Keep Awake

“Keep Awake” The Dover Church
November 28, 2010 – 1st Sunday of Advent
Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 24-36-44

I have never been a night owl. Even in college, when everyone else would be out until all hours of night, I wanted to be back in bed and asleep by 11. I did have practice the next morning at 5, but plenty of my team mates seemed to manage with short naps. Not me. And as for pulling all night study sessions? None of that for me either. I would just put the books down and rationalize to myself that I either knew what I needed to know by then or not. And now? Well, now I am pathetic. By the time 9 rolls around, all I want is to read a few pages of a good book and turn out the lights.
There have been two things in my life, however, which have overcome the gravitational pull my bed has on me: striped bass and sick babies. In the case of striped bass, the really big ones tend to be most catchable from shore in the middle of the night. And sick babies…well, my father could sleep through that, but I never could.
It seemed to be such a simple question at the time: “do you want to have a child?” When I said “yes” without hesitation or reservation, the whole prospect of extended periods of sleep deprivation did not enter into my thinking. Ear infections were Leo’s thing. Anyone who has ever had a baby with an ear infection will know what the crying and squirming is like. Leo’s always seemed to come on sometime between 9 and 10 PM on Saturday nights. You might think that Saturday night is just about the best possible night if you have to have an ear infection, but for a guy who had to drag himself into the pulpit the next morning…well, it got so bad that I actually blanked on the words to the Lord’s Prayer one Sunday and had to be cued by my organist. I was always torn with feelings of helplessness and ignorance, coupled with indecision. Do I wait it out or call the on-call doctor? The experience was intense…not at all sleep inducing.
Once the crisis had passed, I wondered whether the Tylenol and Motrin cocktail was just masking the pain or whether actual healing was going on. I watched for signs of improvement: had the little hand stopped reaching for the aggravated and painful ear? Was the temperature abating? Were the muscles relaxing and the breath deepening? To use the Biblical word, was shalom breaking out? Peace, health, wholeness, harmony? Or was this merely a lull in the storm?
And then, once I gave up trying to diagnose one way or the other, I would find myself actually enjoying a new experience of wakefulness at 3 in the morning, contemplating my sleeping son, feeling the warmth, watching the facial expressions, seeing every detail on the face, the chest rising and falling, the hand opening and closing. This was a time of gradual awakening to something good. Better than good, something great. Dear God, I love this child and I love that I have the chance to be here holding this child….even though I know I am going to be a zombie at church in a couple of hours.
Suddenly, Marie-Laure would be there, nudging me awake. “How’s Leo?” “He had a tough time until about 3, when things got better and he dropped off.” At which point, mother would take the sleeping baby into the bed and pronounce that magic word, “better.” I had seen little hints that “better” was coming. I had felt them, seen them, heard them, just known that “better” was coming although I would have been hard pressed to offer a scientific explanation of how I just knew, but there it was. Better, something that seven hours earlier seemed unlikely if not impossible. My keeping awake had helped shepherd in that possibility, several hours of rocking and cuddling in the chair, a few walking circuits around the house, sometimes more Tylenol. Not much perhaps, and certainly not instantaneous compared with what a doctor might have done, but my part to play in our little shalom drama.
Before there were babies or even Marie-Laure, I loved striped bass. I love to fly fish for stripers, but if you are shore bound as I was and you want to catch a keeper as I did, then it means live eels and the middle of the night. Night fishing is not going out after supper for a couple of hours or getting up a couple of hours before work. It means going out when the Late Show watching folks are tucking in, when I would already have been asleep for four hours. The certain knowledge that big fish were out there made it clear to me that there was one thing missing in the picture of me holding such a bass in my arms on the beach in the middle of the night: me. You better believe that was enough for me to get myself out there.
And what is night fishing for stripers like. Well, it’s actually not like much of anything at all. I would be pretty excited as I got out of the car and rigged up. I would still be pretty excited as I walked down to the beach, sniffed the breeze for the scent of bait, listened to the darkness for sounds of slurps and splashes which would be those bass feeding within casting distance, looked at the tide and flow to decide where to cast. Most nights nothing obvious would be going on, so then it was the mighty heave ho of a big, squirming eel which I stitched onto the hook and a sinker serious enough to get the whole rig down in the current. I’d wait until I felt that the sinker had settled, gave a couple of finger tugs on the line to check if the eel was swimming freely, let the drag off the reel, sat down, and waited. And more nights than not, I’d wait, and wait, and wait. You can’t catch a fish if your bait is not in the water, so reeling in and casting over and over again is not the way to go. You cast and wait. I would listen. I would watch the tide and move a bit up or down depending on the flow. I would see the stars. I would wish I had brought insect repellent when the sand flees started getting at me. And then, it would begin to dawn on me. I don’t know how I knew, but I just knew… the crabs had taken my bait. The eel’s gone. I’m fishing a bare hook, which means my chances of catching anything have sunk to almost zero. I’d reel in and sure enough, nothing there. So I’d take out another sewn eel, rig up, and cast again.
