Watching With Christ

A Study in Christian Spirituality

June 2008

 

“That awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace.”   Book of Common Prayer, Service of Compline

 

 

 

Introduction: Watching as a Spiritual Discipline

 

A minor theme in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus’ command to his disciples “to watch.”  The usual Greek verb is grhgorei~te.  In this essay, we focus on the Gospel of Matthew and three verses in which this verb appear.  All three appearances of the verb “watch” in these Matthean passages are:

 

i.             in the imperative case;

ii.            a command from Jesus;

iii.          a command to his disciples ( not to “the crowds” or any other audience.)

iv.           using the same Greek verb, as recorded by Matthew.

v.            in the third case,  “watching” is linked directly with “pray”, also in the imperative case.

 

Our purpose is to review these three passages and reflect on their possible meaning for Christian spirituality today.

 

An Historical and Etymological Note

 

The dictionary offers several related but distinct meanings for the verb “watch.”  “To watch” can mean to look at or observe something attentively, carefully and steadily.  An associated meaning is given in the phrase “to stand watch.” Here he or she who watches stays awake, often, though not only, at night, serving as a guard, sentinel or watchman.  A third meaning, and the subject of this study, is to stay alert as a devotional or religious exercise.

 

We can distinguish the New Testament noun for “watch” from the verb, “to watch.”  When “watch” appears as a noun, it refers to a period of time during the night, as in “the fourth watch of the night.” (Matthew 14:25)[1]  The Greek word Matthew uses for “watch” is fulakh~|. In Luke 2.8, speaking about shepherds watching their flocks,  fula>ssontev is used.

 

In the three passages in Matthew’s Gospel we examine, the author uses the Greek verb for  “watch” and “watching.”  Here, watching is not directed to a specific object, as in the usage, “watching the prisoner.” Rather, the action of watching is a steady state of alertness, attentiveness, and awareness intentionally developed and maintained.  We are interested in the possible contemporary relevance of “watching” as a religious discipline.

 

In its religious meaning of staying alert as a devotional or religious exercise, to watch is closely connected with the church service of religious vigil.  A Christian religious vigil in the traditional and most general sense is a service of prayers and other devotions held on the eve of a festival or holy day.  The central religious vigil in contemporary Christianity is the Easter Vigil, held on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, at different times for different Christian traditions. 

 

Today, the phrase “prayer vigil” is often used within the Christian community for prayers and devotions at a specific event or occasion, e.g., a natural disaster with many victims or other grave event.  In popular usage,  “holding a vigil” can also be used to describe religious prayers and devotions outside the Christian tradition. [2]

 

A Christian practice, especially in the “Catholic” traditions of Roman Catholicism, Easter Orthodoxy or Anglicanism is the vigil candle, sometimes called an altar candle, lighted to mark the reserved sacrament or lighted next to an altar in a church or placed on a grave. 

 

In the Middle Ages, for example, the worshippers met on the evening before religious festivals for a service of prayers and hymns.  However, historians report that these evening events became ribald parties, with much wine, food and less than pious behavior.  The designation  “wake”, a get-together after a funeral, especially associated with Irish Roman Catholicism, is significant in this context.  Roman Catholic wakes, perhaps especially those of Irish Roman Catholics, are popularly viewed as opportunities for drinking, feasting and revelry.[3]  The word “wake” is however significant in this context, for it relates to staying awake in order to  “watch” at the time of a death.   Thus the custom of a wake in the home of the deceased or now a funeral home is closely related to Jesus’ command at Gethsemane that the disciples watch with him, i.e., not sleep. 

 

The New Testament language of “watching” thus seems to have been institutionalized in vigils and wakes.  This shows that Jesus’ commands to “watch” were not incidental and secondary for the early Christians but developed into spiritual institutions. 

 

With this etymological and historical background in mind, we turn now to the Matthean passages that are the focus of this essay.

 

New Testament Material

 

In the verses we examine here, “watch” means a single psychological/spiritual activity but the “watching” is done in three different “directions.”   Different as they are, however, the common element is an intentional (in contrast to insomnia!) spiritual alertness, vigilance, and an active, concentrated awareness.  Jesus commands this stance in relation to three ‘directions’: in relation to Jesus himself in Jesus’ own spiritual struggle, especially as he struggles with his violent death in fulfillment of the Father’s will; second in relation to temptation; third, in relation to the anticipated “Day of the Lord.” 

