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[Silence] Your message for the moment with Dr. Bruce W. Thielman and the Angels Sobbed, number one in the Via Dolorosa series. [Silence]

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And Jesus came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, "Pray that you may not enter into temptation."

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And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed, "Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done." And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him.

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And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly. And his sweat became like great drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping

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for sorrow. And he said to them, "Why do you sleep? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation." And while he was still speaking, there came a crowd. And the man called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus

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said to him, "Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?" And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word.

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Bea dolorosa. The words mean "way of sadness, way of sorrows, way of suffering." It's the term traditionally used to describe the pathway of our Lord from the experience in the Garden of Gethsemane to his crucifixion on the hill

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called Calvary. And it is the way that I have chosen for us to walk in the weeks of Lent in this year. We shall journey with Jesus to Gethsemane. From the cool of that place we will go to three trials. The trial before Caiaphas, the trial before Herod, and the trial before Pilate.

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There we will meet greedy and avaricious men. From the trials to the barracks of the Roman centurions, to that place where mean men blasphemed against the Son of God, and then out onto the streets of Jerusalem,

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where we shall walk as he walked, see those whom he saw, speak to those to whom he spoke. And then we shall come to Calvary, or Golgotha, the place of the skull. Call it what you will, we shall climb it, we shall face it, and we shall name it. And then our journey will end

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where it began, in another garden. Only this time the Garden of Joseph of Arimathea, and this time the Garden glorious with the raisiance of a risen and resurrected Christ. This is the march we shall make together in the next weeks,

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and we shall begin in Gethsemane after we have prayed. Let us pray. Our Father, grant to us the gift of thy Spirit as we walk where Jesus walked.

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Tear away the veil of history, the mist of the years, and make it real to us again. For we pray it in his name. Amen.

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I suppose no man knows how many different poems have been written about gardens. Dozens and dozens, I am sure. But there's one, a very short and terse one, which is especially meaningful to me.

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It goes, "A garden is a lovely thing, God wot, rose plot, fringed pool, ferned grot, the various school of peace. And yet the fool contends that God is not. Not God in gardens when the eve is cool? No, I have a sign,

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'tis very sure, God walks in mine." We've had that experience, haven't we? Haven't you ever walked in some garden in the cool of the evening when the air was redolent with the perfume of the blossoms and it was still and quiet

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and you felt so very close to God there? You've known that, and so it's not hard to understand why on this last night, on this night before he was to suffer so much, our Lord chose to go to a garden, to a place which he treasured very highly,

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to a place where he had spent intimate communion with his Father before, and where he could know the intimacy of that communion once again. After the last supper, Jesus and his disciples went to the garden called Gethsemane. And I will confess to you at the outset

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that I am rather uncomfortable in following him there. You know, it is said that when Michelangelo was painting his great pictures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome that he had fastened to the visor of his cap

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a little candle which was always burning, lest his shadow ever fall upon the representation of God which he had painted. I think that story illustrates how each and every one of us is concerned always,

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lest some shadow in our lives conceal something of God from someone else. We don't want our witness to stain or blot the pure white radiance of God's presence. And if this is true of every man, it is especially true of the man who

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preaches. For he is always desperately anxious that no sin of his, that no dimension of his personality, that nothing of himself shadow the truth of God which he's trying to reveal. And when I come with you to Gethsemane,

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to this place where Jesus went for silent and intimate communion with his father, I almost feel as if our presence put some kind of unwanted shadow on the scene. Jesus, you see, wanted to be alone with God.

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He took the eleven disciples with him, left eight just inside the gate, took the three he was closest to, Peter and James and John, deeper into the olive glade. But then he bade them be seated also. And he went farther, about a stone's throw farther, and there

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alone he prayed. And that is where we find him, and I and I draw back from finding him there. For if it was so important for him to be alone, what right have we to intrude ourselves into the scene?

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Have you ever paused to ponder how it is that we know what Jesus prayed in Gethsemane? The disciples were all asleep, none of them heard him. There is no record that Jesus ever shared what happened there with his disciples. He was arrested that

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very night and had no opportunity to talk with them in length, in detail about the intimate time he knew with his father. How then do we know what Jesus prayed in Gethsemane? What is our keyhole into this place of mystery?

