“Abba”, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.
Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
Mark 14:36
Unlike the crises you and I face, Jesus knew what was coming. If I had a “heads up” about the news, perhaps I wouldn’t answer the phone or open the letter. Or maybe you or I would run and hide. Deny it. Flee from it. Both are possible responses to the crisis.
The Peters among us would surely pull out a sword and lop off an ear or two. Fight it. Another way to deal with the crisis.
But what about our Lord? What did Jesus do?
He prayed.
He didn’t flee. He didn’t fight. He prayed. And we see His humanity wrapped in His deity as we note exactly what He prayed: Take this cup from me.
For some, this might diminish Jesus a tad bit. But for me it is a huge encouragement. It confirms that “…we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15).
Jesus knows. Jesus understands. We do not pray to a God who is just “up there,” we pray to a God who has experienced the “down here.”
He knew what was coming – the physical torment, excruciating torture and pain, rejection, disdain, taunting, and (worst of all) the separation from the Father as “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (II Corinthians 5:21)
I believe it was the awareness of the separation to come that caused the sweat of Jesus to be “…like drops of blood falling to the ground.” (Luke 22:44).
The assurance that God will be with us in the crises we face will enable us to courageously pray as Jesus — “Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
It’s okay to ask Him to take it away. (After all, Jesus did.) But in the end, children of God acquiesce to God. We yield our will to His. We don’t always understand, but we trust in the One who does.
Christ prayed in His crisis. You and I are assured of His presence and His power in ours.
We don’t always know why.
We won’t always understand.
But we can bow to the One who knows all. We can call on Christ in our crisis.
We can pray the prayer that never fails: Thy will be done.
(Photo attribution: Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, 1890, by Heinrich Hofmann, now displayed in the Riverside Church, New York City.)
