He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 1:24)
It’s day three of our Holy Week reflections - Good Friday.
What a day today is. It's overwhelming.
To understand what is happening on Good Friday, we have to start with the night of Holy Thursday. Jesus enters the Garden of Gethsemane and begins to pray. “Father, let this cup pass from me. Not my will but yours be done.”
Jesus’ agony is one of the most profound and mysterious parts of the Bible. In this simple phrase Jesus speaks from his two natures. As the perfect man, Jesus is praying the Passover prayer asking for the cup of suffering to pass from him. However, as God, he is asking for the blood to pass from him. In fact, just a few lines before he said, “this cup is my blood.”
The root of his agony is the tearing of Jesus the Man and Jesus who is God between these two conflicting prayers. As Messiah he is restoring the separation between God and Man that has existed since the Garden. Ultimately, he undoes the sin of Adam and Eve and submits himself to the will of the Father, “Not my will but yours be done.” Jesus sweats blood by his own volition and lets himself be handed over. Jesus the high priest has become the lamb led to slaughter.
There is so much to unpack here. But let's start with the fact that it all happens in a Garden. It’s not unintentional. Jesus wants us to think back to the first Garden. To Eden. He wants us to reflect on sin and expulsion. What has to be corrected is a matter of the heart and Jesus is correcting it through uniting his heart with ours. Adam and Eve desired to be God. If God allowed them to stay and gave them the tree of life forever, this corruption of the heart would spread its rot throughout creation. Unfortunately, they had to die.
But the secret is, how could that death become redemptive, not just punitive. Can good come from death? Jesus shows us this simple key to the Christian life. When we willingly die to ourselves for God, when we embrace our crosses, we are given new life. And not only are we given new life, we are given access back to the tree of life - the source of eternal life.
It's no coincidence that Jesus died on a cross made of wood. This tree made of human work from dead wood by an empire of war, soaks up his blood and becomes the new tree of life. The fruit of the tree is his body and blood.
When we suffer with love, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the world becomes a new Garden ready to be planted and death becomes a doorway to the Kingdom of God.
Let us all repeat with Jesus today, “Not my will but yours be done.”