 

1. In Matthew, the first occasion of this command is Jesus’ teaching to his disciples to actively anticipate the arrival of God’s full rule and the end of history.  This visitation is referred to either as “the day of the Lord” or the “coming of the Son of Man.”

 

watch, (grhgorei~te) for you don’t know what day the Lord (or) The Son of Man is coming (Matthew 24:42; 25:13)

 

2. Next in Matthew (26:38) comes Jesus’ command to his disciples “to watch with me” while he prays on Mount Gethsemane. Again the verb for  “watch” is grhgorei~tei”[4]  ; Jesus asks the disciples for an intentional sharing in his spiritual agony in prayer. 

 

3. The third use of ‘watch’ appears close to this second use.  Jesus warns his disciples to “watch and pray” when he finds them not watching as he asked but sleeping.

 

“watch and pray, (grhgorei~te kai proseu>cesqe)  that you do not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Matthew 26:41

 

All three of these verses about watching appear toward the end of Matthew’s Gospel, in chapters closely related to Jesus’ passion.  The passion narratives were the cores around which the Synoptic Gospels formed.  Therefore, these verses may have been part of the earliest oral and written traditions about Jesus’ teaching and ministry and may have carried special authority for earliest Christian spirituality.

 

In evaluating these three verses about “watching” we must first ask what Matthew’s purpose was in using them in the context of Jesus’ passion.  A plausible, though I think finally insufficient, answer is that the author of Matthew in this context (Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane) wanted only to display the disciples’ weakness and lack of solidarity with Jesus.  This would be especially plausible for the verses describing Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Jesus asked the selected disciples to watch with him while he prayed; however, every time he returned to them they were not watching but sleeping.  Possibly the only point of these verses about watching with Jesus and watching against temptation is to display the disciples’ lack of faithfulness.

 

If that is the only purpose of these verses, Matthew’s purpose was not to describe “watching” as a spiritual discipline that has continuing significance for Christians after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  His aim was to show up their human weakness, and perhaps the frailty of every disciple of Jesus.  Lending plausibility to this interpretation is the several other references in Matthew to the disciples’ lack of faithfulness, e.g., Peter’s denial or the report in Matthew 26:56 “then all the disciples deserted him and fled.”.

 

While not excluding the possibility that showing the disciples’ failures is one authorial motive, two arguments count against this as the only significance of the “watch” language in these verses.  One is a very similar use of the verb grh>gorew in I Peter 5: 8.  The RSVP reads: “Discipline yourselves, keep alert (grh>gorhsate). Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.” Here “keep alert” could be translated “be watchful”.  In any case the I Peter verse carries the same meaning as Jesus’ command in Matthew 26:41, i.e., a mental or spiritual alertness or heightened attention to avoid temptation.  The I Peter verse could be evidence that “keeping watch against temptation” was an early Christian spiritual discipline, perhaps based on oral traditions reflected in Matthew 26. 

 

A second argument for doubting that the only reason the author of Matthew 26:36-46 was to highlight the disciples’ failure to “watch” is Jesus’ use of “watching” in his apocalyptic teaching.  In Matthew, this teaching comes especially in chapter 24.  In this context Jesus warns the disciples against several things: false prophets who come in Jesus’ name and will lead many astray; warning about possible arrest, torture, and death; warning about being hated by the nations. Jesus also describes signs that indicate “the sign of the Son of Man” which will appear in the heavens. 

 

A central point of Jesus’ teaching as recorded Matthew 24 is that although no one knows the “day and hour, ” nevertheless “this generation will not pass away until all these things [signs of and the arrival of the Son of Man] occur. Therefore, the disciples should “keep awake” (grhgorei~te) (24:42).  The reason Jesus gives for keeping awake is that the disciples do not know “on what day your Lord is coming.”  Jesus uses the parable of the homeowner who would have stayed awake (e>grhgòrhsen) had he known when a thief was coming.  Jesus’ point is: ”Therefore, you also must be ready (gìnesθe %etoimoi, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (Matthew 24:44)

 

Evidence that this command to watch for the Day of the Lord was important in early Christian spirituality is Titus 2:13. Here the author describes an essential aspect of the Christian life as waiting for, and thus look out for, the coming of the Day of the Lord. God’s grace enables 

 

a training…to renounce impiety and worldly  passion, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. (My emphasis) Titus 2:11-13.

