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Matthew 26:74-75Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man.” And immediately the rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)Peter’s tears at the end of this story are the main thing that distinguish him from Judas in the next chapter. There is all the difference in the world between genuine repentance and mere remorse, as Paul wryly notes in one of his letters to Corinth (2 Corinthians 7.10). The one leads to life, the other to death. Peter’s tears, shaming, humiliating and devastating though they were, were a sign of life. Judas’s anger and bitterness led straight to death.
The muddled motives and mixed emotions were no match for the three little questions, from a couple of serving-girls and a courtier with an ear for a northern accent. They were like small pins stuck into a large balloon, and Peter’s world exploded in a roar of oaths and a flood of bitter tears (170-1).
Matthew 26:62-66 And the high priest stood up and said, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?”
But Jesus remained silent.
And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment?”
They answered, “He deserves death.”
Daniel 7:13-14I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.
Psalm 110:1 The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”
Aaron Orendorff The question circling Jesus and his revolutionary, “temple-destroying,” kingdom-of-God movement was a relatively simple one: “How will the kingdom come? How will God’s Messiah—the king and rightful Son—usher in his reign?”
Jesus answer to Caiaphas’ charges and the narrative that follows reveals the answer: “From now on you will see . . .”
What will they see?
For Caiaphas, the Council, the crowds and Roman soldiers, what they will see is a man crushed—utterly decimated—by the world’s most terrifying symbol of imperial and religious power—the cross. And yet, what Jesus says they will see is God’s king enthroned, ascending on the clouds of heaven, ruling and reigning over a kingdom that will never end, never perish and never be destroyed.
Matthew 26:26-29 Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?”
At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him and fled.
Aaron OrendorffIntentional, determined, resolved.
On the heels of what would have been (up to that point) the darkest moment of his life, Jesus walks with calculated intensity into the heart of a gathering storm. The cross is no accident. The mob is not sovereign. The Scriptures, as Jesus twice repeats, must be fulfilled. The Father’s will must be done. The “cup” must be drained. And so, just as Jesus predicted, the shepherd is struck, the sheep scatter and the fate of a fallen world begins rushing to meet a deserted, betrayed and unwavering Jew.
Matthew 26:26-29 Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.”
And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled.
Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.”
And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”
And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”
And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.
Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)Jesus had been sad at various times. He’d been frustrated with [the disciples] for not understanding what he was talking about. He’d been cross with the people who were attacking him, misunderstanding him, accusing him of all sorts of ridiculous things. There had even been tension with his own family. But basically he’d always been the strong one. Always ready with another story, another sharp one-liner to turn the tables on some probing questioner, another soaring vision of God and his kingdom. It was always they who had the problems, he who had the answers.
And now this.
Jesus was like a man in a waking nightmare. He could see, as though it was before his very eyes, the cup. . . . The cup of God’s wrath.
He didn’t want to drink it. He badly didn’t want to. Jesus at this point was no hero-figure, marching boldly towards his oncoming fate. . . . He was a man, as we might say, in melt-down mode. He had looked into the darkness and seen the grinning faces of all the demons in the world looking back at him. And he begged and begged his father not to bring him to the point of going through with it.
And the answer was No.
Actually, we can see the answer being given, more subtly than that implies, as the first frantic and panicky prayer turns into the second and then the third. . . . if it has to be, “may your will be done.”
[W]hen we find the ground giving way beneath our feet, as sooner or later we shall, Gethsemane is where to go. That is where we find that the Lord of the world, the one to whom is not committed all authority, has been there before us (159-61).
Matthew 26:26-29 Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.”
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)The heart of the matter is reasonably straightforward, though none the less breathtaking. Jesus was drawing into one event a millennium and more of Jewish celebrations. The Jews had believed for some while that the original Exodus pointed on to a new one, in which God would do at last what he had long promised: he would forgive the sins of Israel and the world, once and for all. Sin, a far greater slave-master than Egypt had ever been, would be defeated in a way God defeated not only Egypt but also the Read Sea. And now Jesus, sitting there at a secret meal in Jerusalem, was saying, by what he was doing as much as by the words he was speaking: this is the moment. This is the time. And it’s all because of what’s going to happen to me. . . .
Somehow, identifying the bread and wine with his body (about to be broken in death) and his blood (about to be spilt on the cross), and inviting his followers to share it and find in it the gift of forgiveness of sins, of new life, of God’s kingdom—somehow this action had then, and still has today, a power beyond words. A power to touch and heal parts of our broken and messy lives. A power to tell the world around that Jesus is Lord (156-7).
N. T. Wright,
Simply ChristianWhat happens when you're at a concert like that is that everyone present feels that they have grown in stature. Something has happened to them: they are aware of things in a new way; the whole world looks different. It's a bit like falling in love. In fact, it is a kind of falling in love. And when you fall in love, when you're ready to throw yourself at the feet of your beloved, what you desire, above all, is union.
This brings us to the first of two golden rules at the heart of spirituality. You become what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship. Those who worship money become, eventually, human calculating machines. Those who worship sex become obsessed with their own attractiveness or prowess. Those who worship power become more and more ruthless.
So what happens when you worship the creator God whose plan to rescue the world and put it to rights has been accomplished by the Lamb who was slain? The answer comes in the second golden rule: because you were made in God's image, worship makes you more truly human. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover more of what it means to be fully alive.
Conversely, when you give that same total worship to anything or anyone else, you shrink as a human being. It doesn't, of course, feel like that at the time. When you worship part of the creation as though it were the Creator himself - in other words, when you worship an idol - you may well feel a brief "high." But, like a halucinatory drug, that worship achieves its effect at a cost: when the effect is over, you are less of a human being than you were to begin with. That is the price of idolatry (148).
Eugene Peterson,
Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (pg. 162-3)
Each of the ten plagues were an elaborate exorcism, a casting out of the demons, that freed the imaginations of the Hebrews from domination by evil so that they were free to hear and follow their Savior and worship God “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). When Moses began his work with his Hebrew brothers and sisters, their spirits were “broken” (Exod. 6:9) and the only “truth” they had access to was this huge Egyptian lie. But Egypt and Pharaoh were not the “real world.” They were the real world defaced, desecrated, demonized. . . . The exorcising drama of the ten plagues freed the Hebrews from this Egyptian way of understanding reality, clearing the mind to accept God’s revelation reality, energizing their spirits to live in the world of salvation. The intent was that by the time they left Egypt, they would not only be physically free from evil oppression but mentally free of the evil imagination that had crushed the life out of them for so long. The ten plagues would cleanse the “doors of perception” so that Israel could see life in a totally different way—the unreality of Egypt exposed; the untruth of Egypt laid bare—and would set them free to live in a different life when they got out of Egypt, free to live the freedom of salvation.
Matthew 26:21-25 And as they were eating, he said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, “Is it I, Lord?” He answered, “He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me. The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” Judas, who would betray him, answered, “Is it I, Rabbi?” He said to him, “You have said so.”
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)[I]n the middle of the picture once more, almost serene though deeply sad, is Jesus himself, arranging a secret Passover celebration with an unnamed supporter in the city itself, sitting with the Twelve and telling them what was about to happen. The sorrow of his approaching ordeal was overlaid with the sorrow of betrayal. And in that moment we glimpse one element of the meaning of the cross.
Jesus was going to his death wounded by the wounds common to humanity. Greed, lust, ambition: all kinds of natural drives and desires turned in on themselves rather than doing the outward-looking work the creator intended them to. When we say that Jesus died “because of our sins,” we don’t just mean that in some high-flown, abstract sense. We mean that what put him on the cross was precisely the sins that we all not only commit but wallow in (152).
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