Part of the image many people have of England comes from the characters created by Charles Dickens.  His novel Oliver Twist formed the basis for the musical Oliver! and gave us the memorable image of 9-year-old Oliver finishing his small bowl of watery porridge, then telling the master of the parish work house “Please, sir, I want some more.”  Dickens’ book A Christmas Carol introduced us to Scrooge, whose comment on life was “Bah, humbug,” and Tiny Tim, who “bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame” as he pronounced, “God bless us every one.”  Through his fictional characters, Dickens put a spotlight on the all-too-real miseries engendered by the dire poverty, corrupt legal system, and deplorable labor conditions that marked England in the 1800s, but such misery was not limited to England.  In 1842, Dickens made a tour of the United States that included a visit to Philadelphia’s Eastern Penitentiary.  Every prisoner there was kept in solitary confinement, and Dickens wrote:

Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living world, he is led to the cell from which he never again comes forth, until his whole term of imprisonment has expired.  He never hears of wife and children; home or friends; the life or death of any single creature.  He sees the prison-officers, but with that exception he never looks upon a human countenance, or hears a human voice.  He is a man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years; and in the mean time dead to everything but torturing anxieties and horrible despair.[i]

Such isolation, Dickens found, had a profoundly dehumanizing effect.

I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; . . . there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature.  I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: . . . .[ii]

Of all the miseries that Dickens witnessed and that he described through his hundreds of fictional characters, abandonment and isolation, he said, were the most cruel.  Modern research agrees with Dickens that the most devastating thing that can happen to a human being is to be cast aside, to be thrust outside the company of family, community, and friends, beyond all human contact.  Separated from all comfort.  Separated from all forms of human support.

Abandonment and isolation are at issue in our scripture readings for today.  We are continuing in our walk through the Gospel of Mark, stopping along the way to hear the questions that Jesus asked of the people he encountered.  It is now the final night that Jesus would spend with his followers before his death.  The author of Mark tells us that it is “the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed,[iii] and that at their Passover meal that evening, Jesus told his disciples, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.”[iv] 

In keeping with Passover tradition, Jesus and his companions ended their meal by singing a hymn from one of a group of Psalms that includes our First Lesson for today.  With the words of that Psalm, Jesus and the others declared that their God was one who listened and gave comfort to his people.  That if one of them were to suffer distress and anguish, he could call out, “O Lord, I pray, save my life!” and God would “deliver [his] soul from death, [his] eyes from tears.”  When the group finished singing the hymn, they walked to the Mount of Olives.  Along the way, Jesus told them, “You will all become deserters,” but Peter told Jesus he was wrong.  “Even though all become deserters,” Peter said, “I will not.”  Then, Peter and all the disciples told Jesus, “Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.”  Jesus knew better, but they continued their walk. That is where our Second Lesson begins.

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”  He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be distressed and agitated.  And he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death.  Remain here, and keep awake.”  And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.  He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible.  Remove this cup from me — yet, not what I want, but what you want.”  He came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep?  Could you not keep awake one hour?  Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial.  The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words.  And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to say to him.  He came a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?  Enough!  The hour has come.  The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.  Get up, let us be going.  See, my betrayer is at hand.”

It is not as though Jesus had not told them.  It is not as though Jesus had not told his followers what was going to take place.  There was that time when Jesus took these same fellows aside and told them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles.  They will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him, and after three days he will rise again.”[v]  Just this same night, while the group was walking out to the Mount of Olives, Jesus told them they all would become deserters, that they would scatter like a flock of sheep that had lost its shepherd.  Then he added, “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”[vi]  In so many ways, on so many occasions, Jesus had told his followers what was going to take place.  The Son of Man, Jesus had told them, had come “to give his life a ransom for many,” but then to be raised up on the third day.  The question that remained for his followers, Jesus said, was whether they could stay with him while it all took place.  “Are you able,” he asked them, “to drink the cup that I drink?”

That image of a cup to be drunk appears throughout scripture.  Centuries before this night, back when the people of Israel had been driven from their homes and were living in exile, the prophet Isaiah described their suffering as the “cup of staggering,” the cup of God’s anger, and the punishment for their sins.[vii]  That seems to be the cup we hear Jesus talking about within his prayer there at the place called Gethsemane.  When Jesus begged God to “remove this cup from me,” it had become clear that he was going to wind up on the cross, where he would undergo not merely his own death, but also would bear the punishment for all the sins of humanity.  Would Peter and the other disciples be able to drink from that cup?  Would they even be able to stand by and watch as Jesus did?  This scene at Gethsemane is where we begin to learn the answer.