 

We can end this discussion of the author’s purpose in these three verses with two conclusions. We find evidence in the New Testament that the stance of watchfulness is not incidental for the early Christian community.  While the disciples’ failure to watch with Jesus does reveal their frailty, and Matthew surely wants to underscore this, later verses indicate that “watching against temptation” and “watching for the Day of the Lord” were essential aspects of Christian spirituality.

 

Having shown from other New Testament texts that “watching” in Matthew’s Gospel may have substantive meaning of Christian discipleship, we turn to the question: what could these verses imply for Christian spirituality today?

 

“Watching” as Solidarity with Jesus; as Defense Against Temptation and as Facing God’s Future

 

a. Watching with Jesus

 

We have pointed out that the common element in these references to “watching” in Matthew’s Gospel, is a spiritual attitude, a holding one’s spirit in readiness and alertness.  However, as we have stressed, the focus differs markedly among the three uses we have identified.

 

When Jesus commands his disciples to “watch with me” (26:38) he asks them to stay awake and remain with him spiritually, as he agonizes over obeying his Heavenly Father.  Jesus asks his selected disciples to “be with” him in his spiritual struggle in prayer on Mt. Gethsemane. Here, “to watch” is doing something with the Lord, a way of being with Jesus, a mode of communion and participation in Jesus’ own spiritual struggles.  Watching with Jesus is both a command of Jesus, a request of Jesus and an invitation of Jesus to experience the world from Jesus’ own existential center.  

 

Discipleship essentially involves sharing Jesus’ ministry.  Jesus called them to join him in being “fishers of men.” He called them to proclaim the Good News. He called them to share in the opposition to his ministry.  He called them to share his service to God. He called them to carry the cross with him. Watching with Jesus is one aspect of this sharing.

 

In this essay, we propose that a “watching with Christ” is possible that includes but also transcends the situation of Gethsemane.  We suggest that a watching with the Crucified and Risen Lord continues as a possibility for the contemporary disciple, a sharing in Christ’s Lordship made possible by the Holy Spirit.  As the Risen and Exalted Lord, Jesus is accessible to all by faith and baptism through the Holy Spirit.  Watching with Jesus now means sharing in Christ’s center as Risen Lord.

 

The possibility of sharing the center of Jesus’ own existence has fundamental significance for Christian spirituality.  One way to develop this theme is along the lines of St. Paul’s “Christ mysticism”—Paul’s theme of being “in Christ.”[5]  Paul’s Letters indicate how he perceived an intimate union between himself and Christ.  For Paul this union was so immediate and radical that Christ’s own center was the perspective from which he acted.  And this center, the Risen Christ, Paul commended as the center from which every Christian should live.

 

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5)

 

Another the Gospel writers developed this theme of sharing Christ’s identity is the image of vine and branches as in The Gospel According to John, 15: 1-5. 

 

Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can unless you abide in me. …If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.  ….I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.  John 15: 4; 7.

 

By prayer (v 7) and obedience (v. 9, 10) the disciples lives in and out of Jesus’ the true vine.

 

Here we investigate “watching with Jesus ” as an aspect of Christian spirituality. We can mention several implications of “watching with Christ.” 

 

One is that the believer’s own existential center; his/her “soul” becomes relocated outside of him or herself through faith and baptism.  Jesus’ center is the new location for the believer’s point of view.  Both St. Paul’s language of being in Christ and John’s language of vine and branches are especially meaningful here.  The believer’s own ego is no longer the center from which the believer “sees” and acts and suffers. 

 

Yes, as Paul’s own very strong ego-center makes clear, sharing in and living out of Jesus’ center by no means extinguishes the believer’s own ego. As the analogy of the Holy Trinity suggest, union with Christ does not require a logic of one identity excluding another.   The believer living in Christ and out of Christ does not disappear and become a cipher.  However, being in Christ is a displacement of the self’s center, the self’s point of view and way of seeing the world and hence of acting in the world. [6]

 

Watching with Jesus, i.e., sharing Jesus’ existential center means an enormous liberation for the believer.  The believer is liberated from the illusion that his or her frail, finite ego is the center of the universe, a center that must be protected and promoted in competition with other ego-centers.   Sharing Jesus’ center, the believer is freed from the crushing burden of egocentrism. 

