Not My Will but Yours
Growing up in a traditional church, I loved the start of Holy Week. Palm Sunday, when fresh palm branches were handed out as we entered the sanctuary, was a day I looked forward to all spring. Listening to the jubilant choir, I would sit quietly in the pew, perfecting the skill of making a cross out of the branch in my hand. On the drive home in my family’s station wagon, my siblings and I compared crosses, judging whose was best.
Decades later, I no longer feel the same sense of excited anticipation. Perhaps it’s because my beloved church doesn’t hand out palm branches for me to shape into a cross. More likely, it’s because I know what’s to come. Palm Sunday is the prelude; the calm before the storm.
Like me in my childhood naïveté, the crowds that waved their palm branches during Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem at the start of Passover week didn’t understand what was coming. Jesus had been dropping hints about his death and resurrection throughout his ministry but people only saw what they wanted: a deliverer; a conquering king; a source of physical healing; and someone who could give them more enough bread. Their hopes and dreams were focused on being delivered from oppression and Jesus was the most likely candidate since King David.
Just a handful of days later, the crowd’s “Hosannas” would turn to jeers. Jesus would be mocked for his kingly claims, stripped of every tattered garment he owned, and hung naked on a cross to slowly suffocate and die. The Roman cross Jesus’s body was impaled upon would stand tall between two others. Death on a cross was not unique to Jesus - it was a terrifying, excruciating, and public death used by an oppressive government to keep people in line. But Jesus was the only one who chose this death. He was the only completely innocent one to be hung in a cross.
From the beginning of his earthly ministry, Jesus had planned to die. He’d been telling his followers this in increasingly clear ways. In one of his clearest teachings on his coming death and resurrection, Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” (John 10:14-18, italics added)
When the preparations had been made and all that was left to do was be obedient unto death, Jesus didn’t waver. Luke writes that “as the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51) He was resolute. Not kicking and screaming. Not delaying the inevitable. He purposefully set out for Jerusalem, knowing full well what was to come.
Yet, as intent as he was to finish his rescue mission, Jesus’s resolve faltered as death approached. Even for the God-man, the horror to come was overwhelming. On a dark night in a beautiful garden, with his ignorant and exhausted disciples slumbering nearby, Jesus wrestled with his Heavenly Father: crying out for another way; asking to be spared the pain, death, and separation he knew he must endure. But when the Father made it clear that there was no other way, Jesus submitted. “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39)
Why did he go through with it? Why would he choose to suffer such horror? Why would he willingly die a horrible death? He did it for love.
John 3:16-17 may be familiar but the truth is profound. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
His love humbles me. I look at my own response to suffering and I see how weak my love is. As much as I loved my husband-to-be Greg when we were engaged, my love would not have been strong enough to move forward with marriage if I’d known what was coming. The cost of our love was far higher than I ever imagined it would be. If I’d known that we would lose our dreams, his health, our mental health, and ultimately his life while raising a young child together, I would’ve run away - sought a different path - anything easier or with a better outcome.
My love is weak. I’m so thankful Christ’s love is not.
I take great comfort in Jesus’ struggle in the garden of Gethsemane. He knew what it would cost him to love his bride, the church,and loved her anyway. He submitted to the Father. He resolutely went to his death. He endured it all to save us, his beloved.
And because he suffered in our place, we can say along with the apostle Paul, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.”
Jesus was crushed, despairing, abandoned, and destroyed in our place. He suffered unto death so that even though we suffer, we can experience life.
Because of the cross, suffering isn’t the end of our story. One day, we will be reunited with our Savior. One day we will see him face to face. One day we will experience what King David wrote as he reflected on the beauty of knowing God: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11
Your Sister,
