Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Good morning and happy Palm Sunday to you all. Today we remember and we celebrate the story of Jesus entering into Jerusalem with his disciples as they are entering for the Passover feast. And they are greeted like conquering heroes. The people wave palm branches and they shout as Jesus rides through the street, donkey. They say, hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
[00:00:32] And it's this entrance into Jerusalem that kicks off the weekend of Christ's Last Supper with his disciples, his betrayal and his arrest in the garden, which we're going to talk about today, and then the cross.
[00:00:45] And so I want to just begin, as we are now in Holy Week, to just say a prayer of dedication for our church as we enter this time. So would you pray with me, Lord Jesus?
[00:00:58] Hosanna.
[00:00:59] Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Save us.
[00:01:03] We thank you that in this story that we maybe would sit in for a few moments this morning, that we would experience your closeness.
[00:01:13] And in the ups and downs and the emotional rollercoaster the disciples were on in the First Passion, the moments that they experienced as we walk alongside them, we're so far removed. And yet, Lord, I pray that you would make this story real to us today.
[00:01:31] Thank you, Lord, for your presence. We thank you for this week. We thank you for the hope we have in the resurrection of Jesus in your name. Amen. Amen. Thank you. We're going to read out of John 18.
[00:01:45] This is after the Last Supper. Jesus has washed the feet of his disciples, and he has given us the longest unbroken words that we have in any of the Gospels of Jesus in the Last Supper discourse. And now they are going to move towards the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus and his disciples.
[00:02:05] The tone has shifted dramatically from the moment when Jesus has entered on the back of that donkey into the streets of Jerusalem to shouts of hosanna and the palm branches. Now, Jesus has described in some of the most clear verbiage that he's used with the disciples about what he's about to face, his betrayal and his death.
[00:02:24] And they are very sad because of this. And it's in this moment of grief that Jesus leads them to the garden of Gethsemane. We pick this up in John 18, verse 1. It says, after saying these things, Jesus crossed the Kidron Valley with his disciples and entered a grove of olive trees. I want you to notice as we've been looking all the way through the Book of John, that John doesn't waste words.
[00:02:47] When he mentions something, it's usually for a reason.
[00:02:50] As we've talked about many times In John chapter 21, we find that John and his whole purpose of writing is so we might come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in his name, we might experience life through the power of his name. And so John uses his words very intentionally and talks about specific places and names and people, not just because, but because they matter. And so even by mentioning that Jesus is crossing the Kidron Valley. What is the significance of that? Kidron. It actually means dusky and gloomy.
[00:03:25] It is the river that would have flown near the Temple Mount where the sacrifices that would be sacrificed at the temple, the blood from those sacrifices would have been washed away by the river.
[00:03:39] So Jesus is crossing over the waters that have carried the blood of the sacrifice from. From the Passover festivities into this place where he will be betrayed.
[00:03:51] So he crosses over and they enter the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in a grove of olive trees.
[00:03:58] And Judas the betrayer, verse 2, knew this place because Jesus had often gone there with his disciples. Listen, if Jesus is trying to hide, he's picking a terrible place.
[00:04:11] He doesn't go to some unknown spot where he's never been.
[00:04:15] He doesn't flee the city in fear of his life.
[00:04:19] Instead, he goes to the place he always went with his disciples, the place he knows Judas will find him.
[00:04:27] It goes on. Verse 3. The leading priests and the Pharisees had given Judas a contingent of Roman soldiers and temple guards to accompany him. And now, with blazing torches, lanterns and weapons, they arrive at the olive grove.
[00:04:42] Whenever I read this, I think of the scene in Beauty and the Beast where the villagers, led by Gaston, go up to the castle.
[00:04:50] You've seen it, right? The torches, the pitchforks. You're like, yes, that is it.
[00:04:54] It's this contingent of people that are on a mission to capture Jesus.
[00:05:01] And. And with Judas leading them to the place where Judas knows he'll find Jesus, they are way over prepared to take down a carpenter rabbi and his ragtag band of 11 disciples.
