Here Jesus is speaking to his friends. He has just come into Jerusalem for Passover and knows it will be his last week on earth. He’s trying to get his friends ready for the coming ordeal of the Crucifixion, trying to explain how they should understand his coming death. And Jesus himself is full of sorrow and mental agony. We can hear him talking out loud to the Father.
Eugene Peterson’s The Message translates these verses: “Right now I am storm-tossed. And what am I going to say? ‘Father, get me out of this’? No, this is why I came in the first place. I’ll say, ‘Father, put your glory on display.’ A voice came out of the sky: ‘I have glorified it, and I’ll glorify it again.’”
Father, get me out of this. Father, get my son, my daughter out of this. Get my friend, my colleague out of this. Father, get the love of my life out of this. If you have lived a life connected to others and to God, you have prayed this prayer.
But Jesus resisted that prayer. He said to the Father, “I won’t ask You to get me out of this because it’s why I came. I came to stand between Death and Hell and Your beloved children. I came for the express purpose of this death.”
Most of us are not called to die for others. But many of us will suffer in some way, and we wonder: Did my suffering mean anything? Did my suffering do anything? Was there something significant that happened because I suffered? Was my loved one’s death or my grief meaningful? Was my loss or disappointment only that, or did it mean something? What is my purpose in life, and did my time of trial further that purpose, or enhance my witness, or change anything? Did I come for just that moment in time?
I can look back on the most painful time in my life, my father’s death, and see that the grief and loss I experienced profoundly affected me, my faith, my work life, and my ability to come alongside others when they are suffering. I am literally not the person I was before that ordeal. Before it, I had a more childlike and innocent faith, untried and untested. I did not understand the role of suffering in the life of faith. I had a lot of unconfirmed thoughts and ideas about God and life. I did not know how mystery and doubt can exist in the life of faith.
After my father’s death and the subsequent easing of grief, I knew what it was to have a broken heart and also know that it could be mended. I knew what it was to grieve and to grow stronger. I knew what it was to have scars and brokenness and still be useful, not in spite of that, but because of that. I was a person ready to be a pastor in a way I could not have been before. So when Jesus says, “What am I going to say, ‘Father, get me out of this? No. This is why I came. Father, put your glory on display...’” I think of my own time of trial and what God made of me after it. I see the glory that God can work in the worst of our suffering if we allow it. And God is still making me, still shaping me, still putting His Glory on display in you and in me.
Keep an eye out for what God may be making of you and doing within you as He displays His glory in and through you.