Woke Jesus and other nightmares

Allison Mann, Jasmine Doll, and Lela Philbrook sing the Gloria during worship. Photo: Gerald Farinas.

It’s a tough time to be a Christian these days—especially if you’ve built your theology around a gun-toting, bootstrapping, capitalism-loving Messiah who mostly came to earth to promote the nuclear family and tax breaks for the upper-middle class.

Every time I scroll through social media, I find yet another pastor lamenting from the pulpit that Jesus has been hijacked by “woke ideology.”

Apparently, this new version of Jesus is weak, emotional, justice-oriented, and—brace yourself—interested in the poor.

Horrifying.

I understand the concern.

After all, who among us hasn’t opened their Bible hoping to find a stern-faced Savior demanding rugged individualism, only to be assaulted by red-letter quotes like “Blessed are the peacemakers” and “Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor”?

The audacity.

According to these anti-woke sermons, the real Jesus doesn’t have time for pronouns, protests, or panhandling.

He came to tell us to pull up our spiritual bootstraps, not to advocate for the marginalized.

He died for your sins, sure—but not your neighbor’s sins and certainly not systemic sins.

We all know Jesus had strong opinions on personal salvation but none whatsoever on oppressive empires—right?

As a humble member of the Presbyterian Church (USA)—a denomination not exactly famous for its subtlety in social justice stances—I feel compelled to ask:

Have we been reading the same Bible?

Because the Jesus I know? … He woke up a whole lot of people.

He woke up religious leaders clinging to power and empty ritual.

He woke up the crowds to the hypocrisy of empire and the cruelty of legalism.

He woke up fishermen, tax collectors, and women—yes, women—to follow him into a radically new way of life.

He even woke up Lazarus, which seems a little on the nose.

Let’s be honest: if Jesus weren’t so “woke,” he wouldn’t have gotten nailed to a cross.

Nobody crucifies someone for being “nice.”

Rome didn’t execute people for vague platitudes about inner peace.

Rome executed people who were a threat to the status quo—people who lifted up the lowly, welcomed the outcast, and proclaimed a kingdom where the last are first and the first are put on an equitable committee to share power.

So if “woke” means alert to injustice, empathetic toward suffering, and willing to confront systems of oppression—even when it’s uncomfortable or unpopular—then yes, Jesus was woke.

Dangerously so.

The PCUSA, for all our decently ordered faults, has long tried to take that call seriously.

We don’t always get it right.

Sometimes we get distracted by rules of order and gluten-free communion bread.

But we know that to follow Christ is to care about things like racism, poverty, climate, housing, and mental health—not because we’ve been duped by the Left, but because we’ve been captivated by the Gospel.

Maybe that’s what truly terrifies people about “woke Jesus.”

Not that he’s weak—but that he’s demanding.

That he doesn’t fit neatly into our politics.

That he challenges our comfort, our prejudices, and our carefully constructed systems of who’s in and who’s out.

So if you want a Jesus who just wants you to be nice, avoid cussing, and tithe from your Roth IRA, I regret to inform you: you may be looking for someone else.

But if you’re ready for a Jesus who challenges the powerful, lifts up the lowly, and calls us to a justice that rolls down like waters—then welcome to the resistance. There’s dozens of Mariano’s donuts in the fellowship hall and a protest out front.

Turns out, being “woke” isn’t a threat to Christianity. It might just be the most Christlike thing we can be.