Keeping Awake

Jesus’ earnest appeal to his beloved disciples to “Remain here and keep watch with me” (Mt 26:38/41) fell on deaf ears. They were perhaps too exhausted, not only physically but also psychologically, especially after the Last Supper, where Jesus foretold the fate that awaited him. I leave it to biblical scholars to provide an exegesis of the text, but I found the quoted words have a lot to whisper in my ears, even after two centuries. I would like to paraphrase the words of Jesus as “keep awake with me”; in fact, that is precisely the meaning of the quoted phrase. Jesus invited his disciples, who were too exhausted to keep awake.

How hard and challenging is it to keep awake, especially when we know that everyone else is fast asleep; it is hard to keep awake when the body is too frail and weak (the flesh is weak, to quote Jesus, Mt 26:41), and is too exhausted. It is a challenge to keep awake when we find no ray of hope in the distant future. Jesus however seems to be pleading with the disciples precisely because he needed them close to him, when he himself was going through excruciating pain and agony in the garden. The disciples perhaps could not understand what their master was going through and could have assessed the situation too lightly.

Looking at the words of Jesus from a psychological point of view, it is so comfortable to fall asleep, so that we need not face the harsh reality. The ostrich is said to sink its head inside a mound of sand and imagine the whole world to be in dark. We would like to live in our worlds of make belief, where everything revolves round our own interests, needs and demands. The harsh reality that we may have to witness could be something too cruel and harsh for me to witness, and therefore there is a lot more consolation in either closing our eyes, or at least pretending to be fully in sleep.

Jesus does not mind doing the unpleasant job, even if others might laugh at him. Perhaps on other occasions, the disciples managed to keep awake, but now Jesus finds them drawn by the magic spell of the Lotus Eaters. It is possible that Jesus invites the disciples to keep their eyes open and recognize what was happening in front of their very eyes. It may appear that the disciples were refrained from recognizing Jesus as the weak and frail human person, their eyes as if blinded, because they could not see the Messiah sweating blood.

To be awake, psychologically, is a big challenge today. We live in a world where to be awake is to invite trouble, because the world would want everyone to be asleep, or at least pretend to be asleep, so that they do not see, hear, feel, and touch the reality looming before them. To be insensitive to human pain, suffering and misery is considered a virtue, lest we be drawn into an endless questioning and challenging the worldly forces. It is here that we hear the call of Jesus to keep awake with him!