“Friday Happens”
Luke 22:39-46
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
Maundy Thursday – 2016
“Pray that you
may not come to into the time of trial.”
Luke records
Jesus saying this to his disciples, but one can get the impression that Jesus
means these words for himself.
Surely he has witnessed
crucifixions, and now he faces that same fate. He faces state execution because
it is a crime to speak God’s Love, justice, and peace into Rome’s manipulations
of fear and her lust for power.
Personally, I cannot preach that Jesus’
death satisfies some divine bloodlust. Any so-called god who can only be restored to merciful relationship through vicious
brutality – such gods are not the God of Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph,
and David. Those are the gods of Pharaoh, Jezebel, Caesar, Robespierre, Stalin,
and all other Machiavellian tyrants.
In the end, violent
power is powerless to do anything but destroy. It cannot redeem.
As betrayal and death approach, an
anxious Jesus makes his way to a familiar place, the Mount of Olives. It is an
olive grove, a garden, a place where seeds are planted in the ground to die,
then by some mystery that we can appreciate but cannot re-create, those same
seeds emerge into new life. As place of fertility, the garden stands in contrast
to the desert in which Jesus first wrestles with temptation, but in this very
different place he wrestles once again.
“Father,” he says, “if you are willing,
remove this cup from me.”
By way of answer, Jesus gets an
angel to strengthen him. The course of the weekend will not change. Adding
insult to injury, Jesus’ disciples confront the gravity of the moment by denying
it. They go to sleep. Now facing stress far greater than the weakness of the
extended fasting at his first temptation, will Jesus finally break? Escape is an option.
It is called hematidrosis. It is rare but well-documented. Under extreme stress,
a human being can actually sweat blood. The phenomenon has been observed with
some frequency in places like death row. Could hematidrosis be the more painful
blood that Jesus sheds? The blood of inner wounds, the blood of one who
willingly lives in Love for all creation, faces death for his efforts, and then
gets abandoned by those he loves?
Jesus bends,
but he does not break. He faces the worst Rome can do to him not because the
Father won’t be able to love again unless the Son is killed, but because the Father
and Son are inseparable. Love is who they are and what they do. They can do
nothing less and remain themselves.
Whether as bombs in airports, careless
contaminations that destroy individual creatures and entire climates, or our
petty judgments of friend and foe alike, Friday roars into our lives and into
all the life around us. It lulls us into the numbing sleep of anxiety. Most of
all it tempts us with bitterness – with that almost terminal surrender to death
called un-forgiveness.
Friday happens. It just does. Fear,
brutality, and all other idolatries of power will have their moments, and they
will prove painful. Nonetheless, the whole of the Friday-to-Sunday event declares
that, finally, Love prevails. Love, forgiveness, healing – this is the trajectory of Creation. It is God’s will for us and
promise to us.
Jesus plows through Friday not to
make God able to love us again, but to show us that God has never stopped loving us. And never will.
May we all go and do likewise.
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