 

This “relocation in Jesus,” this invitation and possibility of “seeing/watching” the world from Jesus’ standpoint is not only a liberation from the illusion that our egos are the proper centers of the universe.  Relocation in Jesus’ center is, positively, a relocation into the Word made flesh, into that center through which the world was made and that center in which the world finds its coherence.[7] From the stifling, anxiety- ridden place of the egocentric person, the believer is delivered by faith and baptism into the true center of the whole creation, the meeting point between God and the world.  From this new center, the believer is invited to see the whole of creation in a new way as he/she grows into the ability of “watching with Christ.”  This new place for “watching” the world is carried out by frail, fallible, finite disciples.  We can “watch” only within the limits of our intelligence, our education, our imagination.  But the intentionality of that watching is not the protection and advancement of our egos; therefore the “watching” is under the Lordship of Christ.

 

The believer, in “watching with Jesus” is invited, commanded and permitted to “watch” the world from Jesus’ point of view. What is this point of view?

From the Gospels we can safely say that one aspect of this point of view is that of the Father’s Kingdom, the Father’s Rule.  The framework of vision for the disciple, watching with Jesus, is a world under God’s rule.  Obedience to the Father, i.e., obedience to the in-breaking rule of God was the core of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus, as presented in the Gospels, saw the world from this standpoint. In Gethsemane Jesus asked the disciples to watch with him as he struggled to remain obedient to this Rule in his own life.  From this perspective, the Kingdom perspective, Jesus saw the world and consequently acted in the world.  Sharing this perspective, the disciple who watches with Jesus tries to do not his (the disciples’) own will but the will of Jesus and their (Jesus’ and the disciples’) heavenly Father. We will develop this “kingdom perspective” further, when we explore the spirituality of “watching for the Day of the Lord.”

 

Based on the Gospel witnesses to Jesus’ ministry, we can assuredly also say that a second aspect of sharing Jesus’ “watching” the world is to look upon the world with compassion.  To watch with Jesus is to see others as Jesus saw them and as the Risen Christ sees them:  creatures of his Father; objects of the Father’s love; sheep without a shepherd, called to repentance and a new start in life.  How did Jesus look upon the rich young man? How did Jesus look upon the woman taken in adultery How did Jesus look upon the crowds who had followed him into the wilderness to hear his teaching and now were hungry and needed to be fed?  How did Jesus look upon Jerusalem?   How did Jesus look on the poor woman who gave so generously?  How did Jesus look on the widow whose son had died?  Many stories in the Gospels invite us to see the world with Jesus’ compassionate eyes and, thereby, to learn to see as Jesus saw, to learn to “watch with Jesus.”

 

To look upon our neighbors as Jesus looked upon them would also mean to watch with them in their sufferings, their needs.  Even if a disciple can do nothing to change the situation of a needy neighbor, near or far, the plight of the neighbor who is dying, who is in prison, who is being tortured, who is suffering depression, who is experiencing loneliness, estrangement, or meaninglessness, who is burdened with joblessness, homelessness, and hunger, one can “watch” with the neighbor with Jesus’ watching of compassion.  Sometimes the best a pastor can do, ordained or lay, is to watch with another in his or her situation.

 

Here, however, we must address a question about the validity of “watching” with Jesus.  Jesus asked his disciples to watch with him while he struggled spiritually with his mission.   Watching on Gethsemane was in the context of Jesus’ earthly ministry and earthly spiritual struggles.  Is it logically right to extrapolate “watching with Jesus” in the Garden of Gethsemane to mean seeing the world as Jesus saw it? 

 

One might conclude theologically that Jesus is beyond spiritual struggle after his resurrection and exaltation to the right side of God.  As the Risen Lord, Jesus now transcends human need.  In Gethsemane he asked the disciples to watch with him in his (Jesus’ own) need.  Does the Risen Christ now have now needs for disciples to share in and in this sharing to enter into Jesus way of seeing the world?

 

Theologically, we can say that the Risen Lord is the crucified Jesus; the exalted Christ still has his blighted humanity.   Further, Christian theology affirms that Jesus is “the one mediator”; but the work of mediator is between suffering humanity and God.  Theologically there are grounds to say that Jesus, as the Risen Christ, still sees the world with compassion and in the light of the final Rule of God.  

