Suffering

"Put me to doing, put me to suffering..." (Wesleyan Covenant Prayer)

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).

It was the final night, and they were taking one final walk. Actually, only he knew it was the final walk. To them, even though there was, perhaps, a sense of catastrophe in the air, it was just another walk, down the Kidron Valley toward a garden where they often prayed. They walked past the Temple, around the corner of that great edifice Herod had built, and continued down across the small brook into the grove of olive trees. Not far away was a gethsemane, an olive press, where the olives were pressed down, crushed, and made into oil. But it was among the trees on the rocky ground where they usually prayed.

There had not been the usual conviviality in their walk that evening. Jesus had done most of the talking. In fact, he had been praying with them even before they reached the place of prayer. He had told them many things; it seemed as if there were so many things on his heart that evening that he didn't have time to say it all. But he kept reminding them they would have peace if they stayed connected to him. They would have shalom, wholeness, oneness with God.

And yet, they had not missed the fact that he didn't promise a trouble-free life. "In this world," he had said, "you will have trouble." There will be pressure on you, just like the farmers put on the olives over there in the press. There will be trials, bad circumstances, distress. It might get very hard for those who stay true to Jesus. The world will not always be a friendly place.

They were about to learn that in a powerful way. As they prayed in that grove of trees that night, Judas and his new-found friends, the Jewish leadership, showed up with Roman guards to arrest Jesus. Highly illegal, but who was going to challenge them? And when the pressure was on...all of them scattered. Granted, they re-grouped later, but that night, when the pressure was on, they forgot the other thing Jesus had said on their walk to the gethsemane: "Take heart, I have overcome the world!"

They learned what he meant by "overcoming" just a few days later, when the only evidence that he had ever been in the tomb was the grave clothes he had left behind. He was risen, just as he said. He had overcome the world in spectacular fashion. He had shown that he had power they only had suspected up until then. He had overcome the world—and so, too, would they. Even in the midst of suffering, they could and would overcome the world.

And so, to a man, all eleven of them, save John, died a martyr's death. Trouble came. Suffering came. And to a man, not one of them denied the one who had overcome the world, even on pain of death.

Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Do we dare pray such a prayer? Will we be ranked with these disciples who learned a lesson in that garden which they never forgot, which they lived until their dying day? Do we dare?

Garden of Gethsemane, Fall 2014