Gethsemane
Matthew 26:36-46, New Living Translation - Then
Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, “Sit
here while I go over there to pray.” He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons,
James and John, and he became anguished and distressed. He told them, “My soul
is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to
the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering
be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”
Then he returned to the disciples and found them asleep.
He said to Peter, “Couldn’t you watch with me even one hour? Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give
in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak!”
Then Jesus left them a second time and prayed, “My
Father! If this cup cannot be taken away[f] unless I drink it, your will be
done.” When he returned to them again,
he found them sleeping, for they couldn’t keep their eyes open.
So he went to pray a third time, saying the same things
again. Then he came to the disciples and
said, “Go ahead and sleep. Have your rest. But look—the time has come. The Son
of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Up, let’s be going. Look, my betrayer is
here!”
Right
after promising that they would die with Jesus, the Peter, James, and John
promptly fall asleep three times when Jesus asked them to watch and pray with
Him. They can tell Jesus is in great
emotional pain, but for whatever reason, they can’t stay awake. Indeed, one of Jesus’s most famous sayings is
true; “the spirit is willing, but the body (flesh) is weak.” Matthew is telling this story on his disciple
brothers, but he is telling it on himself as well. In a very real way, Matthew is telling this story
on all of us.
On too many
occasions to count, I have promised the moon, but never got off the ground. I have watched others fail in the same way,
feeling connected to them by misplaced ambitions. It still surprises me how quickly the powerful
and inspired moment of promise can devolve into embarrassing failure. This doesn’t happen all the time; there are
plenty of times when my follow-through has been admirable and productive, but
it doesn't erase the memories of alarmingly weak resolve. I wish I knew what the difference between the
two extremes was. I do not. My “body” is weak.
Matthew
wants us to see the contrast here between the disciples and Jesus. Jesus is suffering the opposite of the
disciples. His “Spirit” is unwilling; He
asks God repeatedly to find another way.
However, His “body” is strong. He
pushes back on the unwillingness of His Spirit in order to stay focused on what
He has been called to do. He prays His
way through the unwillingness of His Spirit.
As a result, He leaves the garden that night with Spirit and Body strong
and resolved to stay the terrible course.
After
the third time of finding his comrades asleep, Jesus seems to acknowledge that sleeping
is what they needed to do. They will
each have their key moments of decision, but not tonight. Tonight, they will see Jesus meet his
moment. Perhaps seeing Jesus move so decisively
into the trial before Him will be instructive to them when their moment comes. But tonight, they sleep. Tonight is Jesus’s time, not theirs. That, of course, is what Jesus states when he
wakes them up the third time. “The time
is come. . . my betrayer is here.”
It’s
super obvious that even now, the disciples are not prepared for what is about
to happen. And Jesus’s acknowledgement
of their need to sleep seems to confirm that there is no way for them to be fully
prepared for this moment. Jesus has
prepared them as much as they can be prepared, but ultimately, they must simply
go through the moment unprepared. They
must, as Jesus tells them earlier, “fall to pieces.”
In some
crazy way, this is comforting to me. It
tells me that my many moments of failure despite my bold intentions is more normal
than I realize. It tells me that my
failures do not define me, but rather they help to make me into who I shall
be. Returning to the text, these
unprepared and faltering disciples will soon be the leaders of the most
explosively growing movement of God the world has ever seen. They will all meet their defining moments with
heroic faith and it is at least in part, because of the trial they will endure over
the next three days. They will lose their
Leader, than receive Him back from death.
They will experience complete and utter powerlessness to stop the
crucifixion, and then hide away in terror that they might be next. They will struggle to believe their own eyes
when the resurrected Christ stands before them even though Christ told them perhaps
a hundred times that it would happen.
But somehow, going through all that prepares them to discover who they
really are and what the rest of their lives will be about. Their embarrassing failures form part of the
foundation for their eventual success.
If this is true, then there is hope for all of us who are surprised by
our own failures.
Question: How have past failures prepared you for success?
Prayer: Lord Jesus,
thank you for showing us what complete
and utter obedience looks like even though we often seem incapable of emulating
it. Help us learn from our shortcomings
and keep our eyes on you. Strengthen us
from within and without. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for closest friends today that they will receive just what they need right now.
Song: Gethsemane –
Claire Ryan
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