Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, "I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, "So, could you not stay awake with me one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Again he went away for the second time and prayed, "My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” Again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand."

I want you to think about this passage for a moment. Most of us are fairly familiar with it, and as a result we don’t necessarily think about it very deeply. Even when we read it or hear it, it generally just kind of passes over us. Part of the problem is that Matthew doesn’t write with a great deal of emotion. Most biblical writers don’t. Writing with a great deal of emotion is more of a modern way of writing. The other part of the problem is that we’ve heard the passage so often that we just accept it. We don’t necessarily reflect on it. But what I want you to do this morning is to reflect on it with more depth than normal. Let me take you deeper into the passage.

The passage takes place on the evening of the Passover. Jesus has just gathered his disciples for the celebration of the Passover meal. This is a meal celebrating the great event of the Israelites in Egypt, thousands of years earlier, in which the angel of death passed over the first-born of the Jews, and instead killed all the first-born of the Egyptians. It led to their gaining their freedom from the Egyptians. Moses had warned the Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, but he didn’t. So Moses was instructed by God to tell all the people of Israel to paint lamb’s blood over the doors to their houses. God’s angels would then spare the first-born of the Jews.

Jesus had gathered his disciples in an upper room for the Passover celebration. Typically they would have eaten lamb, vegetables, and unleavened bread with some sort of nut and date spread. And there was wine. Then, in the midst of this meal, Jesus said something a bit odd. He told them that the bread was his body, broken for them. I’m not sure that they understood what he really meant. They probably acted like they did, but I’m sure they were baffled. Why would Jesus be talking about his broken body? He then took the cup and told them that it was his blood, shed for them. Again, they probably acted like they knew what he was talking about, but I’m not sure they did.

Afterwards, Jesus took some of the disciples into the Garden of Gethsemane. This garden was a well-known garden in Jerusalem. It was on a hill in the city, and it was a favorite place for people to go to feel refreshed in the harsh and dusty urban environment. Jesus went there to pray. He knew something bad was about to happen.

One of the unfortunate things about all the movies that have been made about Jesus in the past (especially prior to The Passion of the Christ, which does show Jesus struggling in the garden) is that they often portrayed Jesus as praying somewhat unemotionally. It’s as though Jesus doesn’t want to go to the cross, but the emotion is sort of akin to that we display when we don’t want to go to the dentist. These films make it out as though Jesus was mildly reluctant but determined. If you penetrate Matthew’s version, and especially Luke’s version of this event, you recognize that Jesus suffered terribly as he prayed in the garden.

We tend to assume that Jesus knew that he would be resurrected, but I’m not sure he completely did. I believe that he had faith that the Father would make all things right in the end, and that good things would happen, but I’m not convinced that he knew with absolute certainty that he would be resurrected. There was darkness shrouding the future. Instead, I think he simply knew he had to follow the path to the cross. He had to have faith. He had to trust. He had to surrender. But from his perspective, he had little or no proof that all would be well in the end. And he knew he would suffer terribly. Dying on the cross is the worst way to die. It forces the crucified to slowly die of suffocation as the lungs fill with fluid from the arms being forced to stay outstretched to the side. Also, being exposed to the hot, Middle Eastern sun would have created the conditions for slow and painful dehydration and a blistering of the skin. Having been beaten and whipped ahead of time, the crucified person would have been weak and exhausted from loss of blood prior to being crucified. In addition, people gathered around the cross to mock the crucified. There was no relief from anywhere or anything. Jesus knew this. And he desperately wanted another path.

His prayers in the garden were not bland prayers. They were deeply emotional and anguished prayers. Luke tells us that he prayed in such grief that blood literally came out of his pores as he sweated. He begged the Father to let him go another route, any other route. But in the end Jesus said, “Not my will, but thy will be done.” This is huge. Jesus was willing to say that he would lay down what he wanted in order to do what the Father wanted, even if it meant pain, uncertainty, despair, and death.

When you are in a crisis, or standing at a crossroad, how willing are you to say to God, “Not my will, but thy will be done”? And if you are willing to say it, how willing are you to do it? Most people struggle to do God’s will in even the small things of life. How willing are we to put aside our own will for God’s will in every part of life?

