Why are you sleeping? (Luke 22:46 & Romans 13:10-12)

Here is my manuscript for the sermon that I preached on Sunday, October 17 at our church. As always, this is not exactly what I said but it is the gist. In fact, the manuscript ends abruptly. I had to sort of figure out the ending. The video below is the actual 10:45 AM service if you’d like to check that out and hear some wonderful music (not from me).

Twenty-nine years ago, the Atlanta Braves were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League Championship Series. You have to understand that at the time—at least from my childhood perspective—it seemed like the entire southeastern region of the United States lived and died with the fortunes of the ball club from Atlanta. They were a garbage team for much of the 1980s, but suddenly with the rise of an incredible pitching staff they began to catch fire. And the South plus anyone who had the channel TBS on cable began to get swept up in the excitement. Braves hats were everywhere. P.A. systems at high school football games would break in with updates of playoff scores.

Once a year, our church would take buses on the three hour trek to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and it felt like a trip to Disney World. By all metrics, baseball has been passed in popularity by football and maybe even basketball. So those first few years of the 1990s are in my memory, baseball’s last true run at being the National Pastime. My brother Taylor and I were locked into all of it.

All of which brings us back to 29 years ago this past Thursday: Atlanta and Pittsburgh were playing a winner-take-all Game 7. The Braves were seeking their second consecutive trip to the World Series, while the Pirates were seeking to avenge falling short against Atlanta the year before. Pittsburgh pitcher Doug Drabek pitched a masterful game and the Pirates were winning 2-0 going into Atlanta’s final at-bat in the Bottom of the 9th; three outs from celebrating on the field of their nemesis. Then October magic began to stir. Terry Pendleton led off with a double then advanced to third when David Justice reached base on an error. Next, Sid Bream walked to load the bases. Ron Gant hit a long fly ball for the first out that allowed Pendleton to score and make it a one run ballgame. Catcher Damon Berryhill walked to load the bases again and then Brian Hunter popped up to the second baseman.

The bases are loaded, there are two outs in a 2-1 ballgame. Who will come to the plate in such an epic moment? It was a guy who had only been to the plate 12 times that season: a pinch hitter by the name of Francisco Cabrera. On a 2-1 pitch, Cabrera hit a line drive to left field. Justice easily scored from 3rd base to tie the game. As Barry Bonds tries to field the ball, Sid Bream is rounding third base, pumping his arms with all of his might.

This is what you need to know about Sid Bream: he was not a swift-footed guy. He had five knee surgeries and so running was not his forte. I went back and watched the last inning of this game on YouTube and the moment Bream gets on base, the television commentators immediately start talking about how slow the guy is. They come back to that subject multiple times to the point that it felt kind of mean. Long story short, Bream was possibly the last guy you wanted trying to beat out a throw from second base. Yet Bonds throws it to home, Bream slides, and touches the plate right before the catcher can tag him. Atlanta wins 3-2. 

Pandemonium erupts in the stands. Jimmy Carter and Ted Turner are high-fiving each other. The celebration dog pile at home plate was so raucous that one of the Braves pitchers got hurt and couldn’t pitch in the World Series. And across the Southeast, fans watching their televisions burst out in jubilant cheers including in my home in Moore, SC where my Mom and Dad let out an excited scream so loud that it woke up my brother…but didn’t wake up me. It wasn’t until breakfast before school the next morning that I found out my team had rallied from the 2-0 hole they were in when I went to bed.

The Bottom of the 9th in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS is widely considered one of the best moments in baseball playoff history; not just for Atlanta fans but the sport at large. And I missed it because I was asleep. That was the last time I went to bed before a game was over and I don’t think my parents ever made me go to bed during an important game again. I didn’t want to miss something else amazing or important because I was asleep.

That in short is the message for this Sunday; not about baseball, though I did watch Atlanta win in the Bottom of the 9th last night and it was awesome. But we are many times asleep to the ways in which God is present and moving and working in our own lives. That slumber is important because, especially as Christians, we believe that in God we live and move and have our being. When we are asleep in our faith, we miss out on something amazing, important, and life-giving. So as we wrap up this series on the questions of Jesus, we are looking today at the question “Why are you sleeping?” Cards on the table, it’s also a little bit because I thought it would be funny to preach a sermon entitled “Why are you sleeping?”

There are many reasons why we might be asleep to where God is present in our lives. When Jesus asked this question to his disciples, they were in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus was moments away from being arrested and they were all in the garden to pray; to seek God’s face in a time of barely imaginable trial. The text tells us that the disciples fell asleep because they were overwhelmed with grief. Many of us have been there before. Life gets so difficult and crushing that our bodies just want to shut down. In those moments, it can be hard to find God in the world around us. For some people the last 19 to 20 months have seemed like a never-ending cycle of being overwhelmed. The world got turned upside down and nothing was normal for a really long time.

We can also fall asleep to our faith when we are simply too busy or when faith slips in our priorities. We get so wrapped up in our day to day grind that we don’t really have time to think about God. So we compartmentalize everything to get through the week. We attach God to a time and a place, which is right here and right now. And because of that, Covid has made our faith slip even further down the rungs of priority. When God is tied to a time and place and that time and place is taken off the table, we can easily slip into the habit of even being asleep to God on Sunday if we’re not careful. Jesus wants his followers to be awake because things are urgent. Paul encourages the church in Rome to wake up for that very same reason. We cannot hit snooze on what God is doing in our lives.  

