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What’s the worst sound in the world? You might say
the worst sound in the world is your father yelling at you. The worst sound in
the world is the sound of a spanking being given out. The worst sound in the
world is your mother telling you, “Just you wait ‘till your father gets
home."
I would put before you tonight that the worst
sound in the world is the sound of a sigh. A sigh of exasperation. A sigh of
resignation. A sigh, because words can do nothing, can change nothing. Things
have gone beyond words. The sound a person makes when he knows it is all up to
him to accomplish a difficult task, it is all up to him to restrain his anger at
others.
When your dad, while mowing the lawn comes around
the corner into the back yard and discovers you have just stripped all the bark
you could reach off the apple tree to build an Indian bark canoe, and he simply
turns off the mower, sighs, and goes into the house. When he has it all planned
that he is going to reshingle the roof one fine Saturday and he finds his boys
have, in the days before cell phones and instant communication, have planned on
staying at their buddy’s house overnight and will be back later that afternoon.
That’s the terrible sound I’m talking about.
I wonder if that sound could be heard in
Gethsemane, the night Jesus prayed? If it could, it would certainly show
A Glory Hidden in the Savior’s Sighs
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A sigh for the work at hand.
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A sigh for the lost all around.
Luke tells us, “He withdrew about a stone’s throw
beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup
from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’ An angel from heaven appeared to
him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and
his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground (41-44)."
Jesus knew what he was up against. Ever since he
was twelve years old, that time when he was in the adult Bible classes in the
Temple and everyone was amazed at his questions, ever since then he knew he was
the Savior of the world. He knew he was going to die a violent, untimely death.
But let’s face it. For the young, thoughts about death are mostly theoretical.
But as the adult Jesus, now in his early thirties, carried out his ministry, saw
the opposition arise, knew the slander of his enemies’ words and the power of
their positions, the cross cast a longer and longer shadow on his path. Just
before the time of his Transfiguration he could clearly say to his disciples,
“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be killed (Luke 9.22)." He left very
little doubt as to what kind of death he would face when he added, “If anyone
would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow
me (23)."
He knew he would die on the cross. A horrible
death. Neither quick nor unexpected. A painful death. A spectacle for all to see
and tremble at the end of those who aroused the anger of the Romans. A shameful
death, to be numbered among the criminals.
Yet that was a death others would face, too. Two
thieves would be crucified the same way Jesus was, one on his left and another
on his right. Tradition tells us Peter would be crucified in Rome, head down.
The Roman historians tell us of hundreds, no, thousands of people whom the
Romans crucified. Entire towns at a time when it served their purposes. It
wasn’t the physical death that so unnerved Jesus according to his human nature.
That wasn’t what led him to the sighs at Gethsemane.
It was the spiritual suffering the cross held for
him. “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1.29)."
That’s what John the Baptist told his hearers when he saw Jesus back from his
forty days of temptation in the wilderness. To carry the sins of the world on
your back. And we talk about frozen, concentrated orange juice! How concentrated
did all the sin of all the world have to be to be carried on the back of one
man? When a woman is induced in labor, it is a terrible thing because the labor
pains are upon her, again and again and again, with no relief, no remission,
wave upon unending wave of feeling like you are being ripped apart. What tidal
waves of suffering, tsunamis of terror would engulf Jesus without let-up for the
hours he would hang on the cross the very next day!
“Father, if you are willing take this cup from me;
yet not my will, but yours be done." Who wouldn’t expect the perfect Savior,
true man and true God, to have prayed that?
And the Father, always good to his word, always
ready to give a good answer to prayer, sends an angel to strengthen Jesus as he
again went before his father in prayer, in anguish, sweat falling from his
stricken brow like drops of blood.
And do you hear it? Do you hear the sigh as he
rises? Do you hear the sigh as he closes his prayers with that final “Amen"? The
cup is his and his alone. The cross lies before him with all its terrors.
But don’t let my imagined thoughts lead your
faith. To the word! To the testimony! Hear the Savior’s very thoughts
prophetically spoken through the prophet Isaiah. “I have trodden the winepress
alone. I looked, but there was no one to help, I was appalled that no one gave
support; so my own arm worked salvation for me (Isaiah 62.3, 5)."
(sigh) Let it now begin, the work at hand.
But we said earlier that a sigh can also be given
for others. Might we see that here also? Look at the others with Jesus in this
text.
“Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives,
and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, ‘Pray
that you will not fall into temptation (39-40).’"
