Keep awake

A word for the week

He says it four times in six sentences, and the last time he says it to everyone. Watch. It is the plainest instruction he ever gave, and one of the hardest to keep, because there is nothing to do with your hands while you do it.

Notice first what he refuses to tell them. They wanted the date. Every generation has wanted the date, and every seller of the future has been glad to name it for them. Jesus, who could have said, tells them instead that he does not know it, that not even the angels know it, that only the Father does. Hear how strange that is. The one we are waiting for says plainly that the waiting has no end we can mark on a calendar. He takes the timetable away from us on purpose.

Why would he do that? Because a date would ruin us. If you knew the year, you would sleep until the year before it, live however you pleased, and set an alarm. The not-knowing is not a gap in the plan. It is the plan. It is the thing that keeps you awake tonight, in the ordinary dark, instead of someday.

So he gives the picture of the man who goes away, leaves each servant their work, and tells the doorkeeper to keep watch. See that the watch is work. Each servant has a task. To keep watch is to do your work as though he might walk in while you are doing it. The watching and the working are one act. The honest servant, the one who does his job well when no one is looking, is keeping watch whether or not he is thinking of the master.

Then the tender detail: he might come at evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning. Those are the four watches of the night. Jesus is naming the long hours when it is hardest to stay awake, the small hours when your resolve is thinnest and the bed is warmest and it seems nothing is ever going to happen. That is exactly when he says the coming may be. Not in the bright afternoon of your faith, but in the worn-out middle of the night of it.

Here is the truth about a watch. It is easy the first hour and brutal the fiftieth. Anyone can stay alert when they think the moment is near. The whole difficulty is staying awake through the long ordinary stretch when nothing comes, and nothing comes, and you begin to wonder whether anything ever will. That is where most of the watch is spent. That is where it is kept or lost.

So this is a call to faithfulness on the boring nights. Keep doing the good in front of you, keep the small daily practice lit, and love the people at your table. Do your work as though it mattered, because it does, and because he might. And when your resolve thins, as it will, do not despair of it. He knew it would. That is why he said it four times.

What I tell you, he says, I tell all: Watch.