Weakness is the way we build God’s kingdom

Our fear of weakness doesn’t just apply to us but to the way we think and do things.  But you can’t build God’s kingdom the world’s way.  The world’s way of building is about projecting strength, gaining power and authority and influence and then maximising those things.

That’s always been a danger for the church.  We see it today in the churches excitement over a celebrity coming to faith that buys into the power of celebrity culture and endorsement.  Or thinking it’ll come about through films or media presentations of the gospel with high production values.  Or in parts of the world through political leaders and parties and access to power.  History ought to have taught us that such things aren’t the way you build God’s kingdom.

Jesus arrest challenges that way of thinking.  Whilst Jesus is still speaking Judas arrives mob handed. Judas was one of the twelve, he pretends loyalty and friendship with a kiss.  But Judas is no friend of Jesus, he doesn’t see him as Messiah and lord only as another teachers.  And Jesus draws that distinction.  He address Judas with the word friend(50), it’s not the usual word for close friend but more associate, and it’s only used twice in Matthew’s gospel.  Both times in parables, once of the labourers who moan about the master’s grace in paying everyone the same wages.  And again when the king addresses the man at the wedding without wedding clothes before he’s thrown out of the banquet.  Judas doesn’t belong, he doesn’t share the kingdoms values or value the king, he’s on the outside looking in.

As the mob steps forward a disciples slices off a servants ear(51).  What should happen next?  If this was a traditional revelation story a fight for freedom, disciples heroically hacking their way to free Jesus.  But Jesus’ kingdom is different, it doesn’t come through force.  But neither is it pathetic and weak.  Jesus takes charge.  (52-54)Jesus has more power in his little finger than any and every weapon formed on this planet.

Angels are terrifying warriors of light.  In 1 Kings 19 the angel of the Lord strikes down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night.  And Jesus says he could call 12 legions of angels, 72,000 such warriors in his defence.

Jesus doesn’t lack power and authority and strength.  He could show overwhelming force in a staggering display of shock and awe.  But he restrains his power?  Why “But how then would the scripture be fulfilled…”  Jesus doesn’t fight because worldly shows of strength isn’t how the kingdom comes, it’s not how souls are saved.

Jesus even shows staggering grace to his enemies as he points them to how their very actions fulfil God’s words about him.  He’s no criminal but he is God’s long promised king and God’s will is being done even now.

Jesus ‘kingdom is other worldly.  In that it operates other than the world.  It’s not built on force and strength and power and might.  It doesn’t come to overwhelm and crush.  It comes with strength and power but strength and power used only to serve at cost to self.  And it offers grace and mercy to those who fail, who rebel against it, and even to those who flee.

We need to face up to our weakness and we need to understand how Jesus uses his strength because that is how his kingdom is built.  Not at the point of a sword, not in winning wars of words, or scoring points, or occupying positions of influence and power but in following Jesus.  Using what we are given to serve others as we build his kingdom relying on his strength, making much of him, revealing his glory.

Our weakness laid bare

Why do you sin and fail when testing comes?  Why do I?  I wonder what your answer is.  Stop and think about it, why?

Gethsemane strips away any heroic notions the disciples had about themselves.  They enter it having just boasted of even dying with Jesus they leave fleeing and fearful abandoning the Messiah to his fate.  Why?  Why when tested do they fail?  Why do we?

Their first problem is overconfidence.  They enter the garden boastfully not humbly.  They won’t listen to Jesus warnings even though they’ve heard him be right about everything else. Even though they know his voice stilled the storm, rose the sea, and spoke with authority like no-one else, they ignore his words about what is coming and how they will react to it. They reach the impossible application we so easily reach – Jesus words can’t be true for me! Overconfidence.

Secondly ,they’re ignorant of the battle that’s coming. Partly because they are overconfident they don’t listen to Jesus words of warning. Jesus is facing a war on his knees but they are utterly unaware of the tension within Jesus and swirling around them. It’s another thing we share in common with them being unaware of the spiritual battle that rages around us and in us.

 And thirdly they overestimate themselves and underestimate their weakness.  Jesus asks them to keep watch with him(38), but they can’t.  He returns and finds them sleeping, he gently challenges them (40-41)and teaches them “Watch and pray so that you do not fall into temptation.  The Spirit is will but the flesh is weak.”

I wonder which of those it is for us that leads us to fall into sin, to lose the battle?  Are we overconfident in our own strength?  Ignorant of the nature of the spiritual battle and the horror of sin?  Or unaware of our weakness?  Or a combination of all three?

