Matthew 26:36-46
Sermon preached at Barclay Church, Edinburgh by Rev D. Graham Leitch
6 April 2003

As the warmer weather returns and the spring flowers heralds the arrival of the Spring, our thoughts as Christians turn once again to the Easter story; to events rehearsed in word and drama and song the world over - to the last chapters of the earthly life of Jesus. Looking forward to them, Jesus declared that this what why God sent Him into that world; that it was FOR THIS that he had come.

To know this is essential. Christianity is not about a great life or a great example or a great teacher but about a GREAT SAVIOUR!

His life was unique in its perfection. His ministry was breathtaking in its power. His teaching has never been matched in any religion. But it was to die for our sins that He came!!

JESUS’ FEELINGS ABOUT HIS DEATH
In the Gospels it’s possible to trace the way in which Jesus’ own feelings about his death develop as his ministry takes place, rather as someone approaching a fire from a distance may at first see yet feel nothing of his heat. Jesus early statements about his death (those that come before H entered Jerusalem at the end of his life) are calm and dispassionate:

“The Son of Man has come not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28)

“Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be put to death....” (Mark 8:31)

But as He draws closer to the fire which is the sufferings of the passion - His cross - so the heat increases. So that on the threshold of the momentous events which would end in his crucifixion we find him telling the disciples:

“Now my heart is troubled... and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No! It was for this very reason that I came to this hour.. you are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light before the darkness overtakes you....”

His heart is troubled now - the heat of the fire of God’s judgment on sin which will soon be borne by Him is not only being seen by Jesus but felt as well.

IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE
But by the time Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples the intensity of the heat - the sense of antipathy in His heart to the future and the strength of resistance, in his human nature, to the sufferings and death to which God is sending Him and for which God has appointed Him, is at its height.

JESUS tells the disciples “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow (like a living death!.)” He withdraws first form the twelve, taking only Peter, James and John with him. Then he even withdraws from them, apart and alone. And in the agony of facing a destiny from which human nature recoiled - with his whole human nature crying “No!” He prayed - he begged: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.”

The report of Luke telling of this moment is even more vivid:
He talks of Jesus being in “anguish” or “agony”- he was facing a future he would find it hard, felt it might be impossible, to bear. The word described the agony of fear. And he tells also of the sweat on Jesus’ brow being “like drops of blood falling to the ground.”

“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow......My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass by me....Yet not as I will, but as you will."

Professor Barclay is NOT alone in telling us that the account of what happened in Gethsemane is one we must approach on our knees “Here” he remarks “study must pass into wondering adoration.”
THE EASTER PRAYERS OF JESUS
We’ve been studying the subject of prayer together, and over the next few weeks - through Easter - we’re going to look together at three of the brief prayers of Jesus:

This week we’ll look at His struggle to accept and submit to the will of God in Gethsemane. On Palm Sunday we’ll listen to Jesus’ plea for the forgiveness of those who scourged him, plaited a crown of thorns and put it on his head, scoffed mocked and spat in His face and nailed him to the cross. He called upon God not to curse but to bless them:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

And then, after Easter, His heavenward cry of accomplishment and victory - of the end that was no end but just the beginning of a greater blessing. His last word from the Cross: “It is finished!”

Today, though, the scene that claims our attention is as vivid as it is dramatic - and has some powerful things to say to us. There are lessons about the NATURE of the will of God, and there are lessons about how we respond when HIS choice isn’t OURS! What does it have to say.

1. THE WILL OF GOD NOT ALWAYS HUMANLY ATTRACTIVE.
The first thing it has to tell us, the first thing we learn from Jesus’ battle to face the will of God for his future is that the will of God isn’t always humanly attractive to us, appealing - what we want!! There are times in life when what we want is one thing and what God wants another.

When Jesus knelt to pray in that olive-grove on the hillside his plea was that “this cup” might be “taken from” Him.“Does this have to be?” He cried, as the shadow of the cross loomed ever more dark and foreboding, on the horizon.

