This Lent we follow Jesus as he faces evil in the hours before his death. What is evil? Who is doing evil against Jesus during Passion Week? What are ways in which we are complicit in evil? Do we take evil seriously? As we experience evil in our own lives, discover how Jesus stands in the face of evil.
Invocation
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, who delivers us from all evil.
Invitation Prayer
Lord Jesus, you suffered evil at the hands of the religious establishment. Priests accused you of blasphemy. In their trial against you, they called the Good Shepherd evil. Forgive your people when we call evil good and good evil. We are sheep easily led astray. Renew us to be your people, clean and holy. Amen.
Word
Luke 22:45
“And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow…”
Meditation: So Utterly Human by Megan Roegner
When reading Luke 22 recently, I was struck by a phrase I had never noticed before. Dozens of years of Lenten services have told me the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is a beautiful, tragic example of what the poet Denise Levertov called “the burden of humanness.” Jesus prays for God “to remove this cup” from him as his agonizing death quickly approaches. The disciples, of course, fail in Jesus’s simplest request to stay awake and pray with him. I’m always inclined to be hard on the disciples, particularly during the events of Holy Week. How, I’ve wondered, could they keep failing Jesus over and over again in the most crucial moments?
But this week, I finally noticed that in verse 45 Luke writes that Jesus found the disciples sleeping “for sorrow.” Have you ever been so upset before that you’ve exhausted yourself? Emotional turmoil can manifest itself into physical distress. Perhaps, then, the disciples weren’t sleeping because they weren’t willing to bear witness to Jesus’s anguish. Maybe it was just too much for their heavy, human hearts.
If Lent teaches us anything, it’s that people fail. People fail a lot. People even fail the people they love. At some point, we’ve all been left alone. Maybe even worse, at some point, we’ve all left someone alone who really needed us present and awake. The burden of humanness weighs heavy: between the dread of being failed and the dread of failing, the sorrow can be exhausting.
When I’m angry with the disciples, or angry with myself for my failure to stay awake, I like to read the poem “Gethsemane” by Mary Oliver.
The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.
The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.
Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe
the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move,
maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.
Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.
That last stanza mends my heart: how Oliver refers to the disciples as “the dear bodies”; how she feels sympathy for their frailty; how she calls them “so utterly human.”
Our frailty is part of our humanity. If we didn’t fail, we wouldn’t need Jesus. But in our failures, God, like the stars, is a constant presence, and we are still part of the story.
Jesus, mend our hearts when we feel alone or when sorrow feels like too much. Forgive us when we fail to be awake for you and for others. Thank you for your constant love and presence. Amen.
Sending
In the face of evil, may the God of faithfulness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Jesus Christ. Amen.