Not all that often, but often enough to keep me coming back for more, the moment of truth arrived. Sitting and waiting, listening and watching, thinking about something or the other, and then… a click on the reel. And then another. You’d be amazed how a little click can snap you wide awake…and you wait. The obvious urge is to jump up, grab the rod, tighten the drag, and give a big set and reel that baby in. That is exactly the wrong thing to do right now. The bass is down there mouthing the eel, chewing on it. Doing anything now would just pull the whole thing out of the fish’s mouth. So you wait. Another click. Wait. And then line starts to run off the spool. The fish has it. Which way is the fish moving? Away is best, because a set will bring the hook right into the corner of the mouth where it will hold. Sometimes the fish stops to nibble some more and you wonder, is she off? Has she felt the hook and spit the bait? Sometimes the fish is really gone. Who knows why? But other times, she takes off again and you set the hook and the hysteria begins. If your tackle holds up and you don’t make any mistakes, you finally see the fish and then you have to curb your impatience yet again. Don’t go into the water to get the fish because the fish will see you and make another run for it. No, just firmly hoist her onto the beach where you can finally pounce, turn you headlamp on, take a look, and, if you’re like me, take a picture, lift her up for a weight and length, and then carry her back into the water for another day. Big bass are the ones who spawn, so this is really an act of self interest. A great, big bass: yet another little shalom drama and all because I kept awake. The bass would have been there in any case, but I would never have touched it and felt the thrill of connection without keeping awake.
Our Word from Jesus this morning is to keep awake. Keep awake? Aren’t we wide awake already? Sure, but most of the time we are awake to the press of our daily lives which we can’t help but see but often can’t see through or beyond. And when that isn’t consuming us, we’re wide awake to the brokenness of the world all around us which we can’t help but see but often can’t see through or beyond. But Jesus calls us to keep awake for the vision God gave to Isaiah, a world of peace and harmony, God’s shalom.
This is a paradoxical wakefulness. Normally we see ourselves as the primary actors in our life dramas, but in Isaiah it is God who is doing everything. We are invited to participate, to be part of this reality which we aren’t aware of because we’re so busy with other things. Jesus, tells us that the kingdom of God is already at hand; yet another paradox of somehow both now and not yet. And what’s missing in the kingdom picture? Our participation, in a welcoming, open, encouraging, gently helping along sort of way, just like rocking a baby in your lap or waiting for that big bass shows up.
I know that I have fallen asleep when I suddenly realize that I am very self-absorbed, everything in my world is all about me. Every thought I have comes back to me. I know that I have fallen asleep when I suddenly realize that I am too busy too even give a thought to God’s vision, let alone do anything. I know that I have fallen asleep when I suddenly realize that I am overly self-satisfied, doing alright, pretty darned well in fact, and don’t want to spoil it by worrying about everything that’s not alright. I know that I have fallen asleep when I suddenly realize that I have become cynical: this is the way the world has always been and Jesus and the prophets were just a bunch of dreamers. I know that I have fallen asleep when I suddenly realize that I am resigned, this thing is way too big for me so why bother. I know that I have fallen asleep when I suddenly realize that I’m just angry, but that’s as far as it goes.
It’s hard to stay awake waiting for Isaiah’s vision of God’s future. It’s hard to stay awake for God’s kingdom as proclaimed and lived by Jesus. It is as improbable in our present world, improbable as the vision of a happy, healthy baby in the light of dawn when you hold a crying baby at 2 in the morning, improbable as a keeper striper when the ocean seems devoid of life after four hours of crabs taking your bait. Eugene Peterson, my favorite spiritual theologian, puts it this way, “Kingdom is what is going on all the time, whether we are aware of it or not. Kingdom requires a total renovation of our imagination so that we are able to see what our eyes do not see, so that are capable of participating in what will not be reported in tomorrow morning’s newspaper.” “Internationally and historically, killing is the predominant method of choice to make the world a better place” …”when it comes to what is wrong in the world, Jesus is best known for his fondness for the minute, the invisible, the quiet, the slow – yeast, salt, seeds, light.” That’s hard to keep awake for, seeds growing, yeast rising, salt brining, but that is our spiritual discipline.