Could You Not Watch with Me One Hour?
When I was a relatively new teacher, I fell asleep during one of my classes. I had a group of 8th graders who were quietly working on a test, and I wasn’t feeling well and had taken some cold medicine. All I remember is one minute the kids were doing their work, and the next, the front office was coming over the intercom asking for a specific student. I jumped awake, answered the secretary, saying the student would be right there, and then opened my eyes to find an empty room. To say that I panicked would be a gross understatement. I was a young, untenured English teacher who had just misplaced 32 8th graders. I looked in the hallways, I went to the gym, I ran outside to the playground…I couldn’t find them anywhere. Finally, defeated, I headed to the office to turn myself in and get some help finding the students. As I rounded the corner, there they all were, in the office with my principal. He had come in to check on me, and finding me asleep, he decided to be funny. He and the kids thought it was hysterical. Even all these years later, I can feel the embarrassment of my failure.
It wasn’t intentional, and it wasn’t a lack of desire to do a good job. But I had let my guard down, perhaps out of pride, thinking something so negligent would never happen on my watch, and it was a good lesson that I’ve never forgotten.
When the disciples fall asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, it isn’t from a lack of faith or understanding of who Christ is. They are convinced He is the Messiah; in fact, this scene is immediately preceded by Peter - and all of the apostles, save Judas - vowing that they would never leave Jesus. They know of His deep sorrow and distress, even if they aren’t fully aware of what’s coming.
He commands the three who come deeper into the garden with Him to be vigilant and to pray. Even our Lord needs the support of His friends in His sorrow. He needs their loyalty, and they need the prayer so that they don’t fall into temptation. These men are going to be tested in the coming days. They are, after all, those who had, unlike the rich young ruler, left everything to follow Him.
And now, this kingdom that they had sacrificed and looked forward to was going to begin with its King being crucified? There’s no way this looks like victory to them! Surely, they can feel things shifting. Jesus’s popularity is waning, the Jewish leaders’ hatred of Him is intensifying…and rather than fight, they are told to be watchful.
This watching needs to be done in conjunction with prayer because they are going to be tempted to run away and give up. Jesus tells them that they will all stumble and that the sheep will be scattered when the Shepherd is killed; hard times are ahead. They need to pray and be on guard.
But they aren’t on guard. Three times He returns to find them sleeping. It’s easy to assume that their sleeping was due to indifference, but Luke notes that Jesus finds them “sleeping from sorrow” (22:45). Sleeping is often a grief response, and the apostles would have sensed and shared the great distress of Jesus. Yet, rather than praying as He was, they allowed their exhaustion to overtake them. Maybe their lethargy was compounded by the large meal they had eaten and the late hour of what would have been a really long day. Maybe it was warm and peaceful, and they just dropped off. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter why it happened. It only matters that they are all asleep at a pivotal moment in the life of Jesus and in the establishment of the kingdom, and they are vulnerable as a result.
They don’t seem to be fully awake until Judas enters with the ones who will arrest Jesus.
It seems like the shame of being found sleeping would have reignited these men. And I suppose it does to some extent; Peter still tries to keep Jesus from being taken, but that’s followed by his denial of Jesus at Caiaphas’s house. They have, indeed, scattered without their Shepherd. And as far as we know, they remained scattered for a day or two; John was the only apostle who was with the women at the foot of the cross.
That night in the garden, Jesus offers His disciples, and us, the way to avoid the fall from faith. We are to watch and to pray. Are we listening to Him?
I amaze myself at times with the creative excuses I offer for my lack of watchfulness and prayer. I can lose focus quickly. I don’t know if you’ve ever found yourself singing with the congregation, and you’re just on autopilot. We know the songs, we know the tunes, we don’t have to think…it’s automatic. My lack of vigilance still surprises me sometimes. It’s work for me to concentrate. Did you know that people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter? The average American has an attention span of 8.25 seconds. Isn’t that crazy?! That’s shorter than a goldfish’s attention span, just so you know.
As a result of our distractibility, we are often people who sleep on guard duty! Spiritual lethargy is a real danger, and it always has been, which is why Jesus wakes His disciples and tells them to watch and pray. It’s why He gives the parable about the 10 virgins keeping their lamps ready for the bridegroom, it’s why He warns about the weeds of the thorny ground in the parable of the sower. (We could keep going if there was time.) Over and over, we are cautioned about our unwillingness to be diligent in our spiritual focus.
We can blame whatever we want to: our attention spans, our busy schedules, our children, other people’s children…but we’d better wake up! If we allow ourselves to be distracted by the things of this world and lose sight of our target, then we become no better than Israel’s watchmen in Isaiah 56, whose indifference and laziness induce God’s judgment on the nation.
It’s not easy to be on guard all of the time. I truly believe that part of our problem in Western societies especially is that our lives are so easy and convenient that we expect our Christianity to be easy and convenient as well. In his book The Kingdom of God in America, theologian H. Richard Niebuhr observes that modern Christians, in America in particular, desire and teach about Christ without the cross. We want to have the hope and peace that comes with our faith in salvation without any sacrifice or inconvenience to our daily lives and routines as we would have them be. We are indifferent to God’s commands, and so our culture recreates God in its own image - as a God who requires nothing: no obedience, no adoration, no worship, no thought. We can be completely self-centered and still feel secure behind the walls of the city, which in reality, have watchmen who are drunk and blind and unaware of the dangers at hand.
Knowing that His disciples will become targets for those very watchmen who will try to thwart the furtherance of His kingdom, Jesus tenderly warns the three of such apathy. He’s not angry to find them sleeping; He’s worried. He is worried about His disciples’ ability to hold up under the coming dangers and persecutions. He sees what is ahead for them, and He recognizes the good in them when He says that “the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.” They weren’t lying when they said that they would die with Him, but the flesh is contrary to our wills at times, and when push comes to shove, even Peter denies Jesus in order to save himself.
The message to watch and pray emphasizes that they can’t rely on their own strength, and neither can we. Without watching and praying, we place our relationship with God in danger.
I have to quit making excuses for my own spiritual laziness and fortify my thoughts and my heart so that I have a chance of avoiding temptation. My flesh being weak isn’t another excuse for me to use; it’s a warning that I have to win the war that goes on within myself.
If we believe that all of our days are numbered (Psalm 139), then we believe that God knows what is in store for us, too…both successes and failures, joys and heartaches. His words to us are to watch and pray so that we don’t fall into temptation, so that we can endure the trials of this life, and so that we can face our own deaths without fear, knowing that our victory has already been secured. It won’t be convenient, and it won’t always be easy. It may make us targets for those of our own generations who want to subvert the truth.
But whatever the sacrifice, we can’t be asleep on the job, and no excuses are going to be acceptable to God. We must watch for however many hours have been assigned to us in the numbers of our days, lest we be drawn away into the world, scattered and lost, like sheep without a Shepherd, unprepared to meet the Bridegroom when He arrives.