This week we are wrapping up a seven week series that has focused on Disputing with God. Drawing on texts that span from the time of Abraham through to the time of Jesus we have seen a few different kinds of conflict ranging from patriarchs begging God to spare God’s people when they have disappointed the Divine, to Jonah who argues that God’s mercy is too freely given, to a psalmist who holds nothing back when they cry out in lament, to a woman who pushes Jesus to live into the abundance of his mercy. And now, as we finish this tour of disputes in Scripture we find ourselves at the crux of all disputes, that is the moment when the cross is just over the horizon.
As I hear this story, two conflicts jump out at me almost immediately. The first reveals itself when Jesus gets away by himself and prays that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. That is, if God can do anything to skip what is coming next, that would be great.
In the second, Jesus disputes with his disciples. When he goes off to pray he asks them to sit and remain awake, but they can’t seem to muster the energy it takes to keep their eyes open. Again and again they fall asleep. Again and again Jesus returns to them to ask them to keep awake.
But in addition to these two disputes, I actually think there might be a third that we can learn from. Let’s walk around in this text a little bit to see what we might find.
The story of Jesus and his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane takes place in what turns out to be some of the final hours of his life. It comes right after the last supper he shared with his disciples in which he told them about the gift of the bread that is his body and the cup that is the blood of the new covenant. After the meal they go out into the garden for Jesus to prayer, and it is from this garden, from these prayers and disputes, that he is arrested in the middle of the night. The crucifixion, in Mark’s telling, took place at 9 in the morning, just a few hours later.
And all of this activity comes just after Jesus’ teaching that is sometimes called the “Little Apocalypse,” which fills chapter 13. Coincidentally, this is the text we will hear on the first Sunday of Advent this year, so spoiler alert, or save the date, November 29, we’ll check out it out. What’s important to know about the Little Apocalypse right now, though, is that it is a description or warning of what it looks like and feels like when the empire of this world, Rome in the case of Jesus, his disciples, and Mark’s original readers, clashes with the reign of God. In this description it looks like buildings and even the temple being thrown down. It looks like people who are trying to seek the attention and allegiance of the disciples, contrary to their call to allegiance only to God. It looks like disregard for God’s creation and catastrophe in that creation. It looks like urgency among the most vulnerable as they seek safety and protection when their needs are ignored. And this clash becomes most visible in the crucifixion that Jesus has been talking about with his disciples throughout the last phase of his ministry. In the crucifixion, the Empire quite literally and violently attempts to put God and God’s reign to death. All of this, the predictions of his execution, the apocalyptic teaching, and even the conversations at their last supper together are, not surprisingly, anxiety producing for both the disciples and Jesus.
The clash between Empire and God’s reign can be anxiety producing for us, as well, because it hasn’t gone away. Even if we do not share the same political structure of the ancient Roman empire, imperial forces and patterns are still alive. Imperial ideals include militarism, irresponsible extraction of resources from the land, accumulation and consolidation of wealth, and prioritizing the needs and concerns of the powerful, and they have been alive and operating throughout all of history, even in societies that espouse a democratic worldview. The clash between Empire’s ideals and God’s reign shows up as that feeling of “this is not the way it’s supposed to be.” People are not supposed to be sleeping in tents or on the streets while the most wealthy in our society grow wealthier. People are not supposed to suffer or even die while insurance companies fight with doctors about what treatments are medically necessary. Wars in the name of safety that leave children buried in the rubble of their homes and schools and hospitals are not wars we want waged in our name. The list probably goes on and on of things that feel out of sync with the world as we know God wants it to be, where love and mercy are the highest laws of humanity, where there is just access to the resources all humans need to flourish. And that feeling of being out of sync, of knowing that this does have to be the way we live, but knowing that this is indeed the way we are living, it can be overwhelming.
In Mark’s gospel we’re seeing both Jesus and the disciples act from their own overwhelm. We see it in Jesus’ distress and agitation. We hear it in his gut-wrenching prayer. He names it himself as deep grief of soul, even to death. He throws himself on the ground and prays that this hour, this next step, this inevitable experience can pass him by. Using not just formal father language, but familiar, familial language, Abba, Papa, Dad, he implores God to use God’s power to remove this cup, remove this judgement from his story, his purpose. It’s a prayer, a dispute with God, that sounds more like the lament of the psalmist than the bold arguments Moses and Abraham and Jonah make before God. And like the psalmist, Jesus’ anguish is punctuated by the fact that we don’t hear God’s answer in this story. We just get one side of the conversation, highlighting the sadness, the loneliness Jesus must be feeling.
