Sermon: "Facing Our Darkest Hours"

Delivered March 28, 2010 (Palm Sunday) by Rev. George Antonakos.
Sermon Text: Matthew 26:36-46; Isaiah 50:4-9

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Good morning. We don't talk much about Calvinism at Central in our sermons or anywhere else for that matter. But many in Presbyterian circles are in John Calvin's theological camp. But no matter how much we disagree or agree with reformed theology, one thing that you can say is that there is a lot about reformed theology that is caricatured.

Take the word predestination, for example. Many people think about that word as though it said "pre-determinism." In other words, God predetermines everything, like even of the color of the shirt that I chose or you chose to wear today (or the blouse). That's a caricature. Predestination is really a theological term that actually speaks of Christians who are in the process of being conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ and that God would use all manner of experiences to see that it occurs.

Like take Romans 8:28 to 30. I mean, I think these are the core verses of this doctrine. "We know that in all things God works for the good (or toward the good) of those who love him." Not all things are good, but "God works toward the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son." That's predestination.

It's something that God is doing to conform us "to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified." In other words, what these verses are saying, God will complete what God has begun in Jesus Christ.

But that is very different from the joke that travels around in Presbyterian churches. "What did the Presbyterian pastor say after he fell down the steps?" The answer? "I'm sure glad that's over with." That's a caricature. That's a caricature. But that joke does raise an interesting issue about the painful moments of life. Actually the promises of Romans 8 are in the context of suffering. If you read all around those verses we just looked at, it's talking about suffering. Sometimes suffering is a part of our being conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ.

When our worship planning team was brainstorming a bit about this week's service a month or so ago, or two ago, Andy Gathman mentioned that he was reading a book in which the author made the point, made this statement, "All religion needs to address a seminal question. What do we do with our pain?" Buddhism, at least in its classic sense, defines pain as an illusion. Hinduism presents pain as suffering or purification, suffering as purification or judgment, like Karma. You deserve what you get in this life. It's all part of working something out. Many other religions have to deal with this question.

But no matter what one's view is, the reason the question is so important to all of us as human beings is that pain and suffering are inevitable. We are all going to face some form of it. Now it's true that people deal with that when it happens in different ways. Some people try to dull it. Some people try to do all kinds of stuff to deal with it. But the question is, when we all face it, what will we do? How will we respond? How will we think of God? How will we think of ourselves? How will we think of our world?

And all suffering is difficult, but when we don't understand why certain things happen, it's very challenging. We, when it's most intense when we face our darkest hours, we're challenged to try to understand the meaning of suffering. But even if we understood the meaning... I mean, you're suffering. And even if God said, "And here is why," it still wouldn't necessarily help you in the existential reality of the suffering.

So we ask the question as Christians, "Why does a loving God allow it?" Some people deny belief in God because of the way they see the worlds, because of the way they see suffering happening. "A good God wouldn't allow the world that we see," they reason. But even that doesn't simplify things because even when we deny the existence of God. If a person denies the existence of God, most people still have a fairly deep sense that life ought to be a certain way. That's why I ask, "Where does that sense come from?"

I don't engage many atheists. Maybe some of you have. I don't. Maybe there are some here today! But a question to pose whether we engage someone or not is this if they're of an atheist belief: how do you reconcile a belief that there is no God with the fact that injustice and cruelty really do bother you at some level? How do you deal with that tension because it bothers most people, most normal people? The only people it doesn't bother are the sociopaths or the psychopaths who cause many times the evil and the suffering that we see in this world.

We don't have time to debate different presuppositions here. I wish we could. But if you would like to look into these concepts further, I have a couple of suggestions of books that you can look at. I'll try to... I hope we have them up here. Yeah. Tim Keller's The Reason for God is a great book to try to wrestle with some of these major issues. And then C. S. Lewis. A couple of books that are pretty well known. You might want to just jot down those titles and take a look at those.

But atheism aside for now. Believers and seekers and even inquiring agnostics need to think about how we reconcile our pain with the belief in God who is all-powerful and all-loving. Speaking of books, two of our GROW groups are studying James Bryan Smith's book The Good and Beautiful God. And in it, the author addresses these very issues because in his experience, when his wife was eight months pregnant, it was announced by the doctors that the baby would be born with a rare chromosomal disorder. And it was further predicted that the baby would die at birth. But that was wrong.

But the suffering increased because the baby lived two more years, a little over two years, and then finally succumbed to her condition. It's at that point in his book that Smith asks a question to the reader. "Have you ever been through a situation that made you doubt God's goodness?" And a similar question flows out of that. If so, how much were you willing to trust God in that context?

That brings us to our Scripture text today, the day that begins the passion of the Christ, the day that begins Holy Week. We choose a text that took place on Thursday evening of that week. In it, an event happens that describes... An event is described that gets very close to the heart of a Christian view of suffering. It's a passage that reveals how Jesus approached his darkest hours on earth. It reveals his human struggles with doing the will of God. It reveals how he placed his trust in his loving Heavenly Father in the midst of his pain and suffering.

