*Recommended Reading--Hebews 11-12:7
For the remainder of the season of Lent
we will be looking at the passion narrative of Jesus. We will not cover it all in these next few
weeks, and we will not pick it up again until next winter, though we will look
at the Last Supper text on World Communion Sunday. Last week, we saw Jesus tempted in the desert
wilderness. Today He faces His toughest
decision. This is truly the “more
opportune time” for which Satan had been waiting. We know this because we will hear Jesus say
next week to the chief priests and temple officers that came to arrest Him that
this was the “hour and the power of darkness” that belonged to them.
But I don’t think that was the only way
Satan was at work. Though the devil
isn’t visible in today’s text like he was in last week’s text, the power of
temptation is great with Jesus. Most of
us don’t have conversations with the devil.
We don’t have little angels and devils on our shoulders like they used
to show in the old cartoons, but we wrestle with temptation. We wrestle in our minds, with our flesh, with
our wills, and yes, even with our emotions.
Just like last week, Jesus is tempted whether or not He will love God
with all of His heart, soul, strength and mind.
This temptation doesn’t come in three different incidences like His time
in the desert. This is one big
temptation. He is tested in every
way—with His all of His soul/life—Will He sacrifice His life to save
humanity? With all of His strength—all
the pain He is about to endure, the beatings, the crown of thorns, the
scourging, and crucifixion. Even this
time in the Garden left Him physically exhausted so that once again, just like
in the wilderness, angels come to minister to Him. He was tested with all of His heart—Will He
still align His will with the Father’s? We
know from the other gospels that it was 3 times that He asked the Father to
“remove this cup from” Him and said, yet ‘not My will, but Yours be done.”
Matthew’s gospel tells us that Jesus had
been praying an hour before He went to wake the disciples the first time! This is laboring in prayer. Like the disciples, I struggle to pray for an
hour, especially about a single, yet significant subject. I find it easier to spend time praying
through a litany of requests, and if I am part of a prayer group, I can pray
for an hour. The disciples could have
been praying with each other. Jesus had
given them a topic, “that you might not enter into temptation.” This was Jesus’s request for Himself as well.
He was praying that He might not fall to temptation. He needed strength to pass the test! We can say that it was easier for Jesus than
for us, but I don’t think so. We don’t
have a test where literally the fate and weight of the whole world is resting
on us! We might sympathize with the
disciples because, as we will learn in the Christ in the Passover program on
March 19, that the disciples had 2 more cups of wine than Jesus did, but Luke’s
gospel tells us that the disciples didn’t fall asleep the second time from the
very late hour or from being tipsy, but because they “were sleeping from
sorrow.” Despite the joy of celebrating
the Passover feast, it ended with a very heavy tone. Having observed Jesus from a distance, having
heard Him speak of His death multiple times, they are depressed. I think all of us can identify with times
when we have gotten heavy news or have been depressed to the point that you are
exhausted and need a nap. It is natural
for the body to want to do this. We just
need to be sure we aren’t sleeping too much when then happens. Just as Jesus again wakes the disciples and
tells them to pray, prayer can be part of our healing and getting strength in
times of depression and temptation. But
now the time of praying has come to end.
Jesus’s enemies come to the garden to arrest Him. From here on out, it will be a long, hard
night. Don’t wait until it’s too late to
pray. Pray first!
Prayer is work. Prayer is doing something. Jesus strove in prayer for Himself and for
us. Blood was mingled with His
sweat. This is a real medical phenomenon
called hematidrosis that happens under conditions of extreme exertion involving
distress or fear, thought to be related to our “fight or flight response”. When we think of Jesus shedding His blood for
our sins, we think immediately of the cross, of Him getting pierced in the
side. We think about the nail prints in
His hands and feet, we think of the blood from the crown of thorns. Some of us think of the brutal scouring, but
how many of us think about the fact that Jesus shed His blood for us beginning in
the garden? This story is not new to us,
but I hope we pause to think about its significance. Jesus wasn’t just praying for Himself. The world was on His mind. He thought of His
disciples. He wanted there to be another
way, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me.” If there’s any other way…This was the
Father’s will.
