Could You Be Asleep Right Now and Not Even Know It? Here's How You Wake Up.

It drove my dad nuts.   I tried to explain.  “Dad, I can’t help it.   It’s just something I do.   I don’t even know I’m doing it!   I’m asleep, for Pete’s sake.” 

On Saturday mornings, heck, all day Saturday if he could, my dad loved to work in his three gardens.   He was kind of a frustrated farmer.  And he enjoyed having me, his son, work with him.   Let’s say, I didn’t enjoy that whole working together in the garden as much as my dad did.  

So, here’s how it went.  Early Saturday morning, my dad called up the stairs to my bedroom.   He’d ask.  “What do you want for breakfast?”   I’d tell him.   I’d yell out, “Toast, eggs over easy, bacon.”  But when I said all that, I was still sleeping.  Some people can talk while they’re sleeping.  And yeah, walking while you’re asleep, that’s pretty wild.  But how many folks can order breakfast while they sleep?  Well, I could. 

When I came downstairs a few hours later. My dad angrily pointed to the cold breakfast on the counter.  He said. “That’s yours!”  But I had no idea what he was talking about.   It took me a while to realize.  I could not just talk while I slept.  I could hold whole conversations.   In fact, to be honest, I’m asleep right now.  So please be quiet while I preach, I’m trying to sleep.  Now my dad did not appreciate my sleep conversation abilities.  He just told me to eat my cold breakfast, get out and tie up those tomato plants.    

I don’t know if I can still converse in my sleep.   But I know this.  I still sure like to sleep, not that I get that much with a six-year-old.  I love slipping underneath those covers.  I cherish those few brief hours of blissful slumber.  Yet as much as I like it, I can’t sleep all the time.   Sleeping is great, but a life asleep, that’s hardly a life. You gotta wake up sometime.  

Yet sometimes I wonder how awake I really am.  In fact, I wonder sometimes how awake anyone is.  You see.  You can be walking around, talking, even preaching, and still be in a very deep way asleep.  Has anyone ever seen that play Our Town?   In some ways, that play has everything to do with the danger of being asleep. 

In the play, a young mom, Emily, dies hardly before she’s begun her life.  She asks.  Can I go back to relive just one day of my live?  And heaven says yes.  So, she chooses her 12^th birthday.  But as she relives that day, she discovers something almost horrifying.   Her family is missing everything.  Her dad is wrapped up with business problems. Mom is caught up in kitchen duties.  None of them see what or who truly matters.   Emily cries out.  "Oh Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me.  Mama, 14 years have gone by. I’m dead!" But still they don’t see, and as Emily breaks into tears, she realizes the painful truth. "We don’t have time to look at one another. . . . Goodbye, world! , . . Goodbye, Mama and Papa. . . . Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you!”  And she concludes with this haunting question.  “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?"

That question haunts me.  Do we realize our life while we live it?  Or are we missing it?  Are we walking around asleep and we don’t even know it? If you are asleep, how do you know.  More crucially, how do you wake up?  How do you stay awake?  In these words, God shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.   

Romans13:11-14

Is it true?  Can you miss your life while you live it?  In these words, God tells you yes.  But more than that, God tells you how you can wake up.   That waking up happens when you realize how Jesus has changed everything.  When Jesus wakes that up inside you, you will see the world as you never saw it before.  You will see the world as Jesus sees it.  But before you see that, you need to see easily you can fall asleep, even before you realize it.   

In this passage God even gives you a few of the ways that sleeping happens.   God talks about drunkenness, sexual immorality, dissension.  And in those things, God isn’t giving you a moralistic lecture.   God is showing you some of the things that lure you into sleep.

This past week, I got a call from a friend.  He shared that he was struggling with his regrets about falling into some bad habits that he thought he had moved past.  I got what was going on.  He had been trying to get this big goal done at work.   And it was totally stressing him out.  I told him. Walk away from focusing on that goal today.  Instead do things that give you life.   Later he sent me a message.  He had decided to take the day to listen to worship music, to walk in nature, to just eat and rest.   Now in giving him that advice, I was simply telling him this.  Wake up!  Wake up to what is real.  If this goal doesn’t happen, it won’t be the end of your life.  Let it go for a bit.  Get some perspective.   

But do you know what I realized as I gave that advice?  I was doing the same thing I was telling him not to do.   Last week, I had two days to get everything done I normally get done in four.  So, as I was talking to him, I was feverishly going through my own to do list, one that I thought allowed me no significant time to consciously connect with God.   So, we agreed.  He’d do his self-care, and I would pull myself away from my to-do list to take that time with God.    

Now in telling you that, don’t get the wrong idea.  I’m not giving you some Christian to do list to help you wake up and not do bad things.  No, I’m describing how the whole falling asleep thing happens.     You see, everyone has stresses in their life, things you worry about.  It may be a personal or family problem.  It may be a challenge at work or health concern.   It may be the problems of the world.  But whatever it is, your first instinct is to focus on it.  I’ve got to fix this or work to fix it.  But often that focus will lead you right into sleep.  What do I mean?

If I had stayed focused on that work, I know what would have happened. I’d fall asleep. In fact, that sleep was already happening.  A scout in our church's troop had taken on the renovation of our labyrinth, and while it looked terrific, I’d noticed that the scouts had not gotten the labyrinth exactly right.  And it was freaking me out.  I’d literally been outside moving the bricks around.  While talking to him, I was still trying to figure out when I could find time to move more.    Do you know what was happening?  I was falling asleep.  Heck, I was already asleep.  In his case, his bad habits were his sleeping pill.  Mine was control.  I wanted that labyrinth to be just right.  I was scared that wasn’t going to happen.  So, I was going to make it happen.     

