Maundy Thursday: Wrestling

We’ve just commemorated Maundy Thursday in church, with a remembrance of the Last Supper; Jesus washing his disciples feet, stripping the altar to remember the bareness of the events that were to come, and then an invitation to watch in the darkness to remember the garden until midnight. I baled out at 10.20, not feeling brilliant but Lis is still there as I write (11.30) - she’s a much better Anglican than me :) 

As I sat in the silence and watched for a while, the bit of the story I was thinking about was Jesus alone in the garden. After the supper he’s been abandoned, the disciples can’t even watch with him for an hour. I lasted an hour and twenty minutes! 

Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground. (Luke 22:41-44)

I think Jesus is petrified. He knows what is coming. He also is deeply lonely. Don’t we need our friends when all feels lost? Those he thought got it, have now deserted him. He maybe also feels a failure. Despite three years of hard work trying to convince people of his message it has come to this. He wrestles with God. He doesn’t want what is ahead - who would? 

When we have those moments we are in our own garden, don’t we have those questions that make us wrestle in our mind? 

How did I get here and how do I get out of here?

Why have things gone so badly wrong?

Perhaps if I’d done things differently...

What is your will for me now, God? 

I’ve just reread Luke 22 as I thought about what to write for tonight’s blog and I’d never really noticed an angel appearing at this point in Jesus’ passion. Angels have a habit of turning up when we need reassurance or a firm telling to not be afraid. When Jesus is alone in the wilderness facing Satan and his wiles, an angel ministers to him, and now, as he suffers indescribable torment, an angel gives him strength. Amazingly, when most of us would have given up, and told God to stuff it, he submits himself to God’s will, knowing the cup of suffering cannot be taken away.

Tonight I’m not in a garden as bad as Jesus was, but I am in one. I ponder what the will of God is for me. I worry about the future. I feel guilt that torments me a lot having curtailed my ministry in Hastings, letting a lot of people down. I never wanted to be here, waiting for the wider Church to decide what it is going to do with me and seeming to take ages to tell me. Can I really say “yet not my will but yours God” when I thought it was clear what that was and now it isn’t? 

Walking out of church tonight I noticed the moon lighting the way. The light was bright. Perhaps a parable that in whatever darkness, torment and uncertainty we face, we are held by a greater presence. Tomorrow we shall remember as Jesus goes to a cross there is no experience that God doesn’t face with us. That God dies on a cross is the beginning of knowing the dregs of human experience are never outside his love and care. 

Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

Jesus our brother,

once you knelt sleepless

in the darkness of a garden

alone

and wept and prayed,

sweating, bleeding,

with the pain of powerlessness

with the strain of waiting.

An angel offered you strength -

but it was a bitter cup.

We pray for all

who wake tonight

waiting, agonising,

anxious and afraid,

while others sleep:

for those who sweat

and bleed, and weep alone.

If it is not possible

for their cup to be taken away -

then may they know your presence

kneeling at their side.

 'Gethsemane Prayer' © Jan Sutch Pickard taken from 'Lent and Easter Readings from Iona'