October 14, 2024: Monday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 14:32-42
Good Monday morning to you. I pray that you are surrounded by love in your life, and that you find hope in the Love of Christ as He lives in, with, and around you every day.
Today's reminder, if you are registered to vote, please do vote. This time in our election cycle is a time for prayer and consideration, and to make choices which please you as a citizen of our nation. Melody and I will both be voting by mail this year, as we have in the past. Your vote is important for how the lives of all citizens of our nation will be served by those who we elect as our leaders. Nike has had a long-standing advertising slogan, "Do It". The very same thing is true for each of us. Don't stay away because you think your vote doesn't count. This is your opportunity to have your voice heard on a local, state, and national level. May God bless you and all voters in our nation as we approach this election day on November 5th.
Please pray for peace in the Middle East. It seems that there is a strong drive on all sides to fight out their historic hostilities with each other. Our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, calls on us all to work for peace and harmony between peoples. The starting place for all of this is in our homes and lives. Pray diligently for God's help in this seemingly insurmountable intensity and hatred, that it might give way to peace.
At this point in the study of Mark, our Savior is faced with the fierce hostility of the religious leaders of His time. They have been looking for months to find a way to entrap Jesus. His constant movement throughout Israel and Samaria have not made it easy for His enemies to corner him. But now, Jesus is in their territory, attending Passover, and this makes Him an easy target. Jesus knows that his time will not be long to continue to have input with His disciples, He leaves the upper room to head out to Gethsemane to a private garden in the olive grove. There were no gardens like it inside of Jerusalem. The whole city was considered holy ground by the Jews, so there were no garden areas because to fertilize them, Cow dung would have been used, and it was considered unclean. It seems a little strange that they could butcher 250,000 lambs for Passover, yet a little manure was considered too big a problem in the care of community gardens. Jesus moves out to Gethsemane where he probably knew an owner of a private garden there. I suppose it might also belong to Lazarus. This movement may well have prevented Judas and the temple guards from finding Him too quickly. Obviously, Judas would have returned to that upper room to find Jesus and betray Him. It is likely that Judas was also familiar with the garden in Gethsemane, so it would have been his second stop in his search to turn Jesus over to the temple police.
What we find in Christ's visit to Gethsemane is a group of disciples who are too tired to really be companions to join Christ in prayer, and to offer Him their undying support. Jesus went into the garden a little further to pray, asking His disciples to await his return. I am certain that He was looking for encouragement and support when he came back from praying. However, the disciples were unable to stay awake. Perhaps if they had stayed awake to offer encouragement to Jesus, it would not have been necessary for Jesus to return to His private prayers two more times. I think that they must have been just like you and me, after all, we too know what Christ hopes for us to do in our lives, and when we understand that call through the Spirit we say yes, but like the disciples we are weak, impacted by our energy, our hunger, our tiredness, and much more, all of which may stifle our energy to get the work done. It is obvious here that Jesus wanted to find comfort from both God and His disciples.
Christ's prayers show to us that he was certainly deeply troubled by what He knew was coming, even to the point of asking if it would be possible for him to forego this suffering and death. But Jesus humbled himself to God's will for His life, taking it all in prayer for courage and strength for what lay ahead. In Christ's death on the cross, and His later resurrection, it is God's Love for His Son that makes it possible for Jesus to move forward with confidence that no matter what comes, He will be OK. It is really important for us to see Jesus in the light of these prayers He is offering in the garden. When we read this passage, it certainly ought to humble us to know the strength of faith, the perfection of faith, the courage that comes from knowing a loving Father, all of these carried Christ, and carry you and me in the same way no matter what life brings. Jesus trusted God in everything that was coming, even His Father's need for Him to be sacrificed. I hope and pray that all of us are able to be guided by our Loving Father in all of the wonderful and difficult times we will all face, knowing that at the end we will be in Christ's eternal care.
With love in Christ, Pastor Kim
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