Matthew 26:36-54 – Mess Ups with Good Intentions
Today’s passage is an interesting one. We have been looking at The Life of Jesus since we started the new year, and as we approach Easter – Resurrection Day – we find ourselves getting ever closer to the cross, to His death, by which He forgave us. It’s a wonderful time of the year to spend thinking of your sins and your failures, and to go to Him for forgiveness, cleansing, and a new hope.
Now, I’m working on the assumption that if you are here today, you really do want to do what’s right. Sometimes it may look very hard, and maybe sometimes you don’t feel like doing the right thing. But by and large, I believe that you want to do what’s right.
Well, Jesus’ disciples wanted to do what’s right also. Today we are looking at 2 things where the disciples messed up in doing what was right. I think we’ll recognize these things in our own lives too.
The 1st is in Matthew 26:36-45.
Let me give you the scene. Jesus and His disciples have just had the Last Supper. Judas has fled. The other disciples think he has gone to do something noble but instead, he’s gone to betray Jesus. Jesus and the 11 have gone to an olive grove called the Garden of Gethsemane. From those 11, Jesus singled out Peter, James and John, His 3 closest disciples, to go with Him a little further into the Garden. At some point Jesus tells them to stay while He goes a little further in yet. But He tells them to stay watch over Him.
This is where the movie The Passion of the Christ starts. Jesus was agonizing in the Garden, because He knew what was about to happen. He knew that a mob was about to arrive to arrest Him, after His disciple Judas kissed Him, turning Him in to the authorities. We really get glimpses into His humanness here. Yes, Jesus was and is God. But Jesus most certainly was human too.
And He wanted Peter, James and John to watch with Him. He wanted to know that there were people around trying to help Him. He wanted, even needed, the encouragement that His friends could provide. He wanted to know that He wasn’t alone, even if His friends were just out of earshot.
But they fell asleep. Not just once or twice, but 3 times. He asked them to pray with Him, to stay nearby while He was in anguish and pain, while He was going through an emotional turmoil. But they couldn’t. They didn’t. I think they wanted to, but they didn’t.
I say they wanted to because Jesus said they wanted to. In v41 He says, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” What He was saying is that a person can have the desire to do what’s right, but that doesn’t make it easy for them to do it. A person can want to do the right thing, but that’s actually not enough. You need more than good intentions.
But prayer is sometimes so hard. Prayer is a challenge and a struggle sometimes. Not always – sometimes it comes so easily. Like when we are in trouble or when we feel very guilty. That’s when it’s easy to talk to God, but not so easy to listen to Him.
Isaac Bashevis Singer once confessed, “I only pray when I’m in trouble…but I’m in trouble all the time, and so I pray all the time.” But for most of us, for most of the time, it’s much easier to sleep than to pray. It’s easier for us to try to take care of our own needs instead of waiting on the Lord. It’s easier for us to do what we feel are the most pressing needs than to do what is better or more important in the long run.
We can even come up with good reasons. The disciples probably tried hard to pray and watch with Jesus, but they also knew how tired they were. They probably rationalized, “Well, I’ll just take this little nap now, so I’ll be better refreshed to help Jesus later.”
But Jesus didn’t want help later. He didn’t want excuses. He didn’t want them rationalize. He wanted them to pray, and they didn’t. Because it’s hard work to pray. It’s a lot easier to just sit there and listen. Which is why we have a lot more people at Sunday morning services than at prayer meetings.
Well, the evening didn’t get any better. Jesus woke up the 3, clearly with disappointment in His voice. But there was no more time. They weren’t going to get another chance to prove anything to the Lord because Judas had arrived with the mob. Yes, God loves giving second chances, but I’d be foolish to tell you that they never run out, either.
The disciples did not react well to the mob showing up. John 18 tells us that Jesus gave them a display of His power. He said, in effect, that He was no mere prophet but rather something greater –that He was God. The mob fell back, but advanced again. At that advance, Peter, who was prepared to defend Jesus at all costs, pulled out his sword and started swinging for the 1st person he could reach. That was Malchus, who was a servant of the high priest. Probably, Peter was swinging horizontally and Malchus saved his neck from being cut off, but he lost his ear in the process.
