Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

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.”

Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

Matthew 26:36–42

To speak of the death of Jesus risks collapsing the process into the event. His death happened on Friday at 3pm – but the dying began before.

It started, perhaps, when he set his face like flint and travelled to Jerusalem, knowing the Pharisees would kill him. Or perhaps it was earlier still – the moment of his first miracle, the first words about a kingdom in which the blind would see and the deaf would hear, or when, as a boy, he’d chosen to put his heavenly Father’s expectations above those of his parents in the temple.

Whenever it was, the dying started when Jesus accepted the Father’s will for his life. It started there, but it reached a highpoint in a garden called Gethsemane (meaning the oil press). There he was pressed and crushed, until the purest of oils ran out: a will surrendered to his Father in love.

This was the preparation for the cross. This was where the battle was fundamentally won. This was where, as the Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8). His soul was overwhelmed to the point of death, but he prayed ‘yet not as I will, but as you will.’

And, in doing so, he agreed freely to drain the cup. He agreed not because the Father’s will was a joyous thing to him, although there was joy set before Jesus at the cross (Hebrews 12:2). Nor because he relished the cup’s bitterness. He agreed because the cross was his Father’s will, and because he desired nothing more than to offer the loving obedience of sonship.

This formation of the will towards love is the third aspect of the dark night presented by John of the Cross, which we’ve been considering in recent weeks. Whereas we, like Jesus, may pray that suffering’s cup be taken from us, we do not often pray those final words: ‘Yet not as I will, but as you will.’ For we, unlike Jesus, have not yet learned the obedience-through-suffering that characterises sons and daughters of God.

Lent can be a time for learning this obedience through suffering. Whether our daily dying – at work or home – comes as chosen self-denials or as unwanted losses, darknesses, or silences, we can welcome it. For suffering prepares us to live well on our frontlines and, eventually, to die well, too, as we pursue ever-greater loving obedience to a Father who loves us.

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Dr Chloe Lynch
Lecturer in Practical Theology, London School of Theology

What’s one area in your frontline context where God has asked you to obey him, even though that obedience will be costly? How will you respond?