[00:05:13] They are way overpowered to face Jesus, who has not been known to put up a violent resistance.
[00:05:24] And so they approach Jesus in the darkness and the gloom.
[00:05:29] We know it's cold because in just a few verses we're going to find outside the temple gates people are warming themselves by fire.
[00:05:36] It's a place that is dark. They use torches to light their way.
[00:05:40] And it's a place of betrayal as Judas is going to turn on his rabbi and betray him to death.
[00:05:50] It's interesting.
[00:05:52] The place that this happens is in the garden of Gethsemane.
[00:05:56] In the other Gospels, we get a description of Jesus prayer in the garden where he cries out and says to God, he says, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me. But not my will yours be done. And yet in the Gospel of John, we don't get a description of that prayer. We don't get a description of Jesus grief and torment as he prepares to head towards the cross. Instead we get a Jesus and the account of this moment as Jesus willingly stepping into his own betrayal and arrest.
[00:06:30] There's a reason that John in his telling is going right for this dynamic, that Jesus is not out of control in the moment of his betrayal.
[00:06:42] A cynical view of this story. And especially if I'm one of the disciples, maybe one of the minor disciples, Bartholomew, he doesn't get enough attention, I don't think. Always Peter, James and John.
[00:06:53] What about Bartholomew? Have we talked about this Jesus anyway? Yeah. Bartholomew jokes never go over as well as you'd think they would when you're writing a sermon.
[00:07:02] I should know this.
[00:07:05] But if I'm one of the disciples who watched Jesus enter into the gates of Jerusalem to shouts of hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
[00:07:15] And then I've sat with him at the Last Supper and the tone has changed. And now we've gone to the place we always go in the daytime. But now it's dark, now it's gloomy, now it's cold. And now he's being betrayed. I would cynically maybe come to the conclusion that Jesus has failed in who he said he was and what he said he came to do. Because this is not the Jesus who will take the crown and Jesus the king. This is Jesus, the failed wannabe Messiah, if I'm with him in that moment.
[00:07:48] And certainly these disciples would have known the stories because Jesus was not alone in people who claimed to be from God.
[00:07:58] There were other disciples in that day or other messiahs in that day who came claiming to be from God and claiming to be this fulfillment of the prophecies that a messiah would come.
[00:08:09] And over and over again, what happened in those days was as soon as those messiahs, those would be leaders of the people, caused a threat to the Romans, the Romans would quickly and effortlessly put them down.
[00:08:24] And so the cynic, if you're walking with Jesus as one of these disciples and now you're watching in the garden as he's being betrayed by Judas, about to be arrested by the soldiers.
[00:08:35] You might come to the conclusion that God is far from Jesus and that everything that Jesus promised actually isn't going to come to pass after all. And that Jesus has lost control of the situation. I wonder in our lives if sometimes even in our faith we come to a point where we think it's been good to this point.
[00:08:57] But I'm not so sure anymore.
[00:09:00] I'm not so sure if Jesus is who he said he was, or I'm not so sure if God is as close and as good and as powerful as I thought he might be. Because standing in the darkness of this garden, I have my doubts.
[00:09:13] And certainly it would have been this way for the disciples, or at least the cynic ones, cynical ones like me. Any cynics in the room?
[00:09:21] Oh, I know you're here.
[00:09:24] Like I'd raise my hand, but I don't trust you.
[00:09:27] That's man. I tend towards cynicism.
[00:09:33] We were talking about this with some of the staff and I asked Ben, I said, are you cynical? He's like, yeah, I'm cynical. And I asked Lindsay, are you cynical? She's like, actually no. I was like, well, good for you.
[00:09:47] The rest of us have some work to do because cynicism, and here's what it does, feeling cynical is not the same as skeptical. And I think this is important because all the disciples have been with Jesus and they've been watching and he's performed undeniable miracles.
[00:10:03] It would be really hard to be a full on skeptic that Jesus is not legit. But a cynic will say, I know where this is headed.
