Maundy Thursday 2011

04/21/11

Maundy Thursday 2011

Hudson UMC

Tonight we commemorate one of the most significant days in the history of the world.  Maundy Thursday, or the night that Jesus was betrayed to his death, has three events that are significant enough that the gospel writers tell us about them.  The first of these is Jesus’ washing of his disciples feet, the second is the last supper that Jesus shared with them, including Judas, the one who would betray him, and Peter, the one who would deny him three times in a matter of hours.  The third event is that of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Though we will indeed celebrate communion tonight, our focus will be on the agonizing time of prayer that Jesus spent before he was arrested.

There was a theologian in the early twentieth century named Karl Barth, who, in so many ways, returned traditional Christian faith, as professed throughout history, especially in its early days, to intellectual credibility.  He was a controversial figure in the church at the time and he still stirs up the emotions of people today.  I do not always agree with his conclusions, but I have found his writing to be intensely thought-provoking and insightful, empowering me to read the Biblical text with new eyes to see what has always been there but to which I have been blinded.

I say this because the majority of what I have to share with you tonight comes, more or less word for word, from Barth’s enormous theological work, Church Dogmatics.  He begins by comparing and contrasting the scenes we have in the gospels where Jesus faces temptation in the wilderness and where Jesus faces temptation right before he is arrested and executed.  I want to clarify one point, lest it be misunderstood.  Barth will refer to the will of God and the will of Satan to be one and the same at this point.  What he means is that, while Satan wants Jesus to die to achieve victory over God, the Father wants Jesus to die to reconcile himself to humanity.  It is true that there is a very significant difference between the goals of God and Satan in the death of Christ, but, to the ordinary observer, they look absolutely the same.  Both God and Satan are united in their will that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, must die.  Now, hear the words of this significant interpreter of the Gospel:

“There is a striking difference between the story of Gethsemane and that of the temptation in the wilderness.  In the latter [that is, the temptation in the wilderness] there is not even the remotest glimpse of any hesitation or questioning on the part of Jesus himself.  Self-evidently and with the greatest precision the tempter is at once resisted.  But then it was only a matter of continuing without deviation on the way he had entered at Jordan.  Now he had to face the reckoning.  Now he was confronted with the final fruit and consequence of what he had begun.  Why is his attitude so different?  Especially, why is it so different from that displayed by many a Christian martyr, by a Socrates, [and by many others]?  It is obviously not simply a matter of suffering and dying in itself and as such.  But what then?  What is the frightful thing which, according to these passages, he foresaw in his suffering and dying, which now forces him to this terrified and shaken halt, to this question whether it really has to be, as had not been the case in the wilderness?

“It is only with reservations that we can call the prayer in Gethsemane a “conversation” with God.  In the texts there is no mention of any answer corresponding to and accepting the address of Jesus.  We might think of the appearance of the angel to strengthen him mentioned in Luke.  And this naturally recalls the angels who, according to Mark and Matthew, came and ministered to him in the wilderness.  But this strengthening him in the Lucan account does not form a conclusion, but is, as it were, refreshment by the way.  It is only after the strengthening which comes to Jesus that we hear of his agony, of the sweat which fell to the earth like great drops of blood.  It is not an ending of the necessary conflict brought about from heaven, but, according to the presentation in Luke, the battle in which he is engaged only becomes severe after this strengthening.  Jesus does not, in fact, receive an answer, any sign from God.  Or rather, he has “the sign of the prophet Jonah” who was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly.  For him, as for all this evil and adulterous generation, the only sign will be the actual event of his death:  “So shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”  God will give his answer to the prayer only in this inconceivable, this frightful event, and not otherwise.  For the event of his resurrection lies beyond the answer.  It is the disclosure of its meaning.  The answer which Jesus receives is in itself this and no other, this answer which was no answer, to which his prayer itself alluded.  Note that it came in the same language in which Satan now spoke with him as the prince of this [age], triumphantly avenging his contradiction and opposition in the wilderness.  The will of God was done as the will of Satan was done.  The answer of God was identical with the action of Satan.  That was the frightful thing.  The coincidence of the divine and the satanic will and work and word was the problem of this hour, the darkness in which Jesus addressed God in Gethsemane.

