Maundy Thursday (Mark 14.26-42)
Neil Millar
In April 2015, almost six years ago, Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed in Indonesia, after spending almost 10 years in a Bali prison. You may remember the story – how they were convicted of attempting to smuggle heroin into Australia, how they matured and changed during their time in prison, and of how there was appeal after appeal seeking the commutation of their death sentences. Until, eventually, the last appeal was refused, and there was no further possibility of reprieve.
I’ve tried to imagine what that moment must have felt like for them. What it would be like to know there will be no return to ‘before’, and no mercy shown; that you’re approaching the clear end date of your life and will soon be here no more.
It can be the same with illness. There’s the process of seeking a cure, of hoping the treatment will be effective, that the condition will ‘yield’ and that the end will not be just yet. But when the chemo doesn’t work, and there’s nothing more that can be done that might cure you, then you enter into that same threshold space – death no longer an abstract concept, a some-time-in-the-future possibility. Now, clearly and inescapably, it’s your death coming…
On this night of Maundy Thursday, in the garden of Gethsemane, we witness Jesus in this place, this same threshold. All along he’s known that death – execution – will be the outcome of his ministry. Indeed, he told his disciples on three occasions that this would happen: that he’d undergo great suffering, be rejected by the authorities and others, and be killed’ (Mark 8.31, 9.31, & 10.34). More than that, he knew he’d be provoking this crisis by coming to Jerusalem during the Passover and saying what he did. He knew it would come, and, as we heard a few moments ago, he symbolically acknowledged and enacted this reality in his ‘Last’ Supper with the disciples.
Even so, it seems, there is a jolt when he actually comes to it. In the Garden, he ‘began to be distressed and agitated’, Mark writes… And he said to them: ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death, remain here and keep awake’. He knew it was coming; but now it’s here, really here… an imminent reality. What do you do when it’s this real, this close?
Jesus throws himself onto the ground and into prayer; alone and yet desperate for company, for help, for comfort. Everything in him recoils from his destiny – ‘Abba, Father, for you all things are possible, remove this cup from me’, he pleads. It’s a moment of profound crisis … but then ‘something else appears in this moment of panic’, Laurence Freeman writes. As if his prayer has drawn him in and through the massive waves of agitation’, in and through to the place of serenity, the still place at the heart of reality, the heart of God. There, says Freeman, he regains a ‘sense of deep connection and ultimate purpose’. His mood shifts from panic to peace, from fear to acceptance, from overwhelm to courage and resolve. ‘Yet, not what I want, but what you want’, he says; not my will, but thine. Three times this happens, the resolving and dissolving of conviction. Three times! It’s a gut-wrenching process, but in the end, he breaks through, and stays. ‘Let us be going’, he says, ‘see, my betrayer is at hand’. ‘Centred [and] grounded’ now in his union with God, he gets up and goes forth; ready, truly ready to meet his betrayer’s kiss, and all goes with it …
The fear of death is real – even for Jesus. It threatens always to eclipse our sense of connection to God and to others, to isolate us, to destroy our peace. But the mystery of prayer, the mystery of Easter, is the revelation of a love that is stronger than death, of love that willingly undergoes death so as to undo its power from within.
Tonight, we’re at the beginning of the journey through … we’re remembering the passage Jesus made and offering ourselves to go with him, that we too may come to live on the other side of death, the other side of fear.
How do we make this journey? Jesus asks us to watch and pray with him, to join ourselves to his prayer, his self-yielding trust. Therefore, let us keep awake, let us keep company with him – and as we open ourselves, let him draw us with him into that same still centre, the heart of God, where we too discover our identity, our destiny, our courage and core. Amen.