April 22, 2002

BaptistWay Bible Study for Texas lesson for May 12

Faith often blooms in the garden of desperation

___Mark 14:12-26, 32-42 ___12 On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus' disciples asked him, "Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?" ___13 So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. 14 Say to the owner of the house he enters, 'The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' 15 He will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there." ___16 The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover. ___17 When evening came, Jesus arrived with the 12. 18 While they were reclining at the table eating, he said, "I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me--one who is eating with me." ___19 They were saddened, and one by one they said to him, "Surely not I?" ___20 "It is one of the 12," he replied, "one who dips bread into the bowl with me. 21 The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born." ___22 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take it; this is my body." ___23 Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. ___24 "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many," he said to them. 25 "I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God." ___26 When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. ... ___32 They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." 33 He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. 34 "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," he said to them. "Stay here and keep watch." ___35 Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 36 "Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will." ___37 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon," he said to Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? 38 Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." ___39 Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. 40 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him. ___41 Returning the third time, he said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!"

___By Debbie Chisolm
___It was early in the morning when I crawled into bed with my grandmother. She was old and frail and had long since forgotten who I was. We could have the longest conversations and have the sweetest visits, but they would always end as they began, "Now, who are you?" she would ask.
___This morning she was too weak to talk, so I did the talking and she smiled and listened. I talked about her hands. I told her all the things I knew how to cook, because growing up in her home I watched her hands turn eggs, roll tortillas and flip pancakes.
___She might not have been able to call me by name, but she knew she was in the presence of someone who knew her and loved her, and someone who could share memories with her.
___My grandmother spoke no English, and when I tried to sing her a song we use to sing when I was a child, she patted my cheek and shook her head. Without saying a word she was able to communicate, "Just give up, 'mija', you're not even close!" In my broken Spanish, I reminisced about all the colorful flowers that bloomed in her yard, and I looked toward the future and spoke of colors that could only be seen in heaven. She closed her eyes and went to see for herself. Those will forevermore be some of the most precious moments of my life. Final moments are sacred ones.

___Table fellowship and the last meal
___This week's lesson invites us to join Christ in his final moments with his disciples. Whenever we travel through Scripture for the purpose of study, we have to keep in mind that words and events held a different significance then because of the culture and the time they were occurring.
___The bond of table-fellowship had a much deeper significance in Jesus' day than it has in modern western civilization. There was an ancient Semitic notion of the bond of salt. Robertson Smith explains it like this, "If I have eaten the smallest portion of food with a man, I have nothing further to fear from him; 'there is salt between us,' and he is bound, not only to do me no harm, but to help and defend me as if I were his brother." In this respect, every meal was a special meal, but this one would be remembered forever.
___Christ's last meal with his friends would be the paschal or Passover meal. Just after midday on the 14th of Nisan, which is the first month of the Jewish calendar, the slaughter of the animals began in the temple and went on almost till sunset.
___This was known as the preparation. On that special day, no leavened bread was eaten, and it was customary to abstain from ordinary work; after sunset, the paschal victims were consumed.
___When Jesus arrived in the upper room to celebrate this special supper, everything had been prepared according to law and custom. Eating in Bethany was no longer an option. This meal had to take place somewhere in Jerusalem, and so we find Jesus and the 12 dining in the upper room that had been readied for them.
___The paschal meal was a commemoration of the emancipation of the children of Israel from their slavery in Egypt. But it had also come to have an eschatological significance, because not only did it celebrated a past deliverance, it also embraced the promise of a mightier deliverance that would take place in the future with the coming of Messiah. It included expressions of grateful reminiscences, but it also contained fervent expectations for a messianic future.
___In the Passover Eve service (the Seder), before reciting the Exodus story, the leader breaks off and puts aside a piece of unleavened bread known as the afikoman. The disciples would have all been familiar with the rituals and symbols of this sacred festival. They would have understood that the afikoman represented a person, namely, the messiah.
___Could it be possible that when he broke the bread and said, "This is my body", in Aramaic he could have said, "This is me!"? Could the afikoman been used as a final message of self-revelation? Did the disciples now once and for all know the messiah with whom they had on previous Passovers symbolically united themselves with by eating this piece of unleavened bread, had, in Jesus, arrived?
___With the disciples it was always difficult to know for sure what they understood and what they didn't. What they seem to know one moment, they proved in the next moment that they surely didn't understand at all.
___Regardless of what they did or did not understand, the last supper, occurring in such dramatic circumstances, could hardly have failed to impress itself upon the minds of the faithful who were privileged to be present on such a momentous occasion.
___
___Garden of abandonment
___"And having sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives" (Mark 14:26). The Garden of Gethsemane was outside the city, across the Kidron Valley on the Mount of Olives. It was a remote walled garden where Jesus went often for prayer, rest and fellowship with his disciples.
___If I could travel back into time or create a scenario in my imagination in order to relive a scene in Christ's life, the Garden of Gethsemane would not be the one I would choose. I would much rather witness the mount of transfiguration, bringing Lazarus back to life, the feeding of the multitude or Jesus teaching on the mount and along the Sea of Galilee. Anything would be better than the garden.
___The scene we witness in Gethsemane is a troubling one. We don't want to see sleeping disciples or hear the sound of feet running away in fear. We don't want to listen to Jesus begging to be rescued from death, praying for another way.
___It's difficult for us to view the picture of Jesus verbalizing his abandonment. The sights and sounds of the garden are difficult for us to embrace. When we walk through the Garden of Gethsemane, the flowers we see are blooms of desolation, brokenness, forsakenness, isolation, desertion and abandonment. "Abandonment" is a cruel word that causes us to think of land deserted to weeds and thorns, derelict buildings, frightened children and senior adults alone and forgotten.
___These are pictures we don't want to associate with Jesus. The pain of this abandonment seemed almost too much for Jesus to bear.
___After supper, Mark tells us Jesus and his disciples went out to the Mount of Olives, and taking Peter, James and John, he went further into the garden to pray. Jesus became greatly distressed and asked his disciples to watch and wait with him. Again we see that the disciples just didn't understand what was going on.
___Even though Jesus knew in advance Peter would deny him, he was still upset that Peter couldn't watch with him for even one hour. The Lord struggles with the knowledge that he would indeed be forsaken and left alone to die. The loneliness and agony Jesus was feeling was apparent in his pleas for rescue from death heard in the Gethsemane prayer. It is difficult for us to hear Jesus praying for another way.