Perhaps the more important question is: How can we wake up? There are many ways and I am not going to pretend like what I have to say is the end all, be all. But I have five suggestions for you this morning on ways that you can become more aware of where God is in your daily life. First: simply ask God to show you where God is. At the beginning of each day and however much you need to, ask that God would open up your eyes. You would be surprised how much you start to see when you’re paying attention. I never noticed South Carolina license plates when I lived in South Carolina. But when we moved to Tennessee, every plate from the Palmetto State jumped out at me. The change in context, the fact that it reminded me of what was my home, made every appearance of license plate jump out at me. When we ask God to help us wake up and see where God is each day, that change of mindset can help us be witness to the myriad of ways that the divine shows up.

Yet what does it look like when God shows up? I think it’s easy for us to see God in a sunset or hear God in a Sunday morning hymn. Yet God is so much more present than that. My wife E.A.’s spiritual director suggested that we can search for God by looking for the Fruits of the Spirit. She encouraged E.A. to each day write down where she saw or experienced love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. For God is the source of all of these things. So my second suggestion is to pay attention to where you experience the Fruits of the Spirit and remember that those are true signs of God at work in your life. Where you experience love, God is there. Where life radiates joy, God is there. Where you find peace even when life is as unpeaceful as possible, God is there. If you encounter these fruits, make a note of it; literally if you have to. Write them down in a journal. Put post-it notes all over your house. Not only will it wake you up to God’s presence, but it will also be a reminder that God has been there when those Fruits seem to dry up from time to time. 

Third: Talk to God. I confess that this is one with which I sometimes struggle myself. But when those disciples were literally asleep in one of today’s passages, Jesus’ encouragement to them was to pray. Pray that you won’t fall into the time of trial. Call out to the God who hears you. We sometimes get intimidated by the idea of prayer. If you want a group of people to avoid all eye contact with you, ask them who wants to pray. We often feel like we don’t have the right words. We don’t know what we are supposed to say unless we’re asking God to bless a meal or saying “Now I lay me down to sleep…” Yet Jesus tells us that God is not impressed by fancy religious words. We can talk to God.

There are so many times that I sit in this empty sanctuary or the chapel or my car and just tell God about my day, about what scares me, what I am struggling with, and what I have hope for. I talk out loud, which gets awkward if someone walks into the room. Yet it helps me focus. It reminds me that this is a conversation. Sometimes I’ll sit in silence in listen. Sometimes I don’t have the words. You can borrow words if you don’t feel like you have them. There is a whole book of prayers called the Psalms. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love.” “O Lord, You have searched me and known me.” You can pray the Lord’s Prayer. You can get the Book of Common Prayer, pray the examen, there are so many resources that can help facilitate this conversation between us and God.

Fourth: Remember. Whenever you eat of the bread and drink of the cup, do so in remembrance of Jesus. Each Sunday, we take part in communion. We remember God’s love, mercy, and sacrifice for us. That remembrance does not have to be restricted to communion. We can remember God’s goodness with each meal. In church, we’re often encouraged to remember our baptism. Every single time, you encounter water—when you bathe, when you drink a cold glass, when the rain falls upon your face—you can remember your baptism. You can remember how God gives you new life. The world is full of ways to remember what God does for us. When we remember, our eyes can be opened to the ways in which God’s justice, love, and mercy are happening in the here and now.

Fifth: Community. In a lot of ways, I think that our waking up hinges on this one. We can help keep each other awake to the ways that God is on the move around us. In the prologue to her excellent book Searching for Sunday, the late Rachel Held Evans wrote, “Christianity isn’t meant to simply be believed; it’s meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. [The sacraments of the church] reminded me that, try as I may, I can’t be a Christian on my own. I need a community. I need a church.” I need a community. I need a church. We need each other.

We need each other to point out the places that God is moving around us. We need each other to lift us up when overwhelmed by grief, we just want to sleep. We need to each other to sit watch over us, while we get that necessary sleep. We need each other to slap one another awake when we get too caught up in things that hurt us. We need each other to pray for one another, to break bread together, to laugh, to cry. We need each other. If we truly want to see God in the world, then we need to be around people who want to do the same. It’s not enough just to share a pew with them for a hour once a week. We need to talk about faith with them, pray with them, have fun with them, share in life with them. We do this Sunday school classes, small groups, Bible studies, dinner groups, you name it. It doesn’t happen by accident. It takes intentionality. You and I need the church, because this faith thing is not just a set of ideas to believe, it is meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of one another.

Once a year, our youth group typically does an all-night lock-in in which we stay at the church and the goal of most students is to stay up all night. Between you and me, I’m not a fan of it. I am getting too old for such nonsense as keeping awake until the sun rises. But I love our students and so we do a lock-in and I stay up. People do a variety of things to stay awake. They’ll play games, they’ll eat. This past summer I painted a wall from like 3 to 6 o’clock in the morning. But what really keeps us all awake is one another. Sometimes we make it. Sometimes we don’t. But no one typically makes it to sunrise by themselves.