Sermons

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In The Garden
February 27, 2005
Sermon Series on the Gospel of Luke
Third Sunday of Lent
Rev. Steve Lympus
Luke 22:39-46

As you may know, many people fast from something during Lent. We do this for different reasons:

• Because Jesus fasted 40 days in the wilderness, and we experience a small sacrifice to taste of the sacrifices Jesus made for us.
• We do this to release our dependence on something and depend more on God, to hollow out a hungry space in our lives and invite God to enter into that space.

And traditionally, we break Lenten fasts on Sundays; these Sundays become feast-days or “mini-Easters,” a foretaste of Easter Sunday celebrating Jesus’ Resurrection.

This year, I’m struck by the different things people are creatively fasting from:

• one friend is fasting from eating out,
• another is given away 40 things (one a day) as a fast from dependence on possessions,
• some friends of ours are fasting from sleeping in and skipping church on Sunday mornings…maybe that’s you!

Others are fasting from verbal things like sarcasm, cussing or cutting remarks…I think verbal fasts like these are great, but I’m just not sure what they’re doing on feast-days when they break those verbal fasts. (Stay clear of them on Sundays, you’re likely to get a barrage of verbal attacks, stored up all week!)

I like the discipline of fasting from something – anything – during Lent. It’s real, it’s experiential, and fasting helps us come closer to Jesus’ real experience.

Fasting is usually a personal thing. During Lent, we try to do other things as a community that also bring us closer to Jesus’ experienced: Dan and Linda smeared ashes on our foreheads (in the shape of the Cross) that Wednesday night a couple weeks ago, reminding us of our mortality, the inevitability of death for each of us. And we plan more sober worship services without announcements or “hallelujahs.”

When Holy Week comes, we will step it all up a notch and there will be palm branches on Palm Sunday (for Jesus entering Jerusalem), and quiet prayer services each weekday, and we will meet in the darkness on Thursday night and relive Jesus’ Last Supper and betrayal.

We’ll spend Good Friday thinking about Jesus’ suffering and dying on the Cross (many will attend a Good Friday mass or other service at another church). Many will spend a “quiet day” of prayer on Saturday, together or separately.

Then on Easter Sunday we will rejoice and feast, break all fasts, and again sing our “hallelujahs!” to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord.

So much of what we do in Lent is meant to bring our experience closer to Jesus’ experiences, especially Jesus’ Cross and Resurrection, the two central events in the Christian story.

But it all makes me ask: how much of Jesus’ own experience of the Cross and the Resurrection can I relate to, personally? Fasting and sober services give me a taste of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross; the Easter celebration gives me a taste of Jesus’ Resurrection. But these are very small tastes – helpful, but still far from Jesus’ reality.

From a distance, I can begin to relate personally to Jesus’ Resurrection, because one day after I die I will be resurrected in a new body that will never die. From a distance, I can sort of relate to that promise…but it seems like a long ways off.

But it’s even harder for me to relate personally to Jesus’ dying on the Cross, because I will never experience that. I will suffer – that’s part of the Christian life. I will “take up my cross” and follow Jesus (Luke 9.23, 14.27).

But I will not die on a cross, I will never bear the weight of my sins, much less the sins of anyone else, much less the sins of the world. It’s hard for me to personally experience much of what Jesus actually experienced on the Cross.

But on the way to the Cross, on the way to the Resurrection, Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane. In the Garden, Jesus will pray and agonize over whether the Cross is the only way; in the Garden, he will wrestle with God’s will.

I will never go to Jesus’ Cross, and neither will you. But we have all been to the Garden, to wrestle with God – most of us will go there many more times in this life. So will you stand with me as we read this part of Jesus’ experience in Luke 22:39-46.

I’ve been watching a lot of Jesus movies this Lent, and I’m so struck by how visual the Gospel really is: real places, real objects, real people – when you read it or even hear it read, you can’t help but visualize these scenes…

Last Sunday, Jeff took us through the scene “after dinner,” when

• the disciples argued about who was greatest
• Jesus talked about being servants not masters
• Jesus predicts that the road ahead for the disciples will be full of trials

…but the disciples didn’t really seem to get it.

So the disciples must have wondered what Jesus was up to when he walked out of the dinner and lead them to the Mount of Olives. Matthew and Mark call this place Gethsemane, John calls it a Garden…it was a very real place.

For the disciples, this Garden was also a very familiar place; they’d been sleeping there ever since they arrived in Jerusalem. But tonight, Jesus asks them to stay awake and “pray that you may not enter into temptation.”

Jesus had warned them earlier at the dinner table that trials would soon come; now he asks them to pray that they would withstand the coming crisis. Jesus must’ve been feeling temptation himself that night – to run, to hide, to find another way out other than the Cross.

He wonders if the Father’s way is the only way, and we might wonder, has Jesus lost his faith?

Jesus walks a few feet away (a “stone’s throw,” not very far) and he prays. Jesus prays a lot, especially in Luke:

• he prayed at his baptism (Luke 3.21),
• he would “slip away” from the crowds to be alone to pray (5.16), he spent a whole night praying before he chose the 12 apostles (6.12),
• he taught his disciples to pray “the Lord’s prayer” (Luke 11.1-4)
• …the Garden prayer is another “Lord’s prayer,” a prayer that we can listen to carefully and learn how to pray like Jesus prays.

