Palm Sunday C Remove This Cup from Me

 Palm Sunday C Remove This Cup from Me
March 23 1986
By Rev. Ernest F. Campbell


In my mind the most significant words spoken by our Lord in His ministry came while He was at prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was while He was on His knees in prayer that the painful reality of