Part of the vision of this church is to discern God’s purpose and will for the church and for us as individuals. It’s a vision we take seriously. It says in our vision statement that “Calvin Presbyterian Church is a spiritual family sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, seeking to discern God’s purpose and will…” In effect, we are saying that we want to do God’s will, not our own. The word “discern” is a fancy word that means listening to God and seeking God’s will. And we are called, both as a church and as individuals, to seek God’s will above our own.

Even if it is our vision, I also know that discerning God’s will is very hard to do. And it’s hard for two big reasons. First, many of us aren’t all that sure we can really hear God. Even though the Bible makes it clear that God is all around us and that we can hear God everywhere, many of us believe instead in the idea that God is up there, we are down here, and that we act as agents on God’s behalf in the world. It’s as though we are simply supposed to do the moral and ethical things in life, based on our reading of the Bible. People with this belief system don’t consider the idea of direct contact with God, let alone the ability to actually hear God, a possibility. They believe that contact with God comes only after death. Despite the fact that many people follow this line of belief, it is not a biblical teaching. The Bible teaches that we can and will hear God if we seek God’s guidance.

Even if we do believe that it’s possible to hear God, it’s really hard to willingly let go of what we want for what God wants. What if God calls us to do something we don’t like? I ran into this problem as an associate pastor. The staff of our church did a retreat for the session, and as part of it I did an exercise on how elders are supposed to listen for and discern what God wants, rather than to do what they want, what people in the pews want, or even the pastors want. After doing the exercise, one of the elders said to me, “Man, I don’t like this at all.” When I asked him why, he said, “Because I know what I want, and voting on what I want is easy. It’s not easy voting on what God wants.” I then asked him if this meant that we shouldn’t seek what God wants. He said, “No, not at all. I think we’re supposed to seek and do what God wants. I just don’t like doing it because my ego gets in the way.” Wiser words I’ve seldom heard, and he was right. Most of us don’t like to choose God’s way over our own.

Despite how hard it is to believe that we can hear what God wants, and how we have to fight out own unwillingness to do what God wants, I still have an absolute conviction that if we are truly to call ourselves Christians, then seeking and doing God’s will in everything has to be a passion. This passion has become part of the center of how things work at Calvin Presbyterian Church. Let me show you what I mean.

Unless you’ve been on the session, you probably don’t know much about the inner workings of how we do things. But what might surprise you is that the emphasis is not on doing what any individual or group of individuals want, including me. The emphasis is on trying to discern what God wants. And seeking what God wants as a session in the Presbyterian Church can be hard because we follow a practice that actually gets in the way of seeking what God wants. What do I mean?

Think about how we generally discuss and decide issues in churches. Most church boards or sessions follow the practices of Robert’s Rules of Order. Under Robert’s Rules, issues are typically decided through discussion, and then a vote. The moderator says, when calling for a vote, “All in favor, say ‘aye.’ All opposed say ‘no.’” Right there we are making the choice to follow our own will over God’s. Think about it. If we ask people to vote by who is for or against a recommendation, who’s will are they seeking? Their own. On our session, we’ve changed that. When we decide an issue, I generally allow a fairly broad-ranged discussion. Then I invite the elders, before they vote, to spend two to five minutes in prayer. And the instructions I give are that they are to let go of what they want, let go of what they think others want, and let go of what they think I want. Instead, they are to simply ask what God wants. In other words, they are to seek God’s will, not their own or anyone else’s. Then, when I ask for a vote, I ask, “All who sense that this may be God’s will for us say ‘aye.’ All who don’t, say ‘no.’” The focus is on what God wants.

We extend this kind of seeking what God wants to our nominating process. I don’t sit on the nominating committee, but I do train them in the beginning. What I tell the nominating committee is that they aren’t to recruit the most experienced people, the most organized people, or the people who would seem to be the best at getting the job done. Instead, I ask them to seek elders who are willing to put aside what they want for what God wants—elders who are willing to say to God, “not my will, but they will be done.” Elders are to be spiritual leaders who seek God’s will, and so they are to seek God’s will by asking who they sense God is calling to be elders (and nominating committee members) of Calvin Church. As a result of this process, we have been blessed with an amazing set of elders over the last ten or so years.

