Good Friday - Gethsemane Prayers

Mark 14:32-42

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took with him Peter and James and John and began to be distressed and agitated. And he said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.”

And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me, yet not what I want but what you want.”

He came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour? Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to say to him.

He came a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going. Look, my betrayer is at hand.”

Thursdays are the roughest mornings in my household. On Thursdays, Clive, my three-year-old, goes to “school” for four hours. As soon as he wakes up and realizes what day it is, he starts: “I don’t want to go to school. Please don’t make me go. I want to stay here with you.”

The other days of the week he’s spoiled rotten by a mix of grandparents who watch him. So Thursdays have become the hardest day of the week. Who knew playing with friends, eating snacks, going outside for recess, and painting was so tough.

When we pick him up, he gleams about his day and the fun he’s had. But drop-off… that’s another story. A few weeks ago I took him, and the whole car ride he kept saying what he had started earlier that morning: “Please don’t make me go. I don’t want to go. You can take me with you.”

Finally we got into school, walked to his classroom, and said goodbye, or tried to. Clive gripped me tight, saying again, “Please don’t make me do this.” I peeled him off me, told him it would be okay, and left. And as I walked away, he threw himself on the ground like only a toddler can do and wailed.

And I knew he would be fine. The teacher texted later and said he was having a blast within minutes. But as I walked down that hallway, hearing him sob, it hurt my heart. I kept thinking, this is awful. Maybe you’ve experienced this as a parent, hearing your child plead, “please don’t make me do this.” Or maybe you were the child pleading.

Whether you have been the child pleading or the parent walking away, you have stood closer to Gethsemane than you realize.

All throughout Lent we have been listening to prayers from Hebrew Scripture and the people who prayed them. Again and again we discovered that many of those prayers were our prayers too. Prayers we have prayed without realizing it. Prayers we wanted to pray but weren’t sure we were allowed to pray. Tonight is no different.

Because Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane may be the most relatable, honest, raw, and human prayer in all of scripture.

Up until now, Jesus has never wavered in his journey to Jerusalem. He never hints that he wants things to go another way. And so we begin to imagine a Jesus who isn’t afraid, a Jesus who wants the cross, a Jesus who is somehow different from us. But at Gethsemane we discover something important.

Jesus is afraid. He hopes there is another way. He does not want to die. Because he is human, as human as you and me.

After the meal they shared together and with Judas gone to do what Judas does, Jesus takes the eleven disciples to Gethsemane, which in Mark is more like an olive grove than a garden.

He takes his closest companions, Peter, James, and John, a little further in among the trees.

And something happens to Jesus there.

He begins to shake. He is overwhelmed with sorrow and fear, so much so that he tells his friends, “I am so sad I feel like I could die.” And going a little further, he throws himself on the ground, like a child at drop-off, and he prays: “Father, I know you can change this. Please don’t make me do this.”

It is an honest prayer; probably one Jesus hesitated saying out loud because it meant Jesus still had some hope: hope it won’t happen. Hope there is another way. Hope that my Father will save me, because I don’t want to do this.

And I wonder what it was like for God to hear that prayer. To hear your child begging you to stop what is coming. To hear your beloved pleading with you to save him. I wonder if it hurt God’s heart, infinitely more than mine on that Thursday. I have to believe it did. And I have to believe God’s heart hurts too when we pray this same thing today.

This is the prayer of anyone who has cried out, “Save me.” It’s the prayer of the young couple who finds out for the 10th, 15th, or 20th time that the pregnancy test is negative. It’s the prayer of the cancer survivor driving in for another first round of chemo. It’s the prayer of anyone who has needed friends, desperate for support, for care, only to find them asleep, indifferent to your suffering, leaving you alone while you cry and shake in fear and despair on the ground.

Everyone eventually prays in Gethsemane. In desperation we all say to God, “Please don’t make me do this.” “Please don’t let this happen.” “Please take this away.” And sometimes the cup does not pass. And that is why we need Good Friday.

Because Jesus’ prayer does not end there. He also says, “Yet, not what I want, but what you want.” I don’t want to do this, God. Yet, I trust you. I am scared, God; yet I will do it.

The prayer does not change what is coming. The cup does not pass. But Jesus trusts God anyway. It is the most sacrificial and divine prayer we get in all of scripture, showing us again Jesus is fully God, too. It is a prayer of obedience, yes. But more than that it is a prayer of trust.

Not the kind of trust that says everything happens for a reason or don’t worry God’s got a plan. But the kind of trust that says, even here, even now, against all logic and reason, I will trust. Having said his deepest hope, the secret he didn’t want to utter, sharing his greatest fear, Jesus can now trust God with all that is about to happen.

I don’t lift this nevertheless part up as something to emulate, as if we just need to be obedient like Jesus was. That’s not the good news of this prayer nor this day.

The good news is that this prayer leads Jesus to the cross. Jesus gets up from the ground, walks out of gethsemane, and walks toward suffering, toward abandonment, toward death:

for you, for me, and for everyone who has ever prayed this prayer and the cup didn’t pass. Jesus has stood where we stand. Jesus has prayed what we pray; feared what we fear; and suffered what we suffer.

And because of that, there is no place of suffering we can go where he has not already been. That’s the good news of Good Friday. That on our roughest day, when we throw ourselves to the ground and plead with God to take the cup away, we remember that Jesus has already drunk from it. The cup may not pass. But we are not alone.

Amen.

Good Friday: Grief as Love

John 3:16-17

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

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As many of you know, we’ve been coming at this wall of grief behind me, week after week, on Wednesdays, throughout this Lenten season. And tonight is the last straw, the last stand, the last hurrah … whatever we might want to call it.

