Mid-week Lent Service 2 [Matthew 26:36-46] (7-March-2012)

This sermon was preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon, 7pm.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Text: (Matthew 26:36-46)

And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

In 1 Peter 5 we read these words: Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

Here St Peter is writing about the suffering that we as Christians experience. Every Christian’s life is seasoned with salt, in different ways and in different measures. Because when the holiness of God comes face to face with the sinful flesh of human beings, there is always a struggle, a war, a battle. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us about the seriousness of this battle, when he says: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

You see here how the spiritual battle that goes on inside of us is a very physical, serious struggle. The devil is prowling around. And the holiness of God that is given to us through Holy Baptism and received by us in faith attracts all the insects like a street-light. The devil wants to win, and pull us down into despair, and hopelessness. And God’s holiness often requires him to chastise us, just like a loving parent often has to discipline their children to protect them from harm. Hebrews 12 says: “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves; and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?... For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Acts 14:22 also says: “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”

As Christians, when a time of darkness, a time of temptation, of suffering comes upon us, what also comes with it is a deep loneliness, and a feeling that we are completely alone in our struggle, so completely abandoned by our friends and our family, and that there is no-one on earth who could possibly understand.

Anyone who knows this feeling knows exactly what I am talking about. But this is always the devil’s trick, that he makes us feel as though we are alone, when in actual fact, we are not. St Peter says: “Resist [the devil], firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.” We are not alone, but we suffer these things together as a church, as a holy community baptised into the death and resurrection of Christ, and marked with the sign of the holy cross. St Paul says: “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” Not you or I, by we, together, experience these things, as a church. We are not alone.

Jesus, on the other hand, is alone. And no matter what suffering we experience, no matter what depression we feel, what turmoil we have to endure, hardship, pain, there is always someone else who has felt it before and will probably feel it again. There is always someone in the world who has eaten the same food from the same dish as us.

But with Jesus, it is different. He is completely alone. Lamentations 1 says: “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the Lord inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.”

In our reading tonight, we don’t read so much about the outward, external sufferings that Christ endured later on, for example, when he was chained up, flogged, whipped, spat upon, crowned with a crown of thorns, mocked, nailed to the cross and made to drink vinegar.

Here we read about his intense inward struggle. This is a deep pain that burns within the dark corners of his soul.

We would normally think that Jesus’ heart, his soul and his mind would be full of divine light and brilliance and radiance, the sort of light that then burst forth throw his skin and clothes at the Transfiguration. But the fact that he experiences that true darkness of sin, death and devil, means that he has truly taken our sins upon himself, and has become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. As it says in Isaiah: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” We see this prophecy fulfilled most clearly in our reading tonight, where Jesus prays in the garden.

One thing that struck me recently is that in a previous time, there seemed to be a lot of pictures of Jesus here on the Mount of Olives, praying to his Father. I keep on calling to mind a well-known picture with Jesus on his knees, with his hands resting on a rock, with a beam of light shining down upon his face. But it seems as though you don’t often see these pictures any more, and it seems as though people don’t take this part of Jesus’ life as serious as they once did – and nevertheless, the amount of depression and anxiety that is present in our world today is enormous. Pastors, as well, often suffer greatly with this. In fact, it is said that the most universal problem that pastors face today is depression.

What a comfort for everyone this event in Jesus’ life is for all of us, pastors and laypeople together! St Peter, through the Holy Spirit, tells us that our depression, our sadness, our melancholy are shared with other Christians throughout the world, but not only that but with our Lord Jesus. Jesus suffered great inward, almost paralysing grief and sorrow. And the fact that he went through it, means that he brings his holiness and his purity and the brilliant radiance of his divinity right into the middle of it, and he consecrates it and makes it holy for the rest of us. We can then put our trust in Jesus in times of sadness, depression, sorrow, grief, knowing that Jesus himself has taken on our sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God. He has taken on and become our sadness, so that we might become the happiness of God. He has taken on himself and has become our sorrow and grief, he has promised to be present there in our sorrow and grief, so that we might leap for joy, and exult, and dance, just like King David danced in front of the Ark of the Covenant, and just like John the Baptist did, still locked up, enclosed and imprisoned in the profound depths of darkness and blindness in his mother’s womb when he was in the presence of his Saviour. Psalm 30 says: You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.

Isaiah calls Jesus a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. What a blessing those words are! What a comfort!

+++

And so in our reading tonight, we read that Jesus went with [his disciples] to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here will I go over there and prayer.”

Gethsemane was a place at the bottom of the Mount of Olives, where there was a garden. The word “Gethsemane” actually means an “oil press”. It is probably quite likely that it was named after a press where the olives from the mountain were crushed and made into oil. We also see in different places in the bible that God’s anger and his wrath (in Rev 14 and 19, and also Isaiah 63) is compared to a winepress. Here in the garden, Jesus is trodden down and pressed like grapes by the wrath and anger of God, and all the vengeance of God for all the sin comes to crush him. We see also in Isaiah 53: “It was the will of God to crush him.”

But we read that Jesus tells his disciples to sit in a certain place while he goes and prays. These disciples were eight of the twelve disciples, minus Judas, Peter, James and John. We all know what Judas was doing, conspiring with the Jewish high priests and such like to have Jesus arrested.

But then we read:

And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee [that is, James and John], [Jesus] began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here and watch with me.”

These three men were the same three who were with him at the time of his transfiguration on a different mountain, Mount Tabor. They were witnesses of that majestic glory of Christ. But here they are chosen to be witnesses of his profound suffering and anguish.

