Monday, 6 April              The King Establishes His Kingdom.                Matt. 26:36–56

Have you noticed the change in the heading above? Jesus has finished Revealing and Claiming his Kingdom; now he is Establishing that Kingdom. Note carefully the means he employs.

Gethsemane is forever associated with two deeply human activities: suffering and prayer. Jesus suffered deep agonies of soul in this garden, and prayed so deeply that Luke tells us his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground. 

Every human conqueror who has ever established a new kingdom has established his reign with violence and force, with pomp and ceremony, with triumphal marches and public executions of the enemy, with boastful descriptions of the bravery and glory of the new leader.

Jesus established his Kingdom with suffering and prayer. Why should we think that we would be able to live in this Kingdom without the same experiences? Remember what John says in the beginning of Revelation: I, John, your brother who shares with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance… (Rev. 1:9)

This new Kingdom that Jesus is establishing is absolutely like no other kingdom that has ever been established. Consider how those who are there in these formative hours respond to it:

·     The disciples cannot bear the pressure of the hour and fall asleep.

·     Judas betrays his former Master and friend with a deceitful kiss of ‘peace’.

·     The religious leaders organise a lynching party armed to the teeth, to arrest him. (Perhaps they secretly hoped that the armed crowd would do the leaders’ work for them by killing Jesus in a mad frenzy of blood-lust in the conflict that they hoped would erupt – then they could have claimed innocence! Why else would they have organised a rent-a-crowd, rather than just send out the Temple Police who existed for just this kind of purpose?)

·     One of Jesus’ disciples forgot all about the message of peace and love that Jesus had been proclaiming as the hallmarks of his Kingdom, and sliced off the ear of the high priest’s servant.

·     Finally, all the disciples deserted Jesus in his hour of need and fled.

It is difficult to imagine a less auspicious beginning to a new Kingdom! But in this Kingdom, the first will be last and the last will be first. In this kingdom, the servant will be the leader and the leader will wash the servants’ feet. In this kingdom, you don’t get paid for length of service, you get paid for the depth of the Father’s grace.

If this doesn’t sound like your own church or your Christian experience, then don’t be too surprised. Most of our religious lives are lived in the context of churchianity, rather than Christianity; of religiosity, rather than mercy; of performance rather than worship, of love of money rather than love of God; of love of prestige, rather than faithful servanthood. 

How long will we have to wait for an Archbishop of Canterbury to re-name Lambeth Palace, or a Pope to re-name the Papal Throne? Of course, there are lots of similar incongruencies that happen in the ‘lower’ churches, too, with special deference paid to ‘senior’ pastors as perks of their office. 

Don’t despair. We follow Jesus, not a church. We serve a Kingdom, not a religion. Churches follow Club Rules; the Kingdom of God offers Kingdom Principles, not Rules. (Remember Matthew 5 – Blessed are those who...)

A lot of ink has been spent in debating the question of whether Jesus was fully God, fully man, either, neither or both. This passage seems to me to provide a pretty clear answer.

Jesus’ humanity is deeply real in this passage. He suffers in his mind, just as he will shortly suffer in his body. He is afraid, apprehensive, deeply agitated. He pleads desperately with his Father to take from him this bloody cup of suffering, but hears no reply. And you thought you were alone in that?!

In his fear and apprehension, Jesus is deeply and fully human. 

Yet Jesus yields to the will of the Father and the claims of prophetic scripture. In his obedience to the will of the Father, the narrative flow of scripture, and the historical journey of Israel, Jesus demonstrates his godliness. Only God is faithful to his covenants. Humans always fail covenants – especially those made with God. But Jesus stayed within the will of the Father to the very last drop of blood-sweat.

In his obedience to the Father and to the scriptured world, Jesus is deeply and fully God. 

Cynics will ask how Matthew knew what Jesus prayed, if all the disciples were asleep. I’ve heard people ask this in a sneering tone, thinking they have found a glitch in the sacred text. Pfff!! Jesus’ prayers lasted for hours. The words we have here would not have taken more than a few moments to pray. We can readily imagine the disciples listening to these few words in boggle-eyed fear, then withdrawing when they got too frightened and too tired to stay.

I find the final verse in this section particularly close to home: Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.

I know that I have done this, too. I’ve found it too hard to stand for him, at times. I’ve just dropped my bundle and betrayed him. I’ve withdrawn from his defence just because I didn’t want to be laughed at. But I have much less defence than the disciples did. The heavy stench of evil was so powerful that night. The very air was thick with demons and foul spirits. We can feel the horror of it in the text. We feel the sickness in the pit of our stomachs at the memory of the betrayal and desertion. I can almost imagine how Peter felt.

Oh my Lord! How faithfully you have loved me! 

Prayer: It’s so easy for me, Lord, to criticise the disciples and all the players in this scene. It’s so easy to imagine that if I’d been there, I'd have acted differently. But on the evidence of my own life so far, I’m confident that I would have been no better, and probably worse than most of the disciples. Help me to learn the courage of standing for you. Thank you so much that you wept in that garden for me; that you prayed for me; that you loved me more than you feared the suffering. Amen.