Nielsen’s Nook

³²And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” ³³And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. ³⁴And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” ³⁵And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. ³⁶And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” ³⁷And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? ³⁸Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” ³⁹And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. ⁴⁰And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. ⁴¹And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. ⁴²Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.” (Mark 14:32-42)

I was talking with my friend Pastor Jeff Hatton of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Waco, Texas this evening at a Southwest Church Planting Network dinner. In an amazing pastoral moment, Jeff listened to far more of my story than I probably should have encumbered him with. I was telling him about how the Lord had burdened me to preach to myself in the midst of a year long fiery trial. In addition, I shared with Jeff that one of the initial passages that the Lord used to teach me about preaching first to myself was Mark 14:32-42, where our Lord suffers the agony of anticipation on the precipice of his execution. Our conversation was cut short as the events of the evening progressed and I did not have the opportunity to clarify what I had in mind by saying that I believed that Jesus seems to “redeem even suffering", which is what I am attempting to do here.

Most of us would very much like to know the future or at least certain parts of it if, we’re the types who enjoy a little suspense. We want to know about the hurricanes and tsunamis that would come and wash us out, hoping that we might avoid them. What we find in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-42) is the one who designed the future, the one upon whom the future is predicated, embracing the uncertainty, the angst of suffering. We ourselves would never do such things – or at least most of us wouldn’t. We have come across people with terminal diseases that talk about gracious contentment in their dire state. Those kind of people used to make me very uncomfortable. I always wondered if it was merely an opiate that they had swallowed to help them cope with the unbearable.

What we find in the Garden of Gethsemane is immeasurably far from being an opiate. Just after the institution of the Lord’s Supper in the Upper Room, (i.e., Jesus’ celebration of Passover with his disciples), Jesus predicts Peter’s threefold denial of him. “Even though they fall away, I will not.” Peter echoed with an emphatic hollowness. Jesus then invites three of the disciples, the so-called ‘inner circle’, to join him in the Garden of Gethsemane. Where the first man, Adam, began in a garden and brought suffering upon the race through disobedience, Jesus the fulfillment of humanness would turn suffering inside out through his obedience as he moved from suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross, then from the grave to resurrection glory.

Glory has never come through any other road than the the one that runs through Cross. Earlier James and John had sought glory apart from suffering: “Grant us to sit one at your left hand and one on your right hand in glory” (Mark 10:37). Jesus asks them if they can bear the cup of suffering that he would bear. “We are able,” they naively answered. “The failure to understand what it means to share in Jesus’ destiny and to be identified with his sufferings, rather than privileged status, appears to be the occasion for the isolation of the three from the others.” (Lane, 515) So we find that the three who had thought themselves able to circumvent the Cross – Peter, James and John – now found themselves invited to an object lesson on suffering. Jesus anticipated not only the nine-inch nails measured to inflict acute pain, but also the immeasurable wrath of God that would be poured out upon him for the sins of His people.

Two invitations are given in this passage. There is one to join Jesus in his suffering, to “sit here while I pray” and “remain here and watch” (Mark 14:32,34). The other is the one the disciples chose. It is the invitation to merely cope with a situation out of their ability to control. Three times Jesus asks them to join him by watching and praying for an hour (v 37,38). Three times we find that this ‘inner circle’ denied him, proving that indeed their spirit was willing but their flesh weak (v 38).

The disciples got through this hour in which Jesus was being overwhelmed. His soul was exceedingly sorrowful (v 34). Luke records that even after the Lord had been strengthened by an angel from heaven, "being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground." (Luke 22:44). Only the God-Man could be anxious to the point of sweating drops of blood for only the God-Man could understand what it meant to bear the infinite wrath of God for the sins of his people.

In Jesus we find one who demonstrates an ability to cry out to his God in the midst of great pain and anxiety. In the disciples we find those who merely cope. Coping is that invitation to skate around the outside of pain, to numb oneself and look for deliverance in something other than Christ. The disciples slept. Some of us will turn to the bottle, or television, or entertainment or over scheduling ourselves. These help us get by, so we think. All the while, in circumventing suffering, we fail to see that it is in Christ that suffering itself is redeemed. We fail to see that Christ is not waiting for us on the other side of our suffering in some kind of ethereal platonic heaven. No. He meets us in the midst of suffering in this world, even now.

It is the Cross that makes sense of suffering, giving us hope that suffering is not at the last analysis arbitrary. It often does not make sense and drives us to our wits end. What we find is that Christ is there too, redeeming the madness of suffering, bidding us to walk with him on the road to glory that at every point runs through the Cross.

Suffering will come. There is no avoiding it in this fallen world, for suffering is the reflux of sin’s corruption. For some it comes like the dripping of a leaky faucet, slowly eroding our strength and minds. For others it comes suddenly, unexpectedly, all at once, tragic. The Gospel of Jesus Christ does not lessen the pain or the grief, but it recasts it. And in recasting it, we find that suffering and its cousin death do no longer have the last word. “For if we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6:5, ESV)

We go where our Lord has gone. We walk the trail that our Lord has blazed to glory. This is not some kind of positivistic mantra of which Christians attempt to iteratively convince themselves. It is the fact of this life that suffering has been recast, that while the sharp edges do in fact cut and we do indeed bleed, we are reshaped and reformed into the likeness of Christ. The one who bled the ground red at Calvary for us, did not bleed to leave us to our own devices, coping our way through this life. Rather he, who has trampled down death by his own death, has sent the Comforter, the Spirit of Christ, to walk with us in victorious union.

Whether you are one who suffers much or little, you will suffer. Jesus, our High Priest at the right hand of God the Father Almighty intercedes for us. He does not intercede as a priest who empathizes through a distant imagination of what suffering must be like, but as one who knows what it is to suffer infinitely the wrath of God for our sins. It is this crucified and risen Christ who is himself our Eucharist, our thanksgiving and hope in suffering.