___True faith
___Wanda Jones was a dear saint in our church. She was dying of cancer, and every night before she went to sleep and every time she swallowed the multitude of pills she took each day, she would pray that God would heal her.
___During one of our visits, she wanted to talk about faith. Wanda thought that if she had enough faith God would heal her. We spent a long time exploring what faith is.
___I used to think faith was believing God could do anything. I memorized the verses that said with God nothing was impossible. As time passed, I decided that faith wasn't belief God could do anything; faith is believing God would do something. Faith meant believing I would receive whatever it was I was asking from him. Again I memorized the verses that said whatever we ask in Jesus' name God will do.
___But watching Jesus pray in the garden taught me that faith is Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego standing before the fiery furnace and saying, "Our God can, but even if he doesn't, he's still our God."
___Faith is Jesus saying, "Father you can do anything, but even if you don't, you're still Abba." We never hear how God answers his Son, but we can assume God's answer is that Jesus must drink the cup and face the hour. Seeing that nothing was going to happen to prevent the terrible events about to unfold, the disciples all forsake him and flee.
___As we listen and watch the events in the garden, we recognize a feeling of familiarity. It's more than just the fact that we've heard this story many times during our faith journey. We recognize this place because we too have been to Gethsemane.
___At one time or another, we have prayed, "Father, everything is possible to you, if you will, please ..." We have fallen to our knees and prayed for healing, broken relationships and rescue. We are familiar with the Gethsemane prayer, not because we listened to Jesus utter it in the shadow of the cross, but because we have prayed that prayer too.

Questions for thought and discussion
___ How was the Last Supper remembered in the church of your childhood? Is there one Lord's Supper that was especially meaningful to you? How could we make the Lord's Supper more meaningful in our services?
___ What are some of the ways we secure memories and stories from the past to pass on to future generations? How do we accomplish that as a church? How can we do that for our families?
___ Throughout the Bible, in both the New and the Old Testament, God is constantly establishing rituals for the purpose of remembering. Why is remembering so important?
___ Compare and contrast the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6 and the Gethsemane Prayer. How are they alike? How are they different? What can we learn about prayer from these two prayers?
___ Looking at the characters in today's story-- Jesus, the disciples, the three who fell asleep and Judas--who do you most relate to? Do you feel like someone who follows from a distance? Have you walked closely to the Lord, but lately you've been asleep more than you've been awake? Are you walking through a dark time, and, like Jesus, you are on your knees begging?
___ When you need prayer, rest, and fellowship, where do you go? Why is it good to have a place for times of special prayer? Do you feel closer to God outdoors in nature, in a beautiful sanctuary or in a quiet corner of your house?

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