Suffering love
by Rachael Stelzer
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‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ he said to them. ‘Stay here and keep watch’ (Mark 14:34).
Read Mark 14:27–42
On Wednesday, we read Jesus’ parable about the master who leaves the household in the care of his servants and leaves. The servants do not know when he will return, so they remain alert and awake for his arrival.
Now Jesus finds himself in Gethsemane with his closest friends and asks them to ‘stay awake’. This is the same word he used in the parable, just a day or two earlier – the servants were to stay awake as they looked forward to the master’s return. Three times he asks them to stay awake with him, and three times they fall asleep on the job.
We get a beautiful insight here into the lonely heart of Jesus, a heart that holds the knowledge of all that is to come the following day and also holds a fiercely burning love for his wayward, lost children – both for those on the Mount of Olives with him and for us, his 21st-century disciples. If we are honest, we fall away, deny and betray him as much as his early followers did. And if we look down the centuries at this sobbing man, we understand it was Jesus’ love for us that motivated those beautiful words of commitment as much as his friends on the hillside: ‘Yet not my will but yours be done’ (Mark 14:36).
Max Lucado put it beautifully when he said that Jesus would rather go through hell for us than go to heaven without us. Only this great love would put aside fear and pain for the benefit of the beloved. What a joy to know that our Saviour loves us that much.
Dear Jesus, you knew what was coming. You felt the pain. You suffered the loneliness and betrayal. And you saw us. Your heart broke with love for all of us, and that love that created the universe gave itself to free us from the separation of sin. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.
Rachael Stelzer is the Primary Lay Chaplain at Coomera Anglican College near Brisbane. She is a member of Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Rochedale and teaches primary kids in the Growing Kids group. Rachael loves crafts, reading, and sharing meals, coffee and life with her family and friends.
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