 

This is the theological ground for holding that “watching with Christ” is not limited to what Jesus asked of his disciples at Gethsemane.   Watching with Christ can mean for disciples today seeing the world through Christ’s eyes. This watching is a goal and task of Christian spirituality.  This “watching” brings our seeing of the world under Christ’s Lordship.

 

b. Watching Against Temptation

 

Temptation can come in the present (26:41).  Temptation is a major theme in Matthew and in the Christian life.  Jesus was tempted, and indeed, was “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” (Matthew 4:1.)  Thus， Matthew says that Jesus was driven into the desert by the Spirit, i.e., by God.  This raises the question whether God causes temptation. The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ temptations are not clear on this point. On the one hand God’s Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted, but the Devil is the tempter.

 

 jIhsouv aj>nh>cth eijs te<n e[rhmon uJpo<J<~ tou~ pneu>matov peiraqh~nai uJ[po tou~ diabo>lou). 

 

One meaning of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ temptation is that Jesus spoke from experience, so to speak, when he warns his disciples to remain watchful against temptation.  Further, Jesus includes in the “Lord’s Prayer” the petition that God “not lead us into temptation.”  Here, God’s agency in temptation is also explicit.

 

This petition is, therefore, for many a stumbling block.  That God could or would lead anyone into temptation, and especially his own “Son,” Jesus, seems to contradict God’s compassion and care.  Yet, God-caused/permitted temptation -Jesus’ “temptation in the wilderness” and the example of Job, whom God permits the Devil to test- is a basic theme of the Bible.[9]

 

Whether God, Himself, tempts his creatures may have been a hot theological issue in the early Church.  One side of the issue is presented in the Gospel accounts of the Spirit (of God) leading Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted and Jesus’ prayer that God not lead us into temptation.  An apparently contradictory view —that God never leads people into temptation— is presented in The Epistle to James.  There, the author states that God does not lead us into temptation.

 

No one, when tempted, (peirazo>menov )  should say, ‘ I am being tempted (peira>zomai) by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. (Feo< ajpei>rastov ejstin kakw~n, peira>zei de <aujto>s oujde>na) (James 1:13)

 

The author of James goes on to state his alternative explanation of temptation’s source.   Temptations begin in our own desires.

 

But one is tempted (peira>zetai) by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death. Do not be deceived, my beloved.  (James 1:14-15)

 

Indeed, says the author of James, “facing trials (peirasmoi~v peripe>shte) of any kind” should be an occasion of joy. For

 

You know that the testing (doki>mion) of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its full effect, that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.  (James 1: 3-5)[10] 

 

A disciple could welcome the testing of his or her faith, independently of whether he or she believes God, the devil or his or her own “desires” is the origin of the temptation.  In a culture where temptations are welcomed as an opportunity to develop endurance (James 1:3.12) Christians could help one another by sharing how they have been able to overcome specific kinds of temptation. 

 

Even if Jesus believed that God had tested him and would test his disciples, he warns his disciples to be watchful against temptation.  God may test our faith, or allow our faith to be tested.  Struggling with temptation may produce endurance and endurance may bring wisdom (James 1:4.5).  Nevertheless, Jesus counsels that his disciples should be watchful against temptation.

 

What sort of discipline helps against temptation, “that lion that is on the prowl seeking whom he may devour?”   Animals in the wild, the deer and the antelope, are constantly alert —listening, watching, smelling—for the animal that could be creeping up on them silently upwind.   What are the spiritual senses of a Christian disciple? How can these senses be identified and developed?

 

What human analogy suggests can help here?  One analogy might be the soldier on patrol, every sense alert to the presence of an enemy.  A similar image is that of a bodyguard, constantly alert against a threat to the person for whom he/she is responsible.  As disciples we have responsibility for ourselves, for our own loyalty and for our devotion in service to the Lord.  This is a legitimate self-concern; not a function of egocentricity.

 

Another image of watchfulness, this time not against temptation but against danger, is the parent of a small child. The caring parent is the care-ful parent. He or she constantly thinks about dangers that could hurt the child.  This care leads the parent to anticipate dangers and to act in advance to avoid them.   Electric plugs are blocked; the child’s hand is held walking down a street with traffic; dangerous chemicals are removed from under the sink.  What dangers to our discipleship should we and can we remove from our own environment?

