Keeping Watch With Christ
Rev. Richard A. Bolland

Matthew 26:36-45
(March 20, 2005 Sermon Transcript)

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        Grace mercy and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

        From our Gospel lesson, this portion. 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."

        Dear friends in Christ, I remember from my days in the military that standing military watch is critical duty. It is indeed so critical that the penalty for falling asleep on guard duty can be death. You might ask why so severe a penalty. And the answer is simple. Because, if the enemy attacks without warning, many soldiers could die. So keeping watch on guard is truly a matter of life and death.

        Many of us, in our own sorrows will know, in life, that also knowing the comfort and presence of friends at a time of grief and sorrow is comfort indeed.

        Often our friends will come and sit with us, for instance, if we were to lose a loved one, and keep watch with us in our grief. Even if they say little, just their presence is true comfort. Knowing the presence and care is there helps to ease our pain.

        In this Passion Gospel reading for this morning Jesus asks His three closest companions to keep watch with Him as He prepares to face an unfathomable torture. Our Lord knows that soon, indeed very soon, the Father will turn away from Him, and He will know the torments of eternity in hell for the sake of sinners.

        As we now begin this Holy Week, I invite you to ponder the meaning of keeping watch with Christ. What is the reason that the watch must be kept? I would suspect that, in this passage, in this way, we see as we see no where else, the human nature of our Lord so plainly and painfully visible.

        Here is Jesus, true man begotten of the Father of our Lord. And as any human would, He knows what lies before Him, the horrific experience He knows full well is coming, and very soon.

        As fellow humans, surely we can appreciate our Lord’s apprehension and His anxiety, and His desire not to know the scourging, and the nails, and the painful suffocations of crucifixion, and, of course, death. What we can’t know is what it means to appreciate the Lord’s apprehension, His full complete advance knowledge of the incredible torture He is about to undergo.

        Certainly, in His humanity, we can understand why He might want this cup of suffering to pass from Him. But there’s more.

        His agony is necessitated, of course, by the gravity of human sin. Not His own. Ours.

        We fallen human beings cannot fully appreciate what a serious thing sin is, and frankly, we really don’t want to know. We fail to understand what it means for a holy and righteous God to be violated by our sins. Finally, here in the garden, all that Christ came to do for us lost and condemned sinners is coming to a head. The burden is so incredibly heavy that our Lord seeks the comfort of His friends, His closest friends. Peter, James, and John. He does not wish to face this hour alone. And who could blame Him?

        Our Lord is visibly, obviously, in great distress. He is troubled, as He says, to the point of death.

        Well, this perfect, holy Son of God, who is at the cusp of a precipice over which He is soon to plunge, has much to be anxious about. Ponder if you will, these words. God who is holy, God who is righteous, God who is perfect and flawless is about to become a sinner. This second Adam, this Son of God, who is about to take upon Himself something that is completely and utterly unthinkable - He is to become sin itself - and if so, to no longer be what God is. Holy. No wonder, in the garden, He trembles. No wonder, in the garden, He prays that this cup be permitted to pass. No wonder that His sorrow is to the point of death.

        How gracious it would have been had His friends merely stayed awake with Him at this terrible hour.

        We might ask, what is the nature of this inattention to keeping watch? Having seen their Lord is such great distress, that they had never seen in Him before, what did these apostles do? They fall asleep.

        It’s not that they were out of earshot of what the Lord had said. Nor that the Lord speaking so softly that they couldn’t hear what He had to say. For indeed, in Hebrews, the writer of that book tells us that, during Jesus’ days on this earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death, but He was heard for His reverent submission.

        They are listening to the cries of a man, who, despite His agony, will submit to the will of the Father. For indeed, there never could be, nor ever would be, and instance where the will of the Son would be at odds with the will of the Father. So whatever small comfort could have been obtained by our Lord by the company of His friends will be denied Him. And they sleep.

        This sleep is the overcoming of the sinful flesh over the spirit. For as Jesus said, "Pray and keep watch so that you will not fail. The spirit is willing but the body, or the flesh, is weak."

        This condition, the battle between spirit and flesh, is constant for God’s children. We know it, as well as they. We do not keep watch through the hearing of the Word and the receiving of the Sacraments. And then, this demonic sleep, this slumber, may be our lot as well. And the flesh may, indeed, lead us into sin.

