Our Darkest Prayers

Matthew 26: 6-12
Matthew 26: 36-46

We rarely talk about the hours before Christ was delivered into the hands of the ones that were going to kill him for his popularity with the people, for his ability to heal as well as divide, and for his ability to be authoritative without the schooling and years of diligence the other chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees had put in to be where they are now. Because that’s why he was killed. The ugly, awful truth is they were jealous and afraid of all that Jesus was and did, and how he had the power to make people believe in him.

At the bottom of the Mount of Olives, there is a short road that leads to the Garden of Gethsemane. There are the few surviving olive trees that some believe are the very ones that sheltered Jesus on that fateful night. Carbon dating has placed them to be at least 900 years old, but the ones that seem the oldest cannot be tested because they are too gnarled. The olive trees have a fence around them and no one is allowed to touch them, but you can walk the paths and admire these old, majestic trees and picture Jesus standing amongst them. The smell of rich earth and dried leaves is strong.

Off to the side is a church and it is unlike most of the churches that are built on historic places that Jesus had been in Israel. Because when you walk into this church you are not greeted with light and candelabra and lots of gilding. It is dark. Painfully dark. There are beautiful, quite large stained glassed windows but they do not shed the rainbow of colors you’d expect from stained glass for the colors are dark purples and blues. The color of pain, of passion, of agony and despair.

We like to think of Jesus as riding on the donkey with hosannas ringing in his ears. We like to think of the Resurrected Jesus that we will shout with joy over on Easter Sunday. We can even handle thinking briefly about the Last Supper during a Maundy Thursday service and the fact that he dies the next day. We forget about that night. After the supper is over, the last meal he will ever eat with his friends, his loyal followers that have become like family to him. And after it is over, what then?

The night stretches out long and bitter before Jesus for he alone knows what is coming. When we know we have an important day the next day, how many of us sleep? When we have something we are dreading, how restless is our mind and heart? What if you knew what Jesus knew? Think about the agony of the hours ahead and the silence of the night that at times offers us peace but on nights like this makes us the loneliest and saddest we’ve ever been.

Jesus took three disciples with him. Peter, James, and John his trusted three. He goes to the garden and he prays to His father in heaven. He prays and he prays and he prays, and when he comes back to see the disciples sleeping. He knew this was his cup to bear alone. He knew that this was something only he could do, but he depended on these three men. They were not his family by blood, but they were family of his heart and they were sleeping during the longest, darkest night of his life.

He wakes them, “Keep watch! Pray with me!” and for a puzzled moment they glance at each other and watch him stumble away, weighted down by his fears and his concerns and his responsibilities. “What’s wrong with him?” one asks. “It’s Jesus,” another answers, “it could be anything, but maybe we should pray.” And for a while they do, but their eyelids grow heavy and they begin to fall asleep for they have no idea the weight that Jesus is carrying upon his shoulders this night.

This night is the night that Jesus is the most like us that we ever see illuminated for us in the Bible. This night where he shows how the human body is frail even when our will is strong. This night where his friends abandon him to blissful slumber while he struggles not to fall on his knees crying. This night where the devil comes to mock him with images of what is to come and he allows himself to get caught up in fear for a brief moment. This night where all he can do is pray, “I don’t want to do this! Don’t make me do this! Please, Father! Please God! Do not make me suffer in such a way. Take this cup from me!” Then you can hear the pause, you can hear him gather his strength and courage, and find a bit of calm to finish his prayer, “But not my will, always yours be done.”

I have no doubt that many if not all of you have had a night like this where fear has kept you up all night worrying and praying and wondering what the coming day will bring. That night where there is no rest, there is no peace, there is no comfort to be found. The utter loneliness you feel in those wee hours. The hurt and pain that seems to seep out of your pores. Jesus understands those moments better than anyone else ever will. His worry and fear had him sweating great drops of sweat like blood as it fell to the ground. He was wracked with tremors and you can see him rocking himself in a vain attempt to comfort himself - just like we do in such times.

We do not have a distant and angry God that seeks to punish us for our mistakes. We have a God that entered time, felt what we felt, suffered what we suffer and helped us to keep the covenant by shedding his blood on a cross for us. The most humiliating way to die in those times, and Jesus did it for you. You are covered in his blood and you are made clean by his sacrifice.

