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Two
Mountains, One Prayer
by the Rev. Rich Smith
March 16, 2008
Matthew 26:36-46
Several years ago my brother and I decided to go
mountain climbing. Not having the time or the resources or the
inclination to head off to Nepal, we settled on the highest mountain
between Tucson and the Mexican border, 9,453 foot Mt. Wrightson.
We camped overnight near the trailhead, grilled steaks on an open fire,
and then began hiking shortly before dawn. As we were heading up
the canyon before beginning the grueling switchbacks that would take us
nearly a mile higher to the top, I observed this mountain peak towering
over us to the left, and remarked to my brother how daunting it looked,
and wondered if I could really make it that far. He just laughed
and said, “That’s not the peak. In a couple of hours we’ll be
looking down on that one!” I almost turned around right
then. But I kept putting one foot in front of the other, and we
made it to the top in time for lunch and were rewarded with a
spectacular view of over a hundred miles in every direction, as well as
the company of about a million lady bugs who like to spend July on the
peak. I have the pictures to prove it!
Some people climb mountains "because they're there",
but that's never been my motivation. I've never wanted to climb
Everest, or Mt. Whitney, or even Sugarloaf, for that matter. But
there have been a few with some sort of mystical quality that has drawn
me to them, luring me with the promise that if I succeed in making it
to the top, I would somehow learn the answers to life's mysteries, or
at least be closer to God.
I have an old cartoon which showed a person coming
down from a mountain, where they had had a vision and reporting, "Turns
out the Hokey Pokey IS what it's all about!"
Whether I’ve learned the mysteries of life on a
mountaintop I cannot say, but I must confess: while climbing any
mountain, I usually have doubts about what I'm doing, if I can keep
going or not, and my prayer, exhaled with every breath on the way up
is,"Lord, give me strength to make it to the top!!"
Now you can’t help but notice when you read the
Gospels that Jesus seemed to like to climb mountains too. Well, whether
or not he really enjoyed it I can't say either, but he did seem to
climb a lot of them in the course of his brief ministry. There was that
mountain from which he preached his most famous sermon. There was the
mountain which he scaled with some of the disciples that came to be
known as the Mount of Transfiguration. There was the mountain he seemed
to habitually climb to pray on, the Mount of Olives. And there was that
final mountain, known as Calvary – maybe just a “hill far away,” but
when you’re carrying a cross, or facing one, it must loom pretty large!
But whereas my prayer is usually, "Lord, help me make it to the top",
Jesus' prayer is most often, "Help me make it down!" Help me face
what I must face when I come down from here.
Today I want to conclude our Lenten look at prayer
by going with Jesus to two mountains -- the Mount of
Temptation and the Mount of Olives. I spoke a few weeks ago about
my personal perspective on prayer; Bob held a very successful class on
the topic, we had a contemplative service where we did more praying
that usual, and today I want simply to look at how Jesus prayed.
You recall how the Lenten season began on the Mount
of Temptation where Jesus, fresh from his baptism, was led by the
Spirit into the wilderness. There he was offered three temptations. He
was tempted to satisfy his physical hunger by turning stone into bread.
He was offered all the kingdoms of the world in return for giving
allegiance to Satan. He was invited to test God by hurling
himself off the pinnacle of the temple, for if he was so special,
surely the angels would make him immune to the laws of gravity, and
would catch him before he hit the ground. And we are told that through
prayer and fasting for forty days -- the model for Lent -- Jesus
successfully overcame these temptations and went down to begin his
ministry. He learned what his purpose was, what he was to do with his
life. The temptation was to use his power, and his gifts (which were
many) for his own selfish purposes, to meet his own needs. Instead, he
gave his life to God, and got beyond temptation, at least for the time
being.
Today's lesson finds Jesus at the end of his
earthly life and ministry. He has just eaten a final meal with his
disciples, and as his custom was, gone up to another mountain, the
Mount of Olives, to pray. And there, as on that first mountain, he must
face temptation all over again.
