Nodding Off
This sermon, by Pastor Ted Carnahan, is the first installment the series Saints Behaving Badly, for midweek Lenten worship on February 25, 2026.
Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
It's a very solemn scene, but it's also a little ridiculous. Peter, James, and John go up the Mount of Olives to the Garden of Gethsemane, handpicked to be witnesses to Jesus' suffering and wrestling with God in prayer.
And he gives them just one command, one request from a friend: Stay awake and pay attention!
The Disciples' Failure
And yet these three men, the three great disciples, Peter, James, and John, the ones who, between them (leaving out St. Paul) they wrote a huge chunk of the rest of the New Testament. They are pillars of the early church, apostles par excellence.
These amazing, handpicked men chosen by Jesus to go up — these saints, well, they behave badly. They fumble the basics of following Jesus in ways that are comically relatable.
They gather together and they're waiting with Jesus, but it's late and they get a little sleepy and they begin to nod off.
Our Prayer Struggles
You know what that's like, don't you? You put off your prayers until bedtime when you're already in bed. Your posture of prayer is no longer kneeling beside your bed or even sitting on your couch. No, you have become completely horizontal.
You are laid out flat on your bed and you think, Oh, I should have said something of a prayer at the end of this day. I will pray and I'll get started now. I won't have forgotten that.
And so you lay your head down on your pillow and you turn over so sleepily and you pull the covers in close and you fold your hands and you begin to pray,
"Our Father yawn in heaven, yawn hallowed be your name. Your — oh, this pillow is so nice and warm — kingdom come, your... yawn thine is the kingdom and the power and the... holy smokes... and the glory. Amen."
If you even make it to "amen." Let's be honest, we make prayer a low priority sometimes, don't we? We make prayer to be something that is unimportant, it's an add-on, it's something, just one more thing to do.
And it's as easy as it is for us to point fingers and say, you know, if I had been with Peter and James and John, if Jesus had asked me on the hour before he was betrayed to come up with him and to stay awake and to watch over him and to be there in solidarity with him in this incredibly important moment — it's one of the most beautiful moments:
One of the other gospels says that as Jesus is wrestling with this in prayer and he's saying, "Lord, not my will, but your will be done." And he's sweating to the point where it's like drops of blood are falling from his face, anticipating the blood that will soon streak his face the next day as he dies on the cross.
Meanwhile, these three guys are sitting over there dozing off. We get it wrong, don't we? We doze during devotions and if that's not bad enough, then certainly we live in a world that is full of distractions.
Modern Distractions
Our phones make all sorts of noise and they distract us, don't they?
"Our Father who art in heaven, — oh, hang on, I might have something new on Instagram! Hallowed be your — what?"
It's easy for us to forget. Easy for us to be put into a position where we start thinking about other things.
I have to admit that I do believe that I have accidentally given the "Pavlov treatment" to my own children and myself because as we gather for our evening prayers, we pray sort of extemporaneously, I pray for us and then we pray the Lord's Prayer. But because we do that at the end of the day, as we begin the Lord's prayer, every single one of us starts to yawn. It's like automatic. It's like you start saying, "Our Father," and suddenly our eyelids start getting heavy.
Personal discipleship involves reflection. Maybe you are an excellent prayer warrior and you are always faithful in prayer. If so, good! We need more people like you, and you should be actively encouraged to be about this ministry which you have taken on. It is a ministry (by the way) to pray, even if you are praying only by yourself.
But most of us, myself included, need the reminder: to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to put other things second and Christ first.
Spiritual Drowsiness in Lent
In this season of Lent, we need to take stock of the fact that we have become spiritually drowsy — willing, perhaps in spirit, to do the right thing, but our own sinful flesh, our desires, our distractions get in the way.
And yet, we have a Jesus who saw his disciples fall asleep, not once, not twice, but three times as he goes and he rouses them from sleep, increasingly critical of them.
And yet, in spite of their lack of faithfulness, Jesus looks upon them and says, these are exactly the kind of weak followers for whom I must go to the cross. He chooses you, not because of your faithfulness, but in spite of your lack of it.
He cares for you so much that even though he catches you dozing, spiritually speaking, over and over again, even though he realizes every time that you're distracted by something else that you're putting in the front seat of your spiritual journey, that nevertheless, in spite of the fact that you continually are a saint who behaves badly, that you still desperately need a Savior and he loves you so much that he still willingly tells his disciples, "Get up, let us be on our way. Behold, my betrayer is at hand."
And then knowing full well what's about to happen to him, he walks into the trap, is arrested, is beaten, is tortured, and is crucified for you, for the forgiveness of your sins.
Call to Recommitment
In this season of Lenten reflection and discipline, may we recommit ourselves to the discipline of prayer. May we repent of our sins and examine where we have been behaving badly.
And may we seek, in our increased devotion, not to earn God's love, but to become the kind of people that Christ is calling us to be. In Jesus' name. Amen.