When the next dark hour comes in your life, and when you find yourself on your knees rocking yourself in an attempt to keep the pain at bay while you pray to the Lord, I want you to remember this. I want you to remember you are not alone. That God’s arms surround you in those moments. That your tears are mingled with his tears. Remember that you are precious and beloved and no matter what tomorrow holds, Jesus will be right by your side and you can do this. You can face it all and you will be okay.

Amen.

Treasure

Isaiah 58:1-12

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Treasure

Are we God’s people? Have we committed ourselves to being the ones who follow God despite it not being cool and sometimes we have to sacrifice what we want for what He wants? Isn’t that what we are here for today? We remember that we are created from dust and to dust we shall return. We remember that if God had not breathed the breath of life into us we would be nothing at all.

In Isaiah, God is pretty disappointed with his people over their fasting rituals, but more than that it is their lack of love and appreciation that has God shaking her head and saying, “If only you would listen to my commands I would give you everything”. But the people do not do that. Instead, they pretend to follow the fasting rituals, pretend they are interested in God’s ways, but then they follow a different path entirely. They choose to go their own way rather than God’s way. God is disappointed in their hypocrisy.

It is like when the United States government begins to finally consider cutting spending and one of the ideas is to change the dollar bill to a coin because it could save us $5.5 billion dollars, Americans who were yelling about overspending all of a sudden gripe about pockets jingling and how they prefer the dollar bill to a coin. We’re hypocrites. Instead of embracing an idea that would save us money, we cling to the old dollar bill that is no longer economically healthy for us to keep.

It is the same thing when Christians talk about loving their neighbors and welcoming everyone who comes through the church door, but when someone very different from the congregation walks in, the people become uneasy and cold toward the person. They forget that God tells us to love everyone. Not everyone who is easy to love or everyone who is just like us. We are to care for every single person – especially those people who are hardest to care for.

A young widow with her three children wanted to attend a Christmas Eve service and so she dressed up her two sons and daughter and headed to the nearest church. When she went to walk inside, the pastor stopped her and began to speak to her. At first, she thought he was merely being friendly until he pointedly looked around and asked, “And where is your husband this evening, Ma’am?” When she said it was just her and her children attending the service the pastor told her, “We don’t welcome your kind here”. She hadn’t mentioned she was a widow because it was still so fresh of a wound that she knew she would have cried and tonight was about enjoying Christ’s birth. Not that it mattered to this man who felt he had the right to judge her and turn her and her young children away.

These passages we read today deal mostly with fasting practices, but behind the fasting is the point that we allow ourselves to become hypocrites in our religious practices. In Matthew, it warns us not to allow people to see us giving to the poor because it is no one’s business but God’s and our own. When you call attention to things like that, you do not give your money to help the poor or to be a good steward, you are doing it to bring yourself glory.

The same is true with fasting. If you show yourself as worn out and hungry, you will generate sympathy and admiration from those around you and Jesus says that will be your only reward. Instead, he says that we should put on our best clothes and act happy when we fast because then no one but God will know our sacrifice and we will be rewarded.

We fast not to bring attention to what good Christians we are, but because we are showing God our faithfulness. We are trying to relate to what Jesus has gone through. We are relating to our fellow human beings who go hungry at night, who do not have a roof over their heads and are persecuted for their beliefs. We fast not to show people what a great person we are but to remind ourselves that we are nothing but the dust of the earth that God has given life too. It is not about us, and it never has been.

We need to get over ourselves. We are to remember that the only treasure we require is what we have been given through our Lord Jesus Christ. Treasure is not gold or a house or a car. It is not a big diamond ring or a fancy office space. The real treasure in life is a family that cares about you, friends who would give you the shirt off their back if they knew you needed it. Treasure is knowing that just as Isaiah said, “You will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.” It is knowing that God is there for you. It is knowing that Jesus Christ became a man who lived, died and was resurrected so that you might have eternal life.

Treasure is knowing that Jesus became sin so that we may be forgiven for our sins. Ash Wednesday is about remembering we are nothing without God. We are nothing without Jesus Christ who sacrificed himself for us. We are nothing without the Holy Spirit who guides us and molds us into new creations. We are nothing without the God who loves and cares for us, the God who has breathed life into us and has forgiven us more times than we can count because we mean the world to our Creator. We are precious in God’s Sight.

During this Lenten season, take the time to fast and pray. Take the time to remember how little you would have if God was not with you. Give thanks that God remains faithful no matter how often we turn away and ignore his commands. Give thanks for Jesus Christ and for the blessing of a God that cares enough to bring suffering upon himself. Thanks be to God the Father, to Jesus Christ and to the Holy Spirit! Amen.