Transcript:
Greetings, beloved in Christ. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, prays this prayer. “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will, but your will be done.” It is an extremely powerful and vulnerable prayer, and for me, it is the heart of Holy Week. Jesus prays this prayer because He knows that His insistence on being who God had called Him to be, His insistence on proclaiming release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom from oppression, His insistence on defying the order of the world, was going to lead Him ultimately to the cross, was going to lead Him to pain, to death. And yet He prayed for the courage to stand firm in that conviction.
These are anxious times in which we live, and so many of us feel the pressure to be volatile, to choose violence and anger and outrage. It takes courage to stand up for what is right. It takes courage to be the lone voice of justice. It takes courage to stand firm in who God is calling you to be. Yet that is our call.
Holy Week offers us the opportunity to walk with Jesus, to know that even when we feel alone, God is still with us. To offer that prayer daily, not my will, God, but yours be done, opens us to the grace and the mercy and the knowledge that if we stand in the place that God has called us, if we are the people that God has called us to be, nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ.
Gethsemane, I was told by the Reverend Cynthia Bourgeault, is spiritual boot camp. As you walk this Holy Week journey, I hope that you will root yourself in prayer, that you will pour yourself out as an oblation, that you would give yourself into God’s hands and pray, “Not my will, God, but yours.” Blessings.
