“Not as I Will, but as Thou Wilt” #BCCSundaySchool2019

Matthew 26; Mark 14; Luke 22; John 18

Son of Man, Huh? What Does That Even Mean?
The four chapters in this lesson correlate, to a remarkable degree, the events leading up to Christ’s arrest by Jewish authorities on the Thursday night of Holy week. These events include the Last Supper, the prayer in Gethsemane, Judas’s betrayal of Jesus, and Peter’s thrice-repeated denial of his Master. I will use the text in Matthew as the basis for the lesson, adding in insights from the other Gospels as appropriate.

But first, I want to address the meaning of the expression “Son of Man” (ho huios tou anthropou), which Christ applies to himself 81 times in the New Testament–ten of them in the chapters included in this week’s lesson, beginning with Matthew 26:2: “Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified.”

“Son of Man” was, by a wide margin, Christ’s preferred form of self-address in the Gospels. But despite its prominence, there is nothing even close to a scholarly consensus on what he meant by it. Among the possibilities:

• In the Book of Moses, God’s name is given as “Man of Holiness” in the original tongue of Adan, and Christ’s name is given as “Son of Man.” Presumably, “Son of Man” could be short for “Son of Man of Holiness.”
• The Greek term ho huios tou anthropou–which appears nowhere else in any other Greek text–appears to be (but may not be) a translation of the Hebrew בן–אדם (ben-‘adam), which is used throughout the Old Testament to mean simply “human being.”
• Several uses of ben-’adam in the Old Testament (Psalms 80:17; Daniel 7:13) speak of a future Mesianic figure of great power. Attributing this title to Christ may be part of the gospel-writers’ project of establishing Jesus as the Messiah of Jewish prophecy.
• Many interpreters believe that the self-designation “Son of Man” is a term that should be used in conjunction with “Son of God” (a title which Christ never claimed for himself) to express Christ’s true nature.

This last bullet point, I think, best fits the way that Christ uses the title in this week’s reading. Here we see the Son of God at his most human, as he faces his own death–the one thing that is inherent in his humanity and alien to his divinity. He can atone for our sins because he is the Son of God. But he can die for them only because he is the Son of Man. In these scenes from His last mortal day, the contrast between Christ’s two natures comes into brilliant relief.

This, for me, is what makes Gethsemane so powerful. Christ must face it wholly as a human being who, like most human beings, doesn’t want to die, doesn’t want to leave the people he loves, and doesn’t particularly relish the idea of being tortured for hours before he gives up the ghost. He even asks if it would be OK to just skip the whole thing and maybe go straight to the resurrection. “O my Father,” he entreats, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matthew 26: 39).

Christ does not want to die because, well, most people don’t. Not wanting to die is a normal human response to the reality he is facing, and Christ’s nature is fully human (even as it is also fully divine). One of Jesus’s most deeply human moments comes just a few minutes later, when he comes back from his prayers and finds the disciples he asked to stand guard asleep. He says, to Peter, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” (Matthew 26:40). We can interpret this question to mean something like, “So, I am up there bleeding from every pore and taking the sins of the ENTIRE FREAKING WORLD on my back, and all I asked you to do was not fall asleep for an hour. You had one job, Peter. Great work.”

All of this–the sense of his own importance, the impending sense of doom, his disappointment with his friends, and even his use of mild sarcasm–is fundamentally human and shows that the Savior faced his death, in every way, as a Son of Man.

Peter: The Other Son of Man Who Can’t Seem to Do Anything Right
There is some literary stuff going on in these chapters too. There is a tension between Christ and Peter that runs through the narrative of Thursday night. In literary terms, they become foils for each other, or contrasting backgrounds against which the other can be seen more clearly. Christ is the Son of God who is brought low by his inherent humanity. Peter is the human who will soon be elevated by his inherent divinity.

But not yet. Peter will eventually become a tireless and fearless minister of the Gospel. But, in these verses, is he (like all of us) a human being with a lot of divine potential who just can’t seem to overcome the pull of his human nature.

As we have already seen, Peter falls asleep when he is supposed to be keeping watch for Jesus. And he does it three times. He does it even after Christ reprimands him (and James and John). He does it after he promises not to. He just keeps falling asleep. Why?

Because that is what humans do. When Jesus asks Peter and the other disciples to stay awake while he prays, he is asking them to overcome something basic in human nature. I have no idea how long Peter and the others had been up, but I know that human beings can get to a point where they just can’t stay awake anymore–no matter how high the stakes are.

This may be the best scriptural metaphor we have for the conflict between human and divine nature. We have to sleep, even when we don’t want to. It is something that the body demands. And yet, to fulfill Christ’s injunctions, we have to overcome the pull of the body. Christ’s words to Peter in Matthew 26:41–”the spirit … is willing, but the flesh is weak”–has become an axiom in our language to express the distance between our divine aspirations and the human nature that we have to overcome to achieve them.

Peter’s next mistake–attacking and wounding the servant of the high priest who comes to arrest Jesus–is even more illustrative. All four Gospels tell this story, but only John identifies Peter as the perpetrator:

Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus. Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? (John 18:10-11)

Unlike sleep, cutting off someone’s ear is not something that we have to do. People have managed to go through their entire lives without severing a single body part of anybody else. We don’t ever have to do it. But none of us can escape the primal impulse that makes us want to strike out violently. This is the “fight” of “fight or flight,” and it is one of the first things to come into our squirrel brains when we feel threatened.

So, Peter acts in a fundamentally human way that is incompatible with his divine nature. He strikes out, violently and wounds someone maliciously because he feels threatened and loyal to his master. The person he attacks is a servant–not the high priest himself or any of the armed guards. He hurts the man because he can. Because he is angry. And because feels that he has to do something. His violence serves no purpose. It does not help Christ. It does not hurt the person who is arresting him. It just makes Peter feel better and the earless servant feel substantially worse. Christ rebukes him again and (uniquely in the Gospel of Luke) heals the servant’s wound.

It is important, I think, that we see this action as part of a triple play–”the Sins of Peter” perhaps–that also include the earlier incident of him (and others) falling asleep, and the later incident of his denial of Christ. The final incident (or set of incidents, since he denies Christ three times) is closely related to the prior one. It is the “flight” of “fight or flight.” It is an incident when Peter feels threatened and tries to escape–even at the cost of denying that he knows the man who has been condemned to die.

Now, in fairness to Peter, this really was a dangerous situation. It was a mob, and his life could very well have been in danger if he admitted being with Christ. His greater sin was probably his earlier statement to Jesus that he would never deny him (Matthew 26:35); for, when he made this claim, he spoke with unearned pride in his ability to transcend his own human nature on his own. He did deny Jesus, of course, and Christ knew that he would, because he knew Peter. He also knew human nature. And he knew what it meant to struggle with divine aspirations and human weaknesses–because he was doing it too.

And this is why there had to be an Atonement. Jesus had to reconcile his own human and divine natures–in Gethsemane and on the cross–to create a path for Peter to do the same. And the rest of us too. The Second Principle of the Gospel, repentance, is the process of subordinating our inherent humanity to our equally inherent divinity. It is hard because the pull of human nature is strong. Most of us will travel the path slowly, inexactly, with backwards steps as well as forward ones. But there is a path, and that is why “the gospel” is really “good news.”