The Difference One Hour Makes
Mark 14:32-42
One hour can make all the difference in the world. Ask every one of us on that first Sunday morning after daylight savings time. Our body just doesn’t seem to adjust to that one hour of time. We never get it back, even when the clock turns back.
Researchers call it “social jetlag.” Studies have even shown increases in accidents and health issues right after the time change. Why? Because our bodies don’t have a “sync” button.
That abrupt shift throws us into collective, acute jetlag—we're not just tired; we're physiologically off-kilter. Then come eight months of living out of sync with the sun under DST: darker mornings delay our natural reset, evening light pushes bedtime later, and it contributes to higher rates of obesity, depression, workplace mishaps, and chronic sleep issues—especially tough on kids and teens whose bodies need that alignment most.
Our “social” clocks and our “biological” clocks are mismatched, and we feel it. That’s the difference one hour can make.
We all know what it’s like to be “asleep” when we should be alert—whether from a time change or just life’s exhaustion. In Mark 14:32-42, the disciples and Jesus face their own “one hour” test in the Garden of Gethsemane. We see two very different responses. Let’s see what difference one hour can make.
READ MARK 14:32-42
The disciples were experiencing their own version of both physical and spiritual jetlag. They had physical jetlag simply from the long week they just went through. Think about it? The week began with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. It was a festive time with a party atmosphere. What a way to begin the week. It was like Mardi Gras before there was Mardi Gras!
As the week progressed, they were back and forth from Bethany to Jerusalem. They had been engaged with Jesus in several confrontations with scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees throughout the week. Compounding their weariness were the nightly dinners Jesus and his disciples were invited to, not the least of which was the dinner at the home of Simon the Leper where the woman with the alabaster jar anointed Jesus’s feet with oil.
They had been with Jesus and heard him deliver the Olivet discourse talking about end times prophecy, not to mention they just left the Passover meal (which usually lasted around three hours) before walking out to the Garden of Gethsemane—which was outside the city walls of Jerusalem. It was a long day to end a long week, and the disciples were physically tired.
They were also spiritually jetlagged. Of course, that’s what happens to all of us when we’re physically tired. What’s the first thing many of us say when we’ve had a long week? “I just don’t know if I can make it to church today. I think I need to stay home and rest.” It’s a default for many of us, right? But, the disciples had several challenging spiritual experiences in the preceding days.
Three times leading up to this moment, Jesus had told them what was coming in regards to His own death. Peter had been on a spiritual roller coaster from being lauded as spiritually astute in knowing Jesus was the Messiah to being called Satan by Jesus, and all the disciples got a little lesson in humility a couple of different times when they were concerned about who was greatest in the Kingdom. He had, most recently, told them that they would abandon him in his hour of need. Maybe it was spiritual whiplash rather than spiritual jetlag. Suffice it to say, this was a challenging spiritual time for the disciples. I can understand their weariness.
I certainly know what it feels like later in the evening after things have wound down. Bill Malone, my grandfather, used to go home every evening after a long day at the store and just sit in his chair until it was time to go to bed. I now understand why he did that. He was tired!
I’m like the old, African-American lady who said, “When I works, I works hard. When I plays, I plays hard. When I sits, I goes to sleep!” I know the feeling. Luke’s version of the event even indicates that it was a spiritual weariness that made them unable to stay awake. They were tired with grief.
Jesus leads the disciples out to the garden. He tells eight of them to wait and he takes Peter, James and John (his inner circle) deeper into the garden, and says to them, “My soul is troubled to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch.” Then, he goes deeper into the garden and prays.
He returns to find them sleeping. “Couldn’t you watch for even an hour?” Jesus asks. Jesus is in his most agonizing moment, and the disciples sleep through it. The cross is on his mind, and the disciples are too tired to notice. Then, with honest compassion, He adds perhaps the most revealing words of the night: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak—we get that. Jesus got it too. But rather than sleeping through the crisis, He pressed deeper into surrender, praying the prayer that would carry Him—and us—through the darkest hour.
Jesus goes back into the garden and prays for the second time, “Abba, Father, everything is possible with you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Only Mark’s telling of this moment reveals the intimacy that existed between God, the Father and God, the Son. Mark includes the Aramaic “Abba.” Abba was the word children used to call out to their Father—like a 5 year-old running into his Father’s lap crying “Daddy!” Mark shows us the intimate connection that exists in the Godhead, but at the same time, we glimpse the fulness of Christ’s humanity. Yes, Jesus was fully God, but he was also fully human.
