Holy Wednesday
Rev. Thomas Van Hemert
Isaiah 62:11-63:7; Luke 22:1-23:56
Holy Wednesday
April 13, 2022
In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.
In Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s Gospel account, it is recorded that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. All three Gospels record Jesus asking His Father to remove the cup that He is about to drink from Him—it is the cup of His Father’s wrath, a cup filled with His Father’s burning hatred and punishment for all sin.
Since the Incarnation in Mary’s womb, Jesus became man. He who created all things, became part of His creation. And since Jesus is also a man, He has regular human emotions and experienced all things that we experience as human beings. He wept when His friend Lazarus died, He became hungry and ate, He became sleepy and slept on the boat, and He grew anxious in His agony, even to the point that His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Thus, He prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
How is it that Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, divinely anointed and appointed as the one who was to drink the cup of His Father’s wrath and be punished for the sin of the world could ask His Father to now remove this cup from Him? It might not quite make sense to us. Is Jesus fearful to the point of sin? Of course not. Jesus knew no sin. He knew no sin but He became sin for us as our stand in. Jesus never once sinned. He is the Lamb without blemish. But yet He still asked His Father to remove the cup from Him.
This reveals something significant.
If Jesus can pray, “Father, remove this cup from me. Yet, not my will, but yours be done,” then we can also ask our heavenly Father for anything. We can ask Him for strength. We can ask Him for grace. We can ask Him for patience and humility. And not only for those things, but we can ask Him for seemingly impossible things such as world peace or cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s. We can ask Him to return our loved ones back to us from the dead, after all, He did it for Lazarus. We can ask for an end to depression and anxiety. We can ask Him to put an end to world hunger. And whatever it is that we’re suffering with, we can ask Him to remove that cup from us as well.
Now in the end, the Father did not remove the cup from His Son. The Son suffered the full-blown burning wrath of His Father on the cross alone, forsaken. There upon that tree Jesus suffered the full blast of Hell while begging that His Father would forgive even you. And while the cup was not removed from Him, His last prayer did not go unanswered. The Father sees the Son and through Him, He forgives you all your sins. There no cup of wrath for you to drink. There are no fires of hell for you to suffer. There are no more accusations of Satan for you to endure. For you are innocent, righteous, saved.
Let us pray tonight and every night like Jesus, not expecting that our Father will always, every time grant our requests and petitions, but fully believing and trusting that He hears out prayers, and that He always does what is best for us. For we are children, indeed, children of the heavenly Father. So let us ask as dear children ask their dear father.
In +Jesus’ name.