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Well, the secret is given us in two very subtle references in scripture. We're told in the book of Acts that when the disciples met in Jerusalem, they regularly met in the home of John Mark. The upper room was probably in that place.

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Now Mark, the man who later wrote the gospel which bears his name, was very young at this time. And Mark, in telling the story of Gethsemane in his gospel, makes a reference which is not picked up by any of the other gospel writers. Mark notes that there was a young boy

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hiding in the garden. He tells about it in the 14th chapter of his gospel, that there was a young boy there who heard it all, and when the soldiers finally came to arrest Jesus, this young boy just managed to escape. You see, the picture is that young John

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Mark was there in his home where Jesus celebrated this last Passover with his disciples. And then when Jesus and the disciples get up to go out, the young boy follows after them all the way to the garden. There he conceals himself,

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and in his place of concealment, he and he alone hears and experiences the intimate communion which existed between Jesus and God there. And he tells about it. And the other gospel writers add threads to the tapestry of truth until we have the whole scene.

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But don't you see, if the only one to overhear it was a lad hiding in the bushes, by what right do we boldly walk upon the scene and seek to search out its secrets?

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That night when all of Gethsemane was filled with a strange, soft murmuring. I suppose you can learn more about a man by listening to his prayers than in any other way. I don't mean, of course, listening to

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those phrases which he rattles off with about as much enthusiasm as one would recite the alphabet. And I'm not talking about his automatic responses in the liturgy of worship. I'm talking about those moments when a man really opens his heart to God. When a man understands himself to be

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alone except for his heavenly Father and pours out the whole truth about himself. If you hear that kind of prayer, you get deep insights into that man. Deeper insights, I believe, than you would get in any other way.

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Well, that's what happens to us here in Gethsemane. Hiding here in the bushes with Mark, we hear Jesus open himself in prayer. And we discover that he's in an agony. That's the word that Luke uses, "being in an agony."

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And the word is very intense. The word is very severe. It does not talk only of mental turmoil, of spiritual distress. It speaks also of actual physical pain because of the intensity of the mental and the spiritual experience. Jesus is being pulled apart in this time

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of prayer. And so intense is this agony that his sweat comes to his brow like great drops of blood and it falls to his feet and forms a kind of crimson rosary in the dust.

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In the face of that kind of scene, don't you feel like I do? That although we'll learn of him because we can hear the intimacy of the prayer still, it's just not quite right that we should be here. This night when Gethsemane is filled with that strange,

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soft murmuring, he brought his friends with him and then left them behind because when the actual moment of prayer came, he had to be alone. There are, of course, battles in all of our lives that we have to fight alone. It's good

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having a friend beside you, someone to rub elbows, slap you on the back when you need it, blow the trumpet of encouragement when you need to hear it, wave the flag of enthusiasm when you need to see that flag. It's good to have friends beside you in

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times of trial and difficulty, in times of hurt and tension, but there are some problems we face in life that we have to face alone. I think that's the reason most people fear death, because they recognize that at the moment of dying

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you are altogether alone. Oh, there may be others there, doctors, friends, loved ones. They may be clustered close, but the actual adventure of dying, of closing your eyes on this life and opening your eyes on the life it is to be,

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that is separate. That is altogether separate. And in that moment of extreme aloneness, you can reach out for only one hand, and that's the hand of God. And what makes Gethsemane so terrible is this, that when Jesus, in his moment of

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loneliness, reached out for the hand of God, he couldn't find it, because God had turned away from him. I see some of you look surprised when I say that, but surely that must be what Jesus means when he says,

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"Lord, let this cup be taken away from me." He wasn't referring to his death when he said that. Jesus had been anticipating his death from the very beginning of his ministry. Why, on the very occasion when he was baptized, in the first public act of his

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ministry, he was buried beneath the waters, symbolizing the burial under his passion, which was to come later in his ministry. There at Caesarea Philippi, when Peter said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus complimented him on the blessing

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which the Spirit had given, and then immediately went on to discuss his death and the manner of his dying. Later, on the Mount of Transfiguration, when Jesus stood between Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the great prophet, what did they talk about? They talked about the way

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in which Jesus would die. And when that group of curious Greeks came to find something out about this strange rabbi from Galilee that everyone was talking about, what did Jesus do? Well, the scripture notes that he was sore troubled and that he spoke about the way in

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which he was to die. Jesus knew his death was coming. Jesus knew what the manner of his death was to be. So when he prays, "Let this cup pass from me," he does not have reference to his death. He's ready to face that.