It seems like such an easy request:  “Remain here, and keep awake.”  That is all Jesus asked of these three men, of these his closest friends.  “I am deeply grieved,” he told them, grieved “even to death,” and all he asked was that they give him the ministry of their presence, the comfort of knowing that even though he would have to follow God’s will by himself, he would not have to do so alone.  These are the same three men that Jesus had once taken with him up onto a high mountain, where they had watched as Jesus was “transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.”  Peter, James, and John had watched as Elijah and Moses appeared and talked with Jesus, and they had listened as “a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’”[viii] 

These three men had seen Jesus in his glory, but they failed to stand by and watch as Jesus underwent the tortures of the damned.  They failed to stand by and watch as the man they called Lord threw himself onto the ground and revealed that like all human beings, he was subject to fear and agony and dread.  Peter and the others failed, because they were still relying upon their own determination, still counting upon their own strength and bravado to pull them through.  They were not yet ready to throw themselves upon the mercy of God, to let themselves rely fully upon God, as Jesus was now doing.  And so they fell asleep.  In prayer, Jesus drew near to God.  In sleep, his disciples held themselves apart.

The cup of God’s anger and punishment for sin is not the only cup we find in scripture.  There also is the cup we read about in our First Lesson:  the cup of salvation.  Jesus had talked about that cup earlier that same night, while he and his disciples were eating their Passover meal.  In the middle of that meal, Jesus had picked up an ordinary cup of wine, and after all of them had drunk from it he told his followers what that cup represented.  He said, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”[ix]  Just as the cup of punishment holds the pain of death, the cup of salvation holds the promise of life.  It is not as though Jesus had not told his disciples this.  It is not as though Jesus had not done his best to tell his followers what was going to take place. 

Each time Jesus had told his followers what was going to take place, he had told them not only about his torture and death, but also that after three days God would raise him from death, raise him beyond death.  The question that remained for his followers, Jesus said, was whether they could stay with him while it all took place.  Would Peter and the other disciples be able to drink from the cup of salvation?  Would they even be able to stand by and watch as Jesus did?  This scene at Gethsemane shows us that this group of disciples was not able.  Peter and the others failed, because their own determination, their own strength and bravado were not sufficient to pull them through.  They failed because they refused to throw themselves upon the mercy of God, to let themselves rely fully upon God, as Jesus was now doing.  Instead, they fell asleep.  In prayer, Jesus drew near to God.  In sleep, his disciples held themselves apart.

While Jesus prayed and the disciples slept, Judas arrived, “and with him there was a crowd with swords and clubs.”  Moments later, they laid hands on Jesus and arrested him.  The disciples who had pledged that they would rather die than deny Jesus all “deserted him and fled.”  The most devastating thing that can happen to a human being is to be cast aside, to be thrust outside the company of family, community, and friends, beyond all human contact.  Separated from all comfort.  Separated from all forms of human support.  Jesus underwent such devastation there in that place called Gethsemane, when his closest friends failed to stay awake and watch.  Not many hours later, at a place called Golgotha, Jesus would undergo the ultimate devastation of being forsaken by God.  But, Jesus had always told his disciples that this would not be the end. 

Jesus had told them about far more than desertion and torture and death.  Jesus also had told them about resurrection, that after three days God would raise him from death, raise him beyond death.  Jesus had told them about salvation, that after he was raised up, the cup of salvation would be available to all, so that no one, ever again, would have to be separated from God.  And Jesus had told them that after he was resurrected he would go before them to Galilee.  In Galilee, the same disciples who had deserted Jesus would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they would become Jesus’ “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”[x]

Before Jesus and his companions began their walk to Gethsemane, they sang a hymn that declared that their God was one who listened and gave comfort to his people.  That if one of them were to suffer distress and anguish, he could call out, “O Lord, I pray, save my life!” and God would “deliver [his] soul from death, [his] eyes from tears.”  Christ now calls you and me to sing that hymn.  To know that we do not have to rely upon our own determination, that we do not have to believe that our own strength and bravado will be sufficient to pull us through.  To know that we can throw ourselves upon the mercy of God, that we can let ourselves rely fully upon God, as Jesus showed us how to do.  But, so long as you and I remain asleep — so long as we keep our eyes closed and remain aloof from what Christ wants us to experience and see and know — so long as we keep ourselves separate from Christ, we cannot fully experience the cup of salvation, and we cannot follow him.

Christ has called us to be his disciples, to be his instruments for bringing salvation and grace to the world.  Christ now goes before us, preparing the way for us to be his witnesses in this neighborhood, in all parts of Charlotte, and to the ends of the earth, but he gives us the choice whether to follow.  Christ continues to ask, “Are you still sleeping?”  And he continues to call, “Get up, let us be going.”  May you and I answer that call and go in the way of Christ.  Amen.

 

 

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