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Imagine a room—an office space,
really. It’s a nice space. Dark wood, nice desk. Off to one
side are a leather couch and a chair. It’s a therapist’s
office, and through the door walks that morning’s client. If
the blue jumpsuit and red cape don’t give him away, the “S”
on his chest should. It’s Superman, here for his regular
appointment. He lays down on the couch and starts to open up
as to what it means to be him. The words that flow from his
lips at first seem so strange coming from the “Man of
Steel.” [Note: At this point in the sermon, the song
“Superman” by Five for Fighting was sung.]
What if Superman really didn’t
like to fly? What if Superman thought his job was more
burden than joy? Here on the couch, away from the spotlight
and the headlines, Superman is able to open up. “I wish that
I could cry.” “I wish I didn’t have to be strong.” “I am
more than a man in a silly red sheet.” “It’s just not that
easy to be me.” On the couch of his trusted therapist, our
favorite hero reveals the human side of being Superman.
It’s not what first comes to
mind when we think about Superman, is it? It’s not what
first captures our imagination when thinking of the Man of
Steel. Superman—faster than a speeding locomotive, able to
leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s a bird! No, it’s
a plane! No, it’s Superman! That’s what we think of when we
think of Superman. Super strength, super speed, super
eyesight. Defender of justice and all that is good. Now
that’s the guy my brother and I got out of bed on Saturday
mornings to watch. I mean, we loved Superman. We would sit
there in our pajamas and just wait for mild mannered Clark
Kent to step into that phone booth. When he did, I’d turn to
my brother and say, “There he goes!” He would emerge with
that “S” on his chest, and all the criminals of Metropolis
had to beware. Here was a guy you could believe in. He would
take care of business. He was going to do what we could not
do for ourselves. But what if under this super human’s cape
was a very human heart? A heart that had doubt and fear? A
heart that was confused? Would that make him any less
super?
Just a few weeks ago, I found
myself in a similar conversation about our faith. It took
place here at dinner after the service. Someone asked: “Did
Jesus ever have doubts? Did he ever question his life, his
circumstances, his God?” This led to quite a conversation.
Some around the table thought it impossible that Jesus would
have doubts. He was, after all, the Son of God. He must have
known everything that was happening and was going to happen.
Others felt Jesus couldn’t have had doubts because he has to
be perfect. Otherwise, how could his death on the cross pay
for the sins of the world, and especially yours and mine? If
our entrance into heaven is dependent on his perfection, he
better not be having doubts.
Others at the table felt it was
okay if Jesus had doubts. They felt that in order to really
understand us, Jesus would have had to experience everything
we experience, including both doubt and fear. They felt
that a Jesus who shared the same human condition we share,
doubts and all, makes our relationship with him closer and
more honest. “Because he has already been there,” someone
said, “I can trust that he will go there with me.”
It is with these questions in
mind (Did Jesus have doubts? How human was he really?) that
our journey through Lent brings us to the garden. And it is
here in the garden that we get the answer. If we honestly
confront the text and let it speak to us, we cannot escape
its plain truth. Yes, in the garden, in his humanity, Jesus
seems to have doubts—about himself, his mission, his future.
He wonders if he can really put his life into God’s hands at
this hour of his greatest need. Hear these words from Luke’s
Gospel:
Jesus
went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples
followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray
that you will not fall into temptation.” He withdrew about a
stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father,
if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will,
but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and
strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more
earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to
the ground.
When he rose from prayer and went
back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from
sorrow. “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and
pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”
There we have it. In the Garden
of Gethsemane, we see one of the most human moments of
Jesus’ life as he sits trembling in the dark hours of the
night. John says Jesus was so full of anxiety, fear, worry
and doubt that the blood vessels in his forehead began to
pop, sending droplets of blood trickling down his face.
Jesus is in it. Deep in it. Call it despair, call it grief,
call it fear, call it desperation, call it doubt. Call it
what you will. “Father, if you are willing, let this cup
pass.” Don’t make me do this. There’s got to be another way.
