Every year, I hear the story of the Passion and I would think that over time, I would know it so well that there I wouldn’t hear something new. But yesterday, as we heard the story of the Passion be told again, a simple phrase that I’ve probably heard hundreds of times before jumped out at me. In Luke 22:45, we hear, “At last he stood up again and returned to the disciples, only to find them asleep, exhausted from grief.”

For some reason, I’ve always thought of the disciples falling asleep on the Mount of Olives as being from shear physical exhaustion. It was late at night. They were probably tired. They had come a long way to Jerusalem. Yet the phrase exhausted from grief jumped out at me.

Is this exhaustion from grief which caused the disciples to sleep somehow similar to the exhaustion from grief that leads us to “relax” by watching shows like CSI, Law and Order, Crossing Jordan, 24? (See my previous comments on this in America’s Next Top Model.

Yes, the grief of Holy Week is exhausting. The grief of being a nation at war, and the grief of 9/11 is also exhausting. The grief of families struggling with chronic illnesses, with desperate financial situations and so many other griefs are also exhausting. The question is, how do we best make it to Easter?