April 4, 2004
By Jack Price

            This is an Olympic year.  The Summer Olympics take place every four years, always in a leap year and always the same year as the Presidential elections.  Though the Olympics have become synonymous with controversy, they provide an exciting spectacle. 

            Despite the tensions of professionalism vs. amateurism, the scandals of performance enhancing drugs, political bias in judging, and bribery for Olympic venues, the Olympic moment of performance is like no other.  This is whether it’s track and field, skating, swimming, skiing, team, or individual events.  The preparation of a young lifetime leads to a moment in front of the world:  to succeed or not -- the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat.

          Talk about pressure.  In the Olympics, it’s enormous!  But the pressure-packed situations in life don’t all involve sports and the opportunity for worldwide fame or Olympic gold.  The pressures you and I experience come in the daily activities of earning a living, getting through school, trying to make a  relationship work, holding a family together.

Most of us will not ever be in the Olympics or the final four.  At the same time, the pressure-packed situations we face are very real:  temptations to cheat, even just a little, to get what we really want.  In the crisis-events of life, sometimes we panic and sometimes we come through.  You learn a lot about yourself in the heat of battle.  It can be a tough lesson when our deepest flaws and fears are revealed in the crucible of trial.  When the pressure is on, we learn who we are and we learn to appreciate the strengths of those around us.  We learn to value grace and forgiveness because, quite often, people don’t come through under pressure.  We wilt.  We choke.  We cheat.  The tendency to take the easier way, the path of less resistance, is a very human one.

          The man Jesus learned who he was under pressure.  Before the cross, before the beating, before the trial, in a quiet place of prayer, he faced tremendous pressure, made his choice, and won his victory.

Let’s go back a few days to the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the origin of much of our Palm Sunday pageantry.  To tell the truth, Jesus was no heroic general riding a War Horse to the cheers of thousands.  The triumphant entry was a curious sight, more of an anti-heroic parade – an itinerant prophet riding a donkey through the back gate of a depressed city.  Actually, this was a parade befitting kingdom of God – a kingdom of the powerless, a kingdom for outcasts, peacemakers, the meek, and the pure in heart.

            A few days later, Jesus gathers the disciples in an upper room.  He meets with his family to observe the Passover and to say goodbye.  Picture the upper room intimacy.  Simple bread and wine become sacraments of Jesus:  images of his physical life, his body and blood, becoming one with each of his beloved followers.  His essential self nourishes their souls – the bread of life, the perpetual well of living water, the festive wine life, growing sweeter and sweeter.  The elements of food become a sacrament to Jesus, a symbol drawing us into his very presence and revealing to us his very nature.  In this act, he promises always to be available to them.  The bread and cup of our communion are sacraments of Jesus just as Jesus is a sacrament of God, drawing us into God’s very presence, and revealing to us God’s very nature.  In Jesus, we see all nature of God that can be revealed in human life translated through the lives, memories, and minds of those who followed him, who called him Lord.

When supper was finished, they leave the upper room.  The moment of truth is at hand.  (read Luke 22: 39-46)

            All four of the biblical gospels record that Jesus went out after the last supper to a quiet place to pray.  The disciples, without Judas, followed.  According to Luke, Jesus went to the Mt. of Olives “as was his custom”.  Matthew and Mark identify the place as the Garden of Gethsemane.  When they got there, Jesus “withdrew from them” to pray by himself.  I am reminded of the spiritual – “Jesus walked that lonesome valley; he had to walk it by himself”.  Some things must be faced alone.  Many of the greatest challenges of life are faced on the ground of our own hearts.

The pressure on Jesus is enormous.  The time has come.  He knows what happens to prophets who are rejected in Jerusalem, to critics of powerful regimes who attract attention, and what Rome does to Jews who get out of line.  Jesus warns his disciples to pray that they “not come into the time of trial”.  His words re-echo the Lord’s Prayer.  After his time of prayer, Jesus again warns them to pray “not come into the time of trial”.  He is concerned how his friends will fare when he is gone. 

The pressure mounts and Jesus’ very human prayer is the same as yours or mine:   “God, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.”  “The cup” represents suffering and death.  “Please say it doesn’t have to be so.  Jesus wrestles and struggles.  Angels minister to him.  Angels represent a message from God, God’s word to people.  For Jesus, his clarity of purpose returns.  The struggle is so intense that sweat pours from him like great drops of blood.  It is the struggle of the soul, the great and agonizing battle between right and wrong within the human heart.  “Father, please let this cup pass from me, remove it from me, please.” 

Conflict stirs within and around Jesus.  Then, there is peace.  The fear and dread common to all humanity remain in Jesus, yet the struggle is over with one word.  The NRSV reads, “yet”.  Other translations read “nevertheless”.  That one word changes everything.  “Remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”  Jesus’ plea is the same “With all my heart, I do not want to go through this, nevertheless, not to continue this path means to forsake everything.  I fear this path, nevertheless, I value faithfulness more than comfort.  I value faithfulness more than safety.  I value faithfulness more than life itself.

Full spiritual maturity is the process of being “apprehended by a comprehensive vision of truth”.  In Jesus’ life, we now see the “disciplined, active incarnation of the imperatives of absolute love and justice.”  The apostle Paul wrote, “For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  Jesus’ life now reveals that fuller knowledge.  In the crucible of trial, under the pressure of severe temptation, Jesus chooses faithfulness. He thwarts the powers of Temple and of Rome by accepting worst they can do.  He defeats powers of spiritual darkness in this world by exposing their moral corruption.  By walking his path and embracing the cross, he awakens the divine presence in every human.   He reveals to a broken world, the true breadth, depth, height, and nature of God’s love and grace.

The choices you and I make are matters of faith.  In what do we believe ultimately?  Theologian Marcus Borg tells us that faith is more about commitment, relationship, and trust than about belief systems.  In the day to day living of your life, what do you trust to support you?  To what are you ultimately committed?  From what perspective do you make your life’s choices? 

            We practice our faith choices every day in matters large and small just as athletes and musicians hone their skills.  When the pressure is on, practice or lack of practice shows.  How will we respond under pressure?  Will we say no to temptations to cheat?  To follow popular opinions?  To speak the truth in love?  To shrink back in silence with spouses, children, or parents?  Will we commit to the challenging work of being Christian community?  learning to trust one another?  Learning to trust the Spirit’s leadership? 

Under pressure, we discover that we are the persons and the people we have been preparing to be.  The choices we make in difficult situations are the choices we have made each day along the way.  Jesus faced the human choice of giving up in fear or staying the course.  He chose the path of faith at his greatest time of trial because he had made that choice over and over again his whole life.  When it mattered most, he could pray, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.” 

What was true for Jesus true for us as individuals and also true for us as a body, a community of faith.  Our faithfulness under pressure reflects a consistent practice of faith.  Our ability to manage tough choices comes from practicing, trusting, and committing ourselves to each other and to the Spirit in all things.

Elizabeth O’Connor writes, in the book Cry Pain, Cry Hope, about the path of faithful choices:

From past experience I know that when I begin investing myself in a dream or in a life, the commitment grows.  Where I put my energies and my treasure, my reluctant heart sometimes follows.  If any of us had to be fully committed when starting out, very little would ever be begun.  It would be like having to decide to marry on the first meeting.  What we have to do is to take one step and, if it seems good, take another.

The path of faith lies through the narrow gate, along the hard path “that lead to life, and there are few who find it”.  We are called to that path, to take each critical step by faith, so that we can take the next critical step by faith.  We have the example of Jesus to inspire us, the presence of the living Christ to enable us, and the boundless grace of God to empower us.  Let us walk that path today and each day.