"Jesus got up from praying and went over to his disciples. They were asleep and worn out from being so sad." (Luke 22:45, 46). The King James version reads, "...and they were sleeping for sorrow."
The disciples were overwhelmed with all the talk about the last supper being the very last supper; about Jesus being given into the hands of evil men; of someone who would betray Him; and of dying. There had been an increasing intensity in Jesus' words and acts over the last week, and there was something ominous in the air--a premonition about something awful that was soon to happen.
As the disciples followed Jesus into the familiar garden of Gethsemene, they were done in. Jesus told them to pray that they wouldn't be tempted, then went on further into the garden alone. From where the disciples sprawled on the ground, they could hear Jesus groaning as if He were in great pain. His cries to God were interspersed with gut-wrenching weeping. They probably didn't know what to do and were incapacitated from their confusion and weariness. They slept for sorrow while the battle for their souls and that of all creation, was being waged only feet away from them.
Sleeping for sorrow is not only a spiritual construct. There is a disorder called hypersomnia, which means too much sleep. People can sleep for 12 hours at night and then need naps during the day; who are always sleepy and for whom sleeping more doesn't help. People with sleep apnea or narcolepsy are like this. But in the mental health field, hypersomnia that isn't caused by these physical causes is a major symptom of depression. Usually depressed people lack energy and have some type of sleep problem--either insomnia or hypersomnia. They may wake up tired, shower and dress, and go back to bed, exhausted. Grieving people don't feel rested after sleeping and have that "wiped out" feeling for weeks. Yes, people indeed sleep for sorrow.
When I first started thinking about the temptations of the disciples, sleeping for sorrow didn't jump out at me as a test or temptation. It was evening and they were tired and overwhelmed. Their tiredness seems justified. But now it seems that perhaps Jesus' admonition is for us today, in this world with so many things that cause sorrow.
I had a middle school teacher who was unbalanced. I'll call him Mr. Carter. He was an anxious man, with a shock of reddish curly hair and a thin moustache over his pinched mouth. There was nothing joyous about him: he was intense and his eyes darted back and forth across the classroom most of the time. Mr. Carter had a number of conspiratorial ideas about the government, the Catholic church, and comunism. He was the only teacher who used to make us practice getting under our desks for the air raid sirens we never heard. He lamented numerous times that we didn't have a bunker at our school. This was in the late sixties and few people were still having bomb drills like we were.
Mr. Carter was sure it was only a matter of time before we would be a Russian colony. His theory was that as soon as our own government stopped minimizing the Russian threat, there would be anarchy and we'd probably need a bunker just to protect ourselves from our own people.
But the thing that really troubled me was his frequent talks about the threat of the Catholic church. One morning he played us a fifth- or sixth-hand recording of a nun with a heavy accent talking about how she had found dead babies under a convent someplace in a big city. She regaled her listeners about the hush-hush activities of the church and the subsequent threat to her life. At the end of the static-filled reel-to-reel narrative, Mr. Carter ceremoniously turned off the recorder and unleashed a volley of anti-Catholic propaganda. The class was almost breathlessly aghast, taking in the words spilling out of Mr. Carter's mouth, his face now tomato red.
All of this was unsettling to hear, at the ripe age of 12. As if this weren't enough, about this time a visiting pastor preached a good old Jonathan Edwards sermon that scared me stiff. It was right out of his Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God sermon:
You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.
I was beside myself with terror, sitting in church, fearful of even looking sideways knowing that I could be forever consigned to hell for whatever unknown sin was lurking within me. Over lunch that day, my father announced that that sermon was "hogwash." Neither he nor mother seemed to think much of it, but I worried that maybe some of what the pastor said was actually true and my parents just didn't know it.
Another terror existed in my young experience. My church teaches that there will be a time of tribulation, or time of trouble before the second coming of Christ. Many evangelical and fundamentalist denominations hold this belief. It is based on such Biblical passages as Daniel 12:1, Matthew 24:21, and Revelation 16. Scriptures are quite clear that difficult times are ahead. But without balancing this with the clear teaching that God will protect and uphold His people, such a doctrine can wreak havoc on small children and new converts. This brings us to the temptation of sleeping for sorrow. When people are terrified, depressed, feeling avoidant of reality, they sleep--physically and spiritually.
Due to this frightening beginning, I was terrified of the future clear into my late 30s. Even though there were and have always been voices within my church and Christianity at large, pointing out God's love and ability to spare His people, I could not hear it. A part of me was sleeping for sorrow. I couldn't hear the hopefulness or the freeing part of the Gospel of Salvation--it was about fear and trying not to think about all the things that could happen. I recall many occasions when I begged God to just let me die of cancer or an accident so I wouldn't have to face the unknown sufferings of the future. I was not suicidal, nor have I ever been. But in my terror, I was unable to take in much more than foreboding and daily anxiety of what would happen to me physically and spiritually. No one knew about this--it was my own private time of trouble.
I am grateful that this did not last. God placed a man in my path who for seven years demonstrated through his actions how God cherishes me. Seeing my need, he did not step away until I began to reach for awareness and a new grasp on God's grace. As the warmth of his understanding and sympathy started to melt the paralyzing dread I felt, I began to stir from within my spiritual and emotional somnolence. It was only then that I could recognize that I hadn't been fully awake for all those years.
Pray that ye enter not into temptation. Sorrow, fear, depression, foreboding--all of these make part of us sleep. It is not God's will for any of us to bear such burdens, or to put ourselves to sleep spiritually, just to avoid our fears.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11
...for he who touches you touches the apple of His eye. Zechariah 2:8
And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. John 10:28
That sense of hopeful delight, abandoned joy, and optimistic daring--things that are needed both to make our lives worth living and to be effective ambassadors of God's love--these are gifts God waits to give us. We will not know to ask for them if we are asleep for sorrow.
Wherefore He saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. (Ephesians 5:14).
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