This “Lord’s Prayer,” or at least what Luke recorded, is short: in essence,

“Lord, if you want to, take this cup away from me…

(then I imagine a long agonizing, even awkward pause before)

…but I want what you want, not what I want.”

Bible scholars struggle with this, Jesus had seemed to understand for quite some time what the Father’s will was for him (Luke 9.51)…why was he avoiding it now? Did he want more time? A different method of execution? Whatever the motivation, in these moments, Jesus wanted out of what was coming – he wanted his Father to “remove this cup.”

So what is this cup? Earlier at dinner, Jesus said that “this cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” But in the Old Testament, the “cup” signified the wrath and judgment of God (Ps 11.5-6, 75.7-8, Isa 51.17, 22, Jer 25.15, 49.12, Lam 4.21).

The cup Jesus was about to drink was the punishment for our sins, and of the world. Drinking the cup meant that Jesus’ blood would be spilled out on the Cross.

It’s not really a question for me whether Jesus wanted to do this or not; of course he didn’t want the Cross. No human would want this cruel execution, rejection by his own people, rejection by his Father.

Jesus wasn’t Superman, he was fully God and fully human – not just his body, but his mind and emotions were human too. Jesus did not want the Cross, but his Father was calling him there.

I can relate to that tension, to feeling God calling me to do something, but not wanting to do it: I had a close friend who made a decision I disagreed with–I thought it was a bad idea for him.

I spoke my mind to him, he disagreed, and so I spoke a little more strongly against it, and eventually I went too far. Later, when I realized I was the one who was wrong, I stayed too stubborn and prideful to tell him…our relationship diminished.

Years later we were living in the same city for a few months, and I felt strongly that I needed to reconcile with him, to admit I was wrong, that I had wronged him, and to ask his forgiveness…it was so hard .

It was awkward, it had been a long time, and we had learned how to talk around this conflict. I didn’t want to do this, but all I knew from Scripture and my own heart told me this was God’s will.

Even as I drove to meet him that night I really had to bring to God those desires to not do this. That’s what Jesus was doing in the Garden.

We misinterpret Jesus’ Garden prayer when we make it…

• Stoic (a prayer with no desire). A stoic prayer would have sounded like this:
  
  “God, whatever happens happens, and whatever happens must be your inevitable will, so what difference does it make what I want, do what you want.”
  
  This stoic resignation to God’s will seems self-deprecating, ignoring our own desires and emotions, and it’s just bad theology; all that happens in the world is not necessarily God’s will or God’s idea…I don’t think that God calls us to be “whatever happens happens” kind of people.
  
  We are people of desire and emotion, and God does care about what we want – our best desires are given to us by God. We can be honest about what we’re wanting and feeling when we follow Jesus to the Garden to pray…

Jesus was honest about his desires; he didn’t want to go to the Cross so he brought all his desires and emotions about the Cross to the Father.

Struggling with God’s will is not sinning. Jesus was not a robot programmed to obey his Father’s will, neither are we…it’s hard to obey, and often it takes an honest human struggle for us to do what God is asking of us.

We also misinterpret this Garden prayer when we make it…

• Passive (a prayer with no decision). A passive prayer would have sounded like this:
  
  “God, I can’t figure out what to do, it’s too hard to choose…so whatever you want, go for it.”
  
  This passiveness seems lazy, God wants us to make good choices, not just pass them all off on Him, doing nothing and spiritualizing our laziness.

I remember when I was graduating from college, and didn’t know what I was doing next. I cried out to God with passive prayers like “just get me out of the way,” as if God’s will was this steam-roller that would come and flatten me. “Just leave me on the sidelines, God, you play the game, I’ll meet you after the victory.”

This is too passive, and we don’t get off so easy. God gave us intellect and discernment, so we are people of decision. We can be active when we follow Jesus to the Garden to pray.

Jesus chose to actively bring his will into the Father’s will. He got up from praying, and he knew what was coming: betrayal and death.

• Even from the Garden, Jesus could’ve run away.
• Even once he was arrested he could’ve talked his way out of it.
• Even on the Cross Jesus could’ve come down – he certainly had offers (in Luke23.35-39, people yell three times for Jesus to save himself).

Jesus chose this, it was his active decision to obey the Father’s will.

So Jesus gets up, and finds that his friends have fallen asleep in the Garden. He wakes them, and urges them again to pray that they won’t come under trial… And as that word “trial” comes off Jesus’ lips we hear the footsteps of Judas and the Temple priests and officers coming through the bushes…everything that comes next will be colored by what happened in the Garden, when for a while, Jesus struggled with his Father’s will.

The Father’s will was that the cup will be removed, but not removed from Jesus. Jesus will drink the cup, so that the cup of judgment will be removed from us. He will take our punishment for us; he will atone for our sins. Jesus will drink that cup for us.

Introduction to Communion:
The cup that Jesus offers for us to drink is the cup of the New Covenant, the cup of new relationship, because the cup of judgment has passed…

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