The sun has long set. The day is done. You’re in bed, waiting for sleep to come. But something’s keeping you up. Maybe it’s a problem at home. An argument with your partner, and at least one of you has gone to bed angry. Should I have apologized? No, he’s the one who should say ‘sorry.’ Or you’re stewing about an upcoming exam. Or reeling from a surprise medical bill. Or worried sick about a child. Or maybe you just wish you hadn’t said that thing you said in front of God and everybody at Thanksgiving. Will the Johnsons invite me back next year? Something at work. Business hasn’t been good. How are we going to make it? Or someone at work. Who does she think she is talking to me like that? And before long, our thoughts have unraveled into a maelstrom of worry. An hour passes, two hours, three. Now it’s 2:00 a.m., and you’re still tossing and turning.
What keeps you up at night? Well, these days, what doesn’t?
I’ll tell you what doesn’t keep me up at night. Waiting for Jesus to come back. I’m sorry. I know I’m a Christian, and in this Advent passage, Jesus tells us plainly that we’d better “keep awake - for [we] don’t know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow.”
Look, Jesus, this is on you. If you’d wanted us to be that alert, you should’ve created us with more robust nervous systems. Are we really supposed to go through life bracing ourselves for a darkened sun and moon, falling stars, and shaking heavens? On the other hand, we might prefer the bizarre celestial signs to what we’ve been through here on earth in the last several years. At least we don’t have to quarantine for a solar eclipse.
But how we answer the question of what keeps us up at night can tell us a lot about who we believe God is and what God is like. When we hear Jesus say, “Stay awake - you never know,” is he inviting us to imagine God on the prowl, waiting to pounce? Is Jesus inviting us to imagine God as a thief with a crowbar, prying open our bedroom window in the dead of night? Is Jesus inviting us to imagine that, on some existential level, the life of faith isn’t so different from a character in a horror movie, ridden with fear that the boogie man could pop out of a closet at any time? I’m reminded of the Christ-haunted preacher in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. Hazel Motes, who sees Jesus ‘move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown.”
I believe our response to Jesus’ invitation to stay awake turns on who we think we’re waiting for. If we’re waiting for a God who is quick to anger and abounding steadfast vengeance, our experience of God and neighbor will likely be more fearful than freeing, more harmful than hopeful.
But if we’re waiting for a God who’s slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, then we join with the eager Psalmist, who says, “My soul waits for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning” (Ps. 130:6). It makes all the difference if we’re staying awake to welcome someone we love. My soul waits for this one in whose presence I long to be.
I remember being abruptly awakened at 2:00 a.m. on a bitterly cold night. It was my wife. She said, “Wake up! It’s time!” Her water had broken. Our first child was on the way. How I’d longed across the pregnancy to know who this child would be. What color hair? What gender? Would they look more like their mother, or more like me? And when they were old enough to cry after a bad dream, who would they cry out for first – mom or me? My imagination about this long-awaited child was about to become real life. But when that wakeup call came, I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t terror stricken. I was elated. I was filled with adrenaline and joyful anticipation, as though someone had plugged me into a power grid and thrown the throttle-sized breaker from OFF to ON, and this great coming fulfillment of love made me “all flame.”
This Advent, rather than imagining a masked marauder jumping us from behind in the dark, what if we imagine Mary, instead, great with child, keeping watch over God’s promise, lying awake and dreaming. Who is the Psalmist but Mary waiting for the Lord, “more than those who watch for the morning”? Mary, the oil lamp by her bed still wispy with smoke, lying on her side. Mary, pondering in her heart this child she already loves. This child, whose face she has not yet seen, but who has already inspired shouts of joy from her aunt Elizabeth, and gymnastic in vitro flips from cousin John. This child, whose head she has not yet cradled, but who has already inspired her to sing of the poor finding hope and the rich going away empty-handed. This child, who’s cry she has yet to hear, but who has called her imagination about God and God’s love to expand exponentially with an algorithm of delight. This child, whose eyes have yet to pierce her own, but whose tossing and turning in her belly she reckons as the best reason she’s ever had to keep awake. What keeps her awake at night? This baby. This Jesus. Just for the sheer anticipatory joy of it all.
When Luke tells his version of this Mark passage, he makes it plain. Yes, when Christ comes, it will be frightening. “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world. But he also says, “When these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Lk. 21:25-28).
Nevertheless, we must honor the threatening tone of this passage. How do we wait with such longing for our beloved when the sun really is darkened and the moon is snuffed out?
I remember the testimony of Algerian Trappist Monk, Christian de Chergé, which he left to his family to be opened upon his death. After Christian was taken from his monastery on March 27, 1996, at 1:45 a.m., and beheaded by Muslim extremists, his loved ones opened his testimony to these words,
…my death will satisfy my most burning curiosity. At last, I will be able – if God pleases – to see the children of Islam as He sees them, illuminated in the glory of Christ, sharing in the gift of God’s Passion and of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to bring forth our common humanity amidst our differences. [“Testament of Dom Christian de Chergé OCSO” (1 Jan 1994). Accessed at https://columbanird.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Resources-Gods-and-Men-Testament.pdf.]
Christian de Chergé stands in the chorus around God’s throne, together with Mary and every Psalmist, to sing with conviction, “My soul waits for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning.”
What keeps us up at night, but waiting for God to tear open the heavens and come down? What keeps us up but a longing to come face to face with this God who might be revealed to us at any time? What keeps us up but hearts aching to know God and to be fully known by God? What keeps us up but our tossing and turning with a burning curiosity to know even our enemies and be fully known by them.
You who draw your breath in pain and in hope, what keeps you up at night? Isn’t it the love of God within you, longing to find its fulfillment on the Day of the Lord? When Christ comes in final victory, we feast at his heavenly banquet, and find our rest in Him.
Amen.