Have you ever had to get up early for a significant event or appointment? You set the alarm and hear it go off. But try as hard as you can, you cannot wake up. When you’ve finally hit the snooze button for the tenth time, you are late for something important.
Living in our highly distracted culture, it can be difficult to stay alert and awake to the spiritual life. We know we should pray more, commune with God, meditate on God’s Word. Maybe we’ll have time tomorrow, we tell ourselves. We trust God to accomplish His will. He doesn’t need us. So, we turn on the TV, attend to our hobbies, check in on our people, work extra hours toward our goals and success.
Just maybe God doesn’t ask us to join Him in prayer because He needs us. Maybe He invites us to join Him in solitude because He wants to be with us and for us to be in His company. He asks us to be His companion and share in what He is doing in the world.
Are we awake enough to accept the invitation?
On the Night Jesus Was Betrayed
(This passage can be read in its entirety at this link: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2014&version=NIV).
Mark writes in his gospel (Mark 14) that Jesus and the disciples gathered together to eat the Passover meal, commonly known as the Last Supper. He spends time talking with them about what will soon happen. Then, the Lord shares the bread and the wine, telling them to do the same in remembrance of Him when He is gone.
When supper is finished, Jesus takes the disciples on a walk out of the city and to a ridge line on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. There they entered a garden known as Gethsemane that faced the city of Jerusalem. In this garden of olive trees, Jesus told the disciples to “sit here while I pray” (14:32).
Going further into the garden, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with him. In a secluded spot, Jesus tells his friends that his soul is so overwhelmed and burdened that he feels like death (14:34). The work that God has given him to do is very difficult and almost more than he can bear.
The Lord Jesus then tells his friends to “keep watch” (14:34). This word in the Greek bears the meaning of remaining vigilant. In solitude, Jesus prays anguished prayers to God.
Coming back to Peter, James, and John, Jesus finds them asleep. Addressing Peter, he says “couldn’t you stay awake for one hour?” (14:37). Jesus warns them to be vigilant and prayerful so that they won’t fall into temptation. Again, Jesus leaves to pray in privacy.
A second time, Jesus finds the disciples sleeping because “their eyes were very heavy” (14:40). They didn’t know what to say to him, probably from embarrassment. Jesus goes once again to pray in private.
A third time, Jesus returns from deeply painful prayer to find them asleep. He says to his friends, “Are you still sleeping? Enough! The hour has come” (14:41). In other words, fellas, your time is up. The enemy, Judas, had come to betray Jesus and he was arrested. The next day, Jesus was crucified.
A Painful Moment Wasn’t the End of the Story
We can jump ahead to the book of Acts and see that Peter, James, and John become leaders of the new Christian movement. We know that their failure to stay awake didn’t thwart God’s plan to raise Jesus from the grave. Mankind didn’t miss out on salvation because the disciples lacked strength and discipline to stay alert and awake.
I can only use my imagination and speculate that Peter, James, and John thought about that night in the garden many times over the remaining years of their lives. They trusted the forgiveness and grace of their Lord. Jesus wouldn’t hold that night against them.
It’s possible though that they regretted missing the opportunity to be with Jesus during his last difficult hours among them. He invited them into his suffering, to be part of God’s plan, to be his companion in adversity. Jesus told them he was going to die, told them it would happen soon, told them he was going away.
Somehow, they didn’t understand that this night in the garden was their last night together. They didn’t know why Jesus invited them to be with him in the garden. They missed their opportunity to keep the teacher they loved so much company as he communed with God.
Maybe they didn’t understand exactly what Jesus meant. Maybe they didn’t want to believe it was true. Maybe the realities of life were too overwhelming, and they chose to escape the moment in sleep.
Waking Up is Hard to Do
Life didn’t get easier for the disciples, but they had to wake up and be alert. They couldn’t sleep through persecution and the enemies seeking to kill them. God had invited them to join Jesus in the mission to spread the good news of God’s love.
In recent weeks, I have become aware of some tough realities going on around me. Neighbors, friends, and family are facing some serious life issues. Evil people doing evil things has come close to home. It is tempting to keep the TV going or stay so busy that harsh realities stay at the fringe of my awareness. It is hard to bear the burdens of others and the world.
Hasn’t Jesus invited us to share in his prayer time and the mission of God? Hasn’t Jesus asked us to come to the garden with him and pray that God’s will be done in the here and now just as God’s will is done in heaven? Immanuel, God With Us, has asked us to be his companion alone in the presence of God.
I don’t want to miss my opportunity to be in the garden with Jesus. I don’t want to be found sleeping.
What will you say when Jesus asks, “Are you still sleeping?”
“The end of all things is near. Therefore, be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.”
1 Peter 4:7
Copyright @ TA Boland 2024
Image: istock
Comments