Peninsula Enterprise

Bible Material: Mark 14:12-42.
Devotional Reading: Hebrews 4:14 through 5:9.

Thy Will Be Done
Lesson for March 8, 1959

A STRANGER to the Christian
religion would be struck by
two things. One is that the church
cherishes much that she does not
understand; and the other is that
the church loves to remember what
the stranger would think we should
wish to forget.
The story of
Gethsemane is
one that every
Christian knows.
The first three
gospels all tell it
in some detail.
Every commun-
ion service be-
gins with the
words. "The Lord
Jesus, the same
Dr. Foreman
night in which he was betrayed ..."
The Gethsemane story is one of
anguish of mind and soul, a story
of Jesus offering an unanswered
prayer--'let this cup pass.'
There is no doubt about Jesus'
distress in Gethsemane. Matthew,
Mark and Luke all testify to it.
Mark says that Jesus "began to be
greatly distressed and troubled."
The word Mark uses which is
translated "greatly distressed" in
Mark 14:33 is the same word he
uses in 9:15 to describe the crowd's
astonishment when they saw him
after the Transfiguration. It is the
same word also in 16:5 and 6,
speaking of the amazement of the
women at the tomb when they saw
the white-robed angel. It is the em-
phatic form of a word used in Acts
9:6 (King James version) to de-
scribe Saul's emotions when
stricken to the ground on the Da-
mascus Road. It is a word mean-
ing more than surprise: it is shock.
The whole story of Gethsemane
holds right up to this word that
begins it. Jesus prays in such in-
tensity that sweat poured from his
forehead like so much blood. He
describes his own feelings as "very
sorrowful, even to death." The
church does not remember Jesus
as a man always serene. One of
the early Christian writers speaks
of Christ as offering up "prayers
and supplications with loud cries
and tears." (Heb. 5:7.)

"Not What I Will—"
There is a darker shadow than
this. You would think, if you were
a stranger to the Christian faith,
that if ever there had been a time
when Jesus felt his own will and
his Father's will were not the
same, the church would prefer to
forget that fact. Would it not be
better, more edifying, more com-
forting--would it not make Christ
a nobler figure, if we could think
of him as at every point and in
every moment desiring only what
his heavenly Father desired, never
anything different?
No, if the church had been in-
venting the story, they would prob-
ably have invented it just that
way. But the church was dealing
with facts, not fancies. And in this
story of Gethsemane we are fur-
ther mystified by hearing Jesus
say,
"Not what I will, but what
Thou wilt." Any one who thinks
he knows exactly what Jesus
meant by that, is guessing. What
is plain, if we honestly and humbly
listen, is that there was enough
difference between what Jesus de-
sired, or would prefer, and what
his Father in heaven preferred, so
that he could say, Not this but
that!

Our Lord and Ourselves
Yet immediately, in the same
breath, Jesus cries out "what thou
wilt." Jesus was not at that mo-
ment giving a lesson in prayer.
Nevertheless that is the most pro-
found lesson in prayer which we
can learn. We all know by heart
the prayer which Jesus taught us,
and we rattle it off easily enough.
But every phase of it is hard to say
honestly, and none harder than
this: "Thy will be done." That is
just fine when we think God wants
what we want, and is sitting up
there in the sky like a heavenly
Fixer, arranging for all our sweet
dreams to come true. That is fine
too even when we can see God is
not going to let our dreams come
true, provided we can see that God
has a better plan and we know
what the plan is. But what about
it, if we become sure that God is
against our own plans, that God
is not "fixing things" for us, and
yet we cannot see why? What
about it if our knowing what God's
will is, brings us also to cries and
tears, to amazement and distress?
Well . . . then we can find light
in dark Gethsemane.
(Based on outlines copyrighted by
the Division of Christian Education,
National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the U. S. A. Released by
Community Press Service.)