You could say a lot about what happened next. Luke 22 is the only one of the Gospels that tells us that Jesus touched Malchus’ ear and healed it. This is the only healing recorded in the Gospels that happened immediately after the injury. This is the only healing of a wound inflicted by a person. And it’s likely the only healing of a person who was an enemy of Jesus. What’s amazing is that hardly anybody even noticed it. The mob was so intent on arresting Jesus and bringing order to the situation that they didn’t seem to see that Jesus wasn’t really harmful – he was helpful.
Someone said that it wasn’t really compassion on Malchus that drove Jesus to heal him. In fact, whom Jesus was showing compassion on was His disciples, because He didn’t want them to be arrested along with Him. Assault and battery is likely to get arrested, too.
But no matter the reason, the fact is, Jesus healed His enemy. Then He told Peter to put the sword away. The fact is, Jesus did not need Peter to fight for Him. He did not want Peter to fight for Him. Jesus wanted Peter to pray for Him, not fight for Him.
You know, I’ve got a hunch that if we had more praying in churches, we’d have less fighting. I’m not saying that there would never be personality conflicts. I’m not saying that we’d always see eye to eye. I’m saying that people would be more kind to others and less likely to lash out if we all had more tender, teachable and humble spirits.
In fact, quite frankly, Jesus doesn’t need you to defend Him to anyone and everyone who attacks Him. Our passage says Jesus could have called 12 legions of angels – that’s 72,000 angels – to come down to protect Him from the armies. He certainly didn’t need 12 disciples to try to hack down a few soldiers. The would-be defenders didn’t actually improve things – they made things worse.
You know, when we try to defend Jesus, we get into all kinds of silly fights too. We get into Biblical arguments about all kinds of things that might be interesting but are also distracting. And the problem is that we try very hard to defend our points of view – well, we call it defending the Bible but it isn’t really because the other person isn’t attacking the Bible but our viewpoint about it – and then we get offended because we can’t convince the other person on an issue we feel strongly about, and then we lash out. In our attempts to defend Jesus, we wind up attacking others. We cut other people’s ears off because we get defensive.
Well, we saw that the disciples would rather sleep than pray. And now we see that the disciples would rather react than respond. They would rather fight than think. They’d rather lash out than obey. Despite all their good intentions, another person got injured. And not by the Gospel, but by Jesus’ followers.
So you can see that even though Jesus was counting on His disciples that night, they failed Him more than once. Well, what’s wonderful about this story is that we serve the same Savior as those first disciples did. And even though the disciples’ performance was less than stellar, Jesus’ response was still divine.
How did He treat those who fell asleep while they were supposed to be praying? Well, even those He was disappointed, they moved on. He didn’t continue to beat them up or remind them of their failure. He moved on. And since He continued to do what He was supposed to do, perhaps there were no consequences of their failure. Except that they lost the privilege of serving Jesus. They lost the opportunity to help Jesus. Which, really, was their loss, not Jesus’.
Yes, He wanted them to pray, but not doing it was their loss. Sometimes, the consequences of not doing what we should do is not a matter of punishment; it’s a matter of missing out on something good that God wants for us. When we refuse or neglect to pray, as we are all commanded, perhaps the biggest punishment we get is that we miss out on God using us to serve other people. We hurt ourselves.
And how did Jesus treat all those involved in Malchus’ ear removal? You know, the good news is, Jesus sometimes uses our failures to help others. Jesus had the opportunity to heal Malchus because of Peter’s failure. Jesus is able to take our failures and mistakes and misfired good intentions and bring something good from them. The very fact that 50 years later John records the man’s name likely means that Malchus eventually became a believer, and I’ll bet that he never forgot Jesus’ healing touch.
Of course this is not permission to use violence or anger to get your religious point of view across, just because Jesus can use it for good. Christians still have a hard time getting through to Muslims, partly because most think they are evil, which they are not, and partly because violence was used 1000 years ago to evangelize them. Same thing with the homosexual issue: getting angry and lashing out calling them names is NOT going to get them any closer to God.
What I’m saying is that even when we mess up, God forgives and He moves on and so can we and God can use our failure to heal others. But the point is, when Jesus asks you to pray, don’t find other things to do. And when Jesus asks you to trust, don’t get angry instead. Pray. Listen. Think. Ask. Talk. Be calm. Don’t lash out. Don’t fight. Don’t make it your whole mission to defend Jesus if it’s going to turn you into someone who argues about Him all the time.