[00:10:10] And I know that if we get there and things go badly, I don't want to look stupid because I had hope that things might be better.
[00:10:19] And so what cynicism does is it insulates us from looking stupid when things go bad.
[00:10:25] And I don't know about you, but I like to, maybe this is in my desire to be a leader or whatever, but I like to try to see far out and see what the risks are and see what the dangers are and see where things might go wrong and then a little bit insulate myself from having too much hope that those things won't happen so that if they do, I can say, see, I knew I am your leader, things went badly just like I planned.
[00:10:50] Not planned, but thought they would, right? This is cynicism.
[00:10:55] And I watch the life of Jesus and it's not in an idyllic kind of world that Jesus lives in and ministers in. There's plenty wrong.
[00:11:05] And yet the heart of Jesus is never towards cynicism.
[00:11:10] In fact, when the children come around Jesus in this famous moment where the disciples are trying to keep the kids away from Jesus because he's just too important, and Jesus turns to the disciples, he says, let the little children come to me and forbid them not, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And then he turns to everybody, he says, unless you become like the little children, you won't be able to enter the kingdom of heaven.
[00:11:32] And I'm sure for the disciples and the other adults and for me, I hear that I'm like, but Jesus, I'm so much better as a human now than I was when I was three years old. I mean, it's not even close.
[00:11:43] I'm smarter and I'm better and I'm experienced and all these. I can speak clearly.
[00:11:51] But you know what I've learned along with all my extensive knowledge and wisdom in my years of life, I've also learned to be a cynic.
[00:12:01] I've also learned out of a desire to protect myself from disappointment and looking foolish. I've learned what it is to mistrust that God is good, so that when things go wrong, I can stand in those places and say, well, I didn't get my hopes up too much.
[00:12:17] And Jesus, I think, would speak to me today and maybe for all the cynics, not Lindsay, all the cynics in the room, and he would say, unless you become like a little child who has yet to learn what it is to protect yourself with cynicism, you can't enter this kingdom.
[00:12:34] And here's how I would say it. Cynicism keeps us at a safe distance from the kingdom of heaven.
[00:12:39] My invitation for all of us cynics in the room as we look at a story where it seems like everything is going wrong for Jesus and his disciples, that we would take hold of this hope that God is good in dark and gloomy places where we can't see him, and that the purpose of God is not always what we think it should be.
[00:13:02] So many people had ideas for how Jesus should lead the people into revolution.
[00:13:08] So many people have the ideas how Jesus could take power and glory. So many of those who waved palm branches as he entered the city had a picture of how this was going to go, but that was not the picture of God.
[00:13:22] And so we are asked if we would maybe consider again in those dark and gloomy places of our lives and our history that maybe God is still at work in the garden.
[00:13:35] The story continues on verse 4. Jesus fully realized all that was going to happen to him, so he's not surprised.
[00:13:46] So he stepped forward to meet them.
[00:13:48] Who are you looking for? He asked Jesus the Nazarene. They replied, I am he. Jesus said, judas, who betrayed him, was standing with him. As Jesus said, I am he, they all drew back and fell to the ground.
[00:14:02] Man, John is doing such a beautiful job of describing who has the authority in this situation.
[00:14:08] Here is this Roman contingent of soldiers. Here is the temple guard, here's the high priest and Judas the betrayer. They've come all decked out and armed to the teeth to take this rabbi into custody. And they stand with their torches to arrest him. And Jesus does not shrink back. He does not hide in the shadows. John tells us that he steps into the light and says, who are you looking for?
[00:14:31] And when they say, jesus the Nazarene, and he responds with these words that would have echoed the divine name of God given to Moses at the burning bush of the great I am he says, I am he.
[00:14:42] And at the sound of I am from the mouth of Jesus, the contingent, the soldiers, the temple guard, they fall backwards on their backs.
[00:14:52] I'll tell you what, troops that are on their backs are not troops that are in control.
