From a Fellow Traveler

It’s starting to get dark. The light through my window isn’t enough to work by so I flip on the desk lamp. My wife is resting in her recliner; we added that to my office, knowing she would need a place close to me during chemo weeks. I enjoy having her near.

We just watched a princess sitting in a garden struggling to tell the world she has cancer. I could see the tears stream down my wife’s face as the princess described searching for the right way to tell their children. We know all too well how that feels.

Royalty suffering in a garden…

Holy Week is upon us. It’s getting dark…

A while back I wrote how I often think about the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. It’s been my go-to bible passage on this cancer journey.

Pieces of this story gnaw at me.

Jesus goes to His Father in prayer, repeatedly, in the same evening. I used to see Jesus in that scene as someone who is deeply devout; even in the face of struggle and danger. But now I see Jesus through a different lens.

In the Garden, I believe we are seeing a True Man, in the midst of doubt and anxiety about what lay before Him.

Sorry; did that make you a little uncomfortable? It makes me a little uncomfortable, too, to think Jesus might doubt, or be fearful. Does that seem a bit too vulnerable, too weak? Too much True Man and not enough True God in this part of the story?

Twelve years of Lutheran education and a yearly dose of finger wagging at Doubting Thomas sure made me think doubt is a sin; but is it? Perhaps doubt is just when your faith is less mountain and more mustard seed. 

Why else would you pray multiple times? Is that what someone does who is confident in the end result of their prayer?

This is the Son of God, right? Surely the first prayer would have been perfect, holy, complete; but Jesus felt the need to ask again. He really wanted a different path.

Maybe, when things get difficult for Jesus, we focus more on the True God and not as much on the True Man. Maybe that feels somehow more comfortable for us. But I think we miss out on a lot this story has to offer if we skip over the True Man in the Garden on the way to the True God of the Open Tomb.

It’s getting dark; and a Man is suffering. 

It seems to me, Jesus is trying to barter with God. He is pleading for His own life. I would say, in this moment, Jesus doesn’t want to suffer and die; or He is at least terrified by the idea. If it’s bridge too far to say the Eternal Son is doubting the Eternal Father, perhaps this True Man is doubting His own resolve. Why else put God’s will being done on the opposite side of the coin as Jesus’ own will, His hope, His prayer? “NOT my will; but YOUR will be done.”

Jesus doesn’t want what is coming to Him; He isn’t interested in drinking that particular cup right now.

Does that seem mildly heretical? I actually find this thought comforting.

I have prayed more in the last 6 months (since my wife was diagnosed with cancer) than I have prayed in the first 40 years of my life; and nothing about that repetitive prayer is because my faith is in a season of strength and devotion.

I pray so much because I feel weak and full of doubt. So I go back again and again in prayer, almost as if my petition to God is like a secret code being run through the enigma machine, and if I do it in just the right way everything will become clear, and I will receive the answers I desire.

I say, “Your will be done,” because that is what Jesus modeled; but if I am honest, I am uttering those words with the utmost reluctance.

And God knows this.

I draw a small comfort in knowing that even this Man’s prayer wasn’t answered.

Our faith can often feel like a final exam, and prayers nothing more than a series of essay answers. That view is unbelievably draining. It’s a weight lifted to be able to think that not even the Son got everything he asked for, that the response to prayer isn’t an evaluation of your perfection or a sign of your favor.

This very human Jesus makes me feel less alone, and for that I am grateful. But the same wasn’t true for Him. This Man was feeling abandoned, and not just by His Father.

The story makes a point of how Jesus keeps going back to His friends. He just wants them to care about Him in this moment.

A God does not need friends; but a Man does.

This seems like a Man who feels forgotten. The ones that He held closest: asleep. So wracked with fear that His sweat pours out like drops of blood. And no one is with Him. No one is putting an arm around Him to provide comfort; no shared tears.

It’s dark. There’s not much light left now.

I can imagine how lonely that feels.

There is something special that happens when someone is with you in the pit of your grief, worries about you, cries with you. It feels like your pain is actually real because it has radiated out and, like a blast wave, impacted those who are near.

I can’t relate to a God who births a universe with a single whisper.

But this Man… Scared… Alone… prayerfully pleading with God and with His closest friends, and not being answered in a way that is satisfying by either… In the darkest shadow, I see the Son I need right now: a Man trying to make sense of what is before Him, asking for the stars to be realigned, and another path revealed. 

It’s dark. There’s not much light left now. But in the darkness, I have a sense I am not alone.

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