Let This Cup Pass from Me

Jesus' High Priestly Prayer (from the series Gethsemane), Iain McKillop. Oil on canvas.

“I Stand Amazed in the Presence of Jesus the Nazarene.” Composed by Charles Hutchinson Gabriel. Congregational singing at The Shepherd’s Conference for Pastors, Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California.

Week Five: The Fourth Word: “Why Have You Forsaken Me?”

We come in week five to the most challenging of the seven words: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

“Why?” Is perhaps the most universal question asked—the why of anger, the why of confusion, the why of incomprehension, the why of anguish, the why of relinquishment. Grappling with tragedy, suffering, evil, and death are difficult problems for most. And our lives have tended to be more unsettled since technology has overwhelmed us with instantaneous horror in the form of 24/7 access to natural disasters and worldwide atrocities. Particularly challenging is the problem of innocent suffering. People ask, “Why doesn’t God intervene more often in the horrendous conflicts of this planet?” Indeed, the problem of evil is one of the salient reasons atheists have difficulty with the concept of God—let alone any notion of a profoundly loving God.

Still, Christians believe God is a God of unfathomable love. In the cauldron of God’s intense love, He fashioned humans with free will—the ability to decide for themselves how they would live. Professor Thomas Oord’s fascinating book The Uncontrolling Love of God states, “Giving freedom is part of God’s steadfast love. This means God cannot withdraw, override or fail to provide the freedom a perpetrator of evil expresses. God must give freedom, even to those who use it wrongly.” Essentially, the human race let God down by scorning the genuine, reciprocal love He desired from His creation. In our spiritual blindness, “we have turned, every one, to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6), with devastating consequences. St. Paul wrote, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

We understand that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cannot be divided. While the Savior hung on the cross, a total eclipse covered the earth for three hours, bearing witness, as the Son became a “curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). As the life drained out of Him, Christ shouted the words of Psalm 22, a psalm all faithful Jews knew and recited from memory. His was the cry of a tortured soul in the deep throes of affliction. It is referred to as the “cry of dereliction,” uttered on behalf of the human race. In those final moments, Christ spoke in His humanity as our representative. Scottish theologian Donald Macleod writes, “[Christ] and the Father had gone up to Calvary together. But now Abba is not there. Only El is there: God All-mighty, God All-holy. And he is before El, not now as his Beloved Son, but as the Sin of the World . . . [Christ] is caught in the dreadful vortex of the curse. [God] is there, as the Judge of all the earth who could condone nothing and could not spare even his own son (Romans 8:32).”

Finally, Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice was paid in full, and He placed His spirit into Abba’s powerful, loving hands once more. “My God, why have You forsaken Me?” rings true because it plumbs the depths of unspeakable grief and grapples with the most challenging question facing us: what is our relationship with the Godhead?

Poetry:

“Agony in the Garden”
by Ketha Spicer

A bitter boy knelt in a pile of dirt,
And tears furrowed his cheek. A spinach leaf
Covered him, and the young corn hid his grief.
The morning had grown to acres of hurt,
And there was no way out. Weeding was doom.
No plastic soldiers now would charge the peas,
Or cool Tonka trucks rumble through the seas
Of carrot tops. Amidst the onions gloom
Was all. The glory of a sunflower
In August, or a cabbage in the fall,
Was not enough to stop his cry. He’d weep,
And weep again, before the sorry hour
Had passed. For now, the sweat and filth were all
The harvest he could see, or think to reap.

“IF POSSIBLE, LET THIS CUP PASS FROM ME”

Today’s biblical text is not an easy one to read or understand but there are two important things to notice. First, Jesus’ prayer to the Father contains an interesting qualification, “if it is possible.” Was it possible? Well, Jesus knew that “with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). So, in one sense, yes, it was possible for the cup to pass from him. Yet, Christian theologians have been consistent in their thinking that fallen humanity’s redemption could only be accomplished by a God-man. And Jesus was that God-man. Thus, it was not possible. What is the more important thing here is that Jesus’ “if it is possible” goes away in his subsequent prayers. Jesus only qualifies his first request but the next two prayers suggest that Jesus now knows that it is not possible for the cup to pass so instead he asks that God the Father’s will be done in him.

And this brings us to the second thing to notice: the Garden of Gethsemane is about Jesus aligning his will with God’s will. From the very beginning of his prayer, Jesus only wants what the Father wants. Is this not what we ask whenever we pray as Jesus taught us: “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10)? The real agony in the Garden of Gethsemane was the agony of Jesus, as man, surrendering his will to God the Father’s will. That Jesus sweat drops of blood over this decision (Luke 22:44) suggests that it was a real decision. That is, Jesus, as a human, needed to submit his will to the Father’s. Jesus’ sufferings here are not stagecraft but they are born out of the psychological and emotional torment that following God’s will means “becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).

And so, it is for all humans desirous to do the will of God. To align our wills with God’s will, to do what he wills for us even when it is hard, especially when it could require death. But is there any greater exercise of our free will than to give it up, freely? Is not the best decision that we can make, is to freely surrender our will to God’s will so that his will is done on earth and in heaven? Yes, it is. Thus, when we read today’s lesson let us see not only Jesus in agony but Jesus wholly free as he has aligned his will with the Father’s. In his own words, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38). Thanks be to God!

Prayer:
O Holy Spirit, beloved of my soul, I adore you. Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me. Tell me what I should do; give me your orders. I promise to submit myself to all that you desire of me and to accept all that you permit to happen to me. Let me only know your will. Amen
– Joseph Mercier

Rev. Greg Peters, Ph.D., S.M.D.
Professor of Medieval and Spiritual Theology
Torrey Honors College
Biola University
Vicar of Anglican Church of the Epiphany
La Mirada, California