Waking Up To Life!

Mark 8:15-21

And he cautioned them, saying, "Watch out--beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod." They said to one another, "It is because we have no bread."

And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, "Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?" They said to him, "Twelve." "And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you Then he said to them, "Do you not yet understand?"

Introduction

Did you ever find yourself asleep when you should have been awake? Or, dozing when you should have been giving sharp attention?

I suppose lapses have happened to all of us. I remember a humiliating experience on one of my early trips to Chicago. I bought tickets to Barefoot in the Park, made my way back to the hotel and lay down for a few minutes before getting dressed for the play. It was one of those cold, snowy wintry days in Chicago. I had gotten chilled to the bone waiting in line for the tickets. The room was warm in contrast to the blowing, cold winds outside.

I dozed for just a few minutes, and when I awoke the clock's red numerals read 10:30 p.m. The play was over and I was the proud holder of a worthless ticket. Maybe not tragic in the large sense of the word, but upsetting to say the least.

An experience like this makes you feel dumb, undisciplined, and thoughtless. But there is another kind of sleep that is more tragic than sleeping through the starting time of a play. It is Life-Sleep! Life-Sleep describes the kind of slumber in which persons seem to be alert – they have their eyes open; they drive automobiles, carry on conversations, and earn paychecks. But at the deep level of their lives, they are unaware of ultimate values and meanings of life.

They suffer from the sometimes fatal malady of life-sleep!

I

In the text of the morning Jesus is encountering disciples suffering from life-sleep. He says to them, "Watch out--beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod." They said to one another, "It is because we have no bread."

The disciples missed the point. He is pointing to the spiritual implications of power, influence, and intention, and they are thinking, "Bread! Hard white bread like that lying on the dinner table." But Jesus was warning them about pompous religious leaders and deceitful politicians, and all they think about is "bread."

This block-headed response leads Jesus' effort to waken them: "Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?" They said to him, "Twelve." "And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you Then he said to them, "Do you not yet understand?"

"You have eyes, but you do not see. You are suffering from life-sleep.

"You have ears but you do not hear. You are suffering from life-sleep.

"You just saw me feed the multitude but all you saw were fish and bread and you did not see the bread of life it prefigured.

"You have a numb memory. You are suffering from life-sleep.

"Not only do you not remember my miracle, you have forgotten what I taught you: "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23)

II

Somewhere, sometime in a land far away a part of us fell asleep. It is as though this part of us grew weary, pulled off its clothes, lay down to rest, fell asleep and has never wakened. Other parts of our being did wake up! Our bodies aroused themselves, our minds shook off their drowsiness, and our psych became sensitive to the sounds and feelings and pain of the material world. But our soul, or spirit never fully awakened! If it did, we have never become aware of it!

And just as much as Jesus cared for this dimension of the disciples' lives, he cares for ours. He loves us, comes to us, nudges us and seeks to awaken us to something more than "bread."

In fact, in all that he said and did Jesus seemed intent on shocking his disciples, and us for that matter, into awareness.

To be truly present to your whole life means to have our eyes opened so that you can see; to have your ears opened so that you hear, to have your reason alert so that you understand. This is the biblical way of speaking of wakefulness or spiritual awareness. Wakefulness is the opposite of being asleep, deaf, and without understanding.

Those anesthetized by life-sleep and a fascination with earthly engagements must have something happen to them, something that shocks them into a deeper level of consciousness!

The parables of Jesus provides the kind of explosion that disorients and breaks us them out of their ordered way of perceiving and thinking. In that transitional moment they often glimpse the depth dimension of reality! People responded, "We have never heard anyone speak like this before!"

Jesus' miracles stunned persons so that many of them said "we have never seen anything like this before." Such a shock caused his audience to wonder in amazement. These healings were themselves parabolic. When he heals a blind man, he is showing how he makes people see who have gone through life "unseeing."

