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.

Abraham:Prayer of Bargaining

Genesis 18:20-33

Then the Lord said, ‘How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know.’

So the men turned from there, and went towards Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham came near and said, ‘Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?’ And the Lord said, ‘If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.’

Abraham answered, ‘Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?’ And he said, ‘I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.’ Again he spoke to him, ‘Suppose forty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of forty I will not do it.’ Then he said, ‘Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.’ He answered, ‘I will not do it, if I find thirty there.’ He said, ‘Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.’ Then he said, ‘Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.’ And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.

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How annoying is Abraham? What a nuisance. What a pest. What a nag. Am I right?

And haven’t we all been there? Begging. Pleading. Nagging. Bargaining with God for the things we want and need and long for in life?

We wanted to start our first bit in this series with Abraham, because his prayer is – along with this Gospel bit from Jesus – like a primer of sorts for how we do – or could do – prayer as faithful people in the world.

Because, for me, the most instructive, inspiring thing about Abraham tonight is that he embodies the things that, I believe, are marks of a faithful pray-er:

First, Abraham knows – and is known by – the God to whom he prays. There’s no way this is the first time he’s been in conversation with his maker. In the story of Abraham, he is righteous from the get-go. [SLIDE 1] His faithful, righteousness is what set him apart in the first place – several chapters earlier – called to leave his homeland, his family, all he had ever known, and to travel – at God’s direction – to be a blessing for the world. Abraham’s faithful, righteous ways are the reason God chose him, to begin with, to be the father of a great nation. They had struck deals with each other before – Abraham and God. They had made covenants, held promises, counted the stars together, traveled long distances. These two – Abraham and the Divine – knew each other; they were very well-acquainted; they were intimately familiar, one with the other.

Secondly, Abraham is humble. Not only has he done God’s bidding in so many ways until we meet up with him tonight, in all the ways I’ve already described, but we get a glimpse of his humility in his praying today. For one, he declares himself nothing more than dust and ashes. (He would have gladly covered his shoulders with sackcloth for the occasion, I suspect.) And before his petitions, over and over again, he asks permission, with deference to God’s power: “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord…” “If you’ll allow me…” “If I may…”

And lastly – for my money, anyway – Abraham is as bold as he is righteous and humble. Perhaps he’s bold because he is so righteous and humble. Because he has such a faithful, familiar relationship with his God and because he’s so genuinely humble in the presence of his Lord, Abraham is not shy about shooting his shot; about asking for his heart’s desire; about putting the screws to the God of all creation, like he does. “But what if there are 50 … what about 45 … okay 40 … okay 30, 20, 10 …” “Far be it from you, God, to do such a thing…” That takes some nerve and persistence, don’t you think?

So, again, when I think about the posture and perspective with which we enter into the prayers of our ancestors tonight and in the days to come – and as we wonder about the way we pray, ourselves – I think Abraham is a model worth emulating:

 Let’s engage a faithful regular relationship – let us practice and pray often;

 Let us approach God with deference and humility;

 And then let us be bold; let us say what we mean, what we need, let us be honest and clear about what
we long for – trusting that God already knows anyway.

Which brings me to Jesus – and that bit from Luke’s Gospel. The disciples have just asked Jesus to teach them how to pray and, after some petitions that have since been turned into the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus does all of that “Ask, Search, Knock” stuff.

“Ask and it will be given to you. Search and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened for you.”

And that’s hard because who would believe it? “Ask, search, knock?” It sounds so easy, too simple, impossible and unlikely, really, that God would bother with any of what any one of us has to say. And we can all cite examples, I’m sure, that prove Jesus wrong: times when questions didn’t have answers; times when we never found what we were looking for; times when doors – not only wouldn’t open – but times when doors were slammed in our face.

That’s why I think Jesus must have been up to something else.

After all, very rarely is Jesus so certain about anything as he seems to be here. All throughout his ministry he answers questions with questions. He teaches in parables, not lectures. He leaves so much up in the air about the very nature of his identity, even, all the way up to the very end when he’s about to be crucified. Yet, we read this passage about prayer and want so badly for this one to be black and white or cut and dried.

But, maybe Jesus was up to something else, entirely, when he invited us to pray. And I have to believe it didn’t have so much to do with any one of us getting whatever we want at any given moment. I happen to believe Jesus is trying to teach us – little children that we can be too much of the time – about what we need to live differently as people of faith in this world.

I believe Jesus invites us to pray, not so that we’ll get whatever it is we want or simply that we’ll change the things and the stuff and the circumstances in our day to day lives. I believe Jesus invites us to pray so that we will be changed – from the inside out – when we learn to encounter the things and the stuff and the circumstances in our day-to-day lives with hearts and minds centered on God’s place and power in the midst of it all.

And I think that’s what the gift of regular, humble, bold praying – like Abraham and practiced – still offers to us as believers.

Samuel Shoemaker is a long-dead Episcopal priest, who gets credit for saying something like, “Prayer may not change things for you, but it sure changes you for things.”

“Prayer may not change things for you, but it sure changes you for things.”

See, the other thing you might notice about Abraham’s prayer tonight – and the truth about the rest of that story – is that it his prayer didn’t have anything to do with him. And God didn’t answer it exactly as Abraham seemed to expect, either. That’s not the moral of this story – Sodom and Gomorrah were decimated, in the end, remember.

See, maybe, with all of that back and forth with God, Abraham was negotiating grace just for the sake of it. Maybe, with all of that bargaining, Abraham was testing the capacity of God’s compassion. Maybe, in all of that math and number-crunching, Abraham was trying to measure the mercy of his maker.

But the truth seems to be, some have said, that Abraham was doing all of that praying with hopes that God would spare the life of his nephew Lot and his family. Abraham’s persistent longing wasn’t for his own blessing and benefit. It was all for the protection, blessing, and benefit of someone he knew and loved – even if they had been estranged and separated, as the story goes.

And if that’s the power and purpose and result of our praying – if our prayer doesn’t always change things for us, but changes the way we care about and consider things for others and the world around us – that’s a gift and a blessing that can’t be measured.

“Prayer may not change things for you, but it sure changes you for things.”

So let us pray. Let us ask, search, and knock. Let us be faithful, humble, and bold. Let us be selfish if we dare, but let us be prepared for God to make us selfless, just the same. Let us be greedy, if we must. But let us be open and prepared for God to turn that greed into generosity. Let us be persistent and unyielding in our requests, but don’t be so sure – or surprised – if God turns that into trust and patience, in the end.

I believe prayer changes things, as even the cheesiest bumper sticker suggests, no matter how or when or what we’re praying for. But I believe that, when we pray like Abraham – with faith, humility, and bold expectation, on behalf of others – the first thing prayer will change – by God’s grace – is us.

Amen