On the night before his crucifixion Jesus went to the garden of Gethsemane to grieve and to pray. He brought his friends with him, but his friends, his brothers, didn't extend to him the love of bearing witness to his grief.
I get it. Grief makes me uncomfortable, especially to watch. It highlights all my insecurities about not being adequate. I don't know what to do. Its weight feels like a burden of accusation or its emptiness a yawning depth I fear might swallow me too. Look away. Get away. Honestly, those are my gut reactions when I see grief.
Maybe that's why it was easiest for Jesus' friends to close their eyes and escape into sleep, when he asked them to sit with him. It's not that they didn't care about Jesus, they just didn't really understand his pain, and anyone's pain, understood or not, is uncomfortable to witness.
Right now, my black brothers and sisters, I want to acknowledge, that you are in the Garden of Grief, asking God to let this cup pass from you and your children. Jesus knows your pain, he grieved and cried out to God, in fear for his life.
Come to Gethsemane, my friend. God sees you there. Jesus sits and grieves with you. But I want to sit and grieve with you too.
Right now, my white brothers and sisters, echoing through our nation is the gut reflex, look away, get away. The questions feel frightening, maybe even threatening. Why does evil wear a face like mine? Am I part of the problem? What can I really do? Our response may be to deflect, point fingers in other directions. Or maybe, it's just easier to close our eyes and sleep.
Come to Gethsemane, my friend. Our brothers and sisters are inviting us to bear witness to their grief, to cry out to God, together, to let this cup pass.
Some of us stay outside the garden and it is easy to deflect and to pass judgement on how others grieve. Did Jesus really need to cry to the point of sweating blood? Doesn't that seem a little extreme?
Some of us step into the garden but it all feels too big and too scary to face and so we anesthetize ourselves with sleep. We close our eyes on our sister's weeping, we turn our head from our brother's screams.
This is not love. This is not living as the family of God. There is a different way.
Come to Gethsemane, my friends. In the Garden of grief you don't have to come with the "right" way to grieve. You don't have to come with the "right" answers. But, you do need to come with your eyes and ears open. In the garden, only our Father has the answers. In the garden, we only cling to each other and cry out and wait for Jesus to show us the path out.
Gethsemane is a place of grieving but it is also a place of submission. The path out will not be easy, Jesus showed us it is a path of sacrifice, a path of humility. I don't know what cross our Father will specifically call each of us to carry, but I know he will ask us to carry one. Our beloved, Jesus, carried one for us too.
Our Father will speak to each of us in Gethsemane, words of comfort and words of challenge, whispering to us the specific things he is asking us to submit to him. But he won't ask us to carry our crosses alone. Because of Jesus, our Father will never forsake us. This gives us courage.
Come to Gethsemane, my friends. We need Jesus and we need each other here. It is where the journey begins. It is where an ask for and an answer of sacrificial love changes the world.
