GRACE, MERCY and PEACE are YOURS this day from GOD our FATHER, through our LORD and SAVIOR, Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

St. Paul the Apostle summarizes one of the keys to understanding the final days of Jesus' life – what we call His Passion – when he writes, “As one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.  For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.”

This verse frames our meditation for this evening.

In the most HOLY and BLESSED NAME of JESUS.  Amen.

We know that being a Christian is not based on doing the right things.  We know that we are saved by grace through faith, not by our works, so it is not of ourselves.  But we often fall into the ditch on the other side of the road.  Somehow we are deceived into thinking that, because it is not about our works, being a Christian is primarily about knowing and being able to recite the correct things.  But this is also false.  Being a Christian is living life based on the truth that has been handed down to us from the Apostles.  It is the daily life lived in the knowledge that God loves us.

But that knowledge of God's love is not merely something we believe in in a generic way.  God's love for us is tied to the historical record.  “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins,” says St. Paul to the Church in His letter to the Corinthians.  “For God loved the world in this way,” says Jesus, “He sent His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but would have eternal life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world would be saved through Him.”

The knowledge of the events of Christ's life and death and resurrection come to us so that we may rightly contemplate God's love and mercy and kindness to us.  These events are the very way that God has loved us – it is what He has done in space and time to love us and to make us lovable to Himself.

It is, therefore, necessary to know these things.  It is necessary to have them deeply embedded in our heart and in our mind, so that we may contemplate them and meditate upon them.  Because by meditating on the works of God, we come more and more to see and experience His love and mercy toward us.  By this, the Holy Spirit  transforms our thoughts and our feelings so that we live as the sons of God which He has made us to be in our Baptism.

Therefore, during this Lenten season, we will recount the events of Christ's passion.  We will put them in the forefront of our mind so that we may receive spiritual nourishment and refreshment by meditating on God's work in rescuing and redeeming us.

Even though our meditation tonight focuses upon the events beginning with Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, it is helpful to remember what came before, beginning with Jesus in the upper room at the passover with His disciples.  There, Jesus washes the feet of His disciples, baptizing them into Himself with His own hands and cleansing them outwardly just as His Word that He had spoken to them up until this point had cleansed them inwardly.  Having eaten the passover, and instituting the Lord's Supper, they sang a hymn and headed to the Garden.  Judas had already separated from the group.  He went out into the outer darkness to fulfill the agreement he had made with the chief priests and the elders to hand over Jesus to them.  As they prepared to leave the upper room, Jesus taught His final lessons. He spoke about the coming of the Holy Spirit.  He sought to comfort them with the promise that the sorrow they would begin to feel that night would turn to joy.  Eventually, they would come to terms with the reality of His resurrection from the dead and it's significance for all who believe.  

After He had done everything He could to prepare them for what was to come, Jesus lifts His eyes and prays to the Father saying, “Father, the hour has come, glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify you.”  He goes on to pray for the disciples, and all who would believe through their testimony.  He prays for the whole Church which would He would build and establish on their testimony.  He prays that all Christians would be united in heart and mind, in teaching and in faith.  And then, Jesus consecrates Himself for the task ahead – He prepares Himself to suffer and die for the sins of the world.

Then they depart. They cross over the brook of Kidron, a storm sewer of sorts for the city of Jerusalem.  During heavy rains the brook of Kidron would flow with the muck and the mire of the city.  On this night, it very likely flowed with the blood of the lambs slaughtered in the temple precinct for the passover.

Having crossed the brook – a veritable river of blood – Jesus and his close followers come to the Garden, where tonight enter into our spiritual contemplation.

It should not be lost on us that much of Jesus' spiritual anguish and suffering relating to His death begins in the Garden.  Jesus was faced with the same struggle that Adam was faced with in the Garden of Eden.  Will He heed God's word  and submit himself to God's will, or will he rebel, strike out on his own, and assert his own will over and above the will of God.