And so let's look at it together. It can be found on page 907 and on to 908 in the Bible beneath the chair. And as we look at that, let's just pray so that we might ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand. Our Lord, we thank you for your promise to illumine our dark hearts. We pray that your Spirit would open our minds to understand not just the contents of what we read but what you're trying to say to us in it. We pray it in Christ's name, Amen.

Matthew 26:36 to 46.

"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.'"

"When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, 'Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!'"

The garden of Gethsemane is a place where love and suffering coincide. Do you know what Gethsemane means? It is from the Aramaic for "oil press." It's believed that Jesus was praying in a garden of an olive grove. Our Savior's spirit was beginning to be pressed, maybe crushed we would say, to extract the healing oil of salvation for the whole world. He was about to face torture and death and all kinds of physical suffering. But even more, it is in this garden that he becomes aware of the abyss of separation that he will experience from his loving Heavenly Father.

The ultimate depth of Christ's suffering can only be understood in the doctrine of the trinity. As Christians, we believe that God is one Being, one God, but three Persons expressed. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. An eternal relationship of love existed before time even began to express that love among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son of God was not created but was the eternal God who took part in creation. As the Bible says poetically, he lived forever in the bosom of the Father. That's John's Gospel. So an absolute relationship of intimacy shared from eternity past all the way to this point in the garden. And at the end of his life, Jesus was cut off from that relationship.

Listen to Tim Keller's comments in his book The Reason for God. He says:

"There may be no greater agony than the loss of a relationship we desperately want. If a mild acquaintance turns on you, condemns you, and criticizes you and says she never wants to see you again, it is painful. If someone you're dating does the same thing, it is qualitatively more painful. But if your spouse does this to you, or if one of your parents does this to you when you're still a child, the psychological damage is infinitely worse."

Now magnify that sense of separation a thousand or more fold for Jesus in the garden. He experienced a foretaste of this separation, and I believe that it sent him; it began to send him, into a state of shock. He said his soul was sorrowful, even to the point of death. He was not exaggerating. Again, as Luke's Gospel says he sweat great drops of blood.

But notice here even in this impending sense of separation how his prayer begins, and three times it says he prayed it. "My Father." He begins his prayer the same way he teaches us to begin our prayers. "Our Father." And Mark's Gospel adds, "Abba, Father." Abba is a term of deep reverential trust in God and love. And this way of addressing God reveals that Jesus is trusting God and God's goodness toward him that he has known all of his life when suffering and pain came into the picture.

Jim Cook was one of my favorite seminary professors along with Pastor Murray Smoot and Dave Patton, who we remembered this past week and buried. Jim was part of my ordination service here at Central Church in May, or June, of 1987. Jim's son was stricken with leukemia at the age of 19. And after a year of struggling with the disease, he was told that they couldn't anything more for him at the Mayo Clinic, and he probably only had about six months left to live.

Now before all this news was broken to them, his son had become engaged to a young woman. And so my seminary professor told me that he said, "I wondered what he was going to do." And they still decided to marry. Jim Cook shared with me that when he saw his son and his daughter-in-law to be standing at the altar exchanging their vows, the words of Isaac Watson's hymn "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" came to him. "Did e'er such love and sorrow meet?" The words of that hymn in its entire context in that one line, "See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet or thorns compose so rich a crown."

The Good and Beautiful God author, the one who lost his two-year-old daughter, says this.

"The reason Jesus could trust God in his darkest hour is because he had lived closely with his good and beautiful Father for all of eternity." Then taking it into his own experience, "I now see how love that has been proved can be trusted even when things don't make sense."

So what does all this mean for us? Two things stand out to me.

1. Ultimately it means that Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection means that our salvation has been won for us. Jesus experienced separation from God the Father so that we would not have to be separated from all eternity. The reason this is called Holy Week is because God went to such depths, such extent, to deal with everything unholy in us that causes us to be separated from a holy God to bring us back into relationship with him.

Palm Sunday and everything that follows this week in the chronology of events in this week of suffering for Jesus shows that we are loved and accepted by God before we ever knew it. Romans says God clearly proves his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And now that we know it, we're called to respond. Now please listen. The gospel message is not, "I obey; therefore I am accepted." It is not, "I follow the rules; therefore God is pleased with me, and I'm accepted." That is not the gospel.

The gospel instead is, "I am already accepted. God has already shown God's love toward me in what Jesus did in his life, his death, and his resurrection. Therefore, in response to God's love, I turn away from my self-orientation and receive his life, and I am enabled to obey through his life, through his power." Then I begin to experience the same kind of closeness with God that Jesus did. It's not something I'm earning. It's a gift. It's a free gift of grace. That's our ultimate hope.

That's the first thing that stands out. The second thing, the penultimate hope, is this. Not only are we saved from ourselves to begin an eternal relationship with God that starts whenever we respond in faith, but...

2. Gethsemane also teaches us that God will be with us when we're called to drink the cup of suffering. Jesus said, "Father, please let this cup be taken away from me." Now what does that word cup even mean? Here is how James Smith defines it in his book. "A cup is anything that we struggle with accepting as our lot in life. Our cup is usually the thing that makes it difficult to believe that God is good."

