Scripture: Philippians 2:1–13
The following words were delivered on May 2nd as part of a recent commencement address at Paul Quinn College, a small HBCU in Dallas, Texas:
“We live in the midst of a spiritual crisis, and it will require a spiritual solution.”
The commencement speaker was James Talarico, a minister and current candidate for one of Texas’s US Senate seats, whose thirty-seventh birthday is actually today. But Talarico’s words could just have easily come from our old friend Paul . . . St. Paul . . . Paul the Apostle . . . Paul the epistle writer, who we’re reading this week in his letter to the Christians in Philippi.
We could easily believe that these were Paul’s words, “we live in the midst of a spiritual crisis, and it will require a spiritual solution” because they sound just like him. Paul cried out to his first-century friends against the moral decay of his age, evil in nature, which he called an age of spiritual darkness belonging to a warped and crooked generation.
But fear not, says Paul: because Jesus died to awaken everyone to the reality of something new and good and different that is coming and is already here. Jesus’s gift to humanity; Jesus’s Awakening.
The question of an American Awakening was at the heart of James Talarico’s speech two weeks ago which was entitled: Unshakeable Things: Gen Z and the New Great Awakening. He cited the fact that some historians see four moments in American history they call Awakenings; four historical eras when emotional revivals led to spiritual revolutions and reorientation for huge numbers of Americans. Talarico sees us today in 2026 as on the precipice of a fifth Great Awakening of compassion, justice, and humility that he hopes members of Generation Z, Gen Z, will be uniquely ready to lead.
Could this be true? What could a new Awakening lead us to?
Philippians 2:5-11 is often called the Christ Hymn. It was Paul’s message about what it meant to be like Jesus:
To summarize, Christ emptied himself, and took on the form of a servant, and humbled himself even unto death.
Paul makes that case that the Jesus spiritual Awakening begins with a humble movement, not an upward striving for power and distinction, but by taking on the mentality of selfless service.
How different this sounds in contrast to the dominant public images of power and religion in our time.
A call to unity, humility of heart, and putting others’ interests above one’s own was the key to the church’s first Awakening, a revolution of service that helped solidify a new religion.
I’ll quote James Talarico’s description of the four eras of spiritual Awakening in the United States. I appreciate his efficient, brief summary.
He says, “In the 1730s, America’s first Great Awakening shook the religious establishment and reminded ordinary people of their own spiritual power. In the early eighteen hundreds, the second great awakening gave birth to the abolitionist movement, and the fight for women’s right. In the late eighteen hundreds, the third great awakening produced the Social Gospel which inspired the labor movement and the New Deal. And in the 1960s, the fourth great awakening gave us the Civil Rights Movement, Liberation Theology, and the Great Society.”1
He concludes by saying, “I believe we are on the verge of a new Great Awakening.”
As we wonder what a fifth Great Awakening in our own time could unlock for us and for our society and our world, I’ll put in a good word that if history is any guide, it is likely that unexpected figures and leaders and technologywill be a part of this new movement in unexpected ways.
When I was a divinity student at Boston University, I wrote my thesis about a figure of the First Great Awakening, Charles Chauncy.2 For sixty years Chauncy was the pastor of the First Church of Boston, a church known as “Old Brick” for its building material. But some people also applied the nickname “Old Brick” to Chauncy as well because, to be honest, he was a solid stick in the mud, opposed to any new theology that was sweeping through New England in his time, opposed to the existence of Anglicans in North America, opposed to emotional excess, opposed to anti-intellectualism, opposed to upstart itinerant ministers preaching in fields and barns. He was the main defender of the one-hundred years of New England Puritanism that had preceded him. The first Pilgrims and Puritans had been radical reformers in their own time, but one-hundred years later their tradition had become orthodoxy in New England.
Chauncy thought that any ministers who stoked fear and excess passion in their congregations to try and cause conversions of heart and mind and behavior — ministers like Jonathan Edwards and his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” — were reckless and irresponsible with their people.
So while Charles Chauncy was a figure of the first Great Awakening, he worked hard to oppose and resist the spirit of spiritual change at every opportunity.
Charles Chauncy was a conservative figure. He was an “Old Brick” after all. He would have told you that not all “awakenings” are healthy for Christianity. He thought faith must be slow and thoughtful, and grounded, and resistant to manipulation.
So it’s hard to fully express just how unexpected it was when at the end of his life, Charles Chauncy undermined all of the Puritan orthodoxy he has defended for sixty years. He rejected the social hierarchy of John Calvin and argued that all humans are innately moral, that all have the power and responsibility of free will, and that all people are spiritually equal.
This man who had been a staunch bulwark against any change in the 1730s and 40s had become a major source of change by the 1780s, and he laid the theological foundation for liberal Christianity in the United States, a Christianity that could change, and change people’s lives through rational thought and logic about the life of Christ.
The stone the builders rejected had become the cornerstone.
James Talarico and other Christians in the public square are defending something old even as they’re calling for something new. Even as liberal politicians, they’re proposing a conservative commitment to something old: a spiritual revival marked by empathy, justice, and love of neighbor. They’re proposing a populism that serves vulnerable people, not an elevation of wealth. They’re proposing learning from Christ’s humility and service.
Major changes often don’t look the way we expected them to be once they have happened. Remember St. Paul persecuted Christians before his conversion on the Road to Damascus and he became a follower of Jesus. Remember Charles Chauncy resisted any hint of change in New England’s established before he became the primary source of change that is still rattling around in the DNA of the United Church of Christ today. Remember that anything is possible with the help of God.
Awakenings are possible when people choose the counter-cultural path of service, and doing the Christ-thing of putting other’s interests first — it creates room for an old radical spirit to move.
With any luck, we’ll make it there together. With any luck, we’ll make the Awakening real together.
Amen.