[00:15:00] They are by every measure fully able to authorized to take Jesus into custody. And yet, because of something that is in Jesus, his authority and his power, even in a moment where he's turning himself over to be betrayed and arrested, the authority is clear.
[00:15:20] They fall backwards at the sound of his voice.
[00:15:24] As Jesus said, I am he, they draw back and fall down.
[00:15:28] This is extraordinary because especially in that day, if you're in a battle and you lose your footing, you'll probably die.
[00:15:37] Romans famously had very well designed gear and uniforms, including shoes with traction, for this very reason.
[00:15:48] To lose your footing in battle was to lose the war.
[00:15:53] And here before Jesus, the whole Roman detachment, they fall backwards. They fall over into a position of surrender.
[00:16:04] Verse 7. Once more he asked them, who are you looking for? And again they replied, jesus the Nazarene, I told you that I am he. Jesus said, and since I am the one you want, let these others go.
[00:16:16] And he did this to fulfill his own statement. I did not lose a single one of those you had given me.
[00:16:23] This willingness of Jesus to both face his own arrest and also to try and to actually protect the disciples is an extraordinary example of what Jesus does for each and every one of us.
[00:16:39] And we know this sense of Substitution. In popular culture. I think of Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games standing up for her sister. Right. She says, I volunteer as tribute. Can anyone do the whistle? I asked for a service. No one could do the whistle.
[00:16:56] There it is. Thank you.
[00:16:58] Who is that? That?
[00:17:00] Jason, you're amazing.
[00:17:02] It's like you were ready with that. You were just.
[00:17:09] How about this one? Tony Stark snapping his fingers with the gauntlet to save the universe from Thanos.
[00:17:15] What does he say?
[00:17:17] I am Jason. Iron Man. I am Iron Man. Yeah.
[00:17:24] Distracted. I get it.
[00:17:27] Okay. For you children of the 90s, how about this one? Armageddon. Bruce Willis in the airlock. Ben Affleck's on the other side. Ben Affleck's trying to be the one who sacrifices himself. And Bruce Wilson will have none of it. Right? And then what plays? What song plays?
[00:17:44] Aerosmith. Come on. I don't want to close my eyes.
[00:17:52] I shouldn't sing in messages. I tell myself that every time.
[00:17:56] And it's Steven Tyler. It's the father of Liv Tyler, who's in the movie.
[00:18:01] Anyway. Okay.
[00:18:05] There's something about sacrificing oneself for the sake of others that speaks to us.
[00:18:14] It's something about the highest expression of love.
[00:18:18] He has to say, don't take them, take me. Take me instead.
[00:18:22] And at the heart of what Jesus is walking towards is he is choosing the cross. He's not being forced into this.
[00:18:31] He's not being muscled into his own arrest.
[00:18:34] He is courageously facing it, willfully walking towards what he knows is coming, which is the cross.
[00:18:41] To say, don't take them, take me.
[00:18:46] And for all of us who experience what the Bible would call the curse of sin and death, this is at the heart of the Gospel, is Jesus saying to sin and death, they can't face you down, but I can.
[00:19:01] And it's willfully that Jesus walks towards this intense shame and humiliation and pain of his own death on the cross.
[00:19:11] And in so doing, is saying, don't take them, take me.
[00:19:16] Verse 10.
[00:19:18] Then Simon Peter drew a sword and slashed off the right ear of Malchus, the high priest's slave. But Jesus said to Peter, put your sword back into its sheath. Shall I not drink from the cup of suffering that the Father has given me?
[00:19:33] It's.
[00:19:36] It's just like Peter. He's so impulsive. Have you noticed this, Simon? Peter is always in the moment. And I, you know, mad respect for Peter. He's never on his phone. He's just always present.
[00:19:47] I love that about Peter. He's never thinking about his to do list. He's never making, you know, lists. He just doesn't do that. He's always in the moment.
[00:19:56] And yet we see this impulsiveness in Peter that during the Last Supper, he's the one that says, like, lord, I will go to death for you. And Jesus is like, really? Cause you're about to deny me, bro.