Imagine the scene: Everything has been set in
motion. Jesus knows that the Temple police are on the way, that he will
be betrayed and handed over to them for a mock trial and a certain
sentence of death. He basically has three temptations, or as we might
say, options. The first is, he can fight. He has enough popular support
(witness that Palm Sunday crowd) and at least two of his disciples are
carrying swords. The Zealots, of which Judas was one, would have been
glad to rally for the cause, and all they needed was a signal from
Jesus.
A second option Jesus has at this point is to simply
walk away. If he would have just slipped away that night, quietly gone
back to Galilee and taken up carpentry again, nobody would have given
him a bad time. He could probably become the associate rabbi at the
synagogue in Nazareth. This is the option that Peter has suggested. In
fact, he could even marry, settle down, raise a family, have a long and
fruitful ministry. Could he not accomplish far more, for far more
people? All he would have to do is walk away into a reasonable,
productive, loving, helping life, as long as he quit challenging
authority. And that may even be what he wants to do, as he prays, "If
you are willing, God, remove this cup from me." If it is possible, can
you work out a way where I don't have to go through this – this
passion, this certain agonizing death? Can't I just lead a normal life,
be a good rabbi, a good soldier in your cause?
Now that may not be so far removed from the issues
he faced on that first mountain. For back there, at the beginning, he
was facing some options, some possibilities for what to do with his
life, how to use his gifts. He could turn to stone to bread. He could
rule the kingdoms of the earth. He could put on a magic show. All of
which might well further the mission. Or, he could do the one
thing that the devil didn’t propose: he could follow God's will. And
now, on the Mount of Olives, he faces temptation again: take the
kingdom by force on the one hand; or just walk away and lead a normal
life, on the other.
You may remember that these were exactly the two
temptations that Nikos Kazantzakis addressed in his famous book, The
Last Temptation of Christ, made into an infamous movie back in the late
'80s. The notorious temptation that raised the hackles of so many
traditionalists was supposedly that of Mary Magdalene. In the
book and movie, Jesus, while on the cross, has a vision of what it
would be like to be married to her, a very explicit vision, actually.
And yet the temptation was not sex, not really.
It was simply the temptation to lead a normal life.
To turn away from the cross, and just be an ordinary human being,
marry, raise a family, carry on a trade. There is a scene in the book
where Jesus' mother very much wants this for him as well, for him to
stop struggling with God and give her grandchildren. She goes to the
rabbi for counsel, but he tells her, "Mary, if God listened to mothers,
we would all rot away in a bog of security and easy living." The
temptation represented by Mary Magdalene was not sexual, but that of
"easy living." And in the Gospels it is Peter who represents this
temptation, when he earlier suggests that all this trouble could be
avoided.
And, as I said, the other temptation is represented
by Judas, who in Kazantzakis' novel, betrays Jesus with the best of
intentions. He is a Zealot, a revolutionary, who wants to throw off the
Romans by force. He is suspicious of Jesus, in the novel is assigned to
kill him, but holds off because he suspects that he may indeed be the
messiah, the one who will liberate Israel from Roman domination. Judas
goes along with Jesus, hoping that he will turn from his babbling about
love and finally get down to the business of throwing off the Romans.
He betrays him not out of some evil motive, but in order to force his
hand. Judas' way is also a temptation.
So there you have it. At this crucial juncture, in
that Garden of Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives, Jesus faces
temptation once again. He can choose fight or flight. Both are live
options. They are options that would certainly be tempting to me, if I
were in that situation.
For example, when faced with a controversy, it
is tempting to deal with it by saying, "This is the way it is going to
be. I have spoken. That's that!" And force my opinion on you. It is
also very tempting just to avoid the issue all together, put your head
in the sand and hope it will go away, especially if you don’t like
controversy. Maybe things will work out on their own.
