His Father would have to withdraw from Him as even though He
was innocent, He carried with Him our guilt, our burden, our evil, and our
pain. Fear gripped Christ as He began to
wonder if after having taken on this stain, perhaps He would be unable to shed
it. Perhaps, once tarnished with the
weight of our iniquity it would forever separate Him from His Father, not by
choice, but by design. Evil cannot exist
in the presence of His Father, it is consumed by it. Perhaps after taking on this stain, He might
forever be exiled from Dad, forever separated from Love, forever alone carrying
our burden. Perhaps reconciliation could
not be won by the power of Love, perhaps evil is just too strong.
This was the nearly infinite burden that Christ must face
that night in the garden. His human nature
longed to escape the weight of this burden.
As He sweat drops of blood from His brow, and wrestled with the thought
of prolonged separation from His Father (the definition of Hell), He sought
comfort from His closest companions. He
had asked for Peter, James, and John to simply pray with Him, and pray for Him;
but instead of vigilance during the time when He needed us the most … we
slept. And it seems the followers of
Christ have learned nothing from the lessons of the garden as the most common
enemy even today of our spiritual passion, our spiritual vigilance, is sleep.
The fate of the universe was in jeopardy. Our Savior needed the support of His
creations the most in all of His life, and we were found sleeping. Angels must keep silent. The universe of unfallen beings look on in
horror, and are restricted from the comfort they long to provide. Even God says nothing. He had only one venue for support that night,
it was in us. But these circumstances
did not prevent us from our shame. The
direct request of our Lord and Savior did not impact our actions. Not just once, but several times, He pleaded,
and we slept, until truly alone He settled into His fate. Whether He would endure the Hell of
separation from God for eternity or not; He would face His cross so that we
might be redeemed. Even if our sin was
to be His undoing, He moved forward to see us returned to the side of His
Father. This is the very depths of love,
the very depths of sacrifice. And while
He labored with this decision, we slept on.
One of the true lessons of the garden is that WE are NOT to
be depended on. Our vigilance, no matter
what the circumstances, is truly worthless.
We have proven it over and over.
Our failures extend beyond our ability to see, and yet we seem to cling
to the notion that somehow, we can “help” our God out in the process of saving
humanity. We cling to the idea that God
can somehow “rely” on us for accomplishing His purposes for man. Wake up, sleepy heads, you’ve begun to dream
again. The lesson to be learned yet
again here from Gethsemane is that human weakness is more powerful than
spiritual necessity. We have no strength
to offer our Lord, only failure upon failure.
It is only when we depend upon Him completely that His strength is made
perfect in our weakness.
I find I have no voice when I contemplate the depth of love
that was extended to save me from my sin, I have only tears. I weep at my record of sleep when I was
needed most, and even now, at my pressing desire to return to the comfort of
oblivion. I wish I could have been there
in the garden to put my arms around my Lord and just cling to Him during this
time of His great travail. To have
offered comforting words. But what could
I have said? Hang in there Lord, after
all I will be saved by what you are going through, and I am so worth it …
NOT!!! The truth was and remains that
saving me is NOT worth the agony He was going through. I chose my fate. I choose my evil all the time. My life is the mess I made of it. The truth is, seeing Him in that condition, I
would have rather gone ahead and accepted my doomed chosen fate, and sent Him
back to the perfection He deserved.
Better me in Hell, than Him in Hell.
But Christ would not have it. Love did not think that way. Love decided the worthless piece of garbage I
was, was worth the precious blood of Christ.
More than that though, Christ decided in the garden to exchange His own
permanent fate of separation with God for mine.
He was willing to endure ultimate separation if He could restore me to
our Father. And I believe it was this
sacrifice He made, more than even His life on the cross, that ultimately proved
Love could conquer ALL. God could accept
Jesus back at His side, as He was willing to sacrifice more than His own life,
His very existence for all time on our behalf.
Jesus faced His own death, with the uncertainty of His ultimate ability
to return to His Father. There was NO
more He could have given up for us.
And we slept. We
slept then, as we sleep now. Our Lord
knew this, He compared His coming to keeping watch on the thief in the
night. The thief does not come in the
daylight, he seeks the cover of darkness.
So His counsel to us was to keep watch, to be vigilant. In fairness He asked this of us, before that
horrible night in the garden, when we would prove our unworthiness of His
requests. But His advice is no less real
or meaningful than it was then. The fate
of our world is nearing its end now. The
time to live as if there is no God is growing shorter and shorter. His return is nearing. As it does, the darkness in the world, the
desperation and intensity of evil rises and the level of pain in everyone’s
life grows stronger as predicted. We
ache from it. We moan and groan from it.
But we do not have to.
The plan of our Salvation begins and ends with freeing us from sin and
the pain it is inseparable from. We can
live without being slaves to evil desires and abhorrent behavior. We can live free, fully surrendered to a God
so willing to prove His love to us. We
can start now, start today. The
perfection of our characters is within our reach if we but fully surrender our
will to His. It is His strength we
require. It is His vigilance we
need. It is Him alone that will change
our behavior from self-service to the service of others. We know this is possible. We have seen it done, in our lives. And like our forefathers before us, like the
apostles of old, we have tasted failure because of our lack of vigilance.
The days we “forget” to surrender our will, are the days we
fall back into our pain. So much is our
need of Christ. We need Him to do the
work we are incapable of, and now with our new lesson learned, we need Him to
remind us that we need Him all the time.
After all, He alone is vigilant, the garden and our personal histories
can attest to this fact. We begin to
discover the true meaning of the text that Christ is the “author and finisher”
of our faith and our salvation. He not
only begins the process, but praise His name, He finishes it in us, for us,
perhaps in spite of us. I cannot imagine
I will ever be done thanking Christ for the sacrifice He was willing to make in
that dark dark night in the garden for me.
I will never be worth it, as He alone is worthy. But I will honor it, uplift it, and most of
all – I will accept the gift He has given, the whole gift and praise Him for
it…
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