Gethsemane Prayer of Jesus
I have spent much of my ministry life thinking about and (with varying success) practicing the art of prayer. Some years ago, I was drawn to the prayer of Jesus in the Gethsemane garden as a model prayer. What especially struck me was Jesus’ boldness and frankness at this criticial moment. It still remains utterly amazing to me that Jesus could ask God to release him from the way of the cross (even though he had long seen and taught that his vocation was to suffer and die, and afterwards to be raised up). Gethsemane startles us when we take it seriously. But it also opens up what is the true gift of the gospel: the confident and free expression of our selves before God in prayer and what this actually does to us and in us as we participate.
The exploration into the Gethsemane prayer was part of that process where I was learning that the point of prayer was its exploration of true relational confidence. I came to see that prayer meant nothing if we did not express our truest self to God. But there was more. I saw further that what Jesus finally accomplished for us, his fully yielded will to God’s purposes, was realized precisely in this freest kind of prayer.
So prayer meant at least these two things: the freedom to express myself truly before God, and the way to overcome the short-sightedness of my human perspective and self-will. This was the essence of what Jesus modelled in Gethsemane.
I am adding The Gethsemane Prayer of Jesus. It is a substantial piece with varying subtleties of argument. But I hope that you will see what I have come to see, that in Gethsamene, on the night of his arrest, Jesus modelled a prayer that was in sync with what he always taught: the prayer we call The Lord’s Prayer.
Exploring Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane has fascinated and drawn me closer to Him like no other portion of scripture. I really believe there are many facets to this prayer that have not been explored. An example being "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." I really think it is worth considering that Jesus may not have actually been wanting out of why He came to Earth. What if he was stating in no uncertain terms that He was not doing what He was doing of His own will but His Father’s. How many of us are caught following the Lord’s will only when our will has only come into agreement with His? In other words we aren’t doing His will but our own. It just happens to be God’s will as well. Were his drops of blood His overwhelming dread of carrying our sin? Or were they a sign of intercession on our behalf knowing that even though ALL will have the opportunity to know His father through His blood that not ALL will make this choice? This would have caused incredible anguish. An anguish I might add that we are to experience from time to time as well.I have found meditating on these passages with these interpretations to have had a profound impact on causing me to focus on others and God’s will in my life.