Last Words, second perspective
It is the hour traditionally marked by our Lord’s death, 3:00pm (actually 3:30) and I have been dragging my feet. I have spent time organizing for a trip, running errands, picking up dog doo, and planning a seminar for church. I have been like the disciples, scattered. It has been on my heart to write and share this next perspective that I had on The Passion but I have allowed distraction to enter my day. It may also be timidity. This perspective is one that is a little bit of a mind bender, perhaps intended just for my intercessory prayer heart, but it keeps coming forward, so I will follow the prompt.
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. (Mt 26:36-45)
“Could you not stay and pray with me for one hour?” These are words that I whisper to myself often when I find myself in the midst of spiritual sloth: in the morning when I would like to go back to sleep, when I feel that church is just going to “hamper” my day, when I resent a commitment I have made to serve Christ. “Could you not stay and pray with me for one hour?” I hope that these words will also become engraved upon your heart. As I heard this passage being read on Sunday, a thought intruded, “Why did Jesus check back three times? Why interupt His own prayer?” There is a pattern that is established in these verses. Jesus and patterns are not to be ignored. Jesus tells His disciples that He is in agony, He has told them what is going to happen, He asks for prayer. Three times our Lord goes off by himself and implores the Father to spare the fate of the Cross. Three times He returns to find the disciples asleep. In this moment I imagined Jesus, fully human, acting very human, and perhaps bargaining with God the Father. Perhaps in His prayer, He implores the Father, that the sacrifice is not needed, that becoming human, and giving the world the living breathing example of the life and relationship with God we are all called to is enough. Perhaps He implores His disciples to stay and pray with Him because there is greater power in praying in numbers, “Wherever two or more are gathered in my name…” Perhaps He hoped that if the Disciples loved Him enough they too would fervently ask that God would spare His Son. Jesus came back again and again hoping that what He had already done was enough, but they proved again and again the weakness of humanity and slept. And so after three hours of prayer, our Lord and His Father were set in the Way of the Cross. Man by himself, even with God next to him, is not able to overcome the fall. My second question is answered quickly, “Why didn’t He just stay with them, close by, and keep them awake?” “Free will” is the reply. God does not want us to act out of obligation, but love. Jesus, going off at a distance, allowed the disciples to choose their response. My heart breaks for my Savior every time I read this account. It breaks for the failure of the disciples and it breaks over my own times of failure. I cannot physically go back 2000 years to be “the one” for our Lord, but I can be there for Him in spirit now. Jesus’ moment in the Garden of Olives stands independent of time and space because He is God. When I unite myself to that time and space and spend time in prayer, I can be “the one” who for a moment comforts Jesus and shows Him that what He is about to do is not in vain. Finally, this passage bolsters my firm committment to intercessory prayer. Jesus sets the bar for what we can bring to the Father, the impossible. When we or someone we love are struggling and don’t see a way out, let us unite ourselves in the garden with the Lord. Jesus was unable to avoid the Way of the Cross because His Way of the Cross opened the door for each of us to be redeemed and to call God Father. Jesus didn’t come to simply be a role model, He came to be a Savior. May we honor the Cross daily by going to our Father in prayer, full of hope, trust, and love.