[00:20:07] So in this moment, when Jesus is clearly peacefully surrendering himself to this betrayal and this arrest, that Peter's like, not on my watch. Jesus grabs his sword, cuts off the ear again and again. Peter and his impulsive nature is trying to save Jesus from the pain and the suffering of the cross. And at its surface level, that sounds really noble.
[00:20:35] Wouldn't it be better?
[00:20:36] God, I have some ideas for how this should go. I'm imagining Peter saying in prayer, what if we just made Jesus king?
[00:20:44] What if we could just get him to the throne without whatever he's talking about, with his suffering and death? And unless a seed falls and dies, it can't produce fruit. What if we avoided all that and we just got Jesus to the power and the glory part?
[00:21:00] It's echoes of that impulse, I think, that are present in John chapter 6, in verse 15, when Jesus has fed the 5,000. And they're so excited, all the multitudes of people are so excited because now maybe they have a leader that could lead a revolution. And it says when Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself. Jesus, what are you doing?
[00:21:23] Why all these miracles? Why all this power? Why all this authority demonstrated, if not to become the most powerful and the most authoritative person? Why won't you just accept the power that we're trying to offer you?
[00:21:39] Well, I think we have to go all the way back to the beginning of Jesus ministry when he's being tempted by the devil in the wilderness and the devil takes him. We find this in.
[00:21:48] In chapter four of Matthew, where the devil takes him up to a high place and he looks over all of the Bible says the kingdoms of the earth. And the devil tells him, I will give you all of these kingdoms. Just bow down and worship me.
[00:22:00] And it's this temptation of Christ that we get a picture of what is not a noble impulse around Jesus. All these people saying, we could just get you to be king without the cross. That is not some kind of alternative plan that honors God. That is a plan that comes from the heart of the devil.
[00:22:22] That somehow, if we could just get Jesus elevated without this terrible cross thing, then we would be successful.
[00:22:33] And again and again, the way of Jesus outright refuses that, rebukes it. Because the path towards the kingdom of God is not to avoid the cross. It is shaped like the cross that Jesus is a crucified king.
[00:22:51] And for us, maybe this is challenging for those in the first century who saw criminals crucified every day on Roman crosses. It was an affront.
[00:23:00] It was offensive.
[00:23:02] And this is why Paul would tell Jews and Gentiles, he said, listen, the message of the cross is a stumbling block to the Gentiles, and it's offensive to the Jews. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God for salvation, first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles for the whole world. The power of God is not to avoid the suffering of the cross for Jesus, but it is that Jesus would willfully enter into suffering to meet us at our lowest place.
[00:23:35] It's through the cross and Jesus makes it clear.
[00:23:39] Jesus then heals the ear of the servant of the high priest.
[00:23:48] I read a commentary that was saying Jesus is not only showing mercy to the man whose ear has been cut off, but he is making way for Peter to not be arrested alongside him in this moment, that to attack and to.
[00:24:02] To maim the servant of the high priest would have been a capital offense, and Peter would have been on a cross next to Jesus.
[00:24:10] And so even in this moment, when Jesus is facing down the worst night of his life in his humanity, he's looking out for his own and he's looking out for his enemies.
[00:24:21] What a picture of mercy of God.
[00:24:27] I think, for all of us.
[00:24:30] We have these ideas of how God should work in our lives and in our world.
[00:24:35] And again and again, we find that the way of Jesus and the spirit of Jesus that works among us takes us to places that we would not necessarily choose for ourselves.
[00:24:48] But it's in those places that God meets us.
[00:24:51] I think it's no mistake that in this dark night Garden of Gethsemane, it is a garden that Jesus finds himself in. You know, the garden metaphor is all throughout scripture from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden. It's the first place that humanity communes and interacts with God.
[00:25:11] And in the very last of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, we see a description of the new heavens and the new earth where God takes the throne.