Now when I sat down and took a few minutes to connect with God, I started waking up.  I sensed God saying to me.  “Ken, that labyrinth isn’t your job.  Let it go.”   And after those moments, not only did I get the work done, I did it awake.  I did it appreciating the people around me, the satisfaction my work gave me, my gratitude for all the hard work those scouts had already done.   And if I had not done that, if I had not let go of my need for control, not only would I have wrecked that day.  If I had kept it up, I would have done a lot to wreck my life. 

In the case of my friend, bad habits were putting him to sleep, dulling his senses, deceiving him into thinking that would help him cope with the stresses overwhelming him.   In my case, my desire for control was dulling my senses in the same way.   And if we had kept them up, it would have wreaked destruction in both our lives.  This sort of sleeping will do that.  So, what woke us both up?   What woke us up was rising above those day to day stresses.  What woke us was discovering some perspective on those issues we were fixating on.  And what helped us do that?  We, in our own ways, connected with God or as Paul put it clothed ourselves with Christ.  We got Jesus’ perspective.    

And without that perspective, you will fall asleep at the wheel.  And when you do that, trust me, accidents will happen.  Wreckage will follow.   In fact, our nation has, in a very profound way fallen asleep.  And that sleep, if we don’t wake up, it will rip us apart.   What do I mean?

Do you see these warnings about dissensions and quarrels?   As I was thinking about those words, I read a story by the journalist Tom Junod about Mr. Rogers.

Over 20 years ago, Tom Junod’s editor at Esquire magazine assigned him to do a story on Mr. Rogers, the children’s show host.   Tom already had a reputation as a reporter who crossed a lot of lines and burned a lot of bridges to get a story.  His editor thought it would be funny to put together this not very nice reporter with someone folks considered the nicest man in America.  

But when Tom Junod interviewed Mr. Rogers, it changed his life.   Tom didn’t like who he had become.  He had modeled his life on a father, who had left behind a lot of betrayal and hurt in his wake.    But he didn’t know how else to be, until Fred Rogers showed him a different model, how you could be both strong and kind.   And so, Tom wrote his article describing just that transformation.  It became such a legendary story it has now become a major motion picture with Tom Hanks.    To coincide with the film’s release, Junod just wrote a follow up story for The Atlantic magazine, one he called What Would Mister Rogers Do?  

In it, he tells a story about Pam Bondi, Florida's former attorney general.   At the time, the family separations on the border were happening.  Bondi, as a strong supporter of President Trump had become identified with them.   And during that time, one June night, Bondi and her boyfriend went to see a documentary about Mr. Rogers.  But when she got to the theatre, it turned others had followed her there.  Enraged by the suffering on the border, these folks yelled at her calling her a “horrible person.”  In fact, Junod writes.  They “shouted in her face with such vehemence that she was flecked with spit.” Even though they tried to stop her, she made it into a movie, though she recounted that “she was shaking the whole time.”   As she left, they accosted her again, and screamed these words.  “Would Mister Rogers take children away from their parents….What would Mister Rogers think about you…” 

So, Tom Junod pondered that very question.  And from his friendship with Fred Rogers, he knew the answer.  It has come in an email from Fred during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, where he wrote of grace and forgiveness, and ended with this line.  “The attitude which makes me (sometimes physically) sick is the “holier than thou” one.”     So, here is Tom Junod’s conclusion.  He writes.  “What Rogers would have thought of Pam Bondi’s politics is one thing; what he would have thought of Pam Bondi is quite another, because he prayed for the strength to think the same way about everyone.  She is special; there has never been anyone exactly like her, and there never will be anyone exactly like her ever again; God loves her exactly as she is.” 

If you know anything about Mr. Rogers, a deeply devoted Christian and ordainedPresbyterian minister, you need to know this.  He was profoundly awake.  He sought every day to clothe himself with Christ, and that meant he had perspective.  Whatever concerns he might have about our current President’s actions, above all, he would say about our President what he said about everyone.  Donald Trump was a child once.  He would invite the President to remember that in order that he might remember that he was still a child, a child of God.   And he would have prayed that our President realize that every day. 

As we enter into an election, one that now lies less than a year away, gaining that perspective is exactly what it means to clothe ourselves with Christ.   After all, even on that cross, as people brutalized and murdered him, what did Jesus do.  He prayed for them.  He prayed.  “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  And every day, Jesus prays for each of us, even in our darkest moments, even we are most deeply asleep.  He prays that in the midst of all our sleeping we wake up to who we already are, God’s beloved children.     

So, in these coming days, vote your conscience, support your candidate, even talk about your thoughts on the issues with others.  But please don’t do it asleep with dissensions and quarrels.   Do it with the wakefulness of love.  Do it with the perspective that no matter what happens, God’s love is already winning the victory.   No matter how dark the night seems, trust the perspective that the day is almost here.  And live in the light of that day even now.   Let Jesus put on you the armor of his light, of this God who loves each of us no matter what.  And as you let Jesus’ love wake you, he will give you the perspective to see beyond your fears and anxieties.   He will help you to see all the works of darkness for the dead ends they are.   Bit by bit, day by day, his love will invite you more deeply into his love, into who you truly are, God’s beloved child.   And you will live in that light, because you know.  That light is living within you.

Let the love of Jesus awaken you to what really matters.  Let Jesus enable you to rise up and love everyone even as Jesus loves you. In the name of the God who spoke light into being with a single word, who came as the light of the world, and who awakens in us a love more powerful and beautiful than we could ever dream or imagine. Amen.