When the mountain won't move

What do you do when the mountain won't move?

I am beginning work, or continuing work, on a sermon for Sunday looking at time in the Garden. I am struck by the fact that Jesus, my Jesus, my Lord, "came to a place called Gethsemane." He told the disciples to sit while he prayed. "He began to feel despair and was anxious. He said to them, 'I'm very sad. It's as if I'm dying."

Imagine that. Imagine that.

This morning my family missed their flight from New York to New Orleans. Instead of a three-hour direct flight, they will be in half the airports in America before landing tonight at 7:20 p.m. PM. Dark time. Tonight.

The skies are the color of charcoal and it's dropped 25 degrees overnight. I got to the church at 8:30 a.m. to find we can't park in front of the church because a tree service is cutting limbs up and down our street.

We are mediating mold in two of our rooms in the church, and it looks like the Tasmanian Devil has come for a visit in our hallways.

I could go on and on. It's Monday. All day.

But at no time have I felt "despair." At no time have I felt as if I'm dying. Not really.

Have I mentioned that this was Jesus?

He went a little deeper into the garden and he prayed that <"if possible, he might be spared the time of suffering. He said, 'Abba, Father, for you all things are possible. Take this cup of suffering away from me."

He prayed the mountain move.
And the mountain stayed right there.
Didn't move.
Circumstances didn't change. Negative didn't become positive. Suffering didn't go away.

So what is a Messiah, Son of God, God himself do, say?

"However -- not what I want but what you want."

Get that. The mountain didn't move, the request moved. Not what I want, but what you want. Not my will, but yours.

I am sitting on top of a big ol' pile of pain and fear that I can't really discuss, but let's just say I'm not winning at what I need to be winning at.

Yet, not what I want but what you want.

I wonder can we really say this and mean it? Can we just put down the problem and pick up the prayer? It seems to me the difference in the humanity of Christ and the divinity of Christ is that moment in the dash. "However -- not what I want but what you want," Jesus said. In that moment, the moment of the dash, the moment of the thought, Jesus' divinity flared. He went from the thought that Abba could make this all go away to the thought of let it come on.

Pray with me this day, the first Monday of Lent, "Father, Abba, let me be a person who understands the challenge ahead and says 'let it come on' anyway. Let me accept the challenges as what life is. Let me simply be a person who understands that your will is vastly more important than mine. We surrender, O Lord, to your will. This day. Prayerfully in the days ahead."