true community.

Nowhere is this clearer than in our treatment of immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees—people whose labor we depend on, whose presence we fear, and whose humanity we too often deny. We speak of them as problems to be managed rather than neighbors to be loved.

But Scripture and experience tell us otherwise. We are tied together in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. None of us can be who we are meant to be while our neighbors live in fear of detention, deportation, or disappearance.

John Donne said it well: “No man is an island.” If we are to remain awake through a great revolution, we must not only believe this—we must live as though it were true.

Secondly, we are challenged to eradicate injustice in all its present forms. Racism has not disappeared; it has evolved. It now often hides behind policy language, bureaucratic processes, and claims of neutrality. It shows up in whose bodies are policed, whose votes are suppressed, whose labor is exploited, and whose families are torn apart by law.

Xenophobia has become respectable. The suffering of migrants has been normalized. And entire communities are rendered invisible unless they are being blamed.

The church must tell the truth: silence in the face of this injustice is not neutrality; it is complicity.

There remains a persistent myth—the myth of time—the belief that injustice will heal itself if we simply wait. But time is neutral. It can be used destructively as well as constructively. And I am convinced that the forces of fear and exclusion have used time far more effectively than the forces of justice.

Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the persistent work of people willing to become co-workers with God. Without that work, time becomes an ally of injustice.

There is another myth that endures: the myth of self-reliance, the bootstrap philosophy. It tells the poor, the undocumented, and the marginalized that their suffering is the result of personal failure rather than structural sin.

It ignores histories of stolen labor, restricted opportunity, redlining, exclusion, and

criminalization. It forgets that freedom without resources is a cruel illusion. It is a cruel jest to tell a bootless person to lift themselves by their own bootstraps.

We must also confront the persistence of poverty, here and around the world. Poverty is not accidental. It is produced. And what is new is not the existence of poverty, but our capacity to address it—and our repeated refusal to do so.

Jesus told a parable about a rich man who failed not because he was wealthy, but because he allowed suffering to become invisible. Lazarus lay at his gate every day, and the rich man never truly saw him.

That parable speaks powerfully to our moment. When migrants die in detention, when families sleep in shelters or cars, when wages stagnate while profits soar, the danger is not simply injustice—it is invisibility.

Finally, we are challenged to reject war and violence as solutions to human problems. War continues to drain resources, harden hearts, and justify cruelty. Militarism abroad always returns home—in our policing, our borders, and our politics.

It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence. It is between nonviolence and nonexistence.

There comes a time when conscience must outweigh convenience. When faithfulness matters more than popularity. On some questions, expedience asks, Is it safe? Politics asks, Is it popular? But conscience asks, Is it right?

And there comes a time when one must take a stand—not because it is safe, nor because it is popular, but because it is right.

Let me close by saying this: we live in difficult days. Fear is loud. Cynicism is tempting. But I refuse a politics of despair and a theology of resignation.

With this faith, we can refuse invisibility.

With this faith, we can resist injustice.

With this faith, we can remain awake.

John, exiled on Patmos, caught a vision of a new heaven and a new earth, and heard a voice say, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

God grant that we will not sleep through that newness.

God grant that we will be participants in it.

And God grant that, through our faithfulness, justice, mercy, and peace may yet take flesh among us.

Amen.