In the subtext, can you hear the whisper, “I don’t want to
die.” Jesus not wanting to die is like Superman not wanting
to fly.
Let’s face it, when it comes to
our Lord and Savior, we’d much rather have him be like
Superman than like us. We want the sight-for-the-blind,
hearing-for-the-deaf, walking-for-the- lame,
loaf-multiplying, water-walking Jesus. We want Jesus Christ
Superstar: a
faster-than-speeding-sin-and-able-to-leap-temptation-and-doubt-in-a-single-bound
kind of savior. We like the fully divine Jesus, glowing halo
above his head. And I am sure that if we were to open his
robe, we would find him wearing a blue shirt with a big
yellow “J” on his chest.
Truth be told, we want Jesus to
be like Superman—all the super human stuff joined to human
skin. We are far less comfortable with the flip side of the
coin, the fully human Jesus. The Jesus who cries real tears
of grief when his friend Lazarus dies. The Jesus who gets so
angry that he cannot control his temper and flips tables
over in the temple. The Jesus in the garden who sweats drops
of blood full of anxiety and fear. We aren’t as comfortable
with the Jesus who, in his desperation, seems to question
even the very existence of God. “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?” We aren’t comfortable with the Jesus who
dies on the cross. Sure, we love the Palm Sunday Jesus and
Easter Jesus with all the pomp and circumstance. But what
about the Good Friday Jesus—the suffering, bleeding Jesus?
Take a look at how empty churches are on Good Friday and how
full they are on Easter, and you tell me.
We struggle with the humanity of
Jesus because, in his humanity, he is more like us than we
would care to admit. Perhaps we struggle with his humanity,
his frailty and fear, his limitations, because we so deeply
struggle with our own. But in the wisdom and mystery of the
church, we get them both—a Jesus who is both fully divine
and fully human. So let me suggest this to you. It is in
the garden, in the raw moments of doubt and fear, in the
throws of weakness and suffering, that we get the
opportunity to connect with God in ways no other times in
our lives will ever afford us. And let’s face it—we have all
been to the garden. We have all found ourselves in that
desperate, all alone place where nothing seems to make sense
and the future is uncertain. We’ve all found ourselves face
down, crying that desperate sentence: “Where are you? If you
are there, do something about this cancer! Do something
about this job! Do something about my addictions, my
depression, my marriage, my kids, this war that rages on. Do
something because I cannot do this anymore. I don’t like
where this is headed. If you are still there, please do
something.” We have all been to the garden—to a place where
we are physically, emotionally or spiritually at the end of
our rope. And the good news is, Jesus has been there, too.
Let’s look one more time at
Jesus’ prayer from the depth of his own humanity, a prayer
prayed in the midst of doubt and uncertainty. Jesus prays:
“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Yet
not my will, but yours be done.” “Father, if you are
willing.” Jesus prays to a God who he believes to be willing
to act on his behalf. In this prayer, Jesus reveals the
heart of the God who has sent him. Ours is a God who is
willing and able to intervene in our lives—a God whose love
is active, not static, who is able to change the
circumstances of our lives and our world. In the dark night
of our garden of doubt, we too are accompanied by a God who
is willing to be there with us and willing to see us through
even the darkest nights.
In Jesus’ prayer, we then
glimpse the true essence of his humanity. He prays, “Remove
this cup from me.” Think about that. These aren’t casual
words. Jesus asks God to take away the cross. To take away
his death. To change the course of his life, maybe even of
human history, and take away the cross. Talk about honesty
before God! Jesus reveals the essence of what it means to be
fully human in relation with God, to come before God in full
honesty—this is what I am afraid of, this is what I don’t
want to give up, this is how I want things to go. Jesus does
not hide within his divinity, trying to put on the proper
face and use the right pious religious language to mask his
fear. I struggle to be that honest in front of God. When
facing the garden moments of my life, it is too easy to try
to hide my humanity in some puffed up notion of self
assuredness. But I am learning, through a small group I pray
with each week, that honesty with them and before God is the
doorway to recovery, healing and transformation.
