Thus began that great TV show which aired in the fifties and re-ran for years after. The popularity of that character, his tights aside, has lasted over the past two generations. In the fifties it was George Reeves, and then in the eighties it was Christopher Reeves. They had more in common than the last name. While they both played the mighty man of steel, both were unable to live out the life they portrayed on the screen. George Reeves became despondent after the cancellation of the show in `57. He committed suicide. Christopher Reeves revived the hero but suffered tragedy when thrown from his horse and is now paralyzed from the neck down. The character is invincible, but in reality, they were only cardboard cutouts. Their lives were shattered by reality. Still we love the idea of a superhero. When it comes to the stresses and trials of daily life we all wish that we could have superman qualities. Faster than a depleting checkbook, more powerful than a CEO, able to leap tall piles of laundry in a single bound. Being Superman would be great. But the trouble with Superman is that he can’t relate. Being from Krypton makes him unlike us. When times are tough, it's off to the nearest phone booth (hard to find these days) and poof, you're running down busy streets in tights. He may be able to protect us, but does he, behind the facade of that mild manner reporter at the Daily Herald, really know what we endure? We mistakenly imagine that Jesus is another Super-hero, a visitor from another place, who swoops down to rescue us, but really has little sense as to what life is like for us. We are appreciative, but as the Son of God, does He really understand? In an effort to affirm the great truth of Christ’s deity, we easily neglect His humanity. While stressing that Jesus is indeed fully God, we just tack on, without much thought, that He is also fully man. Scripture is clear in its portrayal of Jesus as both the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, as well as the Son of Man, a human. Two natures, one God. What does this do for us? When we consider His deity we can easily understand that He is then able to save, that He would be without sin, that He is powerful enough to do what He says. But it is His humanity which often confuses us. In our passage this morning we see the humanity of Christ shinning through in the midst of pain and agony. We see the benefit of His humanity as the one who will fulfill what we cannot do. In Matthew 26:36-46 we see humanity in two snapshots, first the perfect humanity of Jesus obediently fulfills what the Father desires, then the sinful humanity in the sleeping disciples who wouldn’t stay awake to pray as Jesus was about to betrayed by one of their own. 36. Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." 37. He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38. Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me." 39. Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." 40. Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?" he asked Peter. 41. "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." 42. He went away a second time and prayed, "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done." 43. When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. 45. Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46. Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!" This passage is intimidating. No less than Spurgeon said: “No man can rightly expound such a passage as this; it is a subject for prayerful, heart-broken meditation, more than for human language." JESUS’S HUMANITY IS SEEN IN HIS STRUGGLE WITH SUFFERING. His humanity is seen in His need for prayer. Following the Passover meal Jesus and the disciples, minus Judas, leave the city of Jerusalem, go through the Kidron Valley and up the slopes of the Mount of Olives to the area where the olives were pressed to make the oil, a place called Gethsemane. There He instructed eight to wait while He, Peter, James and John went further. He takes the same three who in Matthew 17 saw the Transfiguration. If they were to witness the glory, they had to see the agony. There the full attestation of His deity, here the revelation of His humanity. He is sorrowful and troubled, overwhelmed - powerful words to describe the state of mind. If we assume the superman status, if we neglect Christ’s full humanity, these phrases seem just tacked on. But the words describe one who is deeply depressed. Sorrowful - grieving, mournful. There is an agitation, an inconsolable exasperation. Troubled - literally: not at home, bewildered, stunned, at a loss. If you have ever struggled with depression, there is that sense of being disconnected, of being disjointed. In verse 38 the pain He is now feeling is so heavy that He feels as though He is going to die. These emotions Jesus expresses to the inner three do not make Jesus any less God’s eternal Son; rather they drive home the painful reality of the incarnation as Jesus was suffering the anxiety of facing death. Does anyone know what you feel at those times of darkness in your own life? Jesus certainly does. As fully man, He knows the pain, the isolation, the impending death that we face in our lives. He is not painted as a martyr above fear, as a superhero who does not flinch in the face of pain. He is confused and despondent. In light of this Jesus goes to prayer as one who needs to pray, as you and I need to pray. His humanity is seen in His prayer. He addresses God as Father. He falls to His face. Jews would stand when they pray, perhaps