(43)Jesus returns again and finds them asleep.  And Jesus lets them sleep and goes alone to pray, to fight ,to stand.  Do you see the gentleness of Jesus with failures?  Jesus knows their, and our, weakness better than we do.  And he challenges it gently, but covers it totally.  He prays so that he stands where he knows his disciples cannot.  He prays so that he’s faithful because he knows they aren’t.  He battles to go to the cross because he knows they cannot.  He fights to drink the cup because he wants to save them, and us, from having to do so and he alone can.

There’s a gulf between the disciples intentions and their actions, between their boasts and their follow through.  We’re no different are we?  That gulf between what we sing and say in church, our intentions and resolutions and our actions in the rest of the weak when the pressure is on and we’re in the midst of the mob.  And that would be crushing were it not for Jesus standing for us.

Not so that we wallow in our weakness and default to giving in to temptation, but so that we fight knowing he is for us, he has won, and we share in his victory over sin and temptation.  So that we fight sin because of love for the one who has overcome sin and taken our judgement for us.

Fear of failure doesn’t need to paralyse a disciple and make us weak.  Because our failure, our weakness is seen by Jesus, and covered with his strength and perfect record.  That means we can look honestly, stop pretending we’re the hero, and own up to our weakness and bring it to Jesus and find his strength cover us.  And only as we realise this, what he has won for us, can we be liberated to wage this war in his strength not our own.

We need to confess we are antiheroes so we see Jesus stand for us

One of the things that always strikes me as I read the passion narratives in any of the gospel is the extent to which Jesus knows what he’s facing that week.  He’s repeatedly told his disciples what is coming in more and more detail.  

And as he leads them to that garden again, a place they and Judas are familiar with, Jesus enters into a cosmic spiritual battle.  This is a battle on an epic scale – this is Jesus’ Marathon, Waterloo, Stalingrad, and D-Day.  In the garden Jesus fights for the salvation of every believer throughout all of time and for the kingdom of God and the faithfulness of God to his promises.

In an echo of Eden the Son of God enters a garden where he’s tempted to turn his back on sonship and doubt and disobey his Father’s will.  The consequences of this battle will be just as cataclysmic as the first.  But it isn’t a battle fought with sword and clubs, it’s not a battle fought, with joysticks or drone, with wealth or influence. This is a battle fought on his knees in prayer wrestling to obey his Father.

Of all the ways we think of prayer I think this is the one we miss most.  Prayer is a vital part of waging the war to obey God, it is a vital weapon in our arsenal for fighting temptation. Sometimes prayer is war! .

And as Jesus goes to battle he doesn’t want to go alone.  He takes all 11 into the garden, and then Peter, James and John a little further and begins to be sorrowful and troubled.  

There are lots of good things that have flowed out of the focus in the last 30 years on personal times of reading the bible and prayer.  But one of the negatives is that we’ve lost the importance of praying together.  If you read the Bible with an eye to it I think you’ll find people praying together more than individually, especially in the early church.

Here Jesus in his hour of greatest weakness, when he feels the burden of what he is about to do most keenly, doesn’t withdraw alone to a mountain top, he takes his disciples with him.  When we’re fighting to obey God, when we’re in the white-hot heat of battle with sin, when we are feeling weighed down with the burden God has laid on us, we need brothers and sisters around us.  When we’re struggling to pray that’s not the time to withdraw from others but be with and around others.  Do you see that need?  If Jesus has it we have it to, it’s not a sign of weakness but how we are live as God’s people together.

But this is a prayer like no other.  (38)Jesus tells his 3 friends that he’s overwhelmed with sorrow.  Have you ever got in trouble swimming in the sea?  All you can see around you is wave after wave, and you can feel your energy being sapped, water beings to slosh in filling your mouth and you gag as it begins to force its way down your throat.  Jesus isn’t being overwhelmed by the waves of the sea but by the waves of sorrow, grief and distress at what’s ahead of him.  And so he asks them to keep watch with him, to be on guard as he prays, and goes a little further and (39)collapses to the floor to battle in prayer.

Jesus prayer lays bare the agonised spiritual battle he’s waging.  Here we have God the Son earnestly praying to God the Father for any other way to save the world but the way of the cross.

What terrifies you most?  What would be your worst nightmare for me to have in a box and be about to give you?

That’s what Jesus is facing.  If we’d opened the box for Jesus there would have been a cup.  It’s the cup that in Isaiah is pictured as being full of God’s anger at Israel’s sin, idolatry and unfaithfulness.  In Psalms it’s the cup filled with God’s just anger to be poured out on the wicked.  In Jeremiah it’s the cup filled to the brim with God’s fury at the nations for their rebellion against God and every evil action they have committed that they must drain to its dregs.  That’s what’s ahead of Jesus.  It’s no wonder Jesus prays “if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.”  What is amazing is that he can pray “Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

That simple line encapsulates this spiritual battle.  “Yet not as I will, but as you will.”  Jesus longs to avoid drinking this cup – having God’s anger and wrath at sin poured out on him.  But he battles to say “Yet not as I will, but as you will.”  This is true prayer wrestling our desires into submission to a good God’s will.  

