Welcome to Gethsemane

There is agony when we realize that the threat of death is real. If Gethsemane teaches us anything, we should recognize that even Jesus experiences the agony that we all experience before someone lays down their life for another. No greater love, right? The scriptures remind us that “greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friend. (John 15:13)” The act of love that was demonstrated in Gethsemane seems so distant, so handled, and we believe that this moment is simply a Jesus moment; beautiful, heartwarming, and done. What if you found out that there is enough agony for all of us? Would you be a disciple of Christ if you knew for certain that the invitation to follow Christ was an invitation to Gethsemane?

This week we study the Great Commission. This title was given to the verses at the end of Matthew that describe the resurrected Jesus addressing the eleven remaining disciples on a mountain in Galilee. It was 1908 when the first bible that titled these words “The Great Commission” came out. Since then, the words “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”, have been formed into justification for the colonization of the world God loves, beaten into clichés like, “it’s the great commission not the great suggestion”, and pressed into the service of framing the work of a disciple of Christ as guiding the world to embrace” the right way” of thinking about God. Is it any wonder that some of us read these words and quiver; thinking this is precisely what makes me uncomfortable with the life of faith?

Read the words of Jesus about this great love as it is paraphrased by Peterson.

John 15:13

The Message (MSG)

^11-15 “I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.

We can see that Jesus is demonstrating the greatest love in the very moments of Gethsemane. Even though the agony of Christ is obvious, Jesus foreshadows the story by helping us understand that these acts of sacrificial love are the key to the Joy of Christ – complete joy; a joy that is not meant for Christ alone; but also, those that would be Christ’s friends.

Does this help us see the Great Commission in a different light? The disciples had just been told that the tomb was empty. The resurrected Jesus has appeared and instructed his disciples to go to Galilee where Christ will meet them. When the moment comes and the disciples are in place, Jesus appears again in Galilee and something surprising happens. The disciples fall down in worship, but some of them held back because they weren’t sure about this worship – completely giving themselves over – surrendering their lives.

There it is – Gethsemane! To love one another the way that Christ loved us, don’t we need to go to Gethsemane? Don’t we need to face the agony of laying our lives down for another in order to have the Joy that is made complete by new relationship with God? Remember, we are to be friends not just servants. We know the secret and the secret is in the garden.

God knew that the world, in the midst of its profound suffering, needed a new relationship with God. This relationship would come out of love; not just any love – the greatest love of all. To make this new relationship real someone had to lay down their life. If God had come into the world and demanded new lives from God’s chosen people, it would have been God demonstrating that the lives that needed laying down were the lives of God’s subjects.  Power would simply be demanding obedience, but that is not what happened. Power demanding obedience was the old relationship. The new relationship would be based on deep and amazing love. Instead of the subject laying down the subject’s life, God would be the one to lay a life down; demonstrating that we knew God, but now we would know God differently, we loved God, but now we would love God differently. What was would be no more; the new life of God, the new relationship would reshape everything.

Does it make sense that the resurrected Jesus would gather the eleven disciples and charge them with a commission that would force them to compel the world that God loves to lay down their lives and conform to the “right way” of thinking about God? I think not.

Instead, Jesus gathered his friends and said, welcome to Gethsemane. You can tell by the reaction of the disciples (some fell down in worship, others held back, unsure of their ability to commit) that the threat of death was real. They had just seen it done. They knew that death is never the final word. They were promised that God’s very presence would be with them always – until the end of the age. This is in fact the agony of discipleship. To love others the way that Jesus loved us would require us disciples to lay down our lives. At the same time, agony is not the only take away from the carrying out of this commission. Jesus promised Joy, and Joy complete.

To illustrate the point, we should look at examples of sacrificial love. When a couple decides that they will declare their love for each other, it is more than words. To say I love you to another adult means that life is no longer about me. Each situation I encounter will now be experienced as something happening to us. My life is laid down and our life begins. When we have the opportunity to welcome children into our lives, is it not a life changing experience?  Whether we knew it or not going in, loving this child would require us to lay down our lives. The life to come would be something we could never imagine on our own. “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, nothing will grow.(John 12:24)” There is a world around us that suffers profoundly. It is a world that would that needs a new relationship with God. Who will God send?

Richard Rohr describes this act of loving in his book, “The Immortal Diamond”. He says “to love is to die.” This means that we often “live” in a state of self-preservation as if our present state of security is all the happiness we will ever need or have. We want to maintain our view of the world, our image of God, and our understanding of life. We want to rely on, this income, this group of friends, this daily/weekly/monthly ritual, and this pattern of life. In so doing, we hope to guarantee that our “life” does not deteriorate.  This says Rohr is the “false self.” The “true self” is understood on a deeper level of consciousness – the level that acknowledges our connectedness. To love we need to re-imagine life in complete connection to the other. To love is to die. 

When we seek to meet the world around us with love; when we boldly accept the Great Commission, we become worshipers of God. Not people who simply celebrate the great accomplishments of God in times gone by; but instead people that commit to a life of compassion – Loving the other the way Christ first loved us. We hear the words, “welcome to Gethsemane” and we struggle with our faith.  At times we are able to worship and respond with a committed, “send me.” Our lives are laid down and we are filled to overflowing with Joy – the complete joy that comes from being a friend of God and not just a servant.

We are commissioned to live; but first, we must die.

Enjoy God,

pg