kneel at times. But lying prostrate was a sign of abject humility rarely practiced at this time. He addresses God in the intimate term of Father. He then pleads that what He knows must come be turned away. Jesus is fearful (verse 39). Of what? Death? He knew that in three days He would rise. He told His disciples that He would be raised to new life. What could be so frightening to Him? The cup which He wishes to pass from Him gives us some idea what it is He fears. The picture of the cup in the Old Testament was a picture of God’s wrath. In Isaiah 52:17 God talks about the cup of His wrath that would make people stagger. In verse 22 we have the promise given that is now being realized that God would take from us His wrath with the promise that we would never be subject to that wrath again. The cup was a picture in other cultures at this time of execution. Socrates was killed by the Athenians for sedition by means of a cup of hemlock. But Jesus’s death entailed a suffering far greater than the physical end of His life. Since His death must entail the suffering for all the sins He was to bear, Jesus, in His full humanity, desired any other way for the salvation of His people other than that. He was asking that if there be any other way for the penalty to be paid, if there was any other morally consistent means by which the Father’s redeeming purpose could be met, let that be so. When we confess our faith in the word of the Apostles’ Creed, it is this agony we confess when we say Jesus descended into Hell. The Heidelberg Catechism Question 44 describes what that phrase means when it says: A: That in my severest tribulations I may be assured that Christ my Lord has redeemed me from hellish anxieties and torment by the unspeakable anguish, pains, and terrors which he suffered in his soul both on the cross and before. Jesus is willing (verses 39,42). Yet the prayer does not just express His desire to forgo the pain. The prayer each time concludes with the willingness to endure the agony of the Cross for us. Christ in His humanity is fearful of what will transpire. Standing at the edge of a mighty precipice, He more clearly understands the fiery wrath of God. He catches a glimpse of what it means to become the propitiation for God. Our forefather rejected the will of God when he said “not your will but mine” and took of the forbidden fruit, thus changing Paradise into a wasteland. Because of Adam’s sin we move from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane where the second Adam prays: “Not my will but yours”. This is not a fatalistic sigh, a resignation to what He would rather reject. The full humanity of Jesus is seen as He stares at the fires of the Father’s wrath and shrinks back, but His full humanity is equally seen in that He affirms what you and I so much want to disallow: He accepts God’s will as His own. THE DISCIPLES’ HUMANITY IS SEEN IN THEIR STRUGGLE TO SLEEP. Jesus as both fully God and fully man well understood what was set before Him and the sheer terror He faced we can not fully understand. But there are others in this story with whom we can relate very well. This sad account is one of the truest pictures of sin. Sin is painted not in its typical horrid hues, but in the inattentiveness of sleep. While their Savior struggles with the mind-twisting agony He will face in a few short hours for their sins, they catch shut-eye after a long day. Jesus asks the three to come with Him. He tells them how distressed He is, that His torment is so great that He feels He is about to die. All He asks is that they (verse 38) “stay here and keep watch.” But when He comes back no more than an hour later, they are sound asleep. It was just a few minutes before as they took the short walk from Jerusalem to this olive orchard, that Jesus predicted they would all flee. The disciples protested; impetuous Peter swore his life to defend Jesus. But now all he can think about is a little shut-eye. Peter thinks that piety is proved by praxis, not prayer; by action in the world, not piety in the garden. Peter is not all that impressed by the absolute necessity for a devotional life when one has the courage to follow Jesus in the secular world. Gethsemane honors piety, that much maligned thing, not because piety is escape from secular obedience, but because it is preparation for such obedience and even a form of it. (Bruner) Here we see ourselves in a mirror. Our first denials come not in the oaths we swear that we do not know Christ, but in the all too-infrequent quiet times which are quiet naps. We consider our presence enough to please God, our efforts as the next best thing. Certainly we would give our lives for Christ, but first just five minutes of slumber. Peter is a lot like each of us. Real Christians are thought to be those who are active in the world not prayerful in the garden. But we see here in Jesus that prayer is not an escape from our secular activity, but it is the only means by which we will ever be able to obey. Spiritual strength is what the disciples claimed to have in verse 35. But the first test of their strength came in the great battlefield of sleep, that seemingly harmless friend. Peter denied Christ three times in the courtyard only after he had taken these three naps in the garden. Jesus does not demand superhuman feats, but prayer. He desires that we acknowledge our need for help that exists outside of themselves. “Watch and pray, so that you will not fall into temptation." Our need for prayer is for this very reason. The trouble is that we often imagine that we