[00:25:20] And it's described not as some sterile cityscape, but as a garden where a river flows from the throne of God and brings life.
[00:25:31] On Easter Sunday morning, as we'll celebrate next week, we find that the first person to encounter the risen Jesus is Mary Magdalene in the garden.
[00:25:42] She sees Jesus and she mistakes him for a gardener. There's something about the garden that speaks to where God meets us.
[00:25:51] And it's in a garden that Jesus faces his betrayal.
[00:25:55] And I think John is reminding us and would remind us that even in moments of betrayal and darkness and fear, that God meets us there too, that God comes close in the garden.
[00:26:11] The author and scholar, New Testament scholar N.T. wright.
[00:26:15] By the way, if you're a New Testament scholar, using your initials NT is pretty awesome. I'm just going to say that.
[00:26:25] Here's what N.T. wright says about this idea of Jesus not avoiding the cross, but meeting us at the lowest points of our lives. He says in this story, even if we can't really say why, we find that God, who we might have hoped would meet us in the place to which justice, love, freedom and truth had pointed us, has instead come to meet us in the place where justice and love and freedom and truth were denied and trampled upon.
[00:26:50] Our place, our broken place, our broken world.
[00:26:55] And you see what's happened. We hoped to be able to find a way to God without any need for God to reveal himself to us.
[00:27:02] We hope to be able to climb our way up to wherever God is up here, wherever all the great virtues that we hope for exist unthreatened and solid.
[00:27:12] But the Gospels, and particularly John's Gospel, offer us a story fully earthed in the historical reality of our world, of a God who comes to meet us not at the top of the ladder that we can construct, but at the bottom of the heap, the place of broken hopes and broken dreams and broken signposts. That's where Jesus meets us in the garden.
[00:27:33] And we worship a savior and a messiah who did not model this precious, insulated, trouble free life.
[00:27:45] We worship a messiah who encountered the worst that humanity had to offer in the garden and on the cross to meet us there.
[00:27:56] When love fails us, when justice eludes us, when peace is far from us, when freedom is denied us, that's where Jesus meets us.
[00:28:08] The garden of Gethsemane literally means olive press.
[00:28:14] And Alyssa and I went, I think it was last year. There's one olive mill in all of Oregon called Durant.
[00:28:22] It's a vineyard and olive grove with an olive press there.
[00:28:27] You go there and you can taste all the different olive oils that they have. And right off the tasting room, they have like their gift shop basically. And man, the cost of oil is high. Did you know this?
[00:28:42] Like, we should get A couple bottles. And then we looked at the price, and we're like, we should get a small bottle.
[00:28:48] Maybe we'll just get a vinaigrette. That seems cheaper.
[00:28:53] I brought some olive oil. This is not from Durant. This is from California.
[00:28:58] I'm sorry.
[00:29:00] I wanted to bring the Oregon stuff.
[00:29:03] The olive oil is expensive, but as I heard someone once say, no matter how expensive the olive oil is for the olive, it costs everything.
[00:29:14] And it's in this place of among the olive groves, next to the olive press, that Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, willfully chooses to enter into the crushing and the pressing.
[00:29:28] So that from his life that that will not be salvaged or saved in this moment, that through that crushing we might experience what flows from him.
[00:29:41] That the oil would be for our salvation. Isaiah 53. 5 says, but he was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.
[00:29:49] Upon him was the punishment that made us whole.
[00:29:52] And by his bruises we are healed.
[00:29:57] To follow Jesus, there's a cost, I'll tell you. And Jesus made this very clear, that if anyone would follow after him, they gotta deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him. But can I tell you that we have a God and a Savior who did not tell us to do that while he sat back in comfort and ease, but instead, very first, he walked into the pressing and the crushing.
[00:30:23] So that each one of us who faces darkness and gloom and trouble in this life would have hope.
[00:30:33] That it's not when we get out of those places that God comes close. It's not when we get out of those places that we find Jesus has met us. It's in those places that Jesus has come down to meet us.
