Matthew 26:36-39 “Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’”

When ever in his ministry do we hear Jesus ask his disciples for help, as though he is the one in need of strength and comfort? He sends them on an occasional errand to pay a tax, fetch a donkey, or prepare a meal. He called them to serve in his mission. But he was always the pillar of strength offering comfort and assurance to them. He was the one who stood calm, cool, and collected in the face of danger. They are afraid they are going to die in the storm at sea, but Jesus sleeps through most of it, until they wake him up. Then he calms the storm with a word and takes them to task for their little faith.

Now Jesus is so filled with sorrow over the grim task ahead of him, so troubled by what he is about to suffer, that he asks these three closest friends for help. It isn’t a great thing he asks of them. Could they stay up with him for a little while? Could they just watch while he prays, could they see if anyone is coming, so that he may pour himself into this prayer, and pray without distraction? In the face of his fear, in his battle with temptation, he is the one asking them for help.

To be sure, no one ever before or ever since, has carried a burden like his. We sometimes say that a man who is overwhelmed by his responsibilities is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. With Jesus, it was worse. He was carrying the weight of the world’s sins, the responsibility for them all, literally, on his shoulders, and it was going to crush the life out of him in just a few hours. Everything inside of him longed to escape.

He takes his desire to abandon his mission and escape the cross to the Father himself.  He offers no perfunctory prayer, politely prayed before supper or bedtime. His whole body is involved, not just his mouth. There he lies stretched out on the ground, his sweaty, tear-streaked face pressed against the Judean sand. The words pour out from the depths of his soul.

Who is this praying, pleading, so? Who is this asking, begging for some way, any way, to be delivered from the suffering he is about to face? This is Jesus, the Son of God, heaven’s Prince, the King of Kings! For all his divine power and heavenly glory, how utterly, truly human he had become. How inconceivably awful the agony he had to suffer must have been.

In the whole history of Jesus’ sufferings and death, without a doubt the most frightening words we hear him cry come from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” There he suffers the fate of the damned and forsaken, an eternity of torment for the sum of all souls packed into few hours on a cross one sad Friday. But next to that, is there anything more frightening than this scene: the very Son of God, so overwhelmed with sorrow at his coming death, so troubled, that at this late moment he is seeking any possible way to avoid it all?

Yet Jesus doesn’t give in to his temptation. He takes it to his Father in prayer. And so he faithfully battles temptation while his closest disciples stand watch.