I hope those of you who’ve been playing along remember what we’ve left here this season. For those who haven’t that’s okay. I’m certain you are acquainted and familiar with the road of sorrow we’ve been walking – that you’ve walked it, too.

… grief for lost loved ones;

… grief for the losses and destruction of God’s creation;

… grief for unmet hopes and expectations in our lives;

… grief that comes from those who’ve gone before us – from generation to generation – that still lives in our bones and in our bodies and still impacts our lives in the world;

… and grief, too, that is known only between us and God, that buries itself like so much shame, in our heart of hearts.

We’ve called all of this “Grieving Well,” because that was my goal for these Lenten days – that we would find meaningful, practical, holy ways to name the many ways grief and sorrow find their way into our lives. And that by naming that grief, by putting it into words, and by attaching to it some tangible rituals and practices, in worship, we would “do grief well,” in ways that are more real and true and faithful to our experience as people on the planet than we’re always allowed to be.

See, in a world that doesn’t encourage or always have words for – or a comfort-level with – grief, we aren’t practiced at doing any of those things, often enough. We are a people who grieve alone, too much of the time, unto ourselves.

We are a people that has convinced ourselves and each other that grief is, somehow – impossibly – something to be avoided.

And if not avoided, then kept to ourselves when it comes, so as not to show our weakness, or our fear, or our vulnerability; maybe to be polite and not make others uncomfortable about our sorrow.

And we seem, too, to pretend that grief is something to be conquered … accomplished, perhaps … so that we can get on with our happy, blessed, abundant lives, as the good Lord intends.

Well tonight, as I said, is the last stand and last straw for this kind of pretending and pretense. Tonight, God gets the last word. And it’s different than something I’ve ever considered before on Good Friday. It’s cosmic and universal. And it is much closer to home, too. Yes, it’s about God’s love redeeming the world. Yes, it’s about the grace of God being poured out, in Jesus Christ for the sake of all. Yes, it’s evidence that God didn’t send Jesus to condemn the world, but in order that the world would be saved through him.

And it is also God redeeming the world one grief at a time. It is God loving the world one sorrow after another. It is God’s heart breaking, right along with yours and mine whenever the sadness stings. And it is God reminding me that none of us was ever promised this would be easy. The story of Scripture is filled with nearly equal parts horror and hope, if you ask me.

And we do ourselves… and each other… and the world around us … a profound dis-service if we pretend otherwise; if we pretend that life in this world isn’t supposed to include suffering, sorrow, or grief, I mean. And God forbid, Christians, if we convey the message that life for believers is somehow supposed to be immune from any of the above. “If we say we have no sin, no struggle, no sorrow – or that we don’t feel separated from God, from time to time ? – we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Because God shows us tonight that even God’s very self, in Jesus, grieved in that garden when he prayed that all of this might be taken away from him. He suffered. There were whips and thorns and nails remember. He was utterly lost and alone and separated from the heart of God when he cried “my God my God, why have you forsaken me,” and then descended into whatever hell that was for him.

All of that is to say, all of our grief – and God’s sorrow – gathers itself at the cross tonight. And we are called to see it there – our grief, and God’s – because God means for us to know that it doesn’t and will not stay there forever. We can name it. Claim it. Nail it to a tree. And we can watch God gather it all up, unto and into God’s very self, and transform it into something else, much to our surprise.

I watched Stephen Colbert interview Paul Simon last week and found Colbert predictably, reliably wise and faithful in the way he’s able to talk about grief and sorrow and faith in beautiful ways.

After Paul Simon pontificated a bit about the way he understands God and faith, he asked Colbert what he thought about it all. Stephen Colbert, seemed genuinely caught off-guard by the question (he’s the one that’s supposed to ask the questions on his show, after all), but this is what he said:

Having lost his father and two older brothers in a plane crash as a young boy – when he was 10 years old I believe – it’s not a surprise that Colbert wrestled with atheism for a time.

But did you hear what changed his mind? He said that he was “overwhelmed by an enormous sense of gratitude for the world.” And it wasn’t a sappy, happy-happy, joy-joy kind of gratitude. It was gratitude that comes even in grief – even for heartbreaking things – because, “grief with you is an act of love.”

“Grief with you is an act of love.” How beautiful is that?

We can be sad – deeply grieving – and yet there is joy there, because we can share [our] love and share our grief and heal and care for each other in the midst of it.

“Grief with you is an act of love.”

And I think that’s a perfect, faithful way to see just what God means to accomplish on Good Friday – on the cross – by way of Jesus’ crucifixion – for all of us and for all the world. And it’s what I hope we’re up to tonight.

“Grief with you is an act of love.”

God is saying – and God shows in Jesus – what “grief with you” looks like. It is, indeed, a profound act of love. Life on this side of heaven is hard so much of the time. There is grief and shame and sorrow too terrible to name, for too many of us and for too many of God’s children. But when we recognize that we are invited to share our love and to heal and care for one another, even and especially in our grief and struggle – as God did and as God does in Jesus – we are also invited to see and to experience this enormous, overwhelming, uncontainable sense of gratitude.

And we see, in all of that, the hope of Easter.

So, on the cross, may we see and experience the depth of God’s grief and sorrow for our own grief and sorrow tonight, that Jesus came to redeem. And may we trust that God shares that with us as nothing less than a divine act of love too mighty for us to imagine or deserve. And may we be moved by that love in a way that comforts us in our grief, that gives us hope in the face of our despair, and that promises us new life, even, on the other side of our greatest sorrow.

And may we share all of that – comfort, hope, and promise – as an act of love for the world around us, just Jesus calls and shows us how to do in his name.

Amen