are beyond such a need. We are comfortable and at ease and think that the flesh is not so strong that we need worry about sin. News commentator Paul Harvey tells about the time the Italian sailing team went to Australia to participate in the America's Cup race. Gucci, the famous Italian designer, had outfitted them with all the latest sportswear fashions before they left for Australia. After they arrived, the men had some time to kill, so they rented a car and drove out into the bush. They wanted to see some kangaroos. They not only saw one, they ran into it. They jumped out of the rented Land Rover and ran over to the kangaroo. It was just lying there on the roadway without moving. They took some pictures. Then one guy had the idea that it would be funny if he put his expensive Gucci jacket on the animal and took its picture. So he did. Just after he got the coat on the limp kangaroo and stepped back to take a picture, the creature revived and hopped away so fast he couldn't catch it. Somewhere in the Australian outback is a fashionably dressed kangaroo. He wears a Gucci jacket, and in the pocket are the keys to a Land Rover and the team's credit card. In the same way that the Italian sailors made a false assumption about the kangaroo, we often wrongly assume that we have victory over a sin that we've been struggling with. That sin may seem to be dead, but when we least expect it, temptation can come to life. So we slumber, thinking we don’t need the help. The reason for this need to be in prayer: the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. This saying has often been used as an excuse for sin, rather than a motivation for prayer. The trouble is we don’t understand what it says. The NIV has spirit in lower case, meaning the human spirit. That may be what Jesus is saying - that the best of intentions are meet with the tired bodies. But in the context of prayer, it seems best to understand this to be a reference to the Holy Spirit. Victory over temptation comes only when we look to God’s grace and power to be at work in us through the Holy Spirit. This is what David prays in Psalm 51 when he asks God to restore to him the joy of God’s salvation and to grant a willing spirit to sustain him. Human nature, the flesh, on the other hand, is weak, literally is sick. No matter how mature we think we are in the faith, we are always in profound need of God’s help. Jesus does not flatter us by extolling the power of the human potential. But what God does offer us is God’s potential to face whatever it is we struggle with in our lives. The great claim of the gospel is that the Spirit is willing and able to help us despite the weakness of our own flesh. So if we are not supermen and women, if we can not achieve great feats of amazing spirituality but need the Holy Spirit’s help to resist the temptation to sleep, then what are we to do with this story? People will read this passage and conclude that the disciples were foolish for sleeping and Christ was wise for praying. Therefore we should be more like Christ and less like the disciples. Some will see Jesus’s humanity as the best example of what we are and how we live. If we are depressed like Jesus, pray and not sleep. The trouble is you and I are far too much like the disciples. The willingness to obey may, in some form, on a good day, be there, but even so, our flesh is always very, very weak. That weakness will never allow us to learn from Jesus’s example. While the torment Jesus endured is of help to us, it is for another reason. Hebrews 5:7-9 describes this event. Christ learned obedience throughout His life, but it is made especially clear here. Rather we receive the help we need not by imitation of Christ, but by imputation from Christ. His obedience is our obedience. His prayer for God’s will to be done is given to us because He, as the perfect God-Man fulfilled the will of God in obedience. Despite our sleepiness when prayer should be our lifestyle, despite our protestations of devotion only to be followed by running in fear, Christ calls us to rise and follow. We must pray, but we do not. We must face pain and suffering, but we run and hide. What are we to do? See yourself in the faces of these disciples, but then quickly see your Savior who has prayed for you, who suffered for you, and follow. It is there and there alone we will find the help and strength we need to live and do what God has called us to do. All the while Jesus prepares Himself to suffer for His people. But all the while we all sleep. How would I respond if I were He? I would turn and walk out of that garden. That is what each of us deserve. But notice what He says: “Rise, let us go!” Here the gospel made clear - when Jesus says “Let’s go” He calls the sleeping disciples to follow, not because they were dutiful in fulfilling their obligations to Jesus, but because Jesus kept the Law for them. Jesus calls unfaithful disciples because He is faithful for them. We are impoverished, unable, weak and sleeping. But still Jesus calls us to come and worship Him not because of who we are, but because of His own love for us. The disciples have no opportunity to pray, but Jesus has prayed. In His prayer He commits Himself once again to the terror of the Cross for the sins of sleepy disciples. His suffering and death will guarantee the salvation of even those disciples who fall asleep on the job. We have one who is better than Superman, one who comes not just from another world to protect us, but who comes to be one of us and to do for us what we could never be or do. |
