I first heard the snoring when I was in the Brides’ Room lighting a candle. granted, it’s natural to be asleep at 4am. Arguably more natural than being awake at 4am, but we had signed up to keep watch. We were doing this thing based on the story in the Bible where Jesus gets three or four of his boys to pull an all nighter with him for Jesus’ last night on Earth. After he goes to talk things over with Dad, Jesus comes back to find all of them asleep. His reported response is “couldn’t you stay awake one hour?” Unlike the weeping, there is no surviving verse documenting Jesus’ use of the f-bomb. No “Jesus swore.”
So, being Episcopalians, we take a rather congenial approach to commemorating this particular part of Holy Week. There is a presence from the end of the Maundy Thursday service until the nooner on Good Friday, but we break it up into hour long shifts. With a slight feeling of superiority to St. Peter, I have for several years signed up for a fairly early shift. “No prob, Jesus,” is my general train of thought as I put myself down for 4am. Up until this year, I was rewarded for my hubris with a missed alarm or a forgotten obligation. My de facto answer has all too often been, “Well, no, actually, I can’t stay up one hour Jesus.”
Thanks to the incentive of a partner in vigilance, I made it this year. My neighbor wanted a ride, so we got up together in the dark and the rain. Since she has gotten a new hip fairly recently, we were able to park in the handicap area. Not that there was great competition for spots, but I’ll take what I can get at that time of day. Which is apparently also true for whatever homeless person was asleep in the church. How he found the open door is not entirely clear to me, but by doing so, he sanctified that night for us. If it is true that in serving the least of these, we are serving Christ himself, then on this cold and wet Good Friday morning, He got at least one good hour’s worth of sleep.