And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. (Mark 14:32-36)
Gethsemane. We have it all wrong. We expect to see strong men, brimming with confidence, conquering everything that is in their path. There is no place for struggling, there is no place for weeping, their is no place for agony. Only conquest. Only victory. Get in line behind them or they will crush you. If they are there to protect you, then get behind them. If they are against you, then may God help you. Strong men don’t struggle. Strong me don’t agonize. Strong men don’t weep. But what about this man? He is the strongest man who ever lived, and yet he struggles and he weeps. What is this strange paradox of strength and vulnerability? He wrestles as he weeps. Does that mean that he is weak? How can a strong man weep? He experiences agony. Strong men don’t have the time or the patience to agonize. They are too busy conquering those who are so weak, those who weep, those who agonize. Isn’t that the way it works? Perhaps we have it all wrong. How could the strongest man who ever lived be the most honest, the most vulnerable, the most human? Strange paradox. A God who wrestles. A God who struggles. A God who is honest about what he is feeling. A God who is vulnerable. God with a human face. Fully God and fully man. We might be able to catch a glimpse of what it means for Jesus to be God in a human body, but will we ever come to understand what it means that this Jesus who is fully God is also fully man? And will we ever come to understand that while he came to show us who God is, he also came to show us what it means to be fully human? Will we ever come to understand that strength does not mean that we hide from our weakness, but that we honestly face who we are and what we are feeling in the vulnerability of authenticity? We try too hard to keep it together. We try too hard not to let our emotions show. We try too hard to pretend we are not human, and in the process we become less human, we lose our connection to and commonality with the rest of humanity, and we cast aside our core belief that humans are made in the image of God. Jesus was too strong to pretend He wasn’t human. He was too strong to deny the fact that he was struggling. He was too strong to deny the fact that he needed to rely on his Father. He was too strong to deny the fact that he needed his friends to be around him. He needed their support and he needed their encouragement, and he was strong enough to admit that need. He was strong enough to be human, even though he knew that you and I would probably be tempted to interpret his strength as weakness. After all, that’s how we interpret it in each other, and that’s how we interpret it in ourselves. And so he wrestled to submit to the will of his Father, as we so often do. He wrestled with honesty, with authenticity, with genuine tears falling from a very human face, but in the end he trusted his Father with a deep and abiding trust that knows only intimacy as its source, and so he obeyed. May we be strong enough to be real, to be vulnerable, to be genuine, to be human, just as Jesus did. Through the struggling and through the tears, may we learn to trust in our Father’s love enough so that we can do what he asks us to do, just as Jesus did. May we learn to live our lives as children of the Father, knowing that the outcome is in our Father’s hands, and that our Father’s hands are powerful enough to protect us because our Father’s mind is wise enough to guide is and our Father’s heart is loving enough to do what is best for us. This is the strong and vulnerable weakness of humanity that was modeled to us by Jesus as he wrestled and as he wept, trusting in the heart of his Father.
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