First Contemplate Gethsemane

Sat., April 4, 1998

Paul Graves Staff writer

The legendary scene is etched in our minds: Jesus moves away from his disciples to a quiet place among the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane. He sweats through a decision to either walk away or stay, knowing full well that to stay will mean his death.

“Daddy, (for that’s what “Abba” really means) everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Sunday is Palm/Passion Sunday in most Protestant churches and all Catholic churches. Too often, however, many of us Protestants skip right over Holy Week to Easter Sunday, which means we miss seeing Jesus on the cross.

And, without moving through Holy Week, we may not even understand the significance of an empty cross.

From Palm Sunday to Easter in one easy jump? It’s often done, but the likely cost is a malnourished soul. We would do well to take a little sip from - or at least peek into - the Cup of Gethsemane.

What we would find in that cup is a passionate mixture of God’s will and human free will.

Of all the stories where Jesus checks in to see what following God’s will is going to cost him or his disciples, this one tops them all.

Jesus’ free will allows him to think he could run away to fight another day. Plus, in the agony of the moment, he likely hoped God’s will would not mean his death.

Good Lord, three years of ministry isn’t nearly enough!

His radical choice to taste from this Cup of Gethsemane was an act of ultimate belief that God’s will, whatever it was, would win out over a most horrendous personal moment of history.

We certainly don’t have to wait for Holy Week to be faced with our own Cups of Gethsemane.

Our choices are not likely as dramatic or as final as Jesus’ choice. Our choices certainly don’t have the same impact on world history.

But if we choose to bypass Holy Week in favor of a quick Palm Sunday-to-Easter trip, we may not have the courage to face that cup at other vital times in our lives.

I suspect a primary reason we may shy away from any thoughtful Gethsemane time has less to do with any confusion about our free will and more to do with the fearful mystery of God’s will.

If that’s as true for you as it is for me at times, allow me to share a reminder resource that has been very helpful to me over many years: a 56-page booklet by Leslie D. Weatherhead called “The Will of God.”

Those who know this booklet may stand in respectful awe with me at how Weatherhead is able to reduce the fear while maintaining the mystery of what we label as God’s will.

This booklet was originally a five-part sermon series he preached to his downtown London congregation at the height of World War II. With people’s fears at a fever pitch, Weatherhead used both logic and passion to see the Cup of Gethsemane much more as a friend than an enemy.

In part, he did it this way: He divided God’s will into three separate wills so people might understand their logic and embrace the mystery more readily.

As his primary example of these three wills, he used Jesus’ Gethsemane night:

1: “The INTENTIONAL will of God was not that Jesus should be crucified, but that he, God, should be followed.

2: “The CIRCUMSTANTIAL will of God: God’s will in the circumstances which men’s evil provided was that Jesus should accept death in such a positive and creative way as to lead to. …

3: “God’s ULTIMATE Will - namely, the redemption of man, winning man back to God, not in spite of the Cross, but using the Cross, born of man’s sin, as an instrument to reach the goal of God’s ultimate will. (“The Will of God,” Page 33.)

We each have our own ways to avoid even thinking about the Cup of Gethsemane. To drink from that cup may be unthinkable at times. But none of us can avoid the cup completely.

I don’t say this to frighten anyone. I don’t believe God’s intentional or ultimate will mean to frighten us, though his circumstantial will may at times provoke a healthy fear in us.

I speak of the battle between our free wills and God’s “three-in-one will” simply to encourage you to consider entering Holy Week more wholeheartedly than perhaps you have done in the past.

God’s ultimate will is so radically welcoming of us that while we may fear certain moments, we are promised a fuller, more abundant life on the other side of those moments.

Sooner or later, the cup needs to come to our lips. When it does, I picture God right beside us with open arms and a smile of ultimate encouragement.

After all, isn’t that what Jesus got?

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