 

One can ask at this point whether a Christian spirituality that is on the guard against temptation can generate gloomy Christians, unable to relax and enjoy the good things of God’s creation.  Christianity turns many modern and postmodern people off because they believe authentic Christians are negative, gloomy and think all enjoyment of earthly good is wrong.  They think that every Christian worries that somewhere; somehow, somebody is having a good time.  Our modern image of Puritan or Victorian Christianity as morose and prudish typifies this caricature.  They fear that a Christian culture will bring vice patrols that judge and try to control everyone’s behavior.  The Christian as a wet blanket, always seeing only the negative side of situations, seeing only the dangers lurking in every enjoyment,  is not an attractive picture. 

 

A spirituality that tries to take seriously Jesus’ warning to “watch against temptation” will need to be aware of this caricature.  “Watching against temptations” need not promote a negative attitude to all enjoyment any more than the careful parent necessarily negates all pleasures and enjoyments for his or her child.   Christians would need to develop a spirituality that walks a fine line between worldly negativity and spiritual naiveté that ignore the dangerous temptations that  “roam about seeking whom they may devour.”

 

As much as modern and postmodern people reject moral watching, they have become very accustomed and accepting of two other kinds of being watched.   After September 2011, the world has been on the watch against global terrorism.  The Homeland Security Office established color-coded levels of security alerts.  Collective watchfulness against terrorism has at its disposal the resources of new communication technology: satellite photography; hidden security cameras; software that can penetrate personal computers; electronic spy ware that can overhear and locate telephone calls.   “Big Brother is watching you” takes on a new meaning in the electronic age. 

 

Market researchers are also “on the watch.” They gather information by testing target groups, analyzing our credit card purchases, our postal zone, our previous purchases, our age, gender, bank accounts and our travel histories.  They are segmenting and tracking, analyzing and predicting.  We are being watched in ways we mostly don’t know about.  We are tracked as predators track their hoped-for prey.   This “watching” is legitimated as “serving us”; marketing is justified in our market economy as fulfilling a key goal: matching goods with the specific needs of specific consumers.  Have we all, including Christians, become so accustomed to being watched as potential criminals and as cotangential consumers that we are losing or have lost our ability to watch against temptation?

 

What kind of watchfulness is appropriate for the Christian disciple?  What are the temptations today that will undermine the disciples individual faithfulness and the faithfulness and witness of the Christian churches?  How can they be anticipated and defended against?  Who is writing about this today in our western culture where every wish and desire is “valid” and ought to be respected and fulfilled? 

 

c. Watching for the Son of Man.

 

When Jesus tells his disciples to “watch and pray, for you don’t know when the Son of Man will come” (26:38 or 26:40), he calls them to a spiritual attitude toward the future.  This future is not the future in general but the final future, the Day of the Lord, the end of history. For the images of “the Day of the Lord” or “the coming of the Son of Man” are images of God’s Kingdom, God’s final rule.  Jesus calls us here to a way of looking toward future, but not the future as we would determine it but as God wills it to be.  In traditional theological terms, Jesus calls us to relate to God’s providential governance of the world.

 

Watching as the spiritual discipline of looking out for the coming of the Son of Man presupposes our human engagement in time, our immersion in the flow of past, present and future.[11]  Distinctive, probably, to our human nature is the paradox of being fully immersed in nature, time and history, yet transcending this in our awareness that we are subject to nature, time and history.   This paradoxical relationship to time inevitably shapes our watching for the Son of God, i.e., for the coming of the Rule of God in human life. 

 

Because, through our self-awareness, we transcend nature, time and history, while being immersed in these, we can exercise some control over our past and future.  We exercise control over our past by memory, individual and corporate. We exercise our control over the future by planning.   

 

By –remember-ing we organize and synthesize our present lives with past events.   Relating past events to us individually and corporately in the present is a way of affecting and organizing them.  The most influential arena where this is done is not individual, family, clan or national genealogies or histories but the researches of the natural and social sciences.  The physical and social sciences, especially astrophysics and history are modern humanity’s major enterprise for synthesizing the past.  The goal is to explain our present human and cosmic constitution as products of past physical, chemical and biological conditions reaching back to the “Big Bang.”  The drift of these studies, including those in contemporary neurology, is, however, to show how humans are fully and merely products of their pasts.  This promotes the idea that humans can fully comprehend themselves by explaining themselves as products of their past.  

