While the “glory hallelujahs” still ring in the ears of the disciples, while the songs of “Hosanna! Blessed is He!” still echo through the streets of Jerusalem, Jesus goes on walking in the shadow of what restoring broken lives will cost, a toll only He can pay.
From habit His footsteps take Him to the garden of gnarled olive trees and rugged rocks where He has so often gone in the night to pray away the burdens of His heart.
But tonight in Gethsemane the heaviness will not go away. “Drink ye all of it,” He had said just hours before to His friends as they shared the Messiah’s cup, the cup of the new covenant. How could they know what now brimmed from the cup He has to drink? It doesn’t hold the sweet wine of companionship, this cup that now stands like a yawning chasm before Him. He sees the past in the cup, and the future.
He sees the sick perversions of every Sodom and Gomorrah, the bloody wars of violence of brother against brother, the betrayals of trust against the innocent. He hears the cries of children violated and abused, the sobs of the wounded battered in body and broken in the spirit, the angry shouts of men in streets where violence tears relationships apart, the bitter voices of young men who have no one to trust.
In this cup He sees teen-agers writhing in the muddy battlefields of some insane war, crying for the mercy of dearth. He sees long lines of naked Jewish men, women, and children marching, marching toward long grey buildings whose smokestacks belch the sickening stench of burning flesh. In this cup He sees unborn children and their child-mothers who weep at night for the lost childhoods of them all.
And there is silence in the cup – the long, empty silence that widows know when there is no one to talk to. The uncomfortable silence as thick as a cement wall between fathers and sons who have never found a way to love or be loved, the panicked silence of mothers who wait for word from lost daughters, the desperate silence of children who wait for an alcoholic parent to burst into the room where they cower terrified in the darkness.
He sees all the violations, and the pain, all the brokenness from Eden to Gethsemane, and from Gethsemane to the end of time. Since Bethlehem He has walked this earth as a man with all the human limitations…except one: He has the terrible awareness of God. And this awareness eats at His soul, confirming that he must not only see all of this pain in the cup, but He will have to experience all of it – become both victim and violator – yes, become sin itself, if the lost children of the Father are to ever be restored to wholeness. This terrible awareness is more than a human body was ever meant to bear. Drops of blood begin to rupture from the pores of His forehead as if they were drops of sweat. He turns for the support of a friend, for someone to just be there for Him in this hour.
But his friends are asleep. Human companionship is no match for the commitment this relationship demands. He will drink alone – as He has walked alone from Eden to Gethsemane and now from Gethsemane to Golgotha. The road He must take will be called “Sorrow”. The “Man of Sorrows” must walk “Sorrow Street”, and He must go alone.
From the Musical "Then Came The Morning"
