Sinners

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Abba, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Abba, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  Mark 14:32–42 (NIV) They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.” Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Simon,” he said to Peter, “are you asleep? Couldn’t you keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him. Returning the third time, he said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!” CONSIDER THIS After the Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples made their way to Gethsemane, an olive orchard or garden across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem. He told eight of his disciples (Judas was obviously absent) to “Sit here while I pray,” and then he took Peter, James, and John, the so-called inner circle, along with him. These three may have been chosen on this occasion because each of them had earlier professed their willingness to suffer for Jesus. For example, in a passage that immediately precedes our text, Peter exclaimed: “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you” (Mark 14:31). Earlier, James and John, after requesting for themselves two of the best seats in the kingdom of God, in answer to the follow-up question of Jesus, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” they shot back, “We can” (Mark 10:38–39), apparently not realizing at the time all that would be entailed. When many people consider the suffering of Jesus, they immediately think of the cross with its gory blood and torturous physical pain. However, not only did the suffering of Christ, his passion, begin much earlier than this but it also included, judging from the language of our text, some of the most agonizing emotional pain possible well prior to the cross: “he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ he said to them.” In terms of this first phrase, “deeply distressed and troubled,” scholar James Brooks doesn’t believe that our NIV translation does justice to the original Greek in terms of the depth and agony of the suffering entailed. He writes: “The NEB does a better job than the NIV, NASB, and RSV in bringing out their meaning: ‘Horror and dismay came over him.’”1 The English word horror is a much better choice and begins to convey something of the very dark, desolate, and excruciating emotions that Jesus as a flesh-and-blood human being was now experiencing. However, in terms of the second phrase, actually a sentence, the NIV does a much better job: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” However, what does it mean to be so overwhelmed with sorrow that one is at death’s door? This is a reality at the very limits, the boundaries, of human experience. Few people have experienced such pain. It is to fill the cup of emotional anguish to the brim. Moreover, these distressing emotions cannot be properly assessed simply in terms of the prospect of physical torture. Jesus was no coward at Gethsemane. Knowing all that lay ahead of him—physical pain, to be sure, but also and perhaps more important, deep emotional and even spiritual pain—Jesus was deeply disturbed and moved. Who wouldn’t be? In the garden he perhaps had a vision of the alienation that the cross would entail in which so many key relationships would become darkened and forsaken. Many of his own disciples would abandon him. He would become an object of scorn for so many, written off as a person condemned by God and accursed. What’s more, he would be in a place in which even the divine love, though still present, would somehow be obscured. Now that’s darkness; that’s real horror. Knowing that “with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26), Jesus prayed that this hour might somehow pass from him—or to put it in a slightly different way, that this cup might be taken away. Both the words hour and cup in this context refer to the very same thing: the upcoming sacrifice of Christ on the cross with all of its physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. Moreover, in his petitionary prayer, notice that Jesus uttered the words “Abba, Father,” an Aramaic expression that suggests intimacy, a closeness of relationship. The Jews, however, rejected such a usage, a rejection that grew out of their fear of even pronouncing the divine name. Instead, they much preferred to use the word Adonai or, as it is most often translated, simply Lord (God is my Lord). So then, in the judgment of first-century Jews, at least, the word Abba was simply too familiar. It didn’t keep in place the proper distance between God and humanity. Jesus thought otherwise. Returning from praying, Jesus addressed Peter with his personal name “Simon,” perhaps indicating a measure of disappointment or displeasure, and asked, “Couldn’t you keep watch for one hour?” Then Jesus added a word of caution: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Just what kind of temptation did Jesus have in mind that was so grave that he warned his disciples to watch—to be wide awake—to be ever aware of their current environment and all that was happening within it or that was soon to occur? It was none other than the temptation, given the darkness of the hour, to sell out, to abandon Christ, to deny him, to be so driven by fear, to become franticly self-preoccupied, that one would grasp at personal security at all costs. The danger, then, was that such a fearful move could prove to be irrevocable, through a tidal wave of shame and despair, in an unending, spiraling loss. One of his own disciples was about to take that very tortuous path. Jesus knew. Remarkably enough, another time that Mark employed the exact same Greek word that translates as “keep watch” in our text is in the parable that Jesus told earlier to encourage his followers to be wide awake so that they would be fully ready, well prepared, when he comes again. The narrative is as follows: “It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch. “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’” (Mark 13:34–37) Jesus had cautioned his disciples to “keep watch.” Instead, they did just the opposite; they fell asleep. Jesus called for heightened awareness; the disciples dozed off. This cycle of Jesus going off to pray and then returning to find his own disciples slumbering was repeated two more times. In this, they failed Jesus again and again. It’s not that Jesus needed his disciples to offer comforting words during this dark hour or to fix things, to somehow make it all right. His request was much more modest than that. He just wanted his disciples to be present, to be there, at one of the most crucial hours of his life. There is much to be said for a ministry of presence when we just show up, knowing what is happening and who is involved. We don’t have to do or say anything; we just have to be there. It’s that simple. But Jesus couldn’t have even this. It was denied him—and by his friends, no less! Despite all that Jesus had invested in these men over the last three years, the careful toil and labor, the considerable time, and the lengthy conversations, he came up empty. In a real sense, Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane alone. If the disciples had been sleeping and utterly passive, of no account, others in the area at the time were very busy. In fact, in the interim they had organized a party, if you will, and set out to arrest Jesus. Knowing their intentions, Jesus rightly referred to them as sinners, as those who did not love God or their neighbor as they ought, though they themselves obviously thought that their cause was commendable, worth a nighttime effort. Some among them might have even viewed their enterprise as “just” or even more bombastically as the very “will of God.” In the darkness of the hour, they may have inadvertently stumbled onto a grand, complex truth of which they were only dimly aware. That truth was Jesus. THE PRAYER Jesus, as you prayed in Gethsemane, you longed for those closest to you to abide with you—not their gifts, service, or witness. Help me remember that I’m not required to have clever words or elaborate gifts. Help me to offer you and others my presence.