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Was it then the shame and the humiliation of it that he was afraid of? Do we find him here turning away from all of the ugliness that was the cross? We make the cross out of gold and silver today and hang it around the necks of little girls.

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We put it over the places where we buried our dead and on the tops of buildings that mean more to us than other buildings. But in that day, the cross was the symbol of outrageous shame. It was not even spoken of in polite society. Are we to believe then that when Jesus

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said, "Let this cup pass from me," he was trying to avoid the shame? I can't accept that. For Jesus had already entered into an act of awesome humiliation. For him to step from the level of deity to the level of humanity

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was a greater humiliation even than the cross. Jesus had already lowered himself. Jesus had already surrendered all of his sovereignties into the hands of men. And this was the act of greatest shame. So I cannot believe that when he says,

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"Let this cup pass from me," he is simply talking about the embarrassment of the morrow. Oh no, it was more than that. Well, when Jesus said this then, was he speaking of the hate and the anger which would come in his direction? Was that it? Was this pure and beautiful

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one drawing back from all the bitter vengeance which would be hurled at him by those who would be clustered about his cross? No, I can't accept that either. For in all of his ministry, Jesus had known hatred. From the very day he began to speak, there

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were those who attacked him, who cut away at his truth, who ridiculed him, who claimed that what he did was in and of the devil. Jesus knew what it was to be persecuted by the words and the hard-heartedness of others.

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There was nothing about hatred or about anger which he had already not experienced. So when Jesus says, "Let this cup pass from me," he's not speaking of that. Some say it was the treachery. It's a hard thing to be attacked by your enemies.

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It's a much harder thing to be betrayed by your friends. Was that it then? Here in Gethsemane, was Jesus suddenly shocked by the reality of his betrayal? And so he says, "Let this betrayal pass away from me?" No, I don't think that's it

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either. For the betrayal had already occurred. It was past history. He'd already said to Judas, "Go and what you are going to do, do quickly." He'd already prophesied to Peter that before the cup would crow the next morning,

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three times he would deny that he knew him. Jesus knew that all of his disciples would flee and that he would have to face what was in the hours ahead alone. So I don't think he's awed, frightened, despairing because of the treachery of that night.

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Get the picture of this complete turnabout of affairs that's before us. Remember in the upper room, Jesus had been there with his disciples, and they're talking about what is to occur. And what does Jesus say to them? He says, "These things have I said unto you, that my joy might be in you,

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and your joy might be full." This was a joyous occasion, and now, just moments later, in the garden of Gethsemane, alone, in an agony, an agony so intense that his sweat comes like blood. In the midst of that, he cries out, "Father, let this cup pass from me." What

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happened between the upper room and Gethsemane? What changed his attitude from joy to anguish and despair? It was that cup. And that cup wasn't death or shame or hate or treachery. That cup

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was sin. There in the garden that was held out to Jesus, all the collected evil of men, all of the accumulated anger and cruelty and deceitfulness of human history, all gathered together in one cup.

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And as he looked at it, that which was handed him to drink and saw floating in it the clots of man's inhumanity to man, in this bitter brew that had about it the stink of death and hypocrisy and greed and lust and all the things he wasn't,

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it's when he saw that, when that was put before him, that he was stunned. If a criminal sees a crime, it doesn't affect him very much. If a hard man sees a hard deed, it doesn't affect him very much. If a cruel man sees a cruel deed, it doesn't affect him very much.

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But when someone like Jesus, who's innocent and pure and holy and altogether clean, when such a one is suddenly forced to look upon hardness and cruelty, and when the word of God is that he is to take this unto himself so that he who knew no sin

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was himself to become sin, in that moment, Jesus reaches out with one hand to take the cup in obedience, but with the other hand he reaches for his father. "Let this cup be taken away from me." And when he reaches out with this hand for

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his father, he discovers that his father has turned away. For God, you see, can have no fellowship with evil. God can have no fellowship with all the hardness and cruelty accumulated here, which is now to pour into the life of Christ.

