Sidney Herald
religion column published August 10, 2014
Winston Churchill was visiting New York the day after the
stock market crash of 1929. The noise of a crowd outside his hotel woke him.
“Under my very window a gentleman cast himself down fifteen stories and was
dashed to pieces, causing a wild commotion and the arrival of the fire brigade,”
he wrote. Over the following weeks, investors committed suicide by shooting and
overdose.
A loss of riches, if great enough, can make people
sorrowful unto death. Jesus experienced this in Gethsemane. He “began to be
sorrowful … very sorrowful, even to death.” (Matthew 26:37-38).
The Greek word translated “sorrowful” is lupeo. This word
has various uses. A repeated use in the Bible relates to riches, loss, and
poverty causing sorrow. Jesus told the rich young ruler, “Sell all that you have
… and come follow me. Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he
had great possessions.”
Paul used the word when writing about persecutions and
deprivations the apostles suffered. They were “as sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing
everything.” (2 Corinthians 6:10)
Jesus was born and lived in poverty. What riches could he
lose in Gethsemane? What treasure could be so great that losing it would make
him sorrowful to death?
His treasure was in the heart of his Father and the communion of the Holy
Spirit. He was losing communication with them.
The phrase “unto death” meant that Jesus was dying there and then. So “an angel
appeared to him from heaven, strengthening him.” (Luke 22:43). This was
strengthening, but not comforting. The angel only braced up Jesus’ sinking
bodily nature so that He would not die too soon, in the wrong place, in the
wrong way. By prophesy, He must die as the Passover Lamb, on Golgotha, on a
cross, not in Gethsemane.
The angel carried no word from the Father. The abandonment that finally caused
the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” already had begun.
The communion of the Son with the Father and the Holy Spirit was the original
treasure, the richest ever. The Trinity is love’s eternal home. Trinitarian love
is what makes heaven heavenly.
Once we had communion with God. Adam walked and talked with God in the first
garden. But sin separated us from God. This is our poverty without Christ. But
Jesus suffered the loss of love’s riches unto death so he could give the
treasure to us beggars.
By his redemption, Jesus took on the sin that separated us from God and overcame
it. Jesus restores to us the love of Father, Son, and Spirit. (Ephesians
3:14-19). “If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him
and he in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in
us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides
in him.” (1 John 4:14)