Jesus was fully human and fully God
all at once throughout His lifetime
until His death on the cross.
And then, His human body was fully dead,
but His Spirit lived on,
even before we were able to see Him
outside of the tomb.
The Scriptures tell us
He did battle with Satan and won
while we still thought Him dead, entombed.
Before the cross
came Gethsemane,
where Jesus fought with His humanity.
His soul was exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.
He longed for friends to watch and pray and stay with Him.
But even that smallest request
was too much for even His closest friends
who could not stay awake, even for an hour.
In that garden, in both His humanity and diety,
Jesus saw both the torture and the victory;
He knew the earthly pain and heavenly glory to come.
His earthly humanity rose up against that unbearable pain
of flesh and Spirit;
the nails piercing flesh and crushing bones
was nothing compared to
the seering torment of His Father turning away,
His heart ripping hatefully from His chest
and our sins marching in with sickness and wicked evil
and hate and pride and selfishness and everything
unholy poisoning and ripping Him to shreds.
He saw it all
alone, with no friends to comfort
or even sit by His side.
Knowing all too well,
He asked for what His humanity
and ours always desires,
“Take this cup from me.”
None of us, even Jesus in His humanity,
want our part in the kingdom
to include suffering.
Like Jesus, we know,
if He’s graced us to know,
that all things are possible
for our Father in heaven.
But here in our humanity
we rarely if ever
truly say and mean what Jesus said and meant:
“Not what I will,
but what You will.”
That is the process of life,
the work of our decades,
the ultimate going-home goal.
Amen and amen
(from Mark 14:32-42 NKJV)
