Because when Christ is praying, he is saying in the most eloquent fashion possible, there is no way that in my naked, in my unassisted humanness, I can carry this cross. I can bear the nails. I can bear the spear thrust. I compare the mockery. I can bear the loss of God. I can finish the work. I can bear the load. I can save all the people that you’ve given to me—a company before. more than anyone could number. I can emerge from this trial and do what you’ve given me as my calling in my life and death. And that’s why we have a praying Christ. He is the incarnate Son of God. He is the living power of God. He is the wisdom of God. He is the embodiment to all of the ability of God’s grace. And yet he is praying. He speaks the winds and waves obey him. He touches, He wills, and somebody in the last stages of an incurable illness is perfectly fit and healthy again. He raises the dead and he is praying. And does it not say to us that it doesn’t matter… what our position is in the church, how long we’ve been a Christian, what our knowledge is, what our eminence is, what the number and quality of our gifts may be, or the length and the depth of our own experience. There is no way that you and I could emerge into a situation where we become spiritually independent of God. There’s no way that we can face any day without prayer, that we can carry any burden without prayer, that we can climb any mountain without prayer. I don’t mean that we should develop a prayer life in the sense of much Christian mysticism when prayer becomes a sort of end in itself. But I do mean you can only survive as a Christian in America in 2023 by being aware of your impotence that every load is too big. Every obstacle is too high. Every obligation is too heavy, every burden is too much. Every temptation is too great. Even every privilege is too much. And here is Christ and Christ never failed. And Christ was filled with the Holy Spirit without measure. And He had the most marvelous charisma on a human level alone. And he had more right than any other creature to pretend to being independent. And yet he is here before us in felt impotence, grasping at the omnipotence of God. And not only that, but the earnestness with which he prays. He doesn’t just pray. He falls to the ground. He throws himself to the ground. And we know from elsewhere that that was a demonstration of earnestness. And we know that he agonizes… I have got to pray, I must pray. I’ve got to go to God now. Come and pray with me now, because I’ve got to talk to God. I must go to my Father and in that agony, his perspiration is like great drops of blood as the spiritual struggle reduces itself on his physique, on his on his body. And so he prays.
This excerpt was taken from the full sermon, “The Praying Christ“.