We’ve never encountered Jesus this way in the Gospels. Here, in Mark’s Gospel, we find him overwhelmed and distressed. That’s not the Jesus we like to see. We like to see Jesus who shows up fashionably late and raises a man (Lazarus) from the dead. We like to see Jesus feed the 5,000 (and more), calm the storm and walk on the water. Yes! We like to see the Jesus that drives the money changers out of the Temple with a whip—man, that’ll make a great action movie! That’s our Jesus! Not this deeply distressed, Jesus. This unsettles us. It is, however, a reflection of the human nature of Jesus.
Even the location in the Garden of Gethsemane is instructive for us. It’s not by happenstance that Jesus goes there. I suspect it was a place Jesus frequented in the area. How else would Judas, who was about to betray him, know where to find him? Judas left the Passover meal before Jesus and the other disciples. He had to know if they weren’t in the Upper Room, they’d most likely go to the Garden.
And Gethsemane literally means in Aramaic “oil press.” It means the olives have pressure applied to them so that they “surrender” the oil inside. Yes, Jesus is hard-pressed, but it is in the pressure endured in his human nature that we discover the “oil” that brings healing to the nations.
What an amazing sign of hope to be found in this one hour in the garden. What is the hope? Pressure is never pointless. When life presses in on us (as it so often does), God does not waste it. God the Father would not waste the suffering of His Son in this moment, nor in the days ahead. It was this moment of pressure that changed the trajectory of God’s relationship with His creation.
Listen to how the prophet Isaiah described this pressure centuries before:
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
(Isaiah 53:3-5)
As much as we like the miracle working Jesus, it’s good for us to see Him this way. Might I suggest that seeing Jesus this way even gives us more hope? Here is where I see more hope—it’s not a sin to be overwhelmed. For some reason (and I think it has a lot to do with the “prosperity” gospel), we think we believers are supposed to be happy all the time. I remind us that happiness depends on what “happens” to us—they both come from the same root word—and not everything that happens to us is “happy.”
Here is what else gives me hope as I look to Jesus in the garden. It’s not sinful to pray for deliverance from those “unhappy” circumstances that life throws our way. Not once, not twice, but three times Jesus prays for deliverance. “Father, take this cup from me” (verse 36), and (verse 39)… “he went away and prayed the same thing.” Matthew tells us Jesus prayed this same prayer the third time (Matthew 26:44). I think if Jesus could pray for deliverance three times, it’s okay for me to pray for deliverance, too. If anybody ever questions my prayer for deliverance, I’ll just tell them, “I’m being as much like Jesus as I can be!”
Don’t misunderstand me, though. There are some “unhappy” circumstances we find ourselves in that are the result of our own doing. Those circumstances are the result of our bad decisions, and the reality is bad decisions often lead to bad consequences. I’m not so sure the Father appreciates the prayers we pray hoping to be delivered from the consequences of our own stupidity. I’m just saying…
Yes, even this depressing, despondent and distressed portrait of Jesus is a source of hope for us. Jesus shows us that surrender to the Father’s will is the key to faithfulness. Again, Jesus doesn’t just tell us. He shows us. He is our example of faithfulness under pressure. What does Jesus do when the pressure comes? He prays. There is the key for us, too.
Prayer is not about getting what we want from God. It is about finding the strength to go forward even when the Father’s will is not what we desire. We can’t see the big picture. We can’t see the beginning from the end. God is playing the long game while we spend much of our time looking for the shortcut.
I’ve said before that being in the center of the Father’s will is not always the most comfortable place to be. It is the BEST place to be, even in the most uncomfortable moments. For Jesus, the center of the Father’s will was the cross. Yet, it was the cross that would redeem the world—including you and me.
If you haven’t already faced your “hour” of pressure—your Garden of Gethsemane moment—know that you will. Life happens. Will you face that hour sleeping like the disciples, or will you face it surrendered like Jesus?
There are many of us here who have already faced that hour of crisis only to discover we were sleeping. We gave up. We couldn’t handle it. Not to worry. The same compassion Jesus had for Peter, James and John he has for us. He calls us back to faithfulness. He calls us back to surrender. He calls us back to Himself. He offers us grace and forgiveness.
How do I know? Because He’s already been there, and He knows what it’s like. Joseph Scriven captured the depth of Jesus’ understanding for us in his most popular hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus:
“Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged;
take it to the Lord in prayer!
Can we find a friend so faithful
who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
take it to the Lord in prayer!
You know? We may never get that hour of DST back, but for all the hours we “slept” through the crisis, Jesus gives us grace back. I think I’ll take the grace. Amen!
