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Printer Friendly VersionJesus 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.