Love’s Portrait
I had to venture down a hallway the other day at the
parish offices for the parishes that I serve as deacon. I am not on the paid staff, so I don’t keep
an office there, but I occasionally need to meet with someone from the paid staff. That’s what I was doing the other day when a
painting hanging on the wall caught my eye.
I used to spend a lot of time staring at this same
picture when I was a child. I think it
was mostly my father’s preference that when we visited my grandmother most of
the time my brother and I spent the visit sitting quietly on my grandmother’s green
sofa. I was thinking as I typed “sofa”
that maybe it was an old-fashioned word.
I guess I should have used davenport.
On rare occasions my brother Mike and I would be
excused so we could play outside. But, more
often than not we would be sitting on the sofa for the duration of the
visit. The only artwork on the wall in
my grandmother’s living room was a portrait of Jesus in the Garden. It’s a fairly common portrait; maybe your
family had it on your wall, or perhaps one of your friends.
It wasn’t hard to figure out that it was Jesus in the
portrait. It took a few more years
though to have even a surface level appreciation that this was intended to show
Jesus the night before He was crucified.
I remember thinking that Jesus really didn’t look all
that distressed. I do remember spending
a lot of time wondering what He saw when He looked up into the moonlight.
Nowadays I have a greater understanding and
appreciation for what Jesus suffered for us.
I still think that Jesus doesn’t look upset enough to sweat blood in that portrait. What are we afraid to show Jesus suffering,
especially when it was our sins that caused it all. Maybe I just answered my own question.
Many theologians have speculated that Jesus was in agony
in the Garden because the human nature feared the crucifixion. I think that is a reasonable concept;
however, it doesn’t fully satisfy me. I
think there is more to it than that.
As John writes, God is love. Not only is love the Divine nature, but I
think that believers would say that Divine love is perfect love. For love to be divine, even for love to be
virtuous, it must flow outward, onto the beloved. Therefore, Jesus’ Divine Nature could not
have been agonizing over the pending crucifixion, because that would be a focus
on self. So, I would suggest that Jesus
must have also been considering us in the Garden.
Oh yes, all of our sins certainly caused their share
of the agony. But I think there is even
more than that. I think that Jesus
suffered much knowing that even His coming, even His teaching, even His miracles,
were not going to be enough for many people.
Surely then, but even more so now, all the love of God that Jesus showed
us all, isn’t enough for some. Unbelief,
and even outright rejection, 2000 years ago and today, I think, cause the most
bitter tears. May those tears be enough
for us all.
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
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