In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is, destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal. John 12:25 (MSG)
The Night – Cross Series Part 5
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Well after dark, while most families slept soundly, Jesus took his friends to Gethsemane to pray. Blood fell from his brow like drops of rain from the sky.
“Take this cup from me… But not my will, Father… yours be done.”
He turned and found his disciples asleep – sleeping on the Night of Watching… he didn’t want them to miss the night that all the stories, all the waiting, all the sacrifices, all the moments throughout the generations had been pointing to all along.
Betrayal owned the night.
The authorities came in secret, under the cover of darkness. As they arrested and led Jesus away, Judas fled, Peter lost all control and the disciples were left speechless.
Jesus was tried throughout the night while those who supported him slumbered. Those against him had been planning this for a while. They had calculated the exact time of day (night) and secured the witnesses they needed to charge Jesus and see him crucified. So by the time the city started to rise for the day, Jesus had already been accused, tried several times, charged, stripped, and tortured. As people left their homes to attend the Temple, they met a hardly recognizable Jesus stumbling in the opposite direction on his way to Golgotha.
Peter could hardly believe it and didn’t want to. He manifested his disbelief to those around him. Whispers and rumors and questions swept the city as they watched their king at his most vulnerable and broken moments.
It had happened. His body was breaking and his blood was seeping from it, being poured out bit by bit, leaving a trail behind him, his life ebbing slowly along with it.
With all that was going on around him – the two men on either side, John and Mary at his feet, Judas fleeing to a lonely field, the soldiers, the Rabbis, the authorities, the people, the hours, the thirst, the pain – Jesus was nailed to a Roman cross.
As his last moments of life slipped by, he cried,
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
To the afflicted, abandoned, addicted, beaten, shame-filled, abused and heartbroken, bent and disease ladened; to everyone who has ever felt the deepest darkest depths of loneliness and hopelessness; for the suffering of all those before him and those yet to be, Jesus was saying, “Me too…”
He shed his identity and authority to share in our pain and humanity. He mixed it into himself, transcendently becoming one with us all, across space and time.
And then he died.
But all was not lost. With his death, Jesus planted hope deep down into the soil of life.
He had said just hours before,
“Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is, destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.” John 12:25
Go to Part 6 – Live Authentically »