Life is easy when what God wants is what we want to - when the heart of God and the heart of man agree! God’s choices for us are sometimes just what we desire for ourselves. God gives us what we long for.

We fall in love with someone. We hardly dare to believe that they’ll be interested in us - but it turns out that they are - we fall in love and marry. Or we apply for a job. It's really what we want but there are other good candidates for it and when we get it we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we’re not just dreaming! Sometimes God gives us the desire of our hearts. Things work out for us, they’re what we naturally want. Sometimes God’s will appeals to us!!

But sometimes God’s choices aren’t our choices, and as with Jesus in the garden, everything in our human nature rebels against it and cries “Surely not!” “It can’t be!” or even “It mustn’t be!”

Sometimes God’s choices - God’s will for our lives IS appealing, it’s exciting, it’s what WE want! It was so on that day the Psalmist, reflecting upon the goodness God had shown him thus far:

“the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places”

But the will of God isn’t always humanly attractive or in line with our natural desire. As Jesus knelt in the garden the hidden struggle in the depths of his soul to accept the will of God with regard to His future was manifest in the sweat - mute testimony to the anguish in his heart.

“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow......My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass by me....Yet not as I will, but as you will."

The will of God is not always what we want or what is humanly attractive to us. But there’s much more for us to learn here:

2 THE WILL OF GOD SOMETIMES INVOLVES SUFFERING AND LOSS....
We learn that the will of God - God’s choices for us will sometimes involve pain and loss - anyone who thinks of Christians discipleship as a way of endless joy and uninhibited bliss has neither read what Jesus says or visited Gethsemane. In Gethsemane Jesus came face to face with His destiny as the world’s Saviour.

When Britain's young soldiers heard that they were being sent to the Gulf and became aware of the possibility of active service and of being involved in a war with the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq some of them no doubt talked excitedly about the prospect of being involved in action. But its a different thing when you're in the front line, exposed to the risk and danger - when the bombs are dropping, the missiles flying and the snipers firing!!

It was one thing for Jesus to talk about his approaching sufferings and death at a distance - but now, in Gethsemane, He was confronting the realities of what it would mean: the scorn and the mockery, the scourge and the spit in His face, the woven crown of thorns and the wooden cross of His death.

Jesus anguish in the garden was both present and anticipatory - in the garden he sipped the cup of suffering He must soon drink to the full at the Cross of Calvary.

It was for us he would suffer. For our sins that He would pay the price. And it is to us that the offer of His salvation is extended.

.....BUT LEADS TO GAIN!
The will of God sometimes involves suffering and loss - but in the providence of God its purpose is our gain. It is only by the way of the sufferings and seeming defeat of the Cross that we reach the empty tomb and the victory of the resurrection.

On the reveres side of the coin of every resurrection suffering, death and a cross are to be found!!

As Jesus stepped out of the dusk of the evening into the darkness of the olive-grove the future seemed bleak with an impenetrable darkness inducing human fear. But beyond that awful darkness - the pain and loss and cry of God-forsakenness at Calvary, lay the sunlight of a new day.

“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow......My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass by me....Yet not as I will, but as you will."

In Gethsemane we stand in awe and watch Christ struggle with His destiny and learn -
- that the will of God is not always what we want!
- that the will of God sometimes involves suffering and loss
- yet its purpose remains our gain.

RESPONDING TO THE WILL OF GOD
Yet the events of Gethsemane not only help us to understand the NATURE of the will of God but invite us to reflect upon HOW WE RESPOND when the will of God is against what WE want.

And in the accounts of Gethsemane in the Gospel I find four important lessons. Because you see when Jesus came face to face with what was a humanly unwelcome future; when he felt the heat of the fire of His sufferings and began to be burdened with the awfulness of the Cross He resorted to prayer - He turned to God! And that’s the first lesson!

1) JESUS RESORTED TO PRAYER
Although it can be very helpful to share our burdens and worries - our disappointments and distresses - with others, Jesus appears not to do so here. Although he takes the twelve with him into the garden - and then the favoured three who were closest to Him because their human companionship mattered to him (the closeness and support of others always does at such times) - it was to GOD first and foremost that He turned.

