Holy Week: Before the storm

Holy week is building and Jesus ordeal is just days away. He must have been painfully aware of what was to come but the signs of stress are not evident from the text.

I think one little clue to his coping strategy is apparent in the verse that tells us;

Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives ~Luke 21:37

We know that the mount of olives was a  place Jesus liked to withdraw to and pray. What he did out there to recharge his batteries, to draw on the Fathers strength, we can only speculate, but from the glimpse we are given in Gethsemane, we can see that he is not averse to pouring out his heart. I see the wrestling that is in Gethsemane is, in terms of the story, the tip of the iceberg of emotions and fears that will almost sink him. In other words, I would be very surprised if this was the first and only conversation they had had on this issue.

Nightly Jesus would withdraw, as was his habit, to a place of peace and he would pray. I would give an awful lot to have been an eavesdropper on those moments. To hear the intimacy, hinted at in John 16, to hear the passion, to see the transformation from deep prayer that came over Jesus as he communed with his heavenly father. What did he say? What did he ask for?

We are, though, given a little glimpse in Luke 22:31 when Jesus seems to take the opportunity afforded by a conversation about greatness, and who is the greatest, to address something that has been on his heart.  We are not told who was involved in the squabble but afterwards Jesus singles out Peter with the chilling words; 'Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat'. We are not told when Satan had asked but presumably not on the spot, then and there. Jesus had obviously been dealing with this issue privately, and in prayer because he says;

 ^"But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

Whenever I have gone through issues that cause me to be in turmoil, I often find that I cannot really address anything else. I find it becomes all absorbing. That whatever conversations I am having I am only really half present. And when I pray I find that it fills my prayers.

Again, I only speculate to what Jesus prayed, and to how he felt, but presuming his impending death and torture were things that he would have preferred to avoid (as his 'take this cup from me' statement indicates) it is even more astonishing that he almost certainly spent time praying for his friends. Friends that he knew were going to let him down, deny him, even betray him.

How great is the love of the son of God. As he moves ever closer to his own dark hour, he weaves around those he loves, a protective cocoon of prayer, that they too may be kept through their own  trial, fail as they will, that they may also emerge transformed in the power of resurrection.

And this same Jesus prays for us now.


Such love. Such grace.

In pity Angels beheld him,

And came from the world of light,

To comfort him in the sorrows,

He bore for my soul that night.