Gethsemane - Purpose and Promise (Matthew 26 - P 69)

Definition:  Intimacy - familiarity; emotional warmth and closeness; something of personal or private nature.

When someone allows you to share a part of their most personal self - you walk into the realm of intimacy.  It's vulnerable.  Because all masks are off.  The person, at his/her core, is exposed.  But it is also only through intimacy that we REALLY have an opportunity to KNOW someone.

In our reading today, Jesus invites us into intimacy with him.  The Holy Spirit, through the writers of the gospels, allows us to be with Jesus at his most vulnerable.  He allows us to witness Jesus in intimate prayer.  We are privileged to hear Jesus' heart - to watch the intense struggle of his soul.  Enter today's reading with your "shoes off" ... you are about to walk on holy ground.

Matthew 26: 36 - 46

As I watch and listen to Jesus is this vulnerable place, I learn things about him as a man that draw my heart closer to him - that swell my love for him - that connect me to him.  Intimacy is like that.  

First, even Jesus had to wrestle in prayer.  And I think that terminology is appropriate.  Because prayer often is a wrestling - a struggle.  Why does he keep going back?  Keep saying the same thing?  It is because he was struggling to get his will totally aligned with God's will.  I think he was on board with God's aim - the buying back of humanity from the hold of the evil one and their flesh - their redemption.  But he was not on board with the path.  Too much pain.  And so he wrestled ... in prayer.  

That is the focus of prayer, you know.  It is to adjust our wills and wants to the will of God.  It disturbs me when I hear people say things "Prayer is working - keep doing it."  My experience is that what these folks are saying is that some situation is going the way they hoped and wanted.  But prayer is not figuring out a password to get God's account open.  It is intimacy with God.  It is to align my will and wants to the will of God.  It is mysterious.  

Second, even Jesus experienced the emotional agony that accompanies pain.  No one wants to experience death at thirty-three years old - much less death through torture.   Yet Jesus knew what was at stake.  Listen to William Barclay:

All he knew was that the will of God imperiously summoned him on.  Things happen to every one of us in this world that we cannot understand; it is then that faith is tried to its utmost limits; and at such a time it is sweetness to the soul that in Gethsemane Jesus went through that too.

We all have private "Gethsemanes" ... we all wrestle to learn to say, "Your will be done".  Jesus began his work on earth with the words, "Follow me".  That is still the call as he enters his final hours.  

Third, even Jesus knew times of intense loneliness.  He took the three closest friends that he had on earth.  But they just couldn't stay the course with him.  This battle he had to fight alone.  That is also true for us.  There are some battles, some decisions, that must be handled completely alone.  Our helpers, our friends, will fail us.  That's reality.  Henry Lyte lived and wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century.  Reflect again on these familiar words and place them in the context of Gethsemane:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

When darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee;

Help of the helpless,  O abide with me.

God was with our Lord in Gethsemane.  And even though the loneliness of human companionship escaped Jesus in this hour ... he was not completely alone.  Nor are you ... ever.  

Fourth, even Jesus walked in trust of the Father.  He approached his Father in childlike trust.  The early church fathers, Chrysostom, wrote:

Abba was the word used by a young child to its father; it was an everyday family word, which no one had ventured to use in addressing God.  Jesus did.  He spoke to his heavenly Father in as childlike, trustful, and intimate a way as little child to its father.

Jesus walked in trust ... so, indeed, must we.

And fifth, even Jesus had to walk into his destiny with courage.  At the end of our reading, Jesus says, "Rise, let us go."  He rose from his knees to enter the battle.  That's what prayer is ... that is what prayer does.  We kneel ... wrestle in prayer ... so that we can get up and stand erect and strong before the world.  We enter heaven through prayer ... so that we may face the battles that face us on earth.  

Are you facing a 'Gethsemane' right now?  Before you walk into the battle ... spend time in your own Gethsemane.  Trust God.  And then ......... Get up .......... and Go.