Try to
Stay Awake
Mark 13: 24-37
©
Reverend Kenneth E. Kovacs
Catonsville Presbyterian Church
Catonsville, Maryland
First Sunday of Advent/
27th November 2005
My grandmother, Ann, whom I grew up
with, never liked to admit she had fallen asleep. I can remember many evenings spent with her
in front of the television. Around ten
o’clock she would slowly start to nod off, wake up, and then fall back to
sleep. When she really went to sleep and began to snore, I would say, “MaMa, go
to bed, you’re sleeping.” She would
quickly rouse herself, open her eyes wide, and look at me, noticeably angry,
and say, “No, I’m not. I’m awake. I’m watching the show. I’m not sleeping.” And in a few minutes she would nod off again
and awake, nod off and awake, and then be back to sleep again. Johann our cat
(I named him after Bach) would be tugging on her to go to bed. Oscar our dog (named by my brother, who loved
the Oscar Madison character from “The Odd Couple”), he would bark at her,
because, he too, wanted to go to bed.
Then I would say again, a little louder, “MaMa, go to bed, you’re
sleeping.” At which she would stir
wide-eyed even more disturbed by my desire simply to tell the truth, saying, “No,
I’m not. I’m awake.” She would never admit she was asleep, even
when years later she was in a nursing home and slept most of the time.
These images came to mind this week
reflecting upon Jesus’ command to “Keep Awake.” Jesus says there will come a time, very
soon, when they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and
glory. Jesus wants his disciples to pay
attention, to discern the seasons and the times, to be aware of what is
coming. Be ready. Keep awake.
To
our ears attached to our overworked bodies and minds Jesus’ command to stay awake
sounds cruel when all we really want is just to go to sleep or get more
sleep. We’ve all, no doubt, read that
most Americans are sleep-deprived, working long hours, with hectic family
schedules, not getting enough rest. Cramming too much into the day leads to
less time for sleep. Doctors tell us we
need seven to eight hours of sleep a night, some need even more. More than 200,000 accidents occur each year
from drivers falling asleep at the wheel.
The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill
was partially caused by a tired tanker operator. Sleep deprivation is costly and takes it
toll, adversely affecting our health.[1]
The
truth is people need more time to rest. The Harvard developmental psychologist wrote a book several years ago
with the evocative title, In Over Our
Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life.[2] We are being bombarded with so much information
– newspapers, television, computers, books, cell phones, and text messages. The world is changing at a such a fast rate
that it is tough to keep up. When we
watch television or a movie, we are being bombarded by so many images that its
difficult to take it all in, to process it, to think and reflect upon all that
we’re experiencing. Do we really take
the time to ask ourselves what we’re feeling when we look at the images of earthquakes
victims in Pakistan, what
are we feeling when we learn about another death in Baghdad,
or yet one more shooting in Baltimore
City? Several weeks ago, psychologist Nancy
Limbardo spoke during adult education time about the importance of getting
enough sleep for our own mental well-being, so that we’re equipped to deal with
the heavy emotional demands of modern living.
She said some people go to sleep watching TV and think they are getting
sleep, but studies have shown that they are actually being hypnotized by the
images and falling into a hypnotic state and not the deep levels of sleep that
the brain requires for health. We’re on sensory overload, over stimulated, and
overwhelmed. Retreat centers are very
popular today for religious and non-religious types. We need to rest our eyes and minds and
bodies. We need sleep. Dorothy laughed when she saw my sermon title,
knowing how many people try to do exactly this when listening to a sermon – try
to stay awake. If people fall asleep when I’m preaching (and I
know who you are) I don’t take it personally, I just figure you need the sleep
and sometimes the best thing we can do for our spirits is sleep.
And yet, Jesus says “Keep awake.” Obviously, we can’t be awake 24/7. To go thirty-six, even forty-eight hours
without sleep our perceptions of reality itself will start to crack. Yet, Jesus is concerned with reality – your
reality and mine and in order to know what is real you need to be awake. But it’s
tough to know you’re awake if you don’t know you’re asleep. How do you know when you’re awake if you
don’t know you’re asleep? This is
the predicament of the text. Sometimes
people say they’re awake, when they’re really fast asleep. Some people seem to be awake, when they’re
really asleep. There are others who are asleep because they’re too afraid to
wake up. It is possible to sleep with
your eyes open – while I don’t know who you are out there, I do know it
happens.
There is the story about a man who
knocked on his son’s bedroom door.
“James,” he says, “Wake up!”
