Text: Mark
We began the season of Lent with Jesus in
the wilderness. There, in his temptation by the Devil, he said “yes” to the way
His Father had chosen for him. There he declined the Devil’s offer of a way
that would avoid the cross. But this rejection would exact a heavy payment—a
payment so huge that we cannot begin to fathom it.
Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the
Christ” gives a realistic picture of Jesus’ physical tortures. Yet, it only
scratches the surface of what Jesus actually suffered, the agony of His soul.
This ordeal began in earnest as Jesus prayed in
To begin to understand what Jesus went
through, we need to clarify the meaning of the words employed here: Verse 33
describes Jesus: “He began to be filled with horror and deep distress.” In the
original Greek these words paint a picture of the highest possible degree of
immense horror and suffering. Jesus also tells his disciples, “My soul is
crushed with grief to the point of death” (v. 34).
Then Jesus “fell face down on the ground”
and prayed. Here we do not have a kneeling Jesus—as we see it pictured in so
many pious religious paintings—with His face serenely lifted to the sky. No!
Jesus is on the ground with his face in the dirt. His body is shaking for fear
and sweating drops of blood as He cries to His Father. It is as the writer to
the Hebrews describes it: “While Jesus was on earth, He offered prayers and
pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the One who could deliver Him out of
death” (5:7). The distress of Jesus’ heart is like no other ever faced by
mankind. Jesus “prayed that, if it were possible, the awful
hour awaiting Him might pass Him by” (35).
Jesus’ hour had come. It is, however, the
hour of the Tempter, of Satan. As Judas nears with the soldiers, Jesus says:
“The hour has come. I, the Son of Man, am betrayed into the
hands of sinners” (41). This hour is the hour of the power of darkness
(Luke
In this hour, Jesus will be all alone. As
He prays, there will be no audible answer from His Father; no “this is by
beloved Son whom I love.” There will only be silence.
Into this hour Jesus brings His disciples.
He brings them witness the sheer terror He experiences as His Father withdraws
Himself. Jesus asks them: “Stay awake and watch with me” (37). Two reasons they
must watch: In order to be witnesses of Christ’s hour of anguish and in order
to overcome temptation in this hour of darkness. For the fate of mankind will
be determined in this hour as Satan unleashes His fury upon the Son of Man.
Through staying awake with Jesus and praying they are to accompany Him in His
hour of trial. But what happens? They sleep!
Jesus chose the way of the cross three
years before when He declined the Tempter’s suggestion to take another way to
fulfill His mission. Jesus had made His decision and was finished with the Tempter
and His smart ideas. But Satan is not yet finished with Him. In a certain
sense, Jesus is now presented with the bill for that which He had turned down
back there in the wilderness. Now He has to pay for the consequences of His
choice back then. For the weapons of the Devil are not just
sly words, as in the wilderness, but also great power, as Jesus encountered it
in
Now Jesus will experience what it means to
turn your back on the Prince of this world. Now He will see what the world
really looks like which He came to redeem. What Jesus sees in
As Jesus faces the Devil He prays. He does
not pray, questioning where God is, or whether God exists. No, He prays because
He knows that it is His Father who has brought Him to this hour of distress.
And even if His Father should hide His face from Him and withdraw His helping
hand, yet it is still His Father who does it. In this hour Jesus’ heart does
not turn to doubt or despair. We see that in the earnest request He makes to
His Father: “Please take this cup of suffering away from me” (36). This cup is
the Judgment of God over all mankind. The Satanic attack against Jesus and the
wrath of God are one and the same. That is the bitterness of this hour, the
immense severity of what God has poured into the cup and which the Son must
drink to its bitter dregs.
This is not a trap. God is still the One
in control. For that reason Jesus prays as a child addressing His Father. Jesus
prays a prayer of faith, knowing that “everything is possible” for His Father.
Neither He nor His Father have been cornered into a
difficult dilemma. Nor are they under any obligation to follow through with
this plan. And so Jesus asks His Father if there is any other way to
complete this mission: “give me anything, but this.” This plea is
in the form of a request and not an order. Jesus adds: “Yet, not what I
will, but what You will.” Three times Jesus
prays but He is met with silence.
Does this mean that Jesus did not receive
an answer to His prayer? That is unlikely, for after He is finished praying,
the terror and anguish that tormented Him is gone. Instead we see in Jesus a
clear, decisive and determined will to take hold of the cross because this is
the will of His Father. After each prayer He returned to His disciples. It is
here that He found God’s answer to His prayer. While Jesus is wrestling with
death and the forces of hell, His disciples sleep. Three times He has to tell
them to stay alert and pray, but to no avail. Confronted with the powers of
darkness Jesus finds His disciples helpless and hopeless. Though they are
willing, their flesh is weak. They can offer no resistance to the Devil. He has
them in His hands. They are of no help in the work Jesus must do. In the end
Jesus must suffer the agony of our sins alone. In a few minutes His trusted
disciples will all flee and desert Him.
So what is Jesus going to do? Is He going
to repay His disciples in kind? Is He going to accept the fact that all His
efforts of teaching them had failed? Is He going to call it quits? No, as Jesus
sees the pathetic helplessness of His disciples, He is moved to compassion. In
spite of desertion, denial and betrayal, the Scriptures say that He loved His
own to the very end (John 13:1). Seeing their complete inability to
stand up to Satan, Jesus has the answer to His prayer. He must stand for
them. Indeed, only He is able to deal with death and the power of darkness. In
the end, it is His love for His disciples that impels Him to continue on His
mission.
Let me now draw a couple of connections to
us from what transpired at
Secondly, what we see here in the
disciples is a picture of the church. As Jesus wrestles in this hour, the
church sleeps. The hour that the church is asked to watch and pray is not the
hour of Jesus’ passion. It is the hour of His imminent return. It is the hour
in which God’s judgment will break upon our world. Are we ready for this? Are
we obeying Jesus’ call to watch and pray that we might not fall into
temptation? We are warned of terrible consequences that might happen to those
who do not exercise themselves in watching and praying.
But to the sleeping church we must add
that it is the same Christ who is returning who saw His disciples sleeping in
the hour of decision. As then, Jesus continues to battle the forces of darkness
that threaten His church and that threaten us today. Let us then not be shaken,
but prayerfully watch and pray with our Lord as we joyfully await His return in
glory. Amen.