Thursday 28th March 2024 | Maundy Thursday Message by Pastor Rolly Stahl | Mark 14:32-42 | Series: What’s so amazing about Jesus?
Friends, every one of us will face trials that devastate us – and leave us asking: “What on earth is God is up to?!” Some of you might be in that fog of despair right now. Overwhelmed, perhaps you’re wondering: “How on earth am I going to get through this?” “Is there some way out of this mess?”
Come for a moment to perhaps the darkest night in history. The scene is simple. An orchard of gnarled olive trees, surrounded by a stone wall, and entered through a wooden gate. The place is named “Gethsemane” which means “oil press”. Perhaps there was one in this garden.
After the annual Jewish Passover meal, a group have gathered in this olive grove. Four have left the rest of the group – and gone on a bit further. Of the four, one leaves the others to pray.
Can you see that lone figure in the shadows? What’s he doing? He’s lying face-down on the ground. Eyes wide with fear. Hair matted. An anguished sweat of terror mixed with blood streaming down his face (Luke 22:44). That’s Jesus. Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.
Maybe you’ve seen a quite different portrait of Jesus in the garden: where he’s kneeling in the moonlight with his hands folded on a rock. Halo over his head. Snow white robe. A look of serenity on his face as he gazes up to heaven – as if Jesus is preparing for a Sunday School picnic – not the horror that lay before him.
For some time, Jesus has known it was coming to this. Earlier that evening, Jesus made it clear to his disciples that he was about to give up his body … and shed his blood for many. But now, that terror is about to unfold.
Jesus shares his anguish with Peter, James, and John: “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.” (Mark 14:34 NLT). In other words, “I’m so sad I could die!” The dread and despair are crushing the life out of him.
Jesus asks his three friends to stay awake and support him in prayer.
What do they do? They keep falling asleep.
When Jesus needs friends to be with him like never before, he is all alone. We want to shake the disciples: “How can you guys sleep at a time like this?”
Jesus wrestles with his desire to live – and his desire to please the Father. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by. “Abba, Father,” he cried out, “everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” (Mark 14:35-36 NLT). And then again, the same thing.
Drinking this cup means Jesus will suffer betrayal, rejection, beatings, flogging, and one of most brutal means of execution ever invented. Drinking this cup, Jesus will take the blame for our guilt and shame.
As the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Jesus will drink the cup of death and separation from God. As the Son of God, Jesus has never experienced that before!
As a human being like us, Jesus must trust that his Father will raise him to life again – even though it has never happened before! Pr Rick Strelan comments:
“His faith, his courage, his willingness to place his future in the hands of his faithful Father are just as much a risk for him as for us. He, like us, has to place his trust in his Father’s faithfulness and in his promises.”[1]
Despite his sorrow, Jesus prays: “Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” It’s exactly how he taught us to pray: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10).
Self-preservation is healthy and normal. Yet Jesus is ready to lay it aside – for you, for me, for everyone. In obedience to his Father’s will, and for the joy of having you and me together with him in eternity, Jesus takes the path of self-sacrifice (see Hebrews 12:2). It is the most humbling act of love the world has ever seen.
The picture of Jesus in Gethsemane is one who knows our sorrows (Isaiah 54:3). Jesus is not clothed in a snow-white cloak, but in our broken humanity.
My dear friends:
- Next time you are wandering through the fog of despair – and think that no one understands what you are going through – remember Jesus in the garden.
- Next time your self-pity shouts to you “No one cares!” pay a visit to Gethsemane.
- Next time you wonder if God really knows about our pain on this broken planet, listen to him pleading among the olive trees… and follow him from the garden to the cross.
Friends, God doesn’t stand back and watch us from a distance. His love moves him to not only get tangled up in our skin – but to enter our pain, our misery, our suffering, our death. ‘God was never nearer to us than when HE hurt.’[2]
Max Lucado writes:
“If it is true that in suffering God is most like humanity, then maybe in our suffering we can see God like never before. The next time you are called to suffer, pay attention… Watch closely. It could very well be that the hand that extends itself to lead you out of the fog is a pierced one.”[3]
Friends, that pierced hand that reaches out to us also brings us into his resurrection. Amen! (c.920)
An audio version of this message is available on St John’s Lutheran Church Tea Tree Gully YouTube page: www.youtube.com/@stjohnslutheranttg
[1] Rick Strelan, Crossing the Boundaries- A Commentary on Mark, (Lutheran Publishing House, 1991). 197.
[2] Max Lucado, “The Fog of the Broken Heart”, in No Wonder They Call Him the Savior, 133.
[3] Ibid.
St John's Lutheran Church, Tea Tree Gully 