CCC Gainesville | Blog
White potted Hydrangea plants will be used to decorate the foyer & sanctuary on Easter. If you would like to help off-set the expense by purchasing a plant to take home after Second Worship on Easter morning, please contact Debbie at the church office to reserve your plant. Email: dstaples AT christcommunitychurch DOT com Cost: $11 each Checks should be made payable to Christ Community. Memo line: “Easter Plant”
After his last meal with his friends, Jesus went with his closest friends to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Tom Wright provides helpful guidance: Put this passage alongside the other time when Jesus took Peter, James and John away with him by themselves. In chapter 17, the four of them went up a mountain, and the disciples watched in amazement as Jesus was transfigured before them, shining with the glory of God and talking with Moses and Elijah. Now the same group of three are together in a garden, and the disciples watch in amazement as once again Jesus is transfigured, this time with the sorrow of God. Again, he is very much aware of the ancient scriptures which said it must be like this (verses 24, 54, 56).
This scene in Gethsemane is absolutely central to any proper understanding of who Jesus really was. It’s all too easy for devout Christians to imagine him as a kind of demigod, striding heroically through the world without a care. Some have even read John’s gospel that way, though I believe that is to misread it. But certainly Matthew is clear that at this crucial moment Jesus had urgent and agitating business to do with his father. He had come this far; he had told them, again and again, that he would be handed over, tortured and crucified; but now, at the last minute, this knowledge had to make its way down from his scripture- soaked mind into his obedient, praying heart. And it is wonderfully comforting (as the writer to the Hebrews points out) that he had to make this agonizing journey of faith, just as we do.
‘If it’s possible — please make it that I don’t have to drink this cup!’ The ‘cup’ in question, without a doubt, is the ‘cup of God’s wrath’, as in many biblical passages (Isaiah 51.17; Jeremiah 25.15, and elsewhere). Jesus was resolutely determined to understand this fateful moment in the light of the long scriptural narrative that he saw now coming to its climax in his death. But, precisely because of that, he realized in a new and devastating way that he was called to go down into the darkness, deeper than anyone had gone before, the darkness of one who, though he was the very son of God, would drink the cup which symbolized God’s wrath against all that is evil, all that destroys and defaces God’s wonderful world and his image-bearing creatures.
We can see this very process working its way out as the story unwinds. All the strands of evil in the world seem to rush together upon him. The power-seeking politics of the local elite. The casual brutality of imperial Rome. The disloyalty of Judas. The failure of Peter. The large systems which crush those in their way, and the intimate, sharply personal, betrayals. And everything in between, the scorn, the misunderstanding, the violence. The story is told in such a way that we see and feel, rather than just think about, the many different manifestations of evil in the world. Matthew invites us to see them all converging on Jesus. That is what this story is all about.
We are encouraged to see this scene, too, as somehow a revelation of the glory of God. It is one thing to be transfigured in the sense of shining with the dazzling light of God’s glory. It is another thing, perhaps equal if not greater, to be seen in agony, sharing the sorrow and pain of the world. Perhaps the two scenes need each other to be complete. Certainly our own pilgrimage, if we are faithful, will have elements of both. One of the reasons we read and reread this extraordinary story is because we know, in our deepest beings, that the scriptural story to which Jesus was obedient must be our story too. Matthew, telling us that Jesus’ disciples all forsook him and fled, wants us by contrast to stay the course, to see this thing through, to witness the glory of God in the suffering face of his crucified son.
TODAY
Teach us, good Lord, to watch with you in your suffering, that we may learn also to see your glory.
Tomorrow we celebrate palm Sunday with communion services at 8:30 and 11:15. You will notice in the foyer and sanctuary palms setting the scene just as they did when Jesus rode into Jerusalem. Enjoy this insightful devotional to enter into your celebration
From Tom Wright: I have on my shelves a Bible that my grandfather used when he was a student, a hundred or so years ago. It’s good to have that sort of contact with earlier generations, but what pleases me particularly is being able to see how he read it, what was important to him in it. Here are his underlinings of particular passages. Here are the things he scribbled in the margins. When I remember him from my boyhood, he comes across as a cheerful, outdoor, friendly man. All that was true. But here, in his private jottings, I trace something of the inner man, and how he became who he was.
That is a small window on what we ought to think and feel as we read the Psalms and think of Jesus. It’s passages like this that make it obvious; but really we should sense, all through the Psalter, his quiet presence, inhabiting the ancient traditions of his people, pondering and praying through the joys and the sorrows, reflecting on the portrait of the coming king, agonizing over the constant refrain of sorrow and exile. Here, if we listen carefully, we trace something of how Jesus became who he was. ‘Even though he was the Son,’ says an early Christian writer, ‘he learned obedience by what he suffered’ (Hebrews 5.8). And, as we read the Psalms, we realize how he learned that obedience. His own praying had been formed by these poems. We are privileged to pray them with him, sensing his presence as we do so.
It would be good to read the whole Psalm, of course, not just these central eight verses. According to Luke (23.46), Jesus prayed verse 5 (‘into your hand I commit my spirit’) as he hung dying on the cross. The opening of the Psalm sets the agony of the central passage into the context of a rock-bottom trust in God, despite all that the world can do. The closing passage, too, celebrates God’s continuing and abundant goodness and protection. But here, in the middle, we find the passage which meant that, when Jesus was plotted against, whispered about, picked up by the soldiers, laughed at, spat at, abandoned by his friends, he knew this didn’t mean he had somehow fallen out of God’s hands. It didn’t mean he had taken a wrong turn.
This lesson is vital for the church as a whole and for every individual Christian. Of course, it is possible to take a wrong turn and suffer the consequences. It’s no use quoting these verses if you have rebelled and gone your own way, and find yourself in a mess as a result. The right thing then is to repent and get back on course as quickly as possible. But if, so far as you know, you have faithfully trusted and followed, and then find yourself in this kind of distress, lonely and misunderstood, it may be that this is simply part of your particular call to join in the prayer of Jesus, the suffering of Jesus, so that his life and joy may also be revealed in you and through you. Read 2 Corinthians 4 and see how one very early Christian came to exactly this conclusion, using the Psalms to help him.
And when the church as a whole finds itself in difficulties — lack of money, mocked in the media, perplexed about what to do next — that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s taken a wrong turn, either. Of course, scandals and divisions are shameful. It is all too possible for the church to get it horribly wrong. When that happens it must say sorry, to God and to everyone who’s been affected. But sometimes God’s people as a whole are called to follow their Lord through the darkness as well as into the light. That’s why the Psalms remain indispensable in our public worship as well as our private prayer.
TODAY
Thank you, gracious Lord, that we can share your own prayer as we go through the darkness. Help us this coming week to stay close to you and to share your faith and hope.
First Sundays o’ each month we gather at 6PM in the office complex for 55 minutes of kingdom-advancing prayer. Join us!