Speaking nothing of what was in his heart to them He withdrew apart - as though His sorrow was so great and His anguish so deep that He either couldn’t share it with the others or was unwilling to burden them with it - “Sit here” He told them “while I go over there and pray....”

What are we to do when what God wants for us seems to be the opposite of what we want for ourselves - when faced with the illness of a husband or wife, a son or a daughter or news of some other approaching “disaster” as we think of it - we cry“No, Lord, no!”“It mustn’t be!”

We can learn from Jesus’ resort to prayer!
“What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear,
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer.
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.”

What can we to do when what God wants for us seems to be the opposite of what we want for ourselves - we can PRAY.

2. JESUS STILL CALLED GOD HIS FATHER
Secondly, we can remember whenever our lives are thrown into confusion by some circumstance or turned upside down in a moment that though all else may change - God DOES NOT CHANGE.

Notice with care (and perhaps relief!) that Jesus still addresses God as”My Father...”:

“My Father, if it is possible may this cup be taken from me” (Matthew 26:39m)

At the worst of times as much as the best - when the rising tide seems to be flowing against us or (to change the image) when the heat of the approaching fire is at its most intense, God remains FOR us, a Loving Father.

“I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6) God tells us in the Bible.
Though all else change - He remains, everlastingly, the same loving, caring God.

What can we to do when what God wants for us seems to be the opposite of what we want for ourselves - we can rest in the knowledge that God’s care and concern for us is unchanged.

3 JESUS WAS GIVEN SPECIAL HELP FROM HEAVEN
Thirdly, we can sure God’s help will come to our aid. We owe to Luke, who wrote the third Gospel, a detail of Christ’s experience in Gethsemane that Matthew omits and it’s a very tender and beautiful as well as instructive one: (Luke 22:41ff)

41 He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 "Father, if you are
willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." 43 An angel from heaven
appeared to him and strengthened him.

Learn from this that when the path which opens up before us is one from which we shrink; when the future seems dark and forbidding, whenever God’s choice for us is the hard and not the easy way, He will not leave us unattended or to face the future unaided:

“An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.”

When Paul was coming to terms with a trial in his life - he referred to it as a “thorn in the flesh” - he begged God to take it way. But God refused. Instead God gave Him a promise:

“My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

I don’t know whether it’s possible to speak of the modesty of God or not, but the fact of the matter is that the rest of the Bible speaks not of the sufficiency of grace but of its superabundance!! And out of that superabundance God can can supply not some or most of what we need when life seems against us - but ALL that we need in His ways and in His time.

What can we to do when what God wants for us seems to be the opposite of what we want for ourselves - we can remember that in the times when His hand may seem to be withdrawn, His help is still specially given.

NOT MY WILL BUT YOURS!
And then there is a final lesson - and it is contained in Christ’s prayer, “Not my will but your be done!” and his“Rise, let us be going!”

He was speaking not of leaving the garden but of facing what He knew awaited Him in his arrest, trial, sufferings and death - of facing the future of God’s choosing with God’s help.

Professor Barclay says this:

“It makes all the difference in what tone of voice a man says ‘Thy will be done!’:
- he may say it in a tone of helpless submission, as one who is in the grip of a power against
which it is hopeless to fight/ The words may be the death knell of hope.
- he may say it as one who has been utterly frustrated and who sees that the dream can
never come true. The words may be those of a bleak regret or even of a bitter anger which is
all the more bitter because it cannot do anything about it.
OR
- he may say it with the accent of perfect trust.

It was in that Spirit that Jesus rose from the presence of the Father to face a future that would lead him through pain and loss and death itself to the ultimate triumph of a victory eternal and divine.

“God, thou art love! I build my faith on that...
I know Thee, who has kept my path and made
Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow
So that it reached me like a solemn joy:
It were too strange that I should doubt thy love...”

It is in that spirit that God invites us to rise up to face life’s uncertainties and our church’s future!

AMEN

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