James answers, “I don’t want to get up, Papa.” The father shouts, “Get up, you have to go to
school.” James says, “I don’t want to go
to school.” “Why not?” asks the father. “Three reasons,” says James. “First, because it’s so dull; second, the
kids tease me; and third, I hate school.”
And the father says, “Well, I am going to give you three reasons why you
must go to school. First, because it is
your duty; second, because you are forty-five years old, and third, because
you’re the principal.”[3]
Wake
up! Wakefulness, we might say, is
the primary step and goal at the heart of every religious experience. What will take for human beings to become
awake?
The Christian mystic and
psychologist Anthony de Mello (1931-1987), once wrote, “Spirituality means
waking up. Most people, even though they
don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born
asleep, they live asleep, they marry asleep, they breed children in their
sleep, they die in their sleep, without ever waking up. They never understand
the loveliness and beauty of this thing we call human existence.”[4]
Tough words. They might even sound judgmental. For, who is to say what wakefulness looks
like? Who is to say if a person is
sleep-walking through life? Who is to
say if a person is spiritually asleep?
Surely, this must be one of the great tragedies of life, to live asleep,
to die asleep, failing to come awake.
This was a fear of mine. I never
liked to go to bed early as a child and cherished those nights I could stay up
late because I was afraid I was missing out on something. I’m still that way, often wondering to
myself, what am I missing?
But who is to say you’re
asleep? How do we know of we’re
awake? It’s tough to say and I won’t,
because it is very subjective, but you know it.
I was struck by C. S. Lewis’ (1898-1963) description of his conversion from
atheism to theism and finally to faith in the incarnate Son of God. He said, “It was more like when a man, after
long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.”[5] So that awake in Christ, he discovered that
what appeared as wakefulness was really being asleep. That’s a beautiful description of what it
means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, a process whereby one continually comes
awake as we walk with him. When we have
sight through Jesus Christ, we realize how blind we were before. When we wake up with him, we realize all
along we’ve been asleep. When we walk
with him, we are changed and the way we understand reality changes. Our responses to the world change, our
attitudes change, our outlooks and actions all change. One theologian put it this way, “Whoever has
had a little to do with the Savior always sees something new.”[6]
How
do you know whether you’re awake or asleep?
It’s tough to say. Implicit in
Jesus’ injunction is the fact that there is much in our lives trying to make us
sleep and maybe that is the point, maybe that’s half the battle. Remember in The Wizard of Oz (1939) when the Wicked Witch of the West seduced
the Dorothy and her companions with the beauty of poppies that made them slowly
fall asleep (until snow comes as grace to break the spell)? We need to be aware of those things in our
lives that are trying to put us to sleep.
Just think of all the things in our society that are over stimulating
us, lulling us into a hypnotic trance, like a narcotic used to sedate us. There’s so much vying for our attention, our
time, our energies, our resources that we can’t hear the still small voice of
God trying to speak in our hearts. We are overwhelmed, it seems, with bad news,
with untold human suffering. It is easy
to have compassion fatigue – tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, disease
(Thursday is World AIDS Day – 25 million have died since 1981, this morning Africa
has about 12 million AIDS orphans). The
loss is staggering and mind-numbing; it’s easy for us to fall asleep, to shut
down, to not feel. But, if we’re asleep
how can we discern reality and even more pressing, how can we discern what God
might be doing in the world or within our lives? That’s why Jesus wants us to keep awake,
because we’ll miss out on what God is doing.
How
do you know if you’re awake or asleep?
It’s tough to say. Anthony de Mello
says a good place to begin the path toward wakefulness is by being honest,
“realiz[ing] that you don’t want to wake
up.” Maybe that’s a good place to
start, to be aware of the resistance working within us that doesn’t want to
wake up reality, the resistance within us and among us to not wake up, but prefering
to sleep. But when we’re asleep we’re
missing out on life, and what is more, we’re missing out on the God who has
come and continues to come to us in Jesus Christ. To miss the coming of the Lord, now that is
tragic.
As
we begin Advent this morning, maybe this is a good place for all of us to
start, with a simple petition. May this
become your personal prayer, every day throughout Advent: “Lord, wake me up.” Acknowledge deep within that we really
resist this kind of prayer because it might actually lead to a change with us…and
then do it any way. See what
happens. Personally, I would like to
hear from you; what have you discovered about yourself and God and about the
world? So, I invite and urge you to make this your daily prayer throughout
Advent, “Lord, wake me up and keep me
awake.”