Today’s reading began with one of the most provocative passages in the Gospels:

^“39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. ⁴⁰ On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” ⁴¹ He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ⁴² “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” ⁴³ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. ⁴⁴ And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.^{”  -} Luke 22:39-44 New International Version (NIV)

This passage, along with its parallel verses in Matthew and Mark, reveal to us the only time in His recorded life when Jesus actually asked that something His Father willed for Him be something He might avoid. In all other things we only see the Son of God, and the Son of Man, working in apparently perfect unity with God the Father. It is here in the Garden of Gethsemane, and here alone, that the human side of our Lord reveals itself in the sense of the intense human desire to avoid agony, be it physical, mental or spiritual. Jesus knows that He will experience all three of those kinds of agony the next day in a way no human being in this earthly life ever had before, or ever will again, and as one fully human He asks His Father of there is any possible other way.

As we know, in the end, Christ decides to follow the way divinely marked out for Him, the way of the cross. Yet it is instructive and, potentially, supremely comforting to learn here that we have a Lord who knows what it is to experience almost overwhelming fear (of something truly worthy of it) and not only not be destroyed by that fear but overcome it.

Virtually all of us deal with anxiety at one time or another in life and some of us (the author included) have known anxiety to such a level, and for so long a time, as to have to seek a cure for the misery and paralysis it brings. Some of us know what it is to experience panic attacks born of this level of anxiety, moments when we thought we would be completely destroyed by its presence.

Anxiety is really just a synonym for fear. For whatever reason we prefer to talk about “anxiety disorders” in this day and age rather than chronic fear, but that is what the disorder really is: the state of being in deep, unyielding, and long-lasting fear. It is one of the most miserable states human beings can know. It also can have its effects multiplied by a sense of isolation, a feeling that no one else could possibly know how bad we feel. In fact that very sense of isolation reinforces the fear with which we may struggle.

This is where the “supremely comforting” part can be applied to our hearts from these verses. If the incarnate Son of God, who also is fully the Son of Man, can live through the near absolute darkness of that night in the Garden of Gethsemane, through submission to the recognized will of God, than so can we who are also children of that same God. We can also avoid adding shame to our sufferings, in the sense of feeling like we are the way we are purely because of cowardice or lack of character. If there were two things (among the many) that Jesus Christ did not in any way lack, they would be courage and character. Yet even the Perfect Man knew what it was to feel the depths of fear, want to avoid its source, and yet somehow persevere in doing the will of a perfect and loving God, even when it meant facing that fear’s unavoidable source.

Jesus knew He was about to go through the worst experience any human being has ever known, then or now.  He knew that all too well, but by the grace of God and, perhaps more importantly, by the fact of His very identity He still did just that. The result was His resurrection, His and his Father’s glorification, and the fulfillment of His supreme mission: to make possible the salvation of the human race.

We who are followers of Christ have the very nature that allowed the One we follow to go through that night in the garden. We also have the ministering grace of His Father to help us in our own “dark nights of the soul.” Fear does not have to destroy us, no matter how much it may feel, in a moment or moments of time, that it will. Beyond that we will also find like our Savior that on the other side of our worst fears is the joy that will come from facing both them and their sources, and trusting God to act in true obedience to Him until both are just a distant memory.