In Hebrews 12, the writer encourages the Hebrew church facing
persecution to remember the saints that have gone before them who are cheering
them on to persevere and to keep their eyes on Jesus, their example and
Savior. The author tells the readers in
verse 4, “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your
striving against sin.” The author is
warning them that persecution is going to get a whole lot worse and that some
of them are likely to face the things as did the saints of old, but the author
also talks about the discipline that comes from the hand of the Lord, as
consequences for sin. I hear the writer
saying in Hebrews 12, “Look, I know it is hard, but what you are going through,
others have gone through, even Jesus, and He did it for you. You can keep the faith. The saints are cheering you on. Besides, you haven’t even shed blood in
trying to resist temptation. You aren’t even working that hard to stay out of
sin.” Persecution is hard, but have you
even prayed about it? Have you prayed
for endurance? Have you prayed so that
you will not enter into temptation when it comes? The writer of Hebrews is not saying, “Bad
things won’t happen to you if you just pray enough and have enough faith.” He’s saying, “Prayer will help increase your
faith so that you will be able to endure when harder things come.” You don’t even pray enough about the
temptations you face now! Jesus sweat
blood to resist temptation! One of my
former missionary colleagues still serving with A3, the agency I served with in
Japan, recently participated in leading a training called, “Resilience in
Persecution” in a Southeast Asian country where it is difficult to be a
Christian. She writes, “This week I got
some feedback from a participant and leader at the recent module we did for the
Persecuted church. Some of the feedback that they gave was the surprise that,
in our approach to resilience and endurance in persecution, one big piece of
that was their love relationship with God and their spiritual habits and how
they are continually restoring themselves in that spiritual vibrancy and
life... and how that habit and that formational kind of experience, it
strengthens them to endure in persecution—prepares them. Just as Jesus was preparing for the great
persecution that was facing Him, these believers are prepared because they know
the Father. They spend time with Him. If we are to be prepared for persecution and
trials, we need to know the Father. We
need to spend time in prayer and in the Word.
My favorite scene in the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson is the 3rd scene. There’s so much I love about how Mel Gibson has done this scene. This scene depicts that third time that Jesus went away today. He has already gone to wake up and rebuke the disciples. In fact, that’s how this movie opens. It shows Jesus praying and then going to the disciples. In Scene 4, all of Jesus's prayers come straight from Scripture, specifically from the psalms. Other than, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from Me, yet not My will, but Yours be done,” we don’t know what all Jesus prayed. However, it is extremely likely that His prayers did indeed come from the Psalms. The psalms were the Book of Common Prayer of the time. We know that He had them memorized. More than one scholar has described the psalms as the prayers of Christ. At least one has said they are the prayers of Christ for Christ in you. Many of the psalms were prophecies of Jesus’s life, particularly about His passion. We know from His time of temptation in the wilderness that He would use Scripture to resist temptation. The psalms cover every human emotion and situation. Because they are the prayers of Christ for Christ in us, we can pray them too. Even if you don’t have whole psalms memorized, familiarize yourself enough with them, so you know where to go when you face temptations. You can make notes in your Bible. Note whether the psalm is a prayer of praise, of thanksgiving, of confession, a plea for help, a warning, etc. Pick some that speak to you and keep them at hand for reference. Make praying the psalms a practice. Pray through them regularly. You can make it part of your Lenten discipline to pray at least one Psalm a day.
Just like in the desert, Jesus is prayed
up before the hard things happen. The
ending of the scene 4 in The Passion is my favorite part. Jesus stomps the head of the serpent, hearkening
back to the promise of Genesis 3:15 that the serpent will bruise the heel of
the seed of the woman, and indeed, Jesus will be more than just a little
bruised, by the serpent, but the serpent is crushed, defeated!
Jesus wins; Satan does not. That
look that Jim Caviezel gives Satan right as he stomps the serpent is a look of
triumphal contempt. His face is a
flint. He shows Jesus has fully given in
to the Father’s will, and whatever comes, this look of fierce determination
remains, even as his face is twisted with pain and agony, there is a
resoluteness to follow through to the end without wavering, without giving
up. It’s such a great depiction of what
we see in Scripture. Jesus is strong
through all these trials even as His body grows weaker. This time of prayer in the garden with angels
ministering to Him has given Him the strength and the resolve to carry on. If we are truly committed to doing the
Father’s will, we too should not hesitate to follow through on what God has
clearly shown us. The time of
questioning is over. If we don’t know
the next step, we go back to God in prayer, but once we know, we are called to
follow through no matter the cost, no matter how crazy it seems to us. Like Jesus, like Mary His mother, may we be
committed to doing the will of God, even when faced with the toughest decision.