When he heals the paralytic, he shows how persons who have been unfeeling can be made to feel and thus to engage an oft unexplored dimension of their psyche.

And, when he unstops deaf ears he is revealing how spiritually deaf persons can be made to hear by the touch of his hand.

Each of these healings has a spiritual meaning, the recovery of a capacity lost to life-sleep.

III

It is possible, I believe, to wake up, to become aware and there are many ways to do it. But no matter how you describe it, waking from life-sleep is always a mystery

Like waking up in the morning, from the first twitch on the pillow to the fully dressed body walking out the door it is a mystery how we emerge from the caverns of unconsciousness and enter into mindfulness of the day.

While I was pondering the marvel of awakening from "life-sleep," my mind drifted back more than forty years. When I was living in Southern Indiana, I knew a woman named Mary who was married to David. Mary suffered great shame because her mother had been institutionalized in a mental hospital for 20 years.

Sometimes Mary had the courage to talk about her mother, but she often kept silent. When she did speak of her mother, with deep emotion she described how all day long her mother was in a stupor, knew nothing, was helpless, and out of touch with the people and everything else in her world.

Then, one day an amazing thing happened. Mary's mother awoke. After twenty years of being out of touch with the doctors and nurses who cared for her, the people who shared her living space, and her daughter, she suddenly came alive.

No one could explain what happened! The doctors did not know why she was suddenly alive again. Certainly, Mary was dumbfounded but grateful. And, least of all did Mary's mother know how or why she suddenly awoke to life. But she did!

Nudges of God keep coming to us, trying to awaken us from life-sleep. These echo the admonition of St. Paul: "Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." (Eph. 5:14)

Do you sometimes ask questions too big for you to answer?

Do you recall beautiful experiences that made you feel, "life is really, real."

Have there been moments when for a moment your mind was filled with awe?

Did you ever have an intuition of what you were meant to be or do

Was there ever a time when your intellectual clothes no longer fit?

Perhaps your nudge came in the form of a desire to do good. event in our lives.

Or, maybe your nudge came in the form of pain, real physical or emotional pain that would not go away.

IV

If we were today begin telling tales of our awakening, we might make some shocking discoveries. In a gathering this size many of us could tell stories of how Christ awakened us from our slumbers. For one it would be a moment of conversion when the Lord changed the direction of your life. For another, it would be a profound insight that came in an instant when you were reading the bible or some other book. I think someone here would tell about a healing, a time when you were expected to die and you didn't. In that experience a new layer of consciousness was uncovered. (Perhaps, like Dan Reeves, the Falcon Coach, who waked up after open-heart surgery.) I would probably tell about preaching for 10 years and then learning that God really loved ME!)

But I believe that many of us would tell less dramatic stories, something like a student who was describing moments of awakening in her life.

"The experience of awakening that I wish to relate is a favorite memory. It was a Friday evening, about a week before Valentine's day, my senior year in college. A few weeks before, my roommate, Mary, and I had attended a women's retreat held by our school. The speaker had talked to us about the "sacrament of the ordinary," God being present in the ordinary things in life. We were both enchanted with the concept, and talked about it often. So, that Friday night, Mary was siting on her bed, working on some knitting.

Our friend, Michael, came over to visit. He was sewing some lining into a vest. I modeled it, while he pinned the lining on.

Another friend, Chris, wandered down the hall. She brought Valentine makings with her, set up in the middle of the floor, and began cutting out hearts. We were all having a wonderful time visiting and discussing different things. All of a sudden Mary declared, "This is a sacrament of the ordinary party!" And, we realized that it was. God was very clearly present to each of us in that experience of doing very ordinary things.

Maybe at some time or other, these nudges have come to you. Maybe you have felt the pressure inside and your spiritual eyelids getting light. My sincere hope for all of us is that during this week, some of us will awaken for the first time to what is really real, that others of us will awaken more fully to who we are and what it means to be the People of God.