 

Our ability to transcend the past, however, frustrates any effort to fully control the past by scientific explanation.  Yet scientists who think they can “grasp” the present by fully explaining the present as a product of the past, and who go on to claim that human dignity and freedom is an illusion (B.F. Skinner) transcend the past if they recollect that they are standing outside the past as observers of it.  Thus, human relation to the past has this paradoxical character of control and freedom.

 

We exercise control over the future by planning, by organizing ends we choose and choosing the means to achieve these ends. Many of our human expectations are to some extent, therefore, affected by our own agency, individually or collectively.  We look forward to a vacation trip.  We cannot control this future event completely; but we can plan for it and do much to make it happen.  By planning, we try to bring about future results we want.  While the truth that “man proposes but God disposes” remains, nevertheless, planning of all kinds—from city planning, daily planning, corporate planning— from buying insurance, having annual physicals—-these are ways we try to determine the future.

 

Yet, full control of the future will also always elude human beings.  The reason again is that we transcend the future as we transcend the past.  The very ability that enables us to partially determine the future is the same ability that enables us to realize that we are subject to the past, subject to that time which moves us toward the future.  

 

To watch for the Son of Man or the Day of the Lord takes place within this paradoxical relation we have to the past and future.  Unique about watching for the Kingdom of God is that God alone determines this event.  God alone determines the Day of the Lord.  That day will be ‘The Day of the Lord’ because God alone is agent.  In relation to the Day of the Lord, we are wholly passive; only on the receiving side of an event that will happen from beyond us.  All we can do is be alert for it; to look for the Day of the Lord; to be spiritually aware that an event in our future is fully under God’s sole control.  Since we can have not control over it, we can only keep an eye open for it.  In this attitude of watching for the Day of the Lord or The Coming of the Son of Man, Christians experience themselves in their creaturely contingency and dependence. 

 

A Spirituality of Watching for the Day of the Lord

 

What could a spirituality of watching for the Day of the Lord be like?

 

A.O. Scott, editorial writer for The New York Times, reflecting on the films of Jean-Luc Godard directed in 1968, says that “watching these films requires a kind of focused, self-denying, active attention that might best be described as revolutionary discipline” [12] What kind of spiritual discipline does a Christian believer need who “watches for the Day of the Lord?”

 

This would also be a revolutionary discipline, for it would compare the shape of human life under the rule of God to the present shape of individual and social life.  Where peace with justice obtains, the Christian looking for the Day of the Lord would rejoice and seek to protect and promote these conditions. Where injustice, suffering, oppression obtained, the Christian, looking for the Day of the Lord would speak prophetically and do all he or he could in his or her setting to improve these evil conditions.

 

This “watching for the Day of the Lord” would be self-denying.  The self’s egocentric perspective would be challenged by our faith knowledge of the kind of world God wills, a world of peace, righteousness, generosity, forgiveness, service to needs of others, compassion.  

 

Godard’s films nourished the hopes and efforts for social revolution in the ‘60s and 70s.  Many of these revolutionary hopes, were, from a Christian standpoint, naïve. These revolutionary hopes assumed that human beings harbored sufficient good will, intelligence and control that a just and peaceful society could be attained.  Christians know that all human actions are mixed with evil and good and that no human action will bring about God’s Rule.  Christian faith, therefore, is or should be immune to the disappointment of unrealistic, utopian hopes which many in the ’68 generation felt in the seventies and eighties as they moved from their 20’s toward middle age. 

 

Christian discipline of watching for the Day of the Lord, i.e., the coming of God’s Kingdom, faces another challenge however. This is the problem of the delay of the Day of the Lord. 

 

Many passages in the New Testament indicate that the early Christian community expected the Day of the Lord imminently.  Indications in the New Testament are that Jesus, himself, expected God’s Kingdom to arrive during his generation.  The Kingdom did not arrive in Jesus’ generation and has not arrived for the last two thousand years.  The spiritual problem, which this delay causes to faith, is already hinted at in the New Testament.[13]

 

The “delay” of the Coming of the Lord indeed continues to challenge faith.  One of the responses to this challenge in the New Testament (2 Peter 3:8) is that God stands outside of time (“with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.”)  One aspect of “watching” for the Coming of the Lord is to learn to see from God’s point of view, through the eyes of Jesus.