He gives all his disciples a job to do. They are
to pray, pray that they not fall into temptation. They would be tempted to
desert Jesus. They would be tempted to deny Jesus. They would be tempted to be
disgusted they ever believed in Jesus. They would be tempted to despair that
there was any hope of heaven for them. It wasn’t just a job he gave Peter, James
and John, for what kind of leader would warn only a few of his followers of the
dangers at hand? Yes, he took Peter, James and John away from the other
disciples and asks them to pray for him, “stay here and keep watch with me
(Matthew 26.38)." But he tells all his disciples to pray, for the hour of
temptation was now upon them.
And the results of his words? After Jesus was
wrestled in prayer, Luke tells us, “When he rose from prayer and went back to
the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. ‘Why are you
sleeping?’ he asked them. ‘Get up and pray so that you will not fall into
temptation (45-46).’"
They didn’t pray. They didn’t do what Jesus told
them, commanded them, to do. It wasn’t because they didn’t hear him. It wasn’t
because they were ignorant of what a crisis they were in. Remember how Luke put
it? They were sleeping because they were “exhausted from sorrow." They were worn
out with all the bad news Jesus was giving them. They would rather fall asleep
than face reality. Like a teenager coming home from a terrible day at
school—flunking one test, not making the team, being dumped by his girl friend
and getting into a minor fender bender in the school parking lot—who just slinks
back to his bedroom and falls asleep, sleeping through supper, sleeping through
his favorite TV shows, sleeping until the alarm clock wakes him up the next
morning, after 13 hours of sleep because he doesn’t want to be conscious, so the
disciples just wanted to drift away in sleep and escape the troubles they knew
were coming.
And can you hear it? Can you hear the sigh coming
from Jesus when he first comes upon them? The sighs over the best of the best
and how lost they are, the ones who had been with him all this time and still
didn’t know, didn’t show, the lessons Jesus had spent so many precious days
teaching them? Can you hear the sighs coming from the bottom of Jesus’ chest,
ending only in his repeated plea that they pray that they not fall into
temptation—a plea now too late, a plea now interrupted by the approach of the
crowd led by Judas the betrayer?
Sad. Tragic. Even more so because the scene is
repeated over and over again in the lives of the best of the best and most
learned of Christians, people like you and me.
Some of us, blessed to be brought to faith by the
Holy Spirit through Baptism as infants, have believed in Jesus for longer than
we have been able to distinguish our right hands from our left. Some of us have
spent more hours in church, in worship, in Bible classes, than we spent in
college preparing for our life’s work. We know the story. We know the book. We
know the Savior, his power and glory, his humility and mercy. But how lost we
can be! When confronted with bad news, loss of a job, the doc telling us we’ve
got cancer, a tearful son telling us on the phone his wife has just filed for
divorce so she can be with her lover, what is our first impulse? Where do our
instincts lead us? A stiff drink? Denial? Despair over what will ever happen to
us and our loved ones? Anger at God for doing this to us? I would guess, just
judging from my own experience, and knowing that a human heart beats within your
chest, too, we feel some of those things, maybe even a combination of those
things.
Our first reaction is seldom, “Take it to the Lord
in prayer." “God will work good even out of this."
And when the sorrows persist, when the crisis
drags out, when troubles become a part of our daily lives, making themselves at
home, keeping us up at night, robbing us of our appetite at the table,
distracting us during the day, doesn’t the exhaustion of sorrow threaten to
overwhelm us even more? On second thought, upon further reflection, after
chewing on it for a while, our sinful human nature will always tell us we’ve got
to do something to get ourselves out of this jam and if we can’t, well, you
might as well give up all hope.
Can you hear it? Can you hear that sigh from
Jesus, as he draws it from the bottom of his chest? That sigh which proceeds,
but by a second, his everlasting arms of love reaching out for us to embrace us,
to soothe us, to comfort, comfort my people?
For the hidden glory of the cross is that the lost
will not stay lost and the impossible task will not stay impossible. The Son of
Man will die for the sins of the world and by his death we will be saved.
A Glory Hidden in the Savior’s Sighs
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A sigh for the work at hand.
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A sigh for the lost all around.
I don’t know if Jesus sighed on that night in the
Garden of Gethsemane, but I do know he was in agony, he prayed, that he was so
hard-pressed that his sweat dropped like blood from his face. And I do know that
he was obedient to his Father’s will, willing to suffer and die the next day, to
take sin away, to ransom us from hell. And because of all that, we run to his
arms, rejoice in his embrace, as he sighs over us, no longer a sigh of sorrow or
exasperation, but a sigh of joy and happiness forevermore.
Rev. Don Pieper is a minister in the Wisconsin
Evangelical Lutheran Synod. He has devoted his life to sharing the Gospel of
Christ to all of Gods people. For more information about the Green Valley
Evangelical Lutheran Church visit us at www.gvelc.com or call 702-454-8979
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Ask for Pastor Don or Pastor Matt.
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