A Day of Horror

Note: This sermon was preached as part of a series for the 2023 Southside Terre Haute Community Worship service on Good Friday.

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Luke 22:39-46

April 7, 2023 (Good Friday) • Free Life Community Church (WVMA)

39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. 40 On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” 41 He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” 43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

45 When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. 46 “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

At the foot of the Mount of Olives is a courtyard that surrounds the traditional location of the Garden of Gethsemane, and inside that garden, there is an ancient olive tree that, some say (though not all agree), might have been there when Jesus prayed there. It’s the oldest tree in the garden (maybe in the country), held together with a fence around it. If it was there that night, it’s literally not much more than a “stone’s throw” away (22:41) from the traditional spot where Jesus prayed. I like to picture that tree as the one the disciples were sleeping under when Jesus returned to face what was next.

The church that covers the traditional spot where Jesus prayed is dark, intentionally so, in order that we might enter into that darkest of nights when the Savior of the world prayed for the “cup” that was before him to be taken away. I don’t want to do this, Father. It’s too hard; it’s too much. And I don’t know that Jesus makes this request because he didn’t think he could go through with it. He knew he could. He was God incarnate. Of anyone on the face of the earth, he knew he could endure the pain and he knew what the end result would be. He knew the glory that awaited him. Not that such knowledge erased any of the horror that was awaiting him. The Romans did not invent crucifixion, but they perfected it. Roman philosopher Seneca said if there was a chance you would be arrested and crucified, it was better to commit suicide. A Roman politician called it the “cruelest and most disgusting penalty” (qtd. in Hamilton, 24 Hours That Changed the World, pg. 96). It was so horrific that Romans reserved it as a punishment for non-citizens. Our word “excruciating” comes from a Latin word that means “out of the cross.” Crucifixion was a horrible, horror-filled death. But there was something worse.

On the cross, Jesus will cry out in prayer words from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). Worse than the pain that came from being nailed to a cross, worse than the pain of wooden splinters pushing into his back and legs, worse than the humiliation of being exposed in a public and humiliating way was the sense of being abandoned by the Father, by the one whose fellowship Jesus had known from eternity. The real horror of Good Friday is not Jesus’ blood dripping from his body into the ground for our sake and our salvation. The real horror of Good Friday is that somehow, God the Father had forsaken God the Son. I don’t know or understand how that is even possible, but Jesus seems to indicate from the top of the cross that it is and it was. Even if it was only for a brief moment, it was horrible for Jesus—and yet it was good for us. I like the way Max Lucado describes it: “With hands nailed open, [Jesus] invited God, ‘Treat me as you would treat them!’ And God did. In an act that broke the heart of the Father, yet honored the holiness of heaven, sin-purging judgment flowed over the sinless Son of the ages” (On Calvary’s Hill, pgs. 57-58). For Jesus, the day to come would be a day of horror, and so the night before, as he sees in his mind’s eye all that is to come, he prays, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me” (22:42).

Aren’t we thankful that he didn’t? Aren’t we grateful that Jesus’ prayer wasn’t answered the way he first prayed it? Because if Jesus’ prayer had stopped there, we would have no hope. Had Jesus not been forsaken, we surely would have been. Part of me wonders if Jesus didn’t glance over toward the trees under which his closest friends were gently snoring, exhausted from a week of activity and conflict, worn out by grief whose source they did not yet know. Did he listen for a moment to their breathing before he prayed the next part? Did his heart both sink because of their sleeping and yet swell with pride because he knew all they would accomplish in the years to come? I think it’s because of them—and us—that he prayed the rest of his prayer. In spite of the horror that awaited him, Jesus prayed, “Yet not my will, but yours be done” (22:42). Not my will. In essence, he prays, “I was wrong; don’t take this cup from me. I must drink it; I must face what awaits me.” And with that, the decision is made and our salvation is assured.

There was a comic strip many years ago that I clipped and have kept in my files. It was from the series “B. C.” by Johnny Hart, and one of the characters is, as he often did, writing poetry. The poem he writes in this particular strip goes like this: “Now who can call ‘Good Friday’ good? A term too oft misunderstood. You, who were bought by the blood of his cross, you can call Good Friday ‘good.’” From a worldly vantage point, this day might seem like a day of horror, but from the vantage point of heaven, it is a good, good day, all because Jesus’ prayer in the garden was honored: “Not my will, but yours be done.” And so it was. Thanks be to God.