 

Conclusion

 

In this essay we have explored the possibility of a spirituality of watching.  We have seen that this spirituality would have at least three aspects: a watching with Jesus, a watching against temptation and a watching for the Day of the Lord.  The New Testament passages we have examined invite us to a new way of seeing; a seeing that is an active discipline.  This new kind of seeing places our capacities for perception at every level under the Lordship of Christ.  If we enter into this discipline, perhaps “trying it on” for a month or for six months, we may discover that we are not alone but have joined other Christians, past and present. We may discover a new aspect of being “in Christ” and of being “branches of the vine, ” a way supported by the power of Jesus’ own Holy Spirit.

 

(The Rev.) David Scott, Ph.D.

Murnau, Germany

June 2008

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[1] The NRSV reads “early in the morning.” The Greek text reads: “”in the fourth watch of the night.”

[2] See, for example, uses of “prayer vigil” listed in Google under the search words “religious vigil.”

[3] See George Lillie Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England, being a History of the People as well as a History of the Kingdom (London 1838 – 1839, Charles Knight.) James Joyce’s modern, experimental novel, Finnegan’s Wake recounts such a wake. See also Wikipedia article, “wake” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_(ceremony). For wakes in Ireland, see the article: http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-518200/Hospitality-at-wakes-and-funerals.html.

[4] The NRSV translates grhgorei~te “stay awake”.  This is a plausible translation, since the disciples repeatedly fall asleep despite Jesus’ request to “sit here while I go over there and pray.”  But another meaning of grhgorh>w in Koine Greek is “stay alert”; in Classical Greek, grhgore>w is “stay awake” or even “to live.” 

[5] Paul’s teaching about being in Christ is grounded in Paul’s understanding of baptism as entering into Christ’s death and resurrection. See Romans 6:1-14. In 2 Corinthians 5:15., Paul writes, “And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised from them.” In Galatians 2: 20, Paul writes “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,…” 

[6] As narrative theologians put the relation between doing and seeing well: we act in the world as we see the world.  The narrative theologians then added: and we see the world as we say the world; i.e. as we share a particular account of the world.

[7] Christ as the Logos through which the creation was made and in which it finds its coherence are claims made in Colossians 1:15-18. See also the Prologue to John’s Gospel, “All things came into being though him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”

[8] Matthew 4: 1) We cannot here develop the theme of Jesus’ temptation as presented in the Letter to the Hebrews. But any full development of the New Testament theme of Jesus’ temptation would have to include the Hebrews references to Jesus “being tested pepeirasme>non) as we are.”  See especially Hebrews 4: 15-16.

[9] Other biblical texts speak of God testing Israel: see Ps. 66:10 “For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.”  See also Job 23:10 “But he (Yahweh) knows the ways that I take; when he has tested me, I shall come out like gold.”  See also Proverbs 17:3 The crucible is for silver and the furnace is for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.

[10] St. Paul also teaches that “we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us…. (Romans 5:3-5).  The author of First Peter shares with James and St. Paul the belief that testing of our faith can be positive. “In this [imperishable inheritance kept in heaven for you] you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials (peirasmoi~v) so that the genuineness of your faith-being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire-may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (I Peter 1:6).  Notice that the comparison to testing gold by fire is repeated in Scriptures.  

[11] Postmodern philosophy, drawing inspiration especially from Martin Heidegger, has deeply explored this theme of our human immersion in time and history.  Especially Heidegger’s early phase, most influentially and fully stated in his book Being and Time, explores human existence as standing in time and oriented to one’s own death.  Human existence for Heidegger, in this phase of his work, is da- sein, being there in the world, existing as Sein zum Tode, existence oriented toward extinction. 

[12] A.O Scott, “The Turbulence of ’68, In Film and Politics.” This essay appeared in in the New York Times, 2008. 

[13] See I Thessalonians: 4:13-5:11. Note the language “so let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake (grhgorw~men) and be sober…” See also II Thessalonians 2:1-10 and II Peter 3:3-10.