“Final Answer?”

#7 in the Lenten Sermon Series

“Dennis in the Corner”

 

“Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me;

yet, not what I want, but what you want.”

(Mark 14:36)

 

 

A meditation by Siegfried S. Johnson on Maundy Thursday, March 20, 2008

Volume 2 Number 38

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6^th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

 

This is the seventh and final installment of our Lenten sermon series, Dennis in the Corner (by the way, “final” is a word you’ll hear several times tonight).  I hope Dennis’ forced self-reflections while facing the corner have helped you to engage the introspective tone of these forty days we call Lent.   I’ve not, tonight, printed for you a frame of Dennis in the Corner, and that is not by design.  Inexplicably, it’s vanished from my files.  I will instead tell you about it.  It was a frame drawn several years back, when the question Regis asked at the most climatic moment of “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?” was at a peak of popularity.  Remember?  “Is that your Final Answer?”  So in this frame, Dennis was sitting, facing the corner as his mom walked away, and Dennis moaned, “I guess that was her final answer!”

 

I remember when I first saw the cartoon, I had been studying the Hebrew text of Jonah for a lesson series I was writing, and that frame seemed to fit perfectly.  God’s word came to Jonah.  “Go to Nineveh.”  Clear command.  Nothing opaque or ambiguous.  “Go to Nineveh, that great city.”  Nothing cryptic. “Go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it.” Nothing up for dispute, nothing debatable.

 

So, we might say that Jonah’s running in the opposite direction shows that he hoped Nineveh wasn’t God’s Final Answer!   If, by running, he could show his disgust with God’s strategy, his intense disapproval, perhaps God would change his mind.  For Jonah, the fish’s belly became his corner of forced self-reflection and repentance, the place where Jonah seems to have come to grips the fact, “I guess that was God’s final answer! 

 

It seems to me now, however, on this Holy Thursday remembrance of Christ’s agony in the garden, that “Final Answer” introduces a theme fairly descriptive of the spiritual struggle which took place in Gethsemane.  Let’s think for a moment about the bible’s two most famous Gardens, and how they are both stories describing spiritual struggle, struggles with ultimate decisions and far-reaching consequences.  

 

When one thinks of a garden, one generally thinks of a pleasurable diversion in the midst of beautiful flowers, a serene place for meditation in a setting of tranquility and calm.  Gardens are meant to be beautiful to the senses, nourishing to the soul and body.

 

Biblical gardens are entirely something else.  They strike a harsh and dissonant chord.  Rather than being peaceful and contemplative, biblical gardens are filled with the twisted sounds of a beguiling serpent luring Eve, loud with the clamor of soldiers led by Judas, whose betrayal of Jesus set in motion the events of those final three days of Christ’s Passion.  Both gardens, Eden and Gethsemane, contain bitterly unpleasant events. 

 

Genesis 3 contains the record of Eve’s temptation in Paradise.  When the serpent said, “You will not surely die,” was he not suggesting to Eve that perhaps death was not God’s Final Answer to human disobedience, that perhaps God’s real, though less-than-obvious, plan was for her to grow, to find her own answers, and in so doing to make her divine Parent proud by becoming more like him, by maturing beyond the childhood stage of having to be told what to do.  “He knows that, when you eat, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods.”   That, the serpent suggests, is God’s true Final Answer.  God secretly wants you to eat, but can’t command you to do so.  To command you to do so would be to nullify the very reason why God wants you to do so, which is to grow beyond dependence and toward independence. 

 

Our second garden is Gethsemane, a garden of olive trees east of Jerusalem, just across the Kidron Valley on the lower incline of the Mount of Olives, the place where Jesus took three of his disciples after observing the Passover meal.  Distressed and agitated, Jesus told his disciples, “I am deeply grieved, even unto death.”

 

Mark invites us hear a primary thrust of Jesus’ prayer, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible.  Remove this cup from me.  Yet, not what I want, but what you want.”  So he prayed three times.  In other words, “Surely, Father, this is not your Final Answer.  Surely another path can be found to accomplish your design.”  But Jesus found that his sacrificial death was, in fact, the Final Answer, the hope of our salvation.   

 

So it is that the gardens of the bible are associated with agony.  We may find it comforting to sing, “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses,” but the song with which we began tonight’s service is more apropos, “Go to Dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power; your redeemer’s conflict see, watch with him one bitter hour.  Turn not from his griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.” 

 

In Gethsemane the stones are hard, the earth watered by tears, the flickering shadows of the gnarly, knotted trees made by the torches is ominous, and the place is loud with the noise of a crowd approaching with swords and clubs.  Nothing is as it seems.  The garden is not quiet and peaceful, but loud with death.  The disciple’s kiss is not soft and affectionate, but carries with it the sting of a scorpion.

 

Two gardens.  Far-reaching consequences.  Behold Eve, whose desire to get more out of life plunged us into death.  And look upon Jesus, who became obedient unto the death of the cross to win for us life eternal.  Eden discovers death in its search for life.  Gethsemane wins life in its submission to death. 

 

I want to conclude with Max Lucado’s description of Gethsemane.  Listen for the word, Final.  “Thursday night.  Midnight.  The week has been full of finalities.  The final visit to the temple.  The final sermon.  The final supper.  And now, the most emotional hour of the week, the final prayer.  The garden is in shadows . . . His final prayer was about you.  His final pain was for you.  His final passion was you . . . Never has he felt so alone.  What must be done, only he can do . . .

 

“His humanity begged to be delivered from what his divinity could see.  Jesus, the carpenter, implores.  Jesus, the man, peers into the dark pit and begs, ‘Can’t there be another way?’ . . . he asked to get out . . . he begged for an exit . . . there was a time when if he could have, he would have turned his back on the whole mess and gone away.  But he couldn’t.  He couldn’t because of you . . . he saw you in your Garden of Gethsemane — and he didn’t want you to be alone . . .

 

“The battle is won.  You may have thought it was won on Golgotha.  It wasn’t.  You may have thought the sign of victory is the empty tomb.  It isn’t.  The final battle was won in Gethsemane.  And the sign of conquest is Jesus at peace in the olive trees.  For it was in the garden that he made his decision.  He would rather go to hell for you than go to heaven without you.”

 

Sources and notes:

Henry H. Sturdevant, “Mantegna’s Agonies: Meeting the Test of Gethsemane,” PARABOLA, Volume 26, Number 1; Spring 2001.

 

Max Lucado, And The Angels Were Silent, Multnomah Books, 1992, 151ff.