“This brings us to the main question of the content and meaning of this address.  For a moment it holds out before the reader another possible form of the coming event: not in an clear outline, only vaguely – for Jesus is not proposing to God any alternative plan – defined only in a negative way; not this event, the frightful event which now impends.  Jesus prays that this hour, this cup of wrath might pass from him, might be spared him.  He prays, therefore, that the good will and the sacred work and the true word of God should not coincide with the evil will and the corrupt work and the deceitful word of the tempter and of the world controlled by him, the sinners.  He prays that God should not give him up to the power and the temptation of which he had resisted and willed to resist in all circumstances.  He prays that God will so order things that the triumph of evil will be prevented, that the claim of Satan to world dominion will not be affirmed but given the lie, that a limit will be set to him, and with him to the evil course of the world and the evil movement of men.  He prays that, directed by God’s providence, the facts might speak a different language from that which they are about to speak, that in their end and consequence they should not be against him, just as he had decided for God and not against him in the wilderness.  He prays that for the sake of God’s own cause and glory the evil determination of world-occurrence should not finally rage against himself, the sent One of God and the divine Son.  Surely this is something which God cannot will and allow.  Such is the prayer of Jesus prayed once in Luke, twice in Mark and as many as three times in Matthew.

“’Thy will be done’ means that Jesus, like all this “evil and adulterous generation,” is to receive only the sign of the prophet Jonah, but that as the one man, the only One in this generation.  He willed on behalf of this generation to see in it the true sign of God.  “Thy will be done” means that he put this cup to his lips, that he accepted this answer of God as true and holy and just and gracious, that he went forward to what was about to come, thus enabling it to happen.  “Thy will be done” means not only that Jesus accepted as God’s sentence this language of facts, this concealment of the lordship of God by the lordship of evil, this turning and decision against him according to the determined counsel of providence, but that he was ready to pronounce this sentence himself and therefore on himself; indeed, he was ready to fulfill the sentence by accepting his suffering and dying at the hands of sinners.  That is what he did in his prayer when there was none to stand by him, when there was none who could or would help him, when he was not surrounded or sustained by any intercession, when he could only intercede for others, when he prayed for his disciples and therefore for the world that most necessary, most urgent and most decisive prayer, the high-priestly prayer.

But what happened when Jesus prayed in this way in Gethsemane?  How was this prayer heard, which no other ever could pray or ever has prayed before or since, but which was in fact heard as no other prayer was heard when it received the answer which it requested?

One thing is clear.  In the power of this prayer Jesus received, [that is], he renewed, confirmed, and put into effect, his freedom to finish his work, to execute the divine judgment by undergoing it himself, to punish the sin of the world by bearing it himself, by taking it away from the world in his own person, in his death.  The sin of the world was now laid upon him.  It was now true that in the series of many sinners he was the only One singled out by God to be its bearer and Representative, the only One that it could really touch and oppress and terrify.  That the deceiver of men is their destroyer, that his power is that of death, is something that had to be proved true in the One who was not deceived, in order that it might not be true for all those who were deceived, that their enmity against God might be taken away from them, that their curse might not rest upon them.  This was the will of God in the dreadful thing which Jesus saw approaching – in that conjunction of the will and work and word of God with those of evil.  The power of evil had to break on Jesus, its work of death had to be done on him, so that being done on him it might be done once and for all, for all men, for the liberation of all men.  This is what happened when Jesus took the cup and drank it to the last bitter drops.  “For this cause came I unto this hour” is what he says in John 12:27 when he had just prayed on this occasion too:  “Father, save me from this hour.”  If the Father was the Father of Jesus, and Jesus his Son, he could not save him from this hour.  That would have been not to hear his prayer.  For Jesus had come to this hour in order that the will of God should be done in this hour as it actually was done.”

Brothers and sisters, Karl Barth reminds us that we all too often imagine that we understand the work of God in our midst, only to find that God is doing something far different than we expected.  However, this difference is not to say that God’s work is somehow less than what we thought it was, but so much drastically greater than we would have ever imagined.  It is very likely that few of us, if any, will have to endure the kind of torture and death that Jesus did (though, it must be said, such deaths are not at all uncommon in various parts of the world, and even famous Western Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer have been martyred in so-called “civilized” nations).  It is difficult to know how we would face that trial if we had to go through it, but we are reminded that the death of Christ is not merely the death of a human activist like have met their deaths so often throughout history.  Jesus faced a horror far beyond what we will ever know, and he did it for us.  As we gather around the table and as we share once again in the promises of God, let us remember that the hope we have in Christ is something that passes all understanding and gives us joy beyond measure.  Let us pray.        AMEN