This is true spiritual warfare; wrestling what we want to do in all it’s disobedience and disbelief into willing obedience to the Father no matter the cost.  Do you know what it’s like to pray this kind of battle prayer?  I wonder sometimes if our weakness is because we don’t we give in too easily.

Three times Jesus prays this prayer, unafraid of repeating his request, not piling up words, not trying to craze and cajole and twist God’s arm through sheer persistent repetition but fighting and fighting and fighting the temptation and to obey his Father’s will.

And where are the disciples?  Whilst Jesus fights a battle for the very nature of God’s kingdom and salvation itself the disciples doze.  Jesus alone stands and battles to obey his Father’s will, to enact the plan they made together from eternity, willing to go to the cross and drink the cup because of his love for the father and for the lost.  He wins the war in the garden and wakes his disciples “Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners.  Rise! Let us go!”  Jesus fights and wins in the garden so that he can walk and face his arrest, trial and crucifixion and the cup that awaits him there.

As an aside, notice even Jesus experiences ‘no’ as an answer to his prayers.  He must drink the cup, there is no other way.  Jesus’ prayer isn’t answered ‘no’ because of some fault in him, or a lack of faith, or failure to pray properly, sometimes God’s will means he answers our prayers with a ‘no’ because he’s building his kingdom the way an only wise God knows how.  And so as he answers ‘no’ we need to learn to pray “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Not with bitter resignation but with faith in his love, wisdom and goodness.

Jesus knows temptation and testing.  Jesus fights to obey his Father’s will.  And so when we’re struggling to obey we can run to him for help in prayer because he knows what it is to fight to obey. Because Jesus knows and overcomes temptation and testing we can let go of our pretended heroism and run to him which wins for us. It is liberating. It is where rest is found.

Who is the hero?

Who is the hero of your life story?  Be honest, it’s you isn’t it?  We tie so much of our identity, our self-esteem into being the hero, and being recognised and affirmed as such – being the best at work, doing what no one else can, making a difference, achieving success, having a good reputation.  All because we have a hero complex. Maybe your instant reaction is to refute that. Why do I think you have a hero complex? Because I have one and I think you just like me show it a number of different ways.

We see it in our reaction to being put in our place. Don’t you find yourself secretly running the scenario back through you head plotting all the snappy zinging come backs you could have made, and would do if the situation was re-run, that would show who you really are. Confirm you in your hero status. We see it in wanting affirmation and recognition for everything, even increasingly for things which should just be expected of us (seriously graduations from Primary school, copious praise for doing what you are paid to do – surely already enough recognition).

We’re so tied to that hero complex that we react badly when something or someone challenges it.  When we can’t do something or fail to achieve what we set out to, or even just don’t do something very well, we can’t handle our hero narrative being challenged so we excuse it – it was someone else’s fault, it was the impossible task, things conspired against, I wasn’t feeling great. The litany of excuses flow because we want to be the hero.

We’re so wedded to our hero stories that as a society we no longer talk about weakness but areas for development, because a weakness doesn’t fit with our heroic story.

If you work through the chapters in the run up to Matthew 26 we see the same tendency in the disciples.  It’s nothing new.  Jesus teaches about the danger of riches, Peter pipes up we’ve left everything.  James and John ask Jesus for the seats of honour, on his right and left in his kingdom, and all the disciples angrily fume because James and John got there first and they want them too.  When Jesus says they’ll all flee and deny him they can’t conceive of themselves as weak anti-heroes and boldly and heroically claim “We will die with you.”

I think it’s one of the things we find hardest about the gospel, both initially in coming to Jesus because it involves bowing the knee and accepting that we aren’t the hero, that there’s nothing we can do to make ourselves right we God, all our best attempts are only ever filthy rags showing our inability to contribute or earn salvation.  Only Jesus can and we bring nothing but our weakness, rebellion and sin.  

But we also struggle with weakness in our ongoing discipleship, because we still don’t want to see our weakness; we pridefully, sinfully, want to be strong, we recoil from self-examination that might lead us to be confronted with our failure. We certainly don’t want others to see our weakness. We have an epidemic of feign heroism that will not look honestly at ourselves or admit struggle, vulnerability, or ask others for help! As disciples of Jesus the irony is that that attitude cuts us off from our greatest strength to overcome weakness – one another.

But as the disciples enter Gethsemane and we follow them this morning, they’re about to be laid bare, their weakness and failure, but not to shame them but so that they see Jesus alone stands for them.  And it’s vital that they see that because it is the nature of the kingdom Jesus invites them and us into.

Who is the hero of your story?  Do we dare look honestly and see our weakness?