But remember, I said earlier that Jesus had three
options and so far I've only mentioned two -- fight or flight. There is
also the option of bringing up the issue, facing it squarely, dealing
with it in a loving manner, and working it through it together, as
risky as that may be.
That is the kind of option -- the third option
--that Jesus chose. In the end, he refused to take the easy way out. He
did not rationalize, change, or weasel out of the path that had been
placed before him, the one that led to the cross. He refused to fight
or take flight. He overcame his last temptations, and he did it through
prayer. "Not my will, but yours be done!"
Matthew tells us that he prayed in anguish, (other
Gospels describe it as sweating blood). Most of the time, our prayers
are not quite like that. And most of the time, it's probably not
necessary that they should be. We don't face life and death situations
all the time, thanks heavens! But sometimes we do, and then our
prayers are truly anguished.
"There are no atheists in fox-holes". That's easy to
understand. One of my favorite movies is Glory. It's about the
first Black regiment to fight in the Civil War. They volunteered for
what was essentially a suicide mission, to lead the attack on a
Confederate fort, and give the other Union troops a chance. There is a
marvelous scene of the night before the attack, the soldiers gathered
around the campfire, singing spirituals, making their testimonies,
raising their prayers. They knew what the likely outcome would be, but
they also believed in their cause, and were putting their lives and
fates in the hand of God, doing what they believed was God's will.
Of course the situation of war is not the only one
that leads to anguished prayers. I performed a wedding ceremony for a
Viet Nam veteran a few years ago, who confessed to me later that he had
been more nervous and anxious in the moments before the wedding service
began than at anytime during his year in combat! (I saw him again about
a year later, his wife now about eight months pregnant, so I guess he
got over it...)
Facing surgery, walking into court, having to deal
with a family conflict, having to make a momentous decision -- I think
of the soon-to-be ex-governor of New York, having to stand before all
the world and confess his sin, or his wife who stands beside him, or
maybe the new governor, who has less than two weeks to submit a state
budget and who has been kept out of the loop (lots of blood sweating
there!) – there are many situations in which our prayers may be
anguished, where we may very well sweat blood.
Luke’s version of the story tells us further that,
as on that first mountain of temptation, so here too an angel came and
gave Jesus strength. Not to be too literal about what an angel is --
perhaps each of us has a guardian angel, whether we know it or not --
some spirit-being, a friend from another dimension, to keep us from
being totally alone, and remind us that this world is not the only
reality. Now that may not make the prayer any easier. But it does make
prayer possible! And so we pray, and we listen, and we take strength.
And then, like Jesus, we get up and do what needs to be done.
Jesus doesn't walk away, nor does he fight it. He
gets up and faces the music. Because he has already overcome. The devil
has already made all the tempting offers it has, thrown every bribe,
sprung every trap, used every threat. But Jesus is still on course. To
us, it appears that the worst is still to come, but that is the
business of others. Jesus must endure it, but he has made up his mind,
and that's the hardest part. He has already acted, and now he must
simply wait, and trust God. His story shows us that waiting is
sometimes the most important thing we can do. As an old proverb
puts it, "Don't just do something--stand there!" In the words of
Isaiah, "Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they
shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint."
That doesn't mean that we should never "march on the
Mall" or join some worthy cause or take some dramatic action. We have
done that and we will continue to do that. Jesus did that too, on Palm
Sunday, and then with the money changers in the Temple. But we
also need to know that the real action comes after that: restless
nights of prayer, overcoming the temptation to run or to resist, and
then simply waiting for the seeds we have planted to sprout and grow,
as God gives the growth.
And so today we have heard how Jesus climbed two
mountains -- the Mount of Temptation, and the Mount of Olives – but he
prayed one prayer: may God's will be done in my life. Today may God
give you and me the strength to pray that as well: may God's will be
done in my life.
Sources:
Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ
Bruce van Blair, The Believer’s Road
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Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
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