Walsingham Pilgrimage 2013
I have been asked to give a reflection on the Passion of Christ
What is the passion of Christ?
I guess the usual definition is
”the period of intense suffering in the life of Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane to the crucifixion”.
As I thought about it, for me the Passion of Christ is summed up in one verse
42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Lk 22:42)
Let’s look at the context in Luke 22:
Jesus Prays on the Mount of Olives
39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.
40 On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” 41 He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed,
42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.
44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.
45 When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow.
46 “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”
I have been to Jerusalem a number of times and the Garden of Gethsemane can be found at the foot of the Mount of Olives.
There you will find the Roman Catholic Church of All Nations next to the small garden of Gethsamene.
And there is more symbolism in that name than I first thought.
For it was in that Garden next to that Church that Jesus resolved to go through with the Cross.
In the words of Mrs Alexander in her famous hymn “There is a green hill far away”
“He only could unlock the gates
Of heaven and let us in.”
The Garden of Gethsemane is where Jesus spent his last hours praying to his Father, just before Judas betrayed him to the Romans.
And St Luke lets us into a very intimate prayer time Jesus had with his heavenly Father.
Jesus was no fool.
He knew what was coming and, like any sane person, He dreaded it.
He sweated drops of blood and apparently this is now a known medical phenomenon
It is called hemato/drosis - a very rare condition in which a human sweats blood.
Wikapedia describes hemato/drosis like this
“It may occur when a person is suffering extreme levels of stress, for example, facing his or her own death.
Several historical references have been described; notably by Leonardo da Vinci: describing a soldier who sweated blood before battle, men unexpectedly given a death sentence.
Jesus experienced hemati/drosis when he was praying in the garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:44).”
Jesus sweated blood because of the extreme anxiety He was in - for the following two reasons:
1. He could see the pain and torture of Crucifixion.
It was one of the cruellest deaths ever devised by mankind.
Just watch Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ ”if you really want to experience the horror of a Roman crucifixion.
2. He realised too that it would mean a spiritual separation from His heavenly Father for the time as he bore the sins of the world.
“My God, my God why have you foresaken me” – his words
from the Cross reflects the utter desolation that he felt
on the Cross when he died for all our sin.
But what really struck me were Jesus own words
42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Lk 22:42)
My own self preservation would have I am sure caused me to turn tail if I was facing what Jesus was facing.
But Jesus had a different motivation to my own self-preservation.
In fact as I prepared I recalled Jesus words where he said
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Mt 16:25)
1. The Source of Christ's Passion
What was the source of the passion of Christ?
It was his intense love for mankind and His great love of His heavenly father
For the sake of restoring us to fellowship with God, Jesus as St Paul said in our epistle reading last Sunday (Palm Sunday) said that Jesus
made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant by being made in human likeness (Philippians 2:6-7).
His passionate love caused him to leave the glory of heaven to take human form and live an obedient life of self-sacrifice required by God.
2. The Director of Christ's Passion
The passion of Christ was directed by the Father's will and resulted in a life whose purpose was to end here on earth at the cross (John 12:27).
Jesus was dedicated to accomplish the requirements foretold by prophecies and the will of the Father.
As I am sure you have heard many preachers say:
In Matthew 4:8-9, you will recall in the Temptations of Christ in the desert that the devil offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world in exchange for his worship.
This offer represented a way for Jesus to establish his kingdom on earth and bypass the cross.
It may have seemed like an easy short cut, but Jesus was passionate to accomplish the exact plan of His heavenly Father and so rejected it.
The final words of Jesus from the cross are a triumphant proclamation.
It is finished!Jesus said (John 19:30)
3. The Dependence of Christ's Passion
Someone once said these very true words:
“The passion of Christ originated in love, was directed by the purpose of God and was lived in dependence on the presence of God.”
Jesus himself said every word that he said was given to him by His heavenly Father who commanded him what to say and how to say it (see John 12:49 for instance).
Perhaps Jesus words in Gethsamene can throw a light for you this week on the two greatest commandments.
These two commands did not originate from Jesus but can be found in the Old Testament
The first is found in Dt 6:5 which says,
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."
The second is found in Leviticus 19:18 where it says:
18 “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD
Jesus genius’ was in revealing to us that these two commandments summed up
• the Law and the Personality
of God his heavenly Father.
And his prayer in the Garden:
42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Lk 22:42)
sums up the keeping of both these commandments PERFECTLY.
My thanks to the author of http://christianity.about.com/od/ topicalbiblestudies/a/passionofchrist.htm for most helpful thoughts
