Body and Spirit
Notes
Transcript
And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.” Peter answered him, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.” Jesus said to him, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” Peter said to him, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” And all the disciples said the same.
Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”
Last week we began the journey toward Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection by turning to his last supper with his disciples. Jesus set a rather somber tone, and through bread and wine, he put before them his body and blood. Picking up where we left off, they left that house in Jerusalem, and headed east, just outside the city, to the Mount of Olives. They went to a specific place on the Mount, to a garden or an orchard called Gethsemane. Maybe it seems odd that they left Jerusalem later in the evening, but keep in mind a couple things. One, the disciples didn’t want to leave Jesus wherever he was leading them that night; and two. I was reminded by commentaries that the chapters leading up to this tell us their lodging, at least earlier in the week, was out in this direction.
Also, a disclaimer before we read the passage: In verses 39 through 44, Jesus is praying to the Father, asking that if there’s any way he can avoid going through what he knew was coming, would God allow that. We’ll hear the repetition, “not my will, but your will.” That’s a really important piece, but I’m going to delay dealing with that too much until we get to Maundy Thursday and seeing Jesus on the cross and the relationship between him and his heavenly Father.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, are you loyal? And do you keep your word? When I was a kid, I remember the way to really promise something, to prove to each other that we were telling the truth, we would say, “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” Thinking back on that now, it’s a pretty morbid thing to say. If you want, you can Google the possible origins of it—which I didn’t know when I said it. But the idea that we had about using those words, we were communicating that even if you tried to harm us, we’d stand by our word. Saying things like that probably isn’t necessary and I doubt the topics of my classmates’ and I’s conversation really warranted that much force, but a good virtue, part of good character is keeping our word and following through on things.
Often paired with that, as I asked about, is loyalty—that you will not leave or abandon someone, especially in their time of need. Are you someone who others can count on, that you will not let them down? Loyalty is often seen in families—you don’t turn your back on them. It can be with friends, too. As I helped Addison with the valentines she handed out to her class last month, we came across “BFF” stickers—“best friends forever.” We sometimes develop bonds, even from a very young age, that we place this stamp, or maybe even we view as a lock, this relationship will last “forever.” These loyalties are usually where we’re willing to share our deepest secrets, or we feel safe to talk about difficult or important life moments with one another. We’re vulnerable, and we hope and trust that this person or these people will not turn on us or expose us.
The relationship between Jesus and his disciples wasn’t merely a relationship of close friends. Maybe you’ve heard this phrase that seems to be used more often today: “people doing life together.” That was Jesus and his disciples. They were such a close-knit group. There was trust and dependability. But there was also opportunity for rebuke and discipline—they didn’t just accept and affirm each person doing whatever they wanted. They did life together, and yet they weren’t all equal. Jesus was the rabbi, and they his disciples. He was Lord, they were his followers.
We started seeing the depth of their relationship last time. Maybe an hour or two before being on the Mount of Olives, Jesus had told his disciples in verse 21, “‘…One of you will betray me.’” He dropped the bomb: one of them was going to hand him over to his death. They all replied, “‘Surely not I, Lord?’” You can almost hear them saying, “I would never do that!” But now Jesus comes back in verse 31—not only would one of them betray him, but “‘This very night you will all fall away on account of me…’” Peter. the same Peter we’ve followed in the book of Acts, one of Jesus’ closest disciples had declared back in chapter 16 that Jesus is “‘…the Christ, the Son of the living God,’” and a few verses later, he rebuked Jesus, telling him he’d never suffer or be killed. Now in chapter 26, Peter effectively says, “Maybe the rest of these guys will fall away, but not me. I’ve got your back, Jesus.” Yet Jesus knew what was going to happen, “I tell you the truth…this very night…you will disown me three times.” “Peter, you’re saying you won’t, but especially you will fall away, you’ll disown me not just once, but three times.” I imagine the emotions in this group swinging from sadness that we heard about last time to maybe bewilderment, even anger. All the disciples jumped in, “Jesus, you don’t understand. We’d all die for you before disowning you.” This was their loyalty, their desire to keep their word to Jesus.
Before we go farther into these events, let’s consider this question: what kind of loyalty does God want out of his followers? I preached a couple weeks ago from Deuteronomy 4, and we looked at obedience. Especially in God’s relationship with the Israelites, we find throughout the Old Testament that they were to fear God and obey God. It can seem, and maybe we even go so far as to say that their relationship was founded on commands for the sake of obedience. In order for them to be separate from their neighbors, to be visibly holy—both outward behavior and inward reality—they had to do these things.
Their obedience and adherence to commands, wasn’t actually the foundation of their relationship with God, though. Those things, those actions, weren’t the promise or glue that held God and Israel together on its own. No, the foundation of even their loyalty had to be faith expressed in love. In Exodus 15, we come across a song sung by Moses and the Israelites after God had freed them from Egypt and brought them through the Red Sea. In verse 13, they exclaimed, “‘In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed…’” They knew that God loved them.
But love is a two-way street. We do repeatedly hear that Israel was commanded to have this fear of the Lord, but that fear was paired with love. Deuteronomy 6 verse 5, Israel was told, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Those words are familiar to us, but it needs to be clear. When Jesus said, “‘…Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,’” he wasn’t making a new command that only applied to Christians from that time forward. No, he was continuing the call for his loyal followers.