Adam's choice was to disobey.  Adam chose to pursue his own selfish desires, to become his own man, to strike out at God and refuse to submit himself.  By this action, Adam committed all were born after Him to the same path.  Willful and stubborn rebellion against God and the resulting selfishness and hatred of our neighbor is how we are born and how we remain unless God changes our heart.
As St. Paul says, “one trespass led to condemnation for all men.”

But Jesus came to undo what Adam did.  Where Adam failed and plunged the world into sin and condemnation, Jesus obeys.  “Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done,” He prays, as great drops of blood fall from his brow in the midst of His anxiety and anguish over what was to come.

And by the obedience of Jesus to the will of God, His Father; by His submitting Himself voluntarily to die as payment for the sin of Adam, Jesus becomes the substitute for Adam's descendants, paying the debt owed for their guilt, and winning freedom from the bondage that holds us in slavery to sin and makes us subject to eternal death.

But it wasn't easy.  It was an agonizing struggle.  Earlier Jesus said, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour,” and a voice boomed out from heaven.  But now, in the garden, there would be no voice.  There would be agonizing silence as Jesus prays in deep anxiety, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”

Three times, Jesus begs for the cup of suffering that He must drink the the very dregs would be taken from Him so that He would not be made to endure it.  And each time, He submits to the will of the Father.  “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Adam's rebellion had its root in the desire to be like God, as the serpent declared, “You shall be like God and know good and evil.”  The second Adam, our Lord Jesus came and humbled Himself to the very depths.  Though He was, indeed, the divine Son of God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied himself.  He took on the form of a servant and was born in the likeness of men.

Emptied of all self assertion, putting aside all his divine majesty and glory, He submitted Himself to betrayal, unjust arrest, unjust prosecution and an unjust sentence.  Jesus allows Himself to be arrested in the Garden that evening knowing they will pull his beard, strike him in the face, mock him, spit on Him.  He knew, as He prayed in the Garden, that His hands would be pierced, that His heel would be bruised, and that He would suffer in His own flesh the entire wrath and fury of God for our sin.

Such is the depth of His love for us.  Such is the intention of God's heart toward us.  This is the heart of Jesus laid bare – not so that we would pity Him or feel sorry for Him or have our soul stirred in compassion.  

We are not told these things in order to arouse our emotions and grieve for His sake.  Rather, we are presented these things to show us, in a mirror, what was necessary in order to rescue and redeem us.  We are given to see and know these things in order to reveal to us how deep the corruption is in our own heart and how great the love God has for us.

When Adam blasphemed God in the Garden of Eden and refused to submit to God's command not to eat, he grasped out to take and eat the fruit handed to him by his wife in an attempt to to lay hold of the Creator's crown for himself.  But we see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane humbly submitting Himself to the will of the Father.  From there, Jesus would be be bound and led away to stand trial where he would be unjustly pronounced and declared to be a blasphemer by the chief priests, the elders and the whole Sanhedrin even though He never once uttered a blasphemous word.  Where Adam tried to deflect and justify Himself, blaming his wife and blaming God, Jesus is silent before His accusers.  They rightly accused Him of saying He was the Son of God, but it was not blasphemy, it was the truth.  Following in the footsteps of our forefather Adam who bowed down and submitted his life to the forked tongue deceiver, they were the ones who lied and deceived and spoke falsehoods and tried to pass them off as truth.

Where Adam pushed back against His creator and rebelliously lied when God confronted him with his sin, Jesus, who was truly innocent of all sin, took the guilt, and was accused and condemned as a rebel and a liar.

Adam attempted to evade responsibility.  He attempted to make excuses, even accusing God, “The woman, whom YOU GAVE TO ME, O God!  SHE gave me the fruit and I ate.”  It wasn't my fault, I didn't do it, I didn't make dinner that night!  YOU actually did this by putting her here with me in the Garden.

But Jesus, in the face of unjust accusations, lies, and blasphemies kept silent.  Like a sheep before it's shearers.

