Gethsemane

And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch."And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, "Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

A couple of times this week, I read these words from the 14th chapter of Mark, and it still strikes me how mind-blowing this is. Here we see Jesus who for his entire ministry on earth has seemed steady and in control of the situation. While he weeps upon Lazarus' death, the picture we see is one of authority and strength - after all, he proceeds to raise Lazarus from the dead. But consider the words we see in this text: distressed... troubled... overwhelmed... The thought of Jesus stumbling forward and falling to the ground prostrate in his overwhelming distress may look frighteningly out of character. But it all makes sense.

If you count yourself to be a Christian - one who will be at a church on Sunday proclaiming Jesus' resurrection from the dead - the power of that resurrection will be largely lost without understanding the profundity of that death. And Jesus' state of emotion at Gethsemane gives us a raw foreshadow of the depths of that death. The death that Jesus died wasn't the garden-variety human death that we'll all die. What made Jesus' death tragic wasn't first and foremost that he was wrongfully accused, sentenced, and killed. The death that Jesus' died paid the ransom for the sins of many, and the price of that ransom was the wrath of God in judgment for the sins of the world - the most terrifying and horrifying thing in the world. Gethsemane teaches us this.

From Gethsemane we also learn something prayer. We learn that that that this sweet communion with God is ultimately where we must to in times of our greatest need. And we learn that God answers prayers with sweet and bitter providence (plug for a fantastic book I recently read by John Piper) - not with verbatim order-taking as you'd get from a McDonald's drive-thru.