Sheldon Vanauken
once wrote these words describing the aftermath of his decision to follow
Christ:
Forty
days after: The decision made, one begins to act on it. One prays, goes to
church, makes an incredibly meaningful first Christian communion. One tries to
rethink everything one has ever thought in this new Light. One tries to
subordinate self—to make the Sign of the Cross, crossing out the “I”—and to
follow Christ, with something less than brilliant success.
I invite you to
meditate with me, during these few moments we have together, on what enabled
Jesus to go to the cross on Good Friday. I think a good portion of what made
that move possible was Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane on Thursday
night. Listen for God’s word to you from Mark 14:32-42….
They went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his
disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be
distressed and agitated. 34 And he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain
here, and keep awake.” 35 And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and
prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 He said, “Abba,[a] Father,
for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want,
but what you want.” 37 He came and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, “Simon, are
you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour? 38 Keep awake and pray that
you may not come into the time of trial;[b]the
spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39 And again he went away and
prayed, saying the same words. 40 And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were
very heavy; and they did not know what to say to him. 41 He came a third time and
said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour
has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Get up, let us be going.
See, my betrayer is at hand.”
To say, “Not what
I will, but what you will,” is to cross out the “I”. Jesus, in a sense, crossed
out the “I” of himself when he prayed in the garden. He made a deliberate
choice to give himself for our sins upon the cross.
In his humanity,
Jesus did not want to die such a death. That is why he prayed, “Take this cup
from me.” The cup he referred to, it was the cup of suffering.
However, as the
perfect human being, and also fully divine, Jesus chose to unite his human will
with the divine will of the Father and go to the cross for us. He who had no
sin became “sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of
God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
It is hard for us
to imagine the suffering that Jesus endured in the garden, on trial, and on the
cross, but C. S. Lewis describes it this way:
It is clear from many of His sayings that Our Lord had long
foreseen His death. He knew what conduct such as His, in a world such as we
have made of this, must inevitably lead to. But it is clear that this knowledge
must somehow have been withdrawn from Him before He prayed in Gethsemane. He
could not, with whatever reservation about the Father’s will, have prayed that
the cup might pass and simultaneously know that it would not. That is both a
logical and a psychological impossibility. You see what this involves? Lest any
trial incident to humanity should be lacking, the torments of hope–of suspense,
anxiety–were at the last moment loosed upon Him–the supposed possibility that,
after all, He might, He just conceivably might, be spared the supreme horror.
There was precedent. Isaac had been spared: he too at the last moment, he also
against all apparent probability. It was not quite impossible… and doubtless He
had seen other men crucified… a sight very unlike most of our religious pictures
and images.
But
for this last (and erroneous) hope against hope, and the consequent tumult of
the soul, the sweat of blood, perhaps He would not have been very Man. To live
in a fully predictable world is not to be a man….
Does not every movement in the Passion
write large some common element in the sufferings of our race? First, the
prayer of anguish; not granted. Then he turns to his friends. They are
asleep—as ours, or we, are so often, or busy, or away, or preoccupied. Then he faces
the Church; the very Church that He brought into existence. It condemns
him. This is also characteristic. In every Church, in every institution,
there is something which sooner or later works against the very purpose for
which it came into existence. But there seems to be another chance. There is
the State; in this case, the Roman state. Its pretensions are far lower than
those of the Jewish church, but for that reason it may be free from local
fanaticisms. It claims to be just, on a rough, worldly level. Yes, but only so
far as is consistent with political expediency and raison d’état. One becomes a counter in
a complicated game. But even now all is not lost. There is still an appeal
to the People—the poor and simple whom He had blessed, whom He had healed and
fed and taught, to whom He himself belongs. But they have become over-night
(it is nothing unusual) a murderous rabble shouting for His blood. There is,
then, nothing left but God. And to God, God’s last words are, “Why hast
thou forsaken me?”
Can we even
comprehend such agony as this? We can meditate upon it. And well we should. But
we can never fully comprehend the suffering of Christ which he underwent for us
and for our sins. When Jesus prayed, “Not what I will, but what you will,” he
was crossing out the “I” and he was doing it for us.