By His rebellion, it was ADAM who was an insurrectionist and a murderer.  He brought death not only upon himself, but his willful rebellion condemned all his descendants to death.  His one trespass led to condemnation for all men, says Paul.  There is no greater murderer to ever live.  He was a true Barabbas – a son of the father of lies, having accepted the poisonous teaching of the devil and rejecting the plain Word of God.

To make atonement for this, Jesus would stand in for the insurrectionist and murderer whom Pilate had presented to be released.  Indeed, Barabbas, whose name means “Son of the Father” was released, and the only-begotten Son of God the Father – was condemned to suffer the death of His flesh.

In contrast to the blood soaked robes worn by Jesus as He stood before the crowds when they shouted, “Crucify Him,”  Adam was clothed in the beauty perfection.  

God had clothed Adam in innocence and righteousness.  But the strong man attacked him, stripped him of his righteousness and innocence through lies and temptation, found him with the cords of his sin, and left him for dead in his trespasses.  The wounds of Adam, the scars of his disgrace, the shackles of his enslavement to sin and every evil carry down to this very day as Adam's descendants continue to suffer the corruption of sin in all the natural powers of our body and soul.

To atone for this, to divert the consequences of our corruption so that our guilt would fall upon Him and we would not suffer for it, Jesus allowed Himself to be stripped naked by sinful men and to be beat and wounded in all his members.

In the Garden, Adam stretched out His hand.  He laid hold of the fruit of the forbidden tree.  He allowed it to please him.  And thus, He brought sin and death upon the whole world.

To atone for this, to remove from us the sting of death and the power of the grave, Christ Jesus stretched out His hands on the tree of the cross.  He drank vinegar and myrrh. And thus, won righteousness and gained eternal life for us, even though we were born of the sin-filled stock of Adam.

By his disobedience and rebellion, Adam caused himself and all who were born after Him out of the Garden of Paradise.  We live day by day eating bread by the sweat of our brow, struggling and striving through life day by day.

But our Lord, Jesus Christ, has burst through the gate.  And even to the converted thief who was crucified by His side, He promises entrance into Paradise.

Thus it is, – by His agony and bloody sweat, by His cross and passion, our Lord Jesus has helped and delivered us from the pains of eternal death and opened once more the way to eternal life.

This is why we Christians flee to Him for refuge.  Knowing that He has done this for us, and offers this salvation to all, we proudly proclaim that apart from our Lord Jesus Christ we have no good thing.

This is why our Lord Jesus is our chosen portion, and our cup.  In His hand is our rising and our going to bed.  By His mercy He has granted to us a bountiful inheritance and pleasant dwellings in His eternal Kingdom.

This is why we set Jesus, our crucified and risen Lord, before our eyes always. It is why we recount the stories, learn them, take them to heart, meditate upon them and ponder them.  Because if He is at our right hand, there is nothing that can shake us or overpower us.

By meditating upon His cross, our heart made glad because in Him we can rejoice.  Our whole being – body and soul – is secure those loving arms which He stretched out in order to embrace us.  

He has unwound the curse of sin brought into the world by our forefather Adam.  And now our soul will not be abandoned to Sheol, though this body may see decay, our flesh will will be restored and changed and made incorruptible by His almighty power at His return.

In such contemplation of the passion and suffering of Jesus, God not only makes known to us the path of life, but sets our feet firmly upon that path.  Through this sort of consideration of the work that Jesus has done, our Lord brings us into His presence and gives us fullness of joy.

Because though He considered equality with God not something to be grasped, in the glory of His resurrection and Ascension, our brother, who shares our flesh, has been brought up to the right hand of God so that we would receive pleasures forever more.

This Lent, may God grant you to contemplate the sufferings of Christ rightly.  May you be granted eyes to see in His wounds your rescue and salvation, your redemption and restoration.  May you not grieve and mourn for His sake, but may you grieve and mourn over your sin which caused Him to suffer so greatly. And may His Spirit grant you to experience the joys of your salvation by granting to you peace, in the knowledge of your forgiveness, so that your faith would be strengthened and the Holy work of God's mercy would rest upon you.

In the HOLY and BLESSED NAME of JESUS.

AMEN.