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The Father is too perfect to dwell with that which is imperfect. And so in this moment, when Christ receives this accumulated sin into himself, at this moment, God must turn away from him. See, up to this moment, Jesus has been

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the active agent in the story. It's Jesus who administered that supper. It's Jesus who washed their feet. It's Jesus who made the prophecy. It's Jesus who impelled the traitor. It's Jesus who perturbed the disciples. He is the active agent. But now the clock is struck,

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and the sin of the world is put on him. And in that moment, Jesus becomes passive. And now men become the actors, as they visit upon him all their accumulated rage. And God becomes the actor. For God must punish sin. And since our

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sin has been taken by his Son, then his Son must die. And when his boy cries out, "Father, Father, let this cup pass from me," God has to turn away. God has to answer, "No."

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And so the Son, in agony and alone on his knees, prays, "Thy will be done." There's a famous painting by George Pinwell called "The Elixir of Love." It's a picture of a quack doctor,

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one of these medicine show fellows, who's pulled his little wagon into the middle of a city square. And he's out in front giving his pitch to sell a product called "The Elixir of Love." He has it in bottles. And the crowd is gathered around

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listening to him in the midst of his pitch. And here are two young girls over here, and you can see the enthusiasm and the interest on their faces. And here's an older couple, and you can see their remembering and hoping that it can be again.

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And here are some children, and they're looking on in wonder and awe at this man who's trying to sell bottled love. But if that's all you see in the picture, you miss the point. You've got to lift your eyes a little bit above this scene, and then you discover

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that this medicine show man has set up his wares and is making his pitch right at the foot of the village crucifix. Above this man trying to sell love in a bottle, and everyone looking at the man with wonder and enthusiasm,

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hangs the Christ. And that's real love. God sent his Son. That's love. The Son lived perfectly. That's love. The Son takes to himself the cup. Cold because there is no warmth in me.

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Bitter because there is no sweetness in me. Foul because there is in me so much that is foul. He takes the cup, and that is love. And the Father, ready now to condemn the whole world's sin

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born on the back of his only begotten, the Father has to turn away from his Son. And it must have broken his heart. It must have broken the very heart of God

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to turn away. But such was the depth of his love. And it was very dark in Gethsemane now, and you could still hear that strange, soft murmuring

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that seemed to fill the place. But now a torchlight procession comes, and Jesus goes to wake the disciples, and Judas plants the traitor's kiss,

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and the peace of the garden is cracked, and where there were a few there are now many, and his bloody sweat is trampled into the dust, and the flowers are smashed, and the torch is held high.

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Turn the green-gray olive leaves black and then brown, and they're surging in motion, and ropes are brought forward, and he is tied, and the disciples hurry off into the darkness,

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and Mark just manages to slip out of the bushes and make his escape, and they lead Jesus away, down the hill, across the brook Cedron,

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and up into the sleeping city. And now it's very quiet in Gethsemane again. There's a film called Forbidden Games, in which refugees are seeking to escape from Paris

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in the midst of the Second World War, and a Nazi plane comes in to strafe the refugees, and a young mother and father wishing to protect their child put the child on the ground

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and then stretch themselves on top of the child's body to protect it. And the bullets from the plane kill the mother and the father. And after the strafing is done, the child crawls out from under the bodies of the mother and father,

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and she doesn't understand what has happened, and she calls to them to get up, and she pleads with them to get up, and she pulls at them,

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and finally, enraged by the fact that they don't get up, this little girl starts to kick them, "Get up!" You see, they'd already done everything for her they could. They'd saved her life by losing theirs.

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And that seems to me to be a parable. For we keep on asking so much of God when he has already broken his heart and broken his son in the quiet of Gethsemane,

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where all you could hear was that soft murmuring. Luke tells us what the murmuring was. Luke tells us there were angels there, and that sound, you see,

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was nothing less than the sobbing of those angels. God, that thou couldst love us so, is beyond our understanding, that thy son shouldst take our sin,

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and that the cost of his taking it should be his death, and your turning away, that our sin might be judged and destroyed forever,

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that it should cost you and him so much. It's beyond our tears. We thank thee. In his name we thank thee.

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And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love his peace.

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