We extend these same principles to budgeting and stewardship. When setting our yearly budget, the committees try to sincerely ask, “What is God calling us to do in the coming year.” Only after discerning that are they to figure out what it costs. The same theme is found in our stewardship. You notice this each year when we do stewardship. We send a letter out to the congregation telling you what we’ve sensed God calling us to do in the coming year, and inviting you to spend time in prayer asking what God is calling you to give. We have a conviction that when the budget and giving are both under God’s guidance, then God will find a way to get us the funds to do what we are called to do.

Everywhere in this church we are called to say to God, “Not my will, but thy will be done.” We used this same kind of discernment process when it came to doing this building campaign. We asked the elders to pray over it, seeking God’s will, and we asked you to do the same. I also had to do this same kind of discernment when it came to my own participation in the building project and the capital campaign. I’m going to pull the curtain aside a bit to let you in on my own personal struggles with the project. You may not know this, but doing this building project was not really what I wanted. Now, as I say this, I want to be sure that you pay attention to what I’m trying to say, rather than what you might think I am saying. What I am not saying is that our doing this building project was wrong, or that I am not enthusiastically behind it. And I hope you will forgive me for my candor.

About two years before we engaged in the building campaign, I knew that it was coming. And I didn’t want to do the building campaign. I know that some of you may think that we are doing this campaign because it is what I want, but that is not true. I believe in the campaign. I believe that we are absolutely called to do this building campaign. And I think that we are going to be absolutely blessed through it, but I didn’t necessarily want to lead the congregation through the campaign and project. My reasons are personal. I have always been aware of how hard building campaigns are on pastors. 80% of all pastors leave a church after a major campaign (I have not plans to leave, by the way). The reason is that the combination of raising funds and dealing with the pain and turmoil of building a building tend to burn out pastors. I knew this personally. Our first capital campaign nine years ago took a toll on me.

Building campaigns also make me nervous and anxious in a way that I normally am not. They get me to worry about “what if this doesn’t happen?” and “what if that doesn’t happen?” I knew all of this ahead of time, and I had to really ask God whether leading the congregation into this building project was what God wanted. From the beginning I knew that God was leading this congregation into this project. I just struggled with the idea that I should be the one to lead us through it. I didn’t necessarily feel up to it.

As I prayed about it over the course of a year, a number of large churches in the area contacted me about becoming pastor of their church. I felt confused about whether I should stay or leave. I felt like I was going crazy. So I took a week to pray, culminating in a personal, daylong, silent retreat. I spent the whole day asking God in prayer what God’s will was, and asking God to help me put aside what I wanted. In the end, I was able to say, “Not my will, but thy will be done. And through my prayer it became clear to me that God was calling me to lead Calvin Church through this process. If you hear in this that I am some kind of malcontent, doing God’s will reluctantly, I am not. In fact, I am absolutely content. I know that I am part of something wonderful in this building project. I know that all of us are doing God’s work in this, and we will be amazed in the coming years by how much God is going to bless us through this project. The struggle for me was to put aside my will for God’s, but I think I was able to do that. And because I did, I have been able to witness one of the most amazing construction jobs ever.

You don’t necessarily have the privilege of seeing what I see with this building project, but I see amazing things daily. The task force overseeing the project is the most amazing group of people assembled anywhere for a project like this. In fact, several weeks ago, one of the construction workers walked up to Connie Frierson and said, “I just want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to work on this building project. It is an honor to work on it, and it is fun to come to work here. This is the first job we have had in which people aren’t yelling at each other, arguing and fighting. When a problem comes up, people look for ways to work together to solve them. And they laugh together. My only regret is that soon the job is going to end and we’ll have to go to a different work site.” This project has been a blessing from start to finish, and I know that we, and I, are doing what God wants. And it’s fantastic.

This same kind of discernment in the church is possible in our personal lives. It’s not just a vision for the church. It’s God’s vision for all of us. But this kind of discernment takes a commitment and a passion from us to want to say to God all the time, “Not my will, but thy will be done.” It means that when we are at work we have to be willing to ask God in the middle of meetings, while working on a project, or while dealing with a co-worker, “God, what is your will?” At home, in our relationships with our spouses, parents, or children, we have to ask what God’s will is. Wherever we are, we have to be willing to seek God’s will over our own. And if we do, we will be amazed at how present God is in our midst, guiding and blessing us.

We are called to a life of discernment in this church and throughout our lives. I believe in a life lived in discernment, in seeking God’s ways over our own. Do you?