I wonder what your personal cup has been, is? Have you been hurt by a divorce? Have you suffered a major loss? Are you unable to find the life partner who you believe will complete you? Have you experienced the death of a dream? Is there some loss of physical capacity? Or is it the fear of facing something God is calling you to do?

Thinking about 1987, I'm remembering being in the guest bedroom of one of the elders of the First Presbyterian Church in Sunbury. Her name was Joyce McLean.. Ellen and I were staying there. It was the night before I preached for the call to be the pastor of that church, and I was very scared. I wasn't scared because I had to preach. I had done that a few times before then, spoken to people and all. It wasn't that I was afraid to do that. It wasn't even that I was scared that I would be rejected in receiving the call. What scared me the most was that I would receive the call.

I remember kneeling at the bedside in tears because I knew enough about the Church to know that the pastorate is not a criticism-free zone. At age 36, I felt inadequate for the entire task. And in due time, I was able to say with Job, "That which I fear has come upon me" because there were some Gethsemane moments after that too just in the shear nature of being a pastor and not knowing what you're doing and upsetting people and vice versa. Can I tell you a secret? I don't worry about that anymore. And it's not just because I'm the associate pastor either. It's because of you. It's because I serve such a forgiving congregation.

But I know you're not perfect. And I know you know I'm not perfect. And that's the beauty of it. We live in the grace of God. Bu I'll tell you this. I'm going to have to face more Gethsemane moments of some kind and so are you. They're a part of what it takes to conform us to the image of the Son of God. But Jesus promises that He will give us the strength that we need to face our Gethsemane moments because we do not serve a God who is removed from our pain.

And lest we think that the pain was all on Jesus, we have no idea what God the Father was experiencing. None of us can even comprehend it. But once Ellen and I caught a glimpse, like a sliver, of understanding. When our daughter, Mandy, was three, she was running in the hallway, and she fell. When she fell, her upper lip caught the edge of an open door, and it split her lip right on top. And the weirdest thing was there was no blood. It was just this gaping cut. So we're freaking out as parents.

We call Dr. Gary Goshorn, who was a our pediatrician at the time. He said, "Take her to the Emergency Room. I'll come there. I'll call a plastic surgeon, see if they can come. We'll check it out." The plastic surgeon arrives and says, "Yup. She needs plastic surgery. This needs to be sewn together." Well at that point, our three-year-old is put in on kind of like a gurney on this thing and like a little papoose thing straps over her, and her arms are tied down. And they're carting her away. And she is crying, "Mommy! Daddy!" And they're not letting us go in to be with her because we would faint in that situation.

At that moment, we knew we had to let them do that or else she'd be disfigured for the rest of her life. Some day she'd come to me and say, "Why didn't you do something?" We were experiencing agony as parents that probably pales in comparison to what a lot of you have faced. But we caught a tiny glimpse of what it must have been like in the Godhead on the Cross. Amazing that Jesus said even when he said he was feeling forsaken, he still said, "My God, my God!" Even on his lips in his dying moments, he still understood that God was with him and was his God, his Father.

But our Savior was tied down and dragged away by those who were not thinking about his healing. They were pawns through whom our loving and trustworthy God was working to achieve the reconciliation of the world to himself so that by his stripes we could be healed, so that we might be restored from the disfigurement of life lived apart from the love of God.

Listen once more to what Tim Keller says.

"If we again ask the question, 'Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue' and we look at the Cross of Jesus, we still don't know what the answer is. However, we know now what the answer isn't. It cannot be that he doesn't love us. It can't be that he is indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself."

So what do we do with our pain? That's the question that all religions are called to ask and answer? Here is how I believe that we might answer it as believers, as Christians. Jesus is God. He went to the Cross for us out of suffering love and obedience toward his Heavenly Father. By faith in Christ, we find deep consolation and strength to face our pain. And in our worst suffering, we too can know God as Immanuel, God with us.

This loving God will work all things toward our good so that he might fulfill his purpose to make us like his Son, our Lord Jesus. And that through his Son, one day all evil and suffering will be vanquished to such an extent that what has happened will only serve to make our future life and joy infinitely greater. It's quite possible that today you may be dealing with some Gethsemane moments. Or perhaps you just need to draw closer to God for strength for something you're facing. Or perhaps there may be some who need to die to themselves and receive the life of Jesus perhaps for the first time.

Andy in a minute is just going to come up, and he is going to sing a special song. We're going to continue in worship through the listening of that song. And I want to invite you if God is speaking to you, to get up out of your seat during that song and come and kneel at these steps if you're able. Just like Jesus knelt in the garden, if God is speaking to you, come and do that. If you can't kneel, come and sit in the first row. When the song is over, I'm going to pray for everybody who has gathered and then we'll continue to worship the Lord.

Let's pray: Lord, we ask that your Spirit would be moving over the waters of this congregation as it were, the troubled hearts and minds that we bring today. Our need can be met in Jesus as we turn to him. Lord, I pray and ask that your Holy Spirit would seal these understandings and these thoughts and this depth of love to us so that we might gain strength and be lifted out of the pit and find the grace that we need. For we ask it in his name, Amen.

© 2010, Rev. George Antonakos
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org