Awakening
Waking up. Staying awake. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently — Christ’s desire for us to be awake, his urge to awaken our souls. I’ve found it to be a beautiful lens through which to see Jesus’s message. Different doctrines and denominations have differing takes on the specifics of Christ’s teaching, and while there is beauty and value in the minutiae, it has felt so much more powerful and helpful for me this year to try and transcend the technicalities and hear God’s exhortation to just wake up stirring within me. I think this is what Jesus means sometimes when he talks about the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven isn’t some far off place that we’ll get to later, it’s here for us right now to wake up to. He says it belongs to children, and that it is hard for a rich man to enter. Children are so good at being free and present, without pretence or inhibition. While rich men exist in a reality constructed by material wealth and things of the ego. Heaven and hell can both manifest within us at any given moment, and to bring the kingdom of heaven is to awaken from the daydream of surface level existence and see Christ wherever you look. To delve deeply into the mystery available in each and every moment with childlike wonder instead of material distraction or cynicism. Pete Holmes says that when you become alive to Christ’s presence in this way even the air you breathe becomes delicious like pink lemonade.
In the gospel Jesus tells his disciples to stay awake, like servants minding the house of their master, because they do not know when the master of the house is coming. I hear this not as a command to “perform good Christianity always so that you don’t get caught with your pants down when God spontaneously shows up to blow the full time whistle” but really as a call to always remember what is real — to always be ready and willing to see Christ wherever and whenever he may appear, rather than forgetting about him, and starting to believe that you own the house, that you are the master. Each servant has their own tasks to perform, and yet Jesus emphasises a posture of wakefulness ahead of the practicalities of any duties they may have. I think Christ is invested in our being more than our doing.
The Buddha says don’t wait for all your suffering to end before you allow yourself to experience joy. Richard Rohr says that only the true self knows that heaven is now and that its loss is hell–now. Jesus says don’t wait for the master to get home before allowing yourself to wake up.
To be awake to the false realities that our ego tries to sell us, to be awake to Christ’s presence in ourselves and others, to be awake to our own suffering, and yet awake to the presence of the kingdom of heaven at the same time, I think that’s what God hopes for us in this gospel.
