In the garden

A word for the week

Not what I want, but what you want. Sit with that one sentence, prayed in the dark by a man sweating with fear, because it may be the hardest and truest prayer ever spoken, and it is the hinge the whole night turns on. We are used to a Jesus who is calm, in command, unafraid. Gethsemane shows us another one, and the church has never tried to hide it, because it is where he is most like us and most for us.

Look at how plainly Mark tells it. Jesus takes his closest friends, and he begins to be greatly troubled and distressed. He tells them, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. This is not serenity. This is a man in anguish, and he says so out loud. Then he goes a little further, falls on the ground, actually on the ground, and prays that if it were possible the hour might pass from him. Abba, Father, he says, all things are possible to you; take this cup from me. He asks to be spared. He does not want to die. He asks, plainly and honestly, for another way.

We need to see this clearly, because a lot of bad religion pretends that faith means never being afraid, never wanting the hard thing to pass. Jesus wanted it to pass. He asked for it to pass. Faith is not the absence of that cry; faith is what comes after it. Because in the same breath, without pretending he is not afraid, he says the words: however, not what I desire, but what you desire. He does not stop wanting to live. He wants the Father's will more. That is the whole of it. He holds his real fear in one hand and his trust in the other, and he lets the trust decide.

That prayer is the pattern for every hard hour any of us will face. There will be cups you beg to have taken from you: a diagnosis, a loss, a road you did not choose. Jesus does not shame you for asking to be spared; he asked first. You are allowed to say, Father, if there is any other way, please. What makes it faith rather than despair is the sentence on the far side of the comma: and yet, not what I want but what you want. That is trust with its eyes open, handing the outcome to a Father you believe is good even when the road is terrible.

And notice, painfully, what his friends are doing while he prays it. They are asleep. Three times he comes back and finds them sleeping, and there is that quiet, wounded question to Peter: could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray, he tells them, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. He is not surprised by our weakness. He knew it, felt the pull of it himself in that garden, the body that wants comfort and rest and to not do the hard thing. He asks us to watch with him anyway, and forgives us when we drift off, and wakes us gently to try again.

By the end of the passage the wrestling is over. Rise, he says, let us be going. He gets up off the ground and walks toward the thing he dreaded, on purpose, because the prayer was already prayed and the answer was already given: your will, not mine. That is where the strength to face anything comes from. Not from never being afraid. From praying, honestly, all the way through the fear, until you can stand up and go.