But the movement
in the great dance does not end there. Now our crucified and risen Savior turns
to us and asks us to “cross out the I”. The same Jesus who prayed in the
garden, “Not what I will, but what you will,” also instructed us, his
disciples, to pray saying: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
That crossing out
of the “I”, that praying of “Not my will, but yours be done”, that saying no to
self and yes to Christ, is not just something we must do, once for all time, at
the beginning of our Christian life. It is something we must do all along the
road of the Christian walk. We read in Mark 14:39 that Jesus “once more went
away and prayed the same thing.” If our perfect Lord and Master had to pray
twice, surrendering to the Father’s will, how much more do we, his weak and
sinful servants, need to pray the same prayer, over and over again.
Of course, one of
the hardest times to pray, “Not my will but yours be done” is when surrendering
to the Father’s will involves the acceptance of some suffering for ourselves or
for those we love. My mother wrote the following many years ago about the birth
and life of my sister Alissa:
In
September 1959 Alissa Gayle was born. I had problems with her from the
beginning. She had a convulsion when she was a few weeks old. The doctor at the
local hospital didn’t know the cause, but she was bleeding internally, in her
head. She seemed to recover and he sent her home. We were strengthened during
this time by the Word of God, “Yea though I walk through the vally of the
shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.” There are rich
treasures to be had in the dark hours, blessings that the light can never
reveal. At home the sickness intensified. I took her to Portland for treatment.
The staff explained her symptoms: fluid was building up in her head. I got my
hands on a medical book and looked up the problem. I was sure she had
hydrocephalus, water on the brain. Today, that disease can be cured but in 1959
it still mystified the medical profession. We shuttled her to Portland for
seven operations, but they didn’t help. She lost her sight, then her hearing.
Up
until then we had prayed asking the Lord to give us back our little girl, but I
remember kneeling at the side of her empty crib and softly asking, “Not our
will but thine be done.” Sweet peace filled my heart. I knew that whatever ou
loving Father decided would be acceptable.
We
could not keep her with us, she was too sick, so we placed Alissa Gayle in a
hospital. No words can tell what it was like to lay our baby in another’s arms,
somehow knowing we were not to have her again here on earth. On our way home
from the hospital our eldest son expressed all our feelings when he prayed,
“Dear Lord, thank you for letting us have Alissa Gayle for a little while…”
Jim
was away, attempting to break through to kids in Harlem at this time. It became
clear he was going to be based in New York. We needed to be pulled together as
a family. It was time for another move. The doctors told us it would be best for
the baby, and for us, if she stayed in Oregon. It was heartbreaking. Although
she did need care, she didn’t need us. I had a husband and four other children
who did.
When
we left Paradise Ranch, Alissa Gayle was under the hospital’s care and the
watch of friends who visited her often during those painful months. Then she
died and went to be with him who loved us so much that he gave his son.
I believe the
only way we can truly pray, “Not my will, but yours be done,” is if we know God
as our loving heavenly Father. It is only as “we know that in all things God
works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his
purpose,” (Romans 8:28) that we can surrender our lives to him and trust him to
do what is best.
Furthermore, I
believe the only way we can know God as our Father is by coming to him through
his crucified and risen Son, Jesus. When Jesus prayed in the garden, he called
God, as he always called him, Abba. Abba is
the Aramaic equivalent of Daddy. Jesus
was the only person in all of Scripture, up to this point in time, to call God Abba. That just wasn’t done by other
Jews in Jesus’ day. Jesus knew God as Father in an intimate way and he can
introduce us to the same kind of intimate relationship with God. Writing to the
Christians in Rome, Paul said, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you
a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we
cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit
himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are
children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heris with Christ, if indeed we
share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.” (Romans
8:15-17)
Can you call God Abba? Have you come to him through Jesus
Christ his Son? Do you trust the One who prayed, “Not my will, but yours be
done” and thereby obtained for you and me salvation full and free? Do you trust
him enough to pray the same, even in your Garden of Gethsemane? Are you
trusting him to help you cross out the “I”?
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