Matthew 26:36-46Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”
He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.
Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Why a garden?” I wondered. Jesus was always visiting temples and marketplaces, hillsides and beaches…so why is He now in a garden…and at midnight?
Last Lent someone finally pointed out to me that He’s in a garden because that’s where the story had begun - in the Garden of Eden. Now it was the beginning of the end and we’re back in the garden. What goes around, comes around. Life is a cycle of life and death, a cycle of winter to spring, a cycle of glory to madness. This is where the Bible circles back and fulfills all the prophesies and finishes what it starts.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
~John 1:1
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
~Matthew 24:35
You can kill the man Himself…but you can’t kill the Word of man. That was what the Pharisees never saw coming.
And neither did satan…
