Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

• Matthew 26:38-39

And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of bloodfalling to the ground.

• Luke 22:44

“Have we for one second watched Jesus pray? Have we ever understood why the Holy Ghost and our Lord Himself were so exceptionally careful about the recording of the agony in Gethsemane? This is not the agony of a man or a martyr; this is the agony of God as Man. It is God, as Man, going through the last lap of the supreme, supernatural Redemption of the human race. We ought to give much more time than we do­ a great deal more time than we do-to brooding on the fundamental truths on which the Spirit of God works the simplicity of our Christian experience …
Remember: what makes prayer easy is not our wits or our understanding, but the tremendous agony of God in Redemption. A thing is worth just what it costs. Prayer is not what it costs us, but what it cost God to enable us to pray. It cost God so much that a little child can pray. It cost God Almighty so much that anyone can pray. But it is time those of us who name His Name knew the secret of the cost, and the secret is here, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.’ These words open the door to the autobiography of our Lord’s agony.”

• Oswald Chambers, Daily Thoughts for Disciples (September 17, from If Ye Shall Ask …)

A month or so ago, the Sunday school class was discussing God’s love and the subject of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross came up.  I likened it to some torture that was administered on me in the army.  I was put in an odd position and told to reach for the bare-naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling.  I know, cliché.  If you stay in that position for too long, it constricts the movement of the diaphragm.  Your arms naturally come down to get a breath of air.  I was punished for letting my arms drop, a punishment that might have led to scar tissue that can only be seen on x-ray or other imaging – having recently flunked a stress test because of an unexplained shadow – could the shadow be scar tissue where the cartilage between the ribs and the breastbone did not heal in the right way?

But I explained that was the way people died on a cross.  That is why they broke the legs of the thieves (criminals).  Jesus was already dead.  The person on the cross risked the pain to push himself up to get a breath of air, but then the pain was too great, and he slumped down, restricting the diaphragm.  The person on the cross died from too much fluid building up in the lungs.

I sensed the ladies were getting wet eyes, so we moved on, but that is what Jesus faced.

I have heard people scoff at the sweat that was like blood.  They think that is too unbelievable.  But the phenomenon is caused by extreme stress.  The capillaries that feed blood to the sweat glands rupture.  The condition is called Hematidrosis.  Jesus was under a lot of stress.

But I like how Oswald Chambers describes it.  He talks about how anguished Jesus was and how the Holy Spirit inspired the writers to describe it in such terms.

It had bothered me that the disciples slept while Jesus prayed.  It is possible among the three: Peter, James, and John, to have combined their recollections to hear what Jesus said, but Rev. Chambers skips that.  They learned through the Holy Spirit’s inspiration to fill in the gaps, when they were sleeping.

God insisted on setting the record straight to let us know that Jesus was both fully God and fully human.  And his human side was having a tough time at that moment.

Yet, He said, “Thy will be done” because He loved us that much.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.