Holy Week // Matthew 26

Matthew 26

In the Garden of Gethsemane, we see the depth of Jesus' divinity and humanity in one moment. 

Jesus goes riddled with anxiety, knowing exactly what God has asked him to do - to die the penalty of death on behalf of the whole world for all time. He is dripping blood, stressed, and out of his intimate knowledge of God, asks him to take the cup. It is not a moment of doubt but a moment of humanity. A tender moment for a son going to his father because he’s anxious about what’s to come. 

Yet, in those moments, most of us stay in the garden. We never leave the cross Jesus calls us to take up because our anxiety paralyzes us. Jesus, however, is not persuaded to disobey by his anxiety. His love for his Father outweighs the anxiety of the cross. So he goes. He allows himself to be arrested, tried unfairly, beaten, mocked, and led to the death he did not deserve. 

Could we sit at this moment? Could this moment of reading Jesus be both humans in his anxiety and divine in his obedience and bow down and worship him? Could we let this moment lead us to gratitude and feeling the weight of Jesus’ life and death? He lived a life we could never have without Spirit empowerment and died the end reserved for us.