MORE THAN 'SUPER,’ MORE THAN 'HERO'!

February 19th, 2023

SCRIPTURE: "And they came to a place named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples Sit here until I have prayed. And He [Jesus] took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled." Mark 14: 32,33

The name “Gethsemane” means 'oil press.’ And it is thoroughly reasonable for the place of Jesus' greatest distress, His squeezing, with the crucifixion that follows, to be recorded in all four of the gospel accounts. It is the last time in scripture that Jesus wept outwardly, and more profusely than at the time of Lazarus' death, these being the only recorded incidents of His weeping. We presume His crying as an infant, as the Bible doesn't offer otherwise its absence. And while it was mostly righteous anger shown in the temple when 'His Father's house,' by way of the merchandising, seemed to have become more of a marketplace than a house of worship, implicitly one could consider His weeping then. I can imagine His weeping connecting with 'If anyone is without sin, let him cast the first stone,' and to the woman caught in adultery, ’Arise and sin no more.’

When hearing of the death of John the Baptist by execution, He went to a 'lonely' place.
In Isaiah 53:3 He is 'a man of sorrows acquainted with grief'. Indeed, for the inconclusive moments of his own mother, Mary, who pondered, might He have wept? Had He ever ceased loving Judas? Might He have wept? Knowing of Simon Peter's thrice denial of Him, might He have wept? Even, in a different garden, where Adam betrayed Him, might He have wept?

Dare we empathize with the cry 'Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?’ With or without tears, no doubt, here He wept. Very God, and Very man, our Jesus wept. Love wept. He subjected Himself to love us perfectly. He demonstrated the way of love. The burden that He took upon Himself was for our sakes. What does that mean for us?

"And we have come to know, and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love. And the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." [1 John 4:16]
Hallelujah!
He is more than 'super'. He is more than 'hero'.
He is love. 'Emmanuel', God with us!

Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, thank You for loving me. Amen!
By Bro. McNeal Brockington