That upholding of loving obedience is seen in places like 1 Samuel 15 verse 22. The prophet Samuel speaking to Israel’s first king, Saul, he said, “‘Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams…’” Saul had tried to defend himself just before that by saying he had obeyed God, he had partially followed a command. And yet God spokesman in Samuel told him that his heart hadn’t been on God in what he did. We find that all throughout Israel’s history—they forgot to love their God and see his ways in their plans and actions.
If we identify ourselves in this relationship of love, then we too ought to be yearning for this loyalty—loyalty to God and to Jesus. We join the disciples in professing that we will not leave or neglect our God because of the love he has for us and the love we have for him. Why Peter and the other disciples were so adamant that they would not betray Jesus or fall away from him or disown him was because they loved Jesus. We’re called to love God with the same love.
In thinking about obedience and love, think of how governments have all sorts of laws. I’ll speak for myself: Most of them I am willing to follow, I have no problem with them. But ultimately the reason why I follow laws is because I’m a citizen here and the Bible tells me to honor governing authorities. So, I give a certain amount of loyalty to this town, to our state, to this country, not because I love the government institutions, the lawmakers and enforcers, but because I’m a citizen.
My loyalty to Christ, however, to God, is or should be completely different. God loves me, he loves us. He calls us to love him, and because of that love, to walk in his ways. He loves us so much that he gave his Son Jesus, who showed perfect and complete love for us. It’s in love and in gratitude for his love that I want to abide with God and please God. I and we desire to be loyal to God and follow through on our word to him because of who he is and what he’s done for us.
Our loyalty, our devotion, our commitment, our loving obedience ought to be up here. It ought to be unshakable. Paul writes in Romans 8, “…If God is for us, who can be against us?” “[Nothing] in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is the truth, brothers and sisters, and yet even loyal followers show weakness.
We know Jesus wasn’t making these claims up; they weren’t unfulfilled accusations. Next week we’ll move onto Jesus’ betrayal by Judas. We’ll also hear, “all the disciples deserted him and fled.” Matthew 26 ends with Peter’s disowning. When a servant girl saw Peter, she recognized him as having been with Jesus, but his answer was, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” When another girl said the same thing, “He denied it again, with an oath, ‘I don’t know the man!’” The third time, a group of people pinned him as being part of Jesus’ group, noting his accent, “Then he began to call down curses on himself and he swore to them, ‘I don’t know the man!’”
Moments of weakness—these men not living up to their professed loyalty and love. They had spent these three years with Jesus and grown by being with him, and yet they did not keep their word that night. But it happened even when he was still with them—when things hadn’t really seemed to have hit the fan yet. Jesus was breaking down under the weight of what was coming—and so it was time to pray. He asked his inner circle, “keep watch with me.” What happened? They kept falling asleep. Yes, it’s nighttime; they were probably tired. But Jesus told them, “‘Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.’” And still they fell asleep again.
I’m sure I’m not the only one here who is guilty of the same thing as these disciples—I have fallen asleep while praying before. Is Jesus just saying, though, “Hey, I know your eyelids are heavy, but really, this is important. Please muster up that inner strength, set your mind to it, you can stay awake”? He certainly wanted them to pray with him. But it seems that he’s addressing a deeper issue here, weakness as a spiritual issue, as a battle between the old self and new self.
The NIV reads, “The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” If we go back to the Greek, though, the original recorded language of this text, the word we have translated “body” is the Greek word, “sarks.” Why that’s important is because there’s another Greek word that more frequently refers to body, to this structure that we have—that word is “soma.” “Sarks,” the word in verse 41, is more often translated, and we find it translated this way in other versions of the Bible, as “flesh.”
“The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak,” reads the English Standard Version. Maybe they were just physically and emotionally and even mentally tired, and Jesus was telling them, “Wake up!” And yet the Bible frequently talks about the way of the Spirit and the way of the flesh, the way of the redeemed nature and the way of our human sinful nature. We don’t find it much in Matthew’s gospel, but in John 3 verses 5 and 6, Jesus was talking to Nicodemus about being born again. He says to him, “‘I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh,” that’s sarks, the word used in Matthew 26:41, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit…”
With that in mind, the disciples were in a battle that they might not have recognized at that point. They didn’t realize that their flesh, their sinfulness and the devil, was distracting them from supporting Jesus. They were in a moment of weakness now and they would be in another when they fled and Peter in another when he disowned Jesus. That didn’t mean that their loyalty to him, their faith expressed in love, was all of a sudden tossed out completely. But these moments do show the power of God in them and their understanding of Jesus as the Christ was still growing.
The way for that to grow—for faith, for understanding, for loyalty to God to grow is to seek God. We hear the familiar words of 2 Corinthians 12 verses 9 and 10, “But [the Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” The disciples didn’t get it yet. The disciples would let Jesus down. The disciples sinned. Yet in their trouble, God could reveal himself and still accomplish his purposes, including their growth.
The same remains true for us today. If any of us can say that we’ve been completely loyal to God since the moment we professed faith in him, we’re lying. If any can say that we’ve always been strong, we’ve never had a doubt or a worry or that we’ve successfully fought off every temptation to sin, we’re deceiving ourselves. Yet when we find our own weaknesses, the end that we work towards shouldn’t only be how can I fix this. No, we need the grace and power of God.
It’s an easy thing to claim loyalty. It’s another thing to live it out. It’s also an easy thing to let people down—to not live up to their expectations, to not always come through on our word. Thanks be to God that he has given and will continue to give grace that is sufficient for our weaknesses, our struggles, our difficulties. May we grow in our loyalty and devotion to him, and may we also show grace to others, may we be willing to help them when they are weak. Amen.