Sermon
Mark 5:21-43
Awakening from a Deep Sleep
Today I’d like to talk with you about the deep sleep and how we awaken from it. In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
What is the deep sleep? Let me offer two portraits of it. One of them comes from Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye, a book by a woman with a remarkable name: Madonna Kolbenschlag. Kolbenschlag opens her first chapter with this observation:
“You see them in high school study halls, twisting their tresses and staring out the window. You see them in offices, filing stacks of reports and glancing at the clock anxiously. You see them in laundromats, in supermarkets, in beauty parlors, on buses. You see them on the couch, TV blaring, paging throughSeventeen magazine. Wherever you see them, they are young, anxious, languid, bored, unsatisfied with themselves. (And when they are no long young their boredom has changed to self-hatred and their anxiety to depression.) They all have one thing in common: they are convinced they are waiting for something. They imagine themselves in a state of readiness, of expectancy, of waiting for life and for their real existence to begin. In fact, it has already begun — it is passing them by, while their energies atrophy. They are sleeping beauties who may never wake up.” [Madonna Kolbenschlag, Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye (Bantam Books, 1979), p. 5.]
The other portrait comes from Awakening from the Deep Sleep by Michigan psychologist Robert Pasick. This book has an impressive subtitle: A Powerful Guide for Courageous Men. Pasick begins with a list of twenty-five signs by which a man can tell he’s in the deep sleep. Let me mention just five. Speaking to men, Pasick says you know you’re in the deep sleep when:
1. You describe your life as hectic, busy, or rushed.
2. You depend on your mate to tell you how you feel.
3. Work is more enjoyable and rewarding than your home is.
4. You distance yourself from feeling any intense emotions.
5. You have trouble saying “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure.”[Robert Pasick, Awakening from the Deep Sleep (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), p. 1.]
The deep sleep! It takes different forms for men and women, for the young, the old, and the middle-aged. But whoever we are, the deep sleep means that something about us remains unconscious, unaware. We are in a stupor. We know the meaning of certain words, but they never apply to us. Such words as inquisitive, sensitive, trusting, dependent, adventurous, emotional, receptive, open, creative, playful, searching, mischievous, imaginative, growing, accepting, curious. [From Jean Gill, Images of the My Self (Paulist Press, 1982), p. 35, quoted in Diarmuid McGann, The Journeying Self (Paulist Press, 1985), p. 92.] We know what these words mean, but somehow they never apply to us. That’s what the deep sleep takes from us.
A man named Jairus, one of the most important people in town, makes a scene in front of Jesus. He begs Jesus to come to his house and help his daughter, who is close to death. Jesus arrives at the house. It is too late. The girl is dead.
The professional mourners are already in place, and have begun their wailing. Nevertheless, Jesus orders everybody out of the house. Accompanied by his closest disciples and the girl’s parents, he goes in to see the body. The bloom of youth has already left the girl’s face. The reports were right: she is dead. Jesus takes her by the hand, and tells her to get up. She gets out of bed, she walks around, to the shock of everyone. She is alive as any child playing out in the streets. Jesus tells them to give her something to eat. This twelve year-old is, after all, a growing girl.
Jairus’ daughter is his pride and joy, the apple of his eye, his very soul. This girl falls into the deep sleep, and he is devastated. He is humble enough, wise enough, to seek help. Jesus comes and calls her back to life. Before long, Jairus’ house is again full of her laughter.
This gospel story does not deal simply with a certain child who lived at a particular time and place, whose father’s name was Jairus. No. This story is also about any of us who fall prey to the deep sleep, whose inner child is counted as dead. The story insists on the possibility of restoration to life; that this child can awaken from the deep sleep. What it takes is the touch of Christ, the word of Christ. This touch heals. This word empowers.
Is there any place where we hear the words of new life? Where we feel the touch of new life? Consider your existence — its achievements and setbacks, joy and sadness, the complexity and the utter plainness of it all — is there any place where new life touches you, where words of new life are spoken to you? Is there any situation where you hear — however faintly — the command to get up, and feel within yourself the power to do so? If you do, then know for sure that it is Christ who addresses you, who awakens you from your deep sleep as surely as he called Jairus’ daughter back to life.
There were other voices that day in Jairus’ house. The wails of professional mourners, their cries devoid of hope. The mocking laughter of the bystanders when Jesus, newly arrived in the house, claims that the girl is not dead, but only asleep. Their words are sharp with sarcasm. What would have happened if the girl had listened to such voices as these and not the call of Christ?
We too are surrounded by other voices — mockers and mourners who nearly drown out the words of Christ, who nearly keep us from awakening out of our deep sleep. Such voices tempt us. Sometimes they sound familiar. May we listen only to that voice which invites us to live, that calls us to get up and get going with what we are here to do.
That one true voice does not always sounds familiar. It takes different forms, and what it says may surprise us. Often that voice doesn’t say what we think it should be saying. But surprise is the way of God’s kingdom. Surprise is what’s necessary to awaken us from the deep sleep, to raise us from the dead.
Girl or boy, woman or man, let yourself be astonished and amazed! Let the voice of Christ surprise you! Wake from the deep sleep, rise from the dead — it is Christ who calls you; it is Christ who offers you life!
Copyright 2003 The Rev. Charles Hoffacker. Used by permission.