Jesus then ends his prayer with
the most honest response he, or any of us, could make. He
places his life in the hands of God, saying, “Father, if you
are willing, take this cup from me…yet not my will but yours
be done.” Jesus’ honesty recognizes the tension that exists
between his desire in the moment and the unknown future God
is creating. He makes a decision to trust God, knowing that
God will work this out. You see, I believe that in praying
this prayer, Jesus ultimately agrees to face the cross and
the imminent death it promises. I believe that Jesus dies
not knowing about Easter. He dies not knowing that God will
raise him from the dead. And yet he places his trust in God,
in the unseen future, trusting that God will not leave him
or forsake him. We place our hope in the unseen future,
trusting that the one who shapes it will guide and sustain
us in ways we cannot even conceive.
This Lenten season, we have been
following the prayer paths of Jesus. Each week, we have used
a different pair of shoes to symbolize the ways our journey
might unfold. This week, as we come to the garden, we have a
pair of crutches, because we learn what it is like to follow
Jesus in the midst of our brokenness and doubt. We discover
what it means to follow Jesus when our prayers to remove the
crutches, the illness, the hardships and uncertainty don’t
seem to be answered. What happens when God doesn’t “fix it,”
but leaves us with nothing but the very crutches we came
asking him to remove? In my life, only in hindsight have I
discovered that the reason God doesn’t remove the crutches
is because God is the crutches. The best lessons in my life
have always come as a result of limping through the garden.
The best lessons…and the hardest. Lessons I would just as
soon not have learned—what it has meant to lose a mother way
too young, to go through the loss of a pregnancy, to
struggle with compulsive eating, to work through my own self
doubt. Each journey through the garden makes me a better
person. And looking back, I can see the ways that God has
been there, propping me up and using the doubt, fear and
anxiety of those moments to shape a future for me that is
better than I would have imagined. Perhaps when God doesn’t
take the crutches away, we are being invited to lean more
heavily on the God who is revealed in them.
One last word about superheroes.
If we were to identify the superheroes of the Bible, near
the top of the list would have to be the Apostle Paul. Paul
could bring anyone to the faith. He was a brilliant writer,
an eloquent speaker and a determined organizer. He faced
hardship and peril for the faith and endured physical
suffering and imprisonment for the sake of the Gospel. He is
like a spiritual giant. That is why I love this very human
moment captured in his letter to the Corinthians. In it, he
says that three times he pleaded with the Lord to remove the
thorn from his flesh. What was this thorn? A physical
ailment or an emotional struggle? Low self esteem or an
inflated ego? We don’t know. But we know that he was human
and pleaded with God to take his suffering, but God did not.
Paul says that the voice of God came to him and said, “My
grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in
weakness.” God is telling Paul that though his thorn would
not be removed, in it he would find God’s grace, and that is
all he needs. Paul seems to suggest a blessing in the thorn.
A blessing in the suffering? A blessing in the thorn? I
don’t know. What do you think? [Note: To end the sermon, the
song “Blessing in the Thorn” by Phillips, Craig and Dean was
sung.]
Notes: Two songs were sung
during the delivery of the sermon. The first song, entitled
“Superman,” comes from Five for Fighting’s album, “American
Town.” The song that ended the sermon, “Blessing in the
Thorn,” came from Phillips, Craig and Dean’s album, “Where
Strength Begins.”
As to the question, “Did Jesus
have doubts?”, who really knows? But it is a great question.
This question leads to so many others. Did Jesus have free
will? Did Jesus know who he was and what God was doing with
him? Could Jesus have chosen not to take the cross? All
great questions. All of these questions are covered in the
theological category called Christology—the study of Christ.
I want to point you towards a great book that really delves
into the issues of Christology, Meaning of Jesus: Two
Visions. In this book, each author takes a look at these
critical questions around Jesus’ life from two different
viewpoints. I highly recommend it.
Finally, I leaned heavily on
John Indermark’s chapter entitled “God Willing, My Willing”
in his book, Traveling the Prayer Paths of Jesus.
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