In these two small verses, we have three different words for sadness: it says that he began to be (1) sorrowful and (2) troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is (3) very sorrowful, even to death.”

That which is translated as “very sorrowful” is one word in Greek. English has a hard time doing justice to these three words, because they are full of meaning. It’s a bit like the Inuits (or Eskimos) in Canada who have 40 words in their language for snow, or the Lapps in northern Sweden who have 20 different words for reindeer. I think also some Sudanese languages also have many different words to describe to colour of cows. Here we see that the bible has so many different words for suffering, and is able to look at suffering in so many different ways like a kaleidoscope. And nevertheless, with all the depression and sadness in the world, people don’t seek their advice from the word of God, which contains so much experience and advice and comfort. Go to the book of Psalms and you will find hundred of words and expressions describing different types of suffering. Here in Gethsemane, we see Jesus collecting each word and phrase, collecting together each tear that has ever been shed by a human being, putting them in a bottle and taking a long drink. Psalm 57 says: “Put my tears in your bottle.”

So firstly, it says that Jesus became “sorrowful”. Mark’s Gospel even has a different word, which in our bibles is translated “greatly distressed”. This is almost here as if Jesus was flushes and worried like someone with fever. In Luke’s gospel later on we see where Jesus was so distressed that he sweated drops of blood.

Then it says, he was “troubled” – Luther translated this word in his German bible as if he were “hesitating”. It’s as if Jesus were not standing in one place, but moving back and forth. You all know how when a person is worried or troubled they just can’t sit still, but they start pacing or moving around or jittering about. This is probably something like what is described in our reading. We also see later in our reading that Jesus prayed, and then he went and talked to his disciples and woke them up, and then he went back to prayer, back to his disciples.

Then we read that Jesus says: “My soul is very sorrowful even unto death.” This is almost as if Jesus is saying that he is experiencing the same kind of trouble and suffering that people have when they know they are about to die, and when they are on their deathbed. So Jesus takes on this kind of “deathbed” suffering, and also puts his holiness into it in such a way that he is there with us if and when we experience it.

There is a prophecy of what Jesus says here in Psalm 88: “My soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.” Sheol is OT which is used to described hell. Jesus almost quotes this verse here, and truly we do see him reveal to the disciples a foretaste of hell, just as at the Transfiguration he showed to them a foretaste of heaven. Luke’s gospel describes hell when it talks about the rich man, who was in hell, being in torment, who asks to releaved in his anguish.

This description is very similar to what is going on here in our reading tonight. Jesus says: “My soul is very sorrowful even unto death. Remain here and watch with me.”

But Jesus reveals very quickly to the disciples their sin. They are not capable to carry out his commands. “The spirit is willing and the flesh is weak”. They are once again separated from Jesus at this time, and Jesus suffers by himself, alone, with no one else to help. The same goes for us: we are not the Saviour of the world, we cannot die for our sin, or even suffer a little bit for it. Only Jesus can suffer and die for the sin of the world, only he can bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. And so when Jesus needs to do the work that only he can do by himself, we are switched off. We are separated from him: he stays awake, and we fall asleep. When it comes to suffering and dying for the sins of the world, we can only ever be sleepy, lazy, insufficient substitutes.

Then we read: And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Back and forth Jesus prays – three times the same words.

In another part of the Gospels, Jesus says: Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so we see Jesus’ heart pour itself out. “My heart is very sorrowful”, he says. “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” And then later on the cross, we see Jesus cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

When God created the world, we read that he brought everything into existence, not by thinking or imagining things into existence, as if he was some kind of positive thinking guru. We are not told what God thought when he created the world, we are only told what he said. And God said, “Let there be light.” There is an integrity in God that means he speaks exactly what he thinks, and there is no need for us to try and discern what God thinks, because he hasn’t given us his thoughts, he has given us his word. Today, the more people walk further away from God, the more their words and thoughts become divorced, the more people lie and the more language becomes meaningless. When we are in the presence of God, we are called to say to him what we think, and pour out our souls to him. God knows what we think, and we can’t hide anything from him.

So also, Jesus doesn’t hide the deep recesses of his soul from us, but reveals them to us for our comfort. He actually speaks: “My soul is very sorrowful even unto death.” The disciples might have seen him shaking or pacing or worrying, but wouldn’t have known what to make of it until Jesus actually opened his mouth and said, “My -- soul -- is.” What a marvellous thing that we should have a window into Jesus soul through these words.

In his words of prayer, we see him throw himself on the ground. Normally, when Jesus prayed, he would lift his eyes to heaven, just like Psalm 121 says: “I lift my eyes to the hills”. But here, there is a deep reverence and humility before God in profound suffering, as it says in Psalm 119:25: “My soul clings to the dust.” It’s stuck down there like a dirty old chewing gum on the pavement.

So Jesus falls on his face, and utters his prayer, which we all hear and learn: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Here we see the words of St Paul coming to fulfilment: “Christ humbled himself, and became obedient unto death.” We see Christ’s obedience to his Father speak. We see the wrestling, the struggle, the battle that goes on within him, which gives birth to words, and which pours out bloody sweat, and which St Luke says also brought an angel to him for his strength.

We see here an example for us in prayer when we are confronted with the will of God and imminent suffering. But more than that, we see Christ Jesus submitting himself to his Father, and willing taking on our sins, and carrying our sorrows. We see him doing it all for us, pouring out his soul to the Father, and pouring out upon the earth his love for us!

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us!

Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.