Tonight we follow Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane.
As we kneel with him in the dark, see his hands clenched in prayer,
the blood on his brow, in his tears,
as we hear the cry wrench out of him, “Take this cup away from me!”
…we hear also the cry of so many of our siblings.
“I cannot bear this part of myself, O God. Why are you calling me to this? Why did you make me to be this way, when all it has done for me is cause loved ones to abandon me? Take this cup away. Please take this cup away.”
Let us not be like the disciples who slept,
ignorant of Jesus’s agony.
Let us not be like them when they fled the scene
leaving him to the ones who chained him and dragged him away.
O God, set our hearts on fire with a fierce compassion for your oppressed children, so that we cannot sleep when they cry out.
We go to them. We stay awake with them. We. stay.
We remember the one who broke bread and called it his body,
who knelt to wash our feet.
We remember the one who commanded us to love in such a way –
to serve and be served.
Let us go now into a world full of cries,
all anxiously awaiting a day that seems far off, a dawn past all suffering
when we will rise transformed,
when relationships will be reconciled
and all will know God’s love.
In the meantime – this time of anxious waiting – we leave no one alone in their agony. We cry out with them.
We stay awake with them.
We stay.
Binary-Breaking Worship 