
When Jesus asks his disciples, “Why are you sleeping?” he is asking them and us to move beyond the temptation of sleep so that we can be present, be awake to God and the many ways God is at work in this world.
“That’s one of the temptations of the season of Lent, we just sleep through the season, we ignore the invitation to the Last Supper, the challenging prayer in the Garden, the torture and cross, hoping to wake up in resurrection. It’s easy to drift off.”[i] To fall asleep and lose sight of the role God invites us to play in creation. In the season of Lent and beyond, we need to wake up. We need to wake up to how our legalistic rules of faith have caused us to lose sight of the love of God for all God’s beloved children. We need to wake up to the ways we focus on our own personal faith, rather than being in a community of faith. We need to wake up so that we can shift our focus, not on our place in the future kin-dom, but embrace our gifts to do the good work God is calling us to do in this kin-dom. We need to wake up to who God is calling us to be and what God is calling us to do. This work won’t be easy, and that is what we are seeing in the Garden. Like Jesus, a life of caring for those on the margins, and calling into question the powers that be, may well lead us to our own garden moment, and in time the cross.
Why are you asleep? As we move closer to the cross, may we be startled awake to see the presence of God in our world. For when we do, we might just be surprised to find our savior looking back at us, in the eyes of a stranger who, like Jesus, is struggling and needs us to be present, to pray, to not fall asleep on the needs of this world and those living in it. Friends, much work is to be done, so stay awake, be present, and don’t fall asleep on God today.