Mark 14:32-52
Stay here and keep alert, Jesus asks. He’s sad — anxious even. He’s despairing so much so that Jesus feels as though he’s dying. He is that scared. So scared that it feels like death — like there are no alternatives, like there’s no way out, like this is the end. It feels that final. It feels like there is nothing else to say or do. This is the end — and that is the most terrifying thing there is. To feel that you can’t do anything else. To feel that you can’t say anything else. To feel like there is only one outcome from here. That is terrifying. And lonely. So, so lonely. And that’s the last thing you want. When you feel like death, you don’t want to be alone. You want someone to be there. You want someone to be by your side. They don’t have to say anything. They don’t have to do anything. Jesus just needs some friends to sit with him, to stay with him, to keep awake, to be alert to this vast array of emotions.
This is exactly what Kathy Babcock did two days after the tornado that struck Indiana this past week. Kathy kept awake. Kathy stayed alert to every breath her 15-month old granddaughter made. They had found the child after she and her family had been scooped up by the tornado. The twister killed her parents and her two siblings, but Angel clung to life. There were brain injuries. Severe ones but she had survived. It was a miracle. So Angel was transported to one hospital and then another, and Kathy was always there. She kept awake. She sang Itsy Bitsy Spider. She was alert when little Angel took her last breath. Her grandmother was there, holding little Angel’s hand.
“It’s too much for any one family,” a neighbor said. It’s true. It is too much for any one family. It’s too much for any one person to bear, even if we believe that person to be at least a little bit divine. It’s just too much. Still, Jesus says, Stay here and keep alert.
Stay here and keep alert. Because this is too much. And there are too many stories like it. There are too many horrible stories that break our hearts. There are too many stories that make us fall to the ground. There are too many stories that make us beg God to spare this suffering. We don’t need any more of these stories. We have enough. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s exactly the point.
There are too many of these stories but we have stopped listening. Like the disciples, we have fallen asleep. We have not kept alert. So we need to hear this again. We have fallen asleep, so we need to hear Jesus implore us to stay, to remain, to listen. As Richard Swanson observes,
“Perhaps we ought to tell the story of Jesus’ death so that our eyes are lifted to see the faces of other victims of Empire. Perhaps we ought to tell the story of Jesus’ cry on the cross so that we can hear the death song of millions of Native Americans who were slaughtered. Perhaps when we tell the story of the death of the one Pilate taunted as “king of the Jews,” we ought to hear also the echoes of the deaths of Jews in the battles of the First and Second Jewish Revolts against Rome.”
Perhaps it’s true. We need to be reminded. We need to remember that these things happened. These are things that happened to other people — like you and me. It may be too much for any one family, but it’s not just that family that grieves. It’s not just that family holding the hand of a 15-month granddaughter. It’s your hand. It’s my hand. These stories break our hearts because we are all part of the human family. We all feel that suffering — and shouldn’t we?
Shouldn’t we be overwhelmed by the number of innocent people slaughtered in the Holocaust, the number of enslaved farmers in Mexico, Guatemala and God knows where else or the number of children that die every year of malnutrition in the United States alone? Should it only be one family that carries these horrible stories? Should the rest of us just look away, careful not to make eye contact because we don’t want to have that uncomfortable conversation? Don’t we all play a part in taking this cup of suffering away?
Because this is not just Jesus’ cup. You have one. I have one. We have all got a cup that we are carrying around — sometimes its full of suffering and sometimes it overflows with joy — but it’s there. It is the cup of our lives.
Maybe it’s chipped. Maybe it’s big and tall. Maybe it has Winnie the Pooh on it as my favorite cup did in childhood. Or maybe it has a gold star on it and a handle to hold onto like the one Rachel Berry gets from her birth mother on TV’s Glee. I don’t assume you all watch the show about this high school glee club. So, I’ll give you some background. Rachel was adopted and raised by her two gay dads. They are her family but Rachel soon finds her birth mother in high school. It’s a bizarre plot twist that her birth mother is also the coach of the rival glee club, but that’s not really pertinent to this mother-daughter reunion. When these two women finally connect and talk, Rachel is asked, “How do you feel?” Without missing a beat, Rachel replies, “Thirsty.” And then, she explains that whenever she was sad, her dads would give her a cup of water so that she couldn’t tell the difference between being thirsty and being sad. It’s then that Rachel’s birth mother realizes that Rachel’s dads stayed. They remained awake. They kept alert.
The cup of Rachel’s life has been set. The ancients would have called this fate. You know, those things that were meant to happen or supposed to happen this way. I think it’s more complicated than that because those same ancients believed in limited good. We don’t. We don’t share this worldview at all. We think there is enough for everyone. There’s enough love. There’s enough justice. There’s enough for you and for me. This wasn’t so for Jesus and the disciples. They thought that there was just enough so that your cup had a limited and fixed amount of what God may offer your life. No more and no less. You couldn’t add to it or take from it because there’s just not enough to go around — and if you were to be so greedy, you would deprive someone else of what is in their cup. No, this is the cup of your life. You can’t say or do anything else. This is it.
Or so the ancients believed, but Jesus prays to God to take this cup of suffering. Take it away. Remove it. He doesn’t want it. But, isn’t this his cup of life? Is there anyone else that deserved that suffering? Did Jesus think that he had been given more than he could handle? Did he think that this was more than one person could carry on his own?
Every other time that Jesus talks about cups, he is teaching the disciples. In chapter 9, the disciples are worried about impostors healing in Jesus’ name. Jesus tells them not to worry because anyone that offers you a cup of water to drink does so in his name. Only a few verses later, when the disciples are agitated again, they ask Jesus if he will do whatever they want. When Jesus asks what they want, James and John don’t miss a beat. Not unlike Rachel Berry, they want glory. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” Jesus tells them. “Can you drink the cup I drink or receive the baptism I receive?” This is no meek and mild Jesus. You can almost hear the contempt in his question because of course they can’t. James and John can’t pour out of Jesus’ cup into theirs. We each have our own cup of life.
Stay here and keep alert, Jesus asks. He’s anxious and sad. He feels like it’s too much for any one person to carry. His cup is too full. Stay alert and pray, asks every grandmother that has ever held the hand of a dying grandchild. But, of course, it doesn’t need to be the Savior or a grandmother. It’s anyone in your life that told you that there is nothing else that they can say or do. They felt as though they were dying, so they turn to you to say: I can’t do this alone. I need you not to look away. I don’t need you to say or do anything in particular. I just need you to be here. I need to you sit with me. I need you to be here now. I need you to be present to every emotion I’m feeling right now. Stay here and keep alert.
Perhaps we need to be more careful about how we tell this story. Perhaps we need to be more deliberate in the ways we talk about suffering. Perhaps when we imagine that God comes into the world with love, we have to pay more attention to the fact that someone, somewhere was stripped naked. Maybe we didn’t see them at first. Maybe we missed this naked person running around the olive trees, but maybe we need to look again. Maybe we need to do just what’s Jesus asks, Stay here and keep alert.
Because if we remain there long enough, we might catch his name. We might get to see something of God in his nakedness. He might be the one that shows us that God was there all along. Maybe.