April 4, 2004

The Ultimate Test

Luke 22: 39-46

Jesus is finally in Jerusalem. We have taken soundings of his journey there at different points in Luke’s gospel. Now he has arrived. Luke tells the story of his arrival in chapter 19, verses 29-40: what is traditionally known as the “the triumphal entry”. It was a distinctly homespun affair, wholly lacking any of the pomp and circumstance of Roman processions. But the enthusiasm of the people helped to make up for the lack of color and ceremony, and the disciples shouted a text they thought appropriate: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Psalm 178:26). Even so, it ended in tears – Jesus’ tears. “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it” (41).

Much ground has been covered since then, albeit in a short time. The teaching in the Temple, the preparation for the Passover, Jesus’ last supper with his disciples: all this is now behind us. At this stage in the unfolding of Luke’s gospel, we find ourselves at the pivotal event of his story, the watershed of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. This is no penny murder story or TV thriller. In some respects, it is anti-climactic because there is almost no action. The real battle is being fought out within the soul of Jesus. The battle is not for his soul; the battle is for the world’s soul, but the soul of Jesus is the battleground.

Here then, in Luke’s account of Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives, we are witnessing the ultimate struggle, the ultimate test, the ultimate temptation. It has several distinguishable aspects, though all are closely related: intense struggles, intense suffering, and complete self-surrender.

Our attention is drawn to begin with to the intense struggle. The text indicates in many ways that a climactic, decisive moment in the ministry of Jesus has been reached. There is first the compacted emotion of the prayer of Jesus. Standing was the normal position for prayer, except in moments of great stress. Here Jesus “withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed” (41). This is followed by the “more earnest” prayer when his sweat fell to the ground like drops of blood (44). Then there is the tension of wills: what the Father wills and what Jesus would prefer (42). Above all, there are the indications that this is a battle between two worlds: between the world of heaven and the world of hell. This is a moment of testing. The disciples are enjoined to pray that they will be spared the “time of trial”: a rendering of the word “temptation” which suggests a critical turning- point in history. Luke 22:3,28 have similar overtones. And there is intervention of the heavenly angel to strengthen Jesus (43), showing that heaven is throwing its weight into this titanic struggle.

All of these features combine to say that Jesus has come to the climactic contest of his earthly work, the turning-point in the history of the world’s salvation.

Closely related to the intense struggle is the intense suffering. As was indicated earlier, the two are not clinically separable. The suffering of Jesus is written across the whole of the story, but it comes to vivid expression in two words. The first is the word ‘cup’, of which Jesus prays: “remove this cup from me” (42). It meant something fearful, so that Jesus shrank from it and implored his Father to remove it. It certainly means ‘destiny’, but in this context it means ‘destiny’ in a particular sense. In the Old Testament while the cup can have a favorable sense (Psalm 16:5, 116:13), it can also have an unfavorable sense: the judgment of God upon sin (Isaiah 51:17,22; Jeremiah 25:15). It is clearly in the latter sense that it is used here, since Jesus shrinks from it. But that is not his last word. He freely takes upon himself the divine judgment on the sin of the world and, in so doing, releases sinners from that judgment.

The other word which expresses the suffering of Jesus is “agony,” rendered as “anguish” in verse 44. This is the only occurrence of this term in the New Testament. In secular Greek it denoted intense inward disturbance. The English phrase ‘death agony’ gives something of the idea.

Taking these two words ‘cup’ and ‘agony’ together we may say that the suffering of Jesus did not lie in fear of physical death. Many people have died bravely in great physical pain. It was not death or the cross which Jesus shrank from; it was what death on the cross meant: bearing the weight of a whole world’s iniquity. It is as the Suffering Servant of the Lord that Jesus goes to his death: the innocent suffering for the guilty (Luke 22:37; 23:4).

Besides an intense struggle and intense suffering we also find in the passage complete self-surrender. The struggle is resolved, but not by the crushing of Jesus by the Father, but by his full and free surrender to the Father’s will. “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me’ yet not my will but yours be done” (42). ‘Surrender’ is a tainted word. When Roosevelt and Churchill declared that they would accept no other terms from the Axis powers than ‘unconditional surrender’, they were widely criticized as guaranteeing the continuance of the war. No self-respecting nation, it was said, would accept such humiliating terms. But in Jesus’ struggle, the conflict was resolved not by power but by love. The one to whose will Jesus submitted was his Father – ‘dear Father’, as the original term properly means, just as the Father who declared his will did so to his dearly loved Son. In such a context, surrender does not mean defeat: it is rather the height of moral attainment, the laying down of one’s own life to save the life of another.

We may say then, just as the ultimate test was wrought out in the prayer on the Mount of Olives, the ultimate victory was secured there also. When Jesus knelt down and prayed (41), the struggle had entered its final phase. “When he got up from prayer” (45) it was over.