What’s the most difficult choice you’ve ever had to make?
At the Hamilton Round Table for Poverty Reduction on Thursday we heard about some of the tough choices that some parents have to make in order to give their children a shot at getting a good education. Probably the hardest decision many families face is whether or not to “pull the plug” on life support to a relative.
Making choices is part of being human. And the worst part is, we don’t know what the consequences of our choices will be. We can’t look into the future and say, “OK. So if I choose option 1, in five years X is going to happen. So, obviously, the best thing to do is choose option 2.” We don’t have that luxury. All we can do is make the best choices we can, then live with them.
Some of us make choices easily. Some of us procrastinate. Others agonize over every decision. I have a good friend that always agonizes over decisions. Then, as soon as the decision is made, he’ll second guess himself on it. It’s as predictable as clockwork.
How do you make decisions? Do you agonize over them? Do you make snap decisions on important things? Do you second guess yourself? Do you do all three?
This morning we get a glimpse at some of the internal dynamics of Jesus’ decision making process as he faced the toughest decision of his life, as he faced the cross. And the surprising thing is; how much it looks like yours and mine.
32 They went to a place called
Jesus is back on the Mount of Olives, at a
place called
He certainly felt himself under pressure
from without. Last week we saw how he made arrangements for the Passover by
using secret signs and passwords so no-one could surprise them at the meal.
Once they get to the Mount of Olives, to
Jesus was under no illusions about how dangerous his situation was. In fact he knew that he would be arrested that very night. But he had business he had to deal with, with his Father, before that happened and he didn’t want to be disturbed.
He may have felt the pressure from outside,
but it was the internal pressure that was the real burden he had to carry. he
began to be deeply distressed and troubled. 34 “My soul is overwhelmed with
sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them.
Those are pretty strong words; “deeply
distressed,” “troubled,” “overwhelmed with sorrow,” “to the point of death.”
Jesus is really feeling burdened. As we read on we see just how burdened he
was. 35 Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and
prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 36 “Abba,
Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.
Jesus didn’t want to go to the cross!
This week Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the
alleged mastermind of the 9/11 bombings, told a military court in the
History tells us that for 2000 years Christian martyrs have gone to their deaths bravely, with songs of praise on their lips.
Yet the night before his death Jesus is “deeply distressed and troubled” and “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” And when he prays, he prays, “Take this cup from me.”
Jesus didn’t want to go to the cross!
Why? Wasn’t that why he had come? Didn’t he
just celebrate the Last Supper, take the cup, and tell his disciples “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many?” What
was it about the cross that he now fond repulsive as he drew closer to his
final hours?
There’s been a tendency to focus on the physical pain that Jesus experienced on the cross and to glorify it in a way that is probably unscriptural. Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ” is an example of that. The fact is there are things that are much more painful than crucifixion.
[We have a good friend who suffers from tri-geminal neuralgia. (I have her permission to tell you this story.) She called Marilyn earlier this week because she had a particularly bad day and, later in the week, when she was feeling a bit better, she came over to the house and we got to talking about her condition. The pain of tri-geminal neuralgia is recognised to be the worst pain known to medical science. It’s nerve pain in the nerves that serve your face. She never knows when it’s going to hit, or what’s going to trigger it, but when it comes it’s like electric shocks right through her face.
Her mother died of cancer recently, and a year or so ago she was in the office of her mother’s doctor when she had an attack and she said to the doctor, “You’ll have to excuse me a moment, I have tri-geminal neuralgia.” The doctor rolled his chair over to her and said, “Really? How long have you had it?” “Twenty years.” And he turned to her mother and said, “Your daughter experiences pain that no cancer patient will ever experience; even when they’re dying.”
As we discussed the pain that she has to live with, she began to talk about the pain of Jesus on the cross. She wasn’t being disrespectful or blasphemous, but she said something like, “He had nails through his hands and feet. How hard is that? I could manage that.”
She was brutally honest about the fear that she lives with; that she’ll turn her head the wrong way, or not bite down on something quite gently enough, and her face will explode in pain; pain much worse than any pain of crucifixion.]
Jesus knows what’s coming. He is going to be “delivered into the hands of sinners” (v 41), who will then abuse and crucify him, just as he has predicted. (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34). But it isn’t the pain that’s the issue. There are worse things than pain.
One is shame. The Romans had much more painful ways of killing people, but none was as humiliating as crucifixion. It was a psychological weapon. For those of you familiar with World War 2 movies, it was the equivalent of the German Stuka dive-bomber. The Stuka only carried one small bomb, but it had a siren mounted under the fuselage so that, when it dived, it let out a banshee wail that struck men’s blood cold. Crucifixion was intended to have the same effect on those who witnessed it.
But, more than that, when Jesus talked about his death in verse 24 with, “This is my blood of the covenant,” he was implying that his death would be a sin offering, and the idea behind a sin offering is that it absorbs God’s wrath, allowing the person making the sacrifice to go free. Jesus was expecting to bear the consequences of human sin when he went to the cross, especially that he would be cut off from his Father.
A few verses earlier, in 14:27 Jesus quoted Zech 13:7 “‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’” And applied it to himself, which can only mean that God’s wrath would fall on him. Then, at the very moment of his death Jesus will cry out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (15:34).