        Here we observers 2000 years later may claim the company of these snoring apostles. Like them, we tend to be careless in our watching for our own spiritual struggles, listening to the world more than we listen to God as He speaks and acts through His means of grace, Word and Sacrament.

        Peter, James, and John could have listened to some of the last words that God in human flesh was going to speak while on this planet. But they squandered the opportunity, giving in to the weakness of flesh.

        Likewise, every time we have the opportunity to come to worship, and there hear God speak to us through His Word, some of us sometimes find something more valuable for us to do. Then we too are guilty of spiritual drowsiness.

        I would suggest that every Sunday, after each first service, we have the opportunity to come and study the word of God, in Sunday School and in Adult Bible Class. And yet, some find that eating breakfast with friends is a bit more tempting, or whatever the case might be. It might be running off to an NFL game, although no excuses this time of year!

        And our eyelids grow heavy, and we become weak.

        Every Sunday in each service the Lord’s Supper is offered to strengthen our faith, and to bring us the forgiveness of our sins by the grace of God again. And yet some will not come. Their eyelids become heavy.

        Every single day each husband and father or mother has the opportunity to have their family strengthened by listening to God’s word in family devotions and prayer. But there’s always so much that get in the way. The schedules are too busy, and athletics are too demanding, and the school bus is coming! And our eyelids close in spiritual slumber.

        I would suggest it’s precisely for all of these failures, and so many more, that our Lord now suffers and dies, for the forgiveness of such sins.

        You see, Christ is abandoned, even by His friends. I guess, really, here’s a surprise. And that is that it is Christ who keeps watch with the sleeping apostles, and not they with Him. And I would suggest that, in some sense, this is really no surprise. For we learn from Scripture that humanity has absolutely no help to offer Christ in redeeming us from our sins. This He must do quite alone.

        Indeed, we humans might well have slept through the entire time that Christ keeps watching with us, save for the grace of God speaking to us through Word and Sacrament.

        As He suffers alone in the garden of Gethsemane, so alone also to the whipping post and the cross He goes. I tell you there is no earthly help for Him.

        And even more profoundly, neither is there heavenly help for Him.

        For He must go to the cross also without the Father. For when He cries out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?", the Father abandons the Son to hell’s fire and darkness. He is alone.

        This is God’s Son, who willingly bears our sin to their most bitter end.

        In our Lutheran Hymnal, one of the verses that we sing at this time of year goes like this:

A Lamb goes uncomplaining forth,

The Guilt of all men bearing;

And laden with the sins of earth,

None else the burden sharing!

Goes patient on, grows weak and faith,

To slaughter led without complain,

That spotless life to offer;

Bears shame, and stripes, and wounds and death,

Anguish and mockery, and saith,

"Willing all this I suffer."

        There is simply no comfort for the Lord in His suffering.

        And so the divine watch is kept by Christ for our sakes. No accusation of Satan will be able to stand against us, since our Lord has taken our sins away, and nailed them, with Himself, to the cross.

        And what’s more, no punishment will come our way. For our Lord already endured that which we deserved. For He knows hell, so that we will not. And the Father’s desire for a holy people is finally met. Not because of our holiness, but because, having been forgiven, having had our sins removed, the clothing of Christ binds us to be holy in His sight, and acceptable in His house.

        And, hell finally has no fear over us. For our Lord has already been there for us, and we need not go. So, maybe the last verse of that same hymn would provide us some comfort. Verse 6 reads,

And when Thy glory I shall see

And taste Thy kingdom’s pleasure,

Thy blood my royal robe shall be,

My joy beyond all measure;

When I appear before Thy throne,

Thy righteousness shall be my crown,-

With these I need not hide me.

And there, in garments richly wrought

As Thine own bride, I shall be brought

To stand in joy beside Thee.

        This is the account of the beginning of the Lord’s passion. And I would suggest that it starts in the same way that it ends. Our Lord alone endures all that we might have all things. Salvation is always and only what God in Christ alone has wrought through Christ. And therefore, let us thank our God that the Lord keeps faithful watch with us.

        In Jesus’ name, Amen.