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Day 5 Shake yourself awake

Today’s detox follows yesterday’s as surely as day follows night!

‘Why are you sleeping?’ The question gets asked twice in the Gospels. Jesus asks it of his disciples at the worst moment of their lives in the Garden of Gethsemane, with the collapse of their mission staring them in the face. The disciples ask it of Jesus at the scariest moment of their lives, on a boat in the middle of a storm.

Sleep gets mixed reviews in the Bible. Its first appearance, in the myths of the Garden of Eden, is glorious. Adam goes into a deep sleep and, while he is oblivious to anything, God forms womankind. When he wakes up, there she is: his soulmate, his helpmate; his equal, his opposite; his love and his lust. Eve! And suddenly there is a good reason not to sleep at night!

The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime. Romans 13.11–13

That, according to the Bible, was in the glorious days before sin entered the world. After that sleep is sometimes easy and sometimes impossible. It is some- times blessed with dreams and sometimes cursed with nightmares. Sometimes it soothes away cares and sometimes it’s disturbing.

Dreadful things happen while people are asleep. Noah gets so drunk that in his sleep he doesn’t realize he has no clothes on, which unleashes a train of ghastly events. Samson is so shagged out after his night with the prostitute Delilah that he is captured by the Philistines, instigating a series of atrocities. Eutychus is so bored listening to a long sermon that he drops off, both into sleep and out of a third storey window.

This puts me in a difficult position, because I love sleep. The night in October when we get an extra hour is one of my autumn highlights. Aged eight on our school trip to the pantomime Sleeping Beauty, all the good boys came out wanting to be the sword-swishing hero. All the bad boys wanted to be the blood-curdling ogre. I wanted to be the princess who slept for a hundred years!

So I am gritting my teeth as I admit that whenever sleep is used as a metaphor in the New Testament it is bad news. ‘Wake up!’ the writers tell us repeatedly. Things are going wrong in the world and you are sleepwalking through it. ‘Wake up!’ because Jesus is going to return any moment. There is so much to do and so little time. Apathy, temptation, lack of energy to copy the ways of Jesus, being a Christian by name but not showing evidence of it – the New Testament writers describe these things as being asleep while the night deepens into danger. Not the best metaphor they could have chosen for someone like me!

It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: ‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’ Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity. Ephesians 5.12–16

But it was Jesus himself who started the metaphor. In Gethsemane he had to wake his followers physically; in his teaching he had to wake them spiritually. He once told a story about a disastrous wedding celebration. At a wedding in Jesus’ day, the bride’s family prepared her intricate costume and then sat down to wait for the groom’s arrival. (It was the opposite of today’s weddings where the stereotypical joke is that the bride keeps the groom waiting.) In the meantime, everyone dozed off. When a rap on the door woke them all up, half the bridesmaids were ready to go to the party, but half discovered that they did not have what they needed for the wedding procession and were subsequently left behind. The problem was not that they had needed a sleep; it was that they had wasted time while they were awake and had failed to get themselves ready.

Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling . . . The night is given to us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth and work with it till the evening. Florence Nightingale, nurse, 1820–1910

‘Be prepared for my arrival,’ says Jesus the bridegroom. How? By doing as a habit what we want him to see us doing when he arrives in person. Being wide awake!

The Christian faith is not a matter of dozing our way through Monday to Saturday before snapping into religious mode on a Sunday. It is a matter of having our relationship with Jesus in mind, shaping and prompting us, all through the week. It is when we are drowsy (either actually or metaphorically) that we allow things to happen that we regret when we are awake. Be alert, Jesus says, not only when you know I am close, but during the gaps when it is harder to be aware of me. Even then, I am on the way!

I am on the way! The challenge comes blazingly from Paul in the New Testament: ‘The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber.’ It comes perfectly from Jesus in Luke’s Gospel: ‘Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.’ And it comes pathetically from a writer who at eight o’clock in the morning would give anything in the world to press the snooze button one more time, but who believes with all his heart that the world needs Jesus to prevent it from sleepwalking into chaos.

Be eager in prayer, and vigilant to do good without wearying. Remove from yourself all drowsiness. You should be watchful both by night and day. Do not be disheartened. Abraham of Nathpar, theologian, circa 550–600

The challenge to the Christians of the world is for all the dozers to perk up, all the deserters to join up, all the idlers to hurry up, all the loungers to sit up, all the miseries to cheer up, all the bores to shut up, all the whisperers to speak up and, most of all, for all the sleepers to wake up, because it was while the disciples were sleeping that Jesus was betrayed.

Detox: Where are the places and when are the times that you are most likely to fail the standards that Jesus has set you? Last thing at night? After a drink? In a particular shop? With certain people? As part of your detox, analyse whether there are areas of your life in which you need to be shaken awake, and take steps to make sure you do not let your guard down.

Lord Jesus, you and I both know the circumstances in which I am most likely to let you down. Make me strong enough not to go where I will be tempted, and make me vigilant when I have no choice. Amen.