Matthew 26:36-39a”Then Jesus went with them to a garden called Gethsemane and told his disciples, ’Stay here while I go over there and pray.’ Taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he plunged into an agonizing sorrow. Then he said, ‘This sorrow is crushing my life out. Stay here and keep vigil with me.’ Going a little ahead, he fell on his face, praying, ‘My Father, if there is any way, get me out of this. But please, not what I want. You, what do you want?’ When he came back to his disciples, he found them sound asleep.”
As most of you know, I work another job on top of my duties as pastor of this Church. I have the distinct privilege of being with a company which works with parents that are in the process of reunifying with their children after they have been taken into custody by the State of Maine. It is mentally trying work, but it can be very rewarding at the same time. Seeing children leave our care and go back home to live with their biological parents after as much as two years away is an incredible thing to witness.
Unfortunately, I have seen the other side, too.
I have worked as a Family Visit Supervisor for almost one and a half years now. In that time, I have taken part in five “goodbye” visits where the children have been removed from the home permanently because the parents have been unable to recover from their mistakes and problems. Those visits are very difficult, even when you know deep down that it is probably for the best. One mother broke down and sobbed uncontrollably as I drove away with her two young children in my car. Another one couldn’t handle the pain and simply asked that I take away her infant son back to the adoptive home very early in the final visit. Still another father welled up with tears as he gave his three-year-old daughter a picture of himself and asked her to “always remember” him.
As I said, it can be a mentally difficult job.
Whenever I do these visits, I always struggle for words to say to ease their pain. Most often, the kids are not the ones that are hurting at that moment. It’s the parents. The parents understand the enormity of the moment. They understand that these “goodbyes” don’t lead to another “hello”, at least not for a very long while. I still haven’t found anything that I can say that would seem to make it any easier or give them a sense of hope. But I have found that an empathetic smile, a touch on the arm, or a simple look into their eyes has a way of calming them. For a pain that is so obviously beyond words, it only makes sense that words cannot contain a sense of hope.
I think that is what makes Jesus’ statements in the Garden of Gethsemane so profound for me. Jesus knew that the most difficult moment in his life was coming, and he simply wanted someone to be there with him. He wasn’t looking for anyone to say anything. He didn’t want someone else to do it for him or share the pain. He wasn’t looking for anyone to do anything, except maybe God. He was simply looking for someone to be there with him and care enough to not fall asleep. And he couldn’t even get that. He faced all of the pain of the cross completely and totally alone.
As I’ve said many times, we live in a world that is losing hope. But I think more than that, we live in a world that is losing “touch”. We can talk and debate and communicate and argue all day long, but we seem to be losing our sense of community. As our understanding of the world gets larger through the use of technology and media, our strong personal relationships seem to be suffering. As we are bombarded with images from across the globe, we struggle to know our neighbors, our friends, and our families.
Jesus would say that we have fallen asleep.
Is that an alarm clock that I hear?!