Not my will, but yours

After the meal, Jesus led his friends to a garden called Gethsemane to pray. What happened there is the most human moment in the entire record.

He took Peter, James, and John, and told them plainly: I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here and stay awake with me. Then he went a little farther and threw himself on the ground. Luke, a physician, adds a detail: his sweat became like great drops of blood, something that can actually happen to a human body under extreme anguish. He knew precisely what was coming; he had predicted it three times.

And he prayed:

My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.

Matthew 26:39

Read both halves. The first is total honesty: if there is any other way, I want out. Faith did not make him pretend. The second is total trust: not what I want but what you want. This is not defeat and not resignation. It is a man who has looked directly at the worst and chosen, freely, to trust his Father through it rather than around it. Every hard prayer you will ever pray fits inside this one.

He came back and found his friends asleep. Three times. Could you not stay awake with me one hour? Keep watching and praying, he told them, for the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. He knows. He said it while sweating blood.

Then the torches came. A mob with swords and clubs, led by Judas. Peter drew a blade and cut off the ear of the high priest's servant. Put your sword back, Jesus said, for all who take the sword will die by the sword. And then, in the last recorded act of his hands before they were bound: he touched the man's ear and healed him. His final miracle, spent on a member of the mob that came to arrest him.

That is who he was when it cost the most.

Tomorrow: the cross, and the words he chose while dying.