The disciples don’t help that feeling. Having asked them to sit and pray, to keep awake and bear witness to his suffering, the disciples can’t seem to give Jesus what he needs. They fall asleep. Again and again and again. Maybe the situation doesn’t seem all the urgent to them. Maybe it seems farther away for them than it really is. Maybe they are in denial that it will really be all that bad. Maybe they just want to crawl in bed and pull the blanket over their heads and hope that it will all somehow go away. Maybe like toddlers playing peekaboo they believe “if I can’t see it, it must not be there.”
Maybe they are numbing themselves by scrolling Facebook. Maybe they have decided, “I just can’t watch this news anymore ever because it makes me feel too horrible about the state of the world.” Or maybe on the flip side, they leave only the story on their channel of choice running over and over and over again so they only hear one side, one interpretation, one perspective, and therefore don’t hear a need for them to get involved – either, our guys are taking care of things, or it’s too far gone to redeem anyway.
Oh wait, that’s us.
Because we do this, too, don’t we? Or at least we’re tempted to. The clash of values between the world around us and the world that God desires us to help build is exhausting! It’s daunting! It’s even scary at times when we see people lose jobs for refusing to participate in injustice, lose their freedom for walking around in targeted skin, lose their lives for standing up for what is right. Sometimes we’d rather sleep than step into the fray or, or we think it looks far enough away from us right now that sleeping seems possible.
All of these responses – Jesus’ begging God for something different, the disciples sleeping, our own numbing of pain or dismissal of urgency – they all point to what I think is a third dispute in in this text – the dispute within our own selves, the dispute we have in our hearts, and our minds, and our bodies, when we recognize the clash is right in front of us and we need to decide how we’re going to respond to it.
The disciples response, I have proposed, probably feels most familiar to our own, so I think one of the purposes of this story is to show us another option.
Jesus is overwhelmed. We hear it in his exasperation with his disciples. We see it in his body thrown on the ground. The narrator declares it if there is any doubt, and it’s on his own lips in his prayer “Remove this cup from me.” This clash between the kingdom of the empire and kingdom of God, this crucifixion that’s coming, it’s awful. That sounds like an understatement, but I don’t know how to say it any other way than that plainly. Jesus would give anything to avoid it. Anything, except his relationship with God, except his loyalty to his purpose and place in God’s mission. “Remove this cup from me,” he prays, but also, “yet, not what I want, but what you want.”
Not what I want, but what you want. Instead of shutting down, Jesus opens up. He opens up to God’s will, God’s purpose, God’s vision for how they will move through this terrible time, to the time where the glory of resurrection outshines the horror of the crucifixion. He places his worry, his anxiety, his agitation, and I even think his fear in God’s hands for God to carry, for them to walk together to the truth that is to come – that God won’t show up with powers of death and destruction to overcome the clash between empire and God’s reign; God shows up instead with the promise of new life.
In his internal dispute, Jesus decides to trust God who has been there through the ages, is there now (even if we can’t hear it), and will be there for all time. And in his words to Peter, he shows us this response is available to us as well. “Keep awake and pray,” he says, “that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. I think most of the time when I hear this declaration I hear it describing some internal struggle within myself or more broadly our human condition. Like there are good angels and bad angels fighting it out in heart for control of our actions.
But New Testament scholar Eugene Boring (yes, his name is unfortunately, Boring) points out one of those nerdy New Testament scholar details that cracks opens a well-known verse like this in a new way. In the Greek of the New Testament there are no capital letters. There is no designation the differentiates between a lower case s for the spirit inside each of us and the upper case S for Spirit that indicates the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit. When you see those differences printed in your Bible, they are an interpretive choice made by a translator. So what if this phrase, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” isn’t a description of an internal battle, but a promise of God’s eternal presence and strength. The Spirit is willing; God’s spirit is willing. In our times of anxiety and agitation, when we are worried about the state of the world and the clash of empire and God’s kingdom, God’s Spirit is willing…
… to walk with us,
… to guide us,
… to strengthen us,
… to steel us for the clash we face as citizens of God’s kingdom and residents of the empires in this world.
If we are open to that Spirit, if we can show that same relinquishment of worry and anxiety that Jesus performs in prayer knowing it’s available to us as well in our own prayer, in our own practice, in our own discipleship, in the ways that we follow God’s mission and purpose in the world, if we can face the clashes and the contradictions we see in the world with the Spirit of God willing to walk with us in them and through them, then the promise and power of resurrection is available to us in this day and everyday.