As Easter (Resurrection Day) approaches, I know that a deep sadness and emotional release is coming. I know it like I know waves off the California Coast come in sets of three, like I know that every spring the tree in our back yard will dump yellow…things all over the yard and roof, and like I know that the sun rises in the morning. Every year is a similar experience.
The sadness comes in entering through my imagination into the suffering of my Master. I listen as He answers the Sanhedrin, I watch as He is scourged 39 times, I hear the ring of the hammer on the nails. But I first enter a garden late at night and watch and listen as my Master turns a corner I never knew existed. The One who commands the storm to cease and the dead to come forth, weeps and prays to avoid a “cup” yet to submit to the will of His Father. If a “cup” exists which is so powerful that it causes the Son of God, my Master to avoid it, I am frightened. He is not supposed to be afraid, He is supposed to calm my fears.
The contents of this “cup” have been debated for centuries, and I do not believe I have the answer brighter minds could not come up with. I believe that what Jesus had to face is unimaginable. I have no frame of reference for it. So, if that is the contents of the cup, then I wouldn’t recognize it anyway. When I first try to accept a Trinitarian God (difficult enough on its own), and then consider what must happen to one of the Persons for sin to be truly atoned for, my ability to reason fails. Some never go there because it is impossible. But as I read Scripture, the punishment for sin, all sin, is separation from this Trinitarian God. So, when this Trinitarian God pays this debt there must be a separation, at least in my opinion. As I said, brighter minds disagree.
This is not mere theological semantics as I watch my Master in the garden of Gethsemane as His sweat shows blood drops. As I hear Him pray to avoid this “cup” I shudder, because the ETERNAL Son of God is about to cease to be “One with the Father”, the severing of a connection I cannot really fathom when it was intact! What the Agent of Creation, the One Fullness of God, is about to endure will shake the entire creation and shatter what was firm and sure. But here in the garden He weeps and prays…for now. At the moment I read about in today’s passage, He is nearly overwhelmed by grief and distress. Here He prays to avoid this event, however it is described or understood. But in a moment, He will stand up from His stance of prayer, the betrayer will arrive, and He will lead His captors into this event with focus and determination. He will go to the cross, not be led. And on that cross…the impossible will occur, and the very things He created will be shaken in response. Everything changes in ways impossible to follow.
The creation was never understood before the change, and at that moment the worm enters the chrysalis for a metamorphosis, and life itself seems to die. In a very real sense, it does die. And yet I watch, I see the event, hear the crowds, smell the sweat, feel the heat, taste the dust. And I am powerless to act, only watch. It happens to me, but I am not the victim, but the oppressor. It is my sin, my choices, my rebellion, my selfishness and MY APATHY toward my Master that will drive these events.
But I get ahead of myself. Today I watch in a garden as my Master prays in grief and anguish. And I tremble.
No comments:
Post a Comment