It’s this abandonment that Jesus fears most. This is what makes Jesus different from the martyrs. Martyrs go to their death convinced that God is pleased with them and that he will welcome them. Jesus faced his death knowing that in his final moment he would be cut off from God by the sins of the human race. No wonder he hopes that this “might pass from him,” that it, “might pass him by” and miss him altogether.
Jesus is under huge pressure, and just as olives in an olive press reveal the olive oil within them, that pressure reveals Jesus’ humanity.
All through Mark’s gospel there’s this growing sense of the disciples asking “Who is this person?” that they’re following as they witness him walking on water, healing the sick, casting out demons.
Although today people question whether Jesus can be God, for the early church there was no question about Jesus’ divinity. It was his humanity that was in question. And what we see here is that Jesus is a real human being.
How one person can be both human and divine at the same time is something that has kept Christian theologians busy for 2000 years. The ancient confessions of the church don’t try and explain the how they just declare that the two natures are “unconfused, unchanged, indivisible and inseparable.” That Jesus is one person, who is both human and divine.
We don’t know how that works but there are some hints in scripture. Phil 2 says he emptied himself and took the form of a servant. I take that to mean that he laid aside all the things that come with being God, and that don’t fit with being human.
[It’s like when a businessman moves into politics. If he doesn’t sell his business, he has to put it into what’s called a “blind trust.” He can no longer run the business or have any influence on it, nor can he get any information or benefit from it. He still owns it, it’s still his, but it is no advantage to him.]
In a way, that’s what Jesus did with his divine attributes, his God-like qualities. One of those attributes is omnipotence; able to do anything. In Mark 10:27 Jesus says to his disciples, “With humans it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.” Now Jesus prays, “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you.” Jesus had laid aside that aspect of who he was and had chosen to live by faith, dependant on his Father. If he hadn’t, he would have been cheating. If Jesus is going to redeem human beings, he has to be a real human being himself. That means being dependant on the Holy Spirit to live a life dedicated to God, with no short cuts.
Mark doesn’t talk about it so much, but Luke’s gospel makes it a major point that everything Jesus did, he did through the power of the Spirit. So when Jesus healed, he healed by the power of the Spirit. When he cast out demons it was by the power of the Spirit. Of course he was in perfect fellowship with the Spirit because his relationship wasn’t marred by sin. But he still had to live as a real human being, dependant on the Father, through the Holy Spirit.
That means that his anguish in the garden is real. He had put his omniscience (his ability to know everything) into that blind trust too. So, he knew the plan. The Holy Spirit had revealed that to him, and he had spoken of it to his disciples. He was to be arrested, tried, and executed. Then on the third day he was to rise again from the dead.
He knew the plan; but he didn’t know the outcome, and so like any other human being, he ad to deal with fear of the unknown. He had to trust his Father, just like we have to trust God. And sometimes trusting God is an anguishing experience, because you don’t know what the outcome will be.
And that fear of loneliness we talked about
is not an act. His sense of dread is real as he realises that he will soon be
absolutely alone. Although he had laid aside all of his “godness,” he was still
in constant touch with his Father. John 3.34 says 34 … the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the
Spirit without limit.
Jesus was never alone. All through his earthly ministry he has been full of the Spirit, without limit, mediating his Father’s presence. Soon that will be gone and he will be totally, absolutely alone and abandoned.
And because Jesus’ humanity is real, because his anguish is real, and because his loneliness is real; that means that Jesus’ obedience is real too.
This isn’t some put up job, where Jesus and the Father and the Spirit all agree to pretend like Jesus is really human. No. He actually felt all these things; the fear, the anguish, the loneliness, and he didn’t want to go through with it.
Jesus didn’t want to go to the cross, but he knew it was his father’s will, and that, since the Trinity is always in agreement, at some level he had agreed to it.
Then come those marvellous words that mean salvation for you and me, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” There are people who tag those words onto the end of every prayer in case they pray the wrong thing. It’s like the disclaimer at the end of those medical ads on TV. “In rare cases may cause your hair to fall out, your skin to turn green, and your ears to fall off, etc.”
But that’s not the point. Jesus knew what God’s will was. He just didn’t want to do it. As he would say to his disciples, “The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” His natural, human emotional responses were danger of winning and turning him from his task, until he came to the place of accepting what he knew to be what God wanted him to do.
“Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Is not a disclaimer for not knowing God’s will. It is a declaration of intent to obey God’s will, despite the difficulty and pain involved. It’s the prayer you pray when you know that you should talk to that person, but you’re afraid of the consequences and would rather let it slide, but you know it’s the right thing to do…not what I will, but what you will
It’s the prayer you pray when you have to make a tough choice, a choice that may cost you something, to remain faithful to God, not what I will, but what you will
It’s the prayer you pray when you’re tempted to follow a path you know is wrong – a relationship, an action, a habit – and you need God’s grace to resist, not what I will, but what you will
Jesus knows what it’s like to be caught in
the jaws of a decision that makes the future look scarey. He’s walked this path
before on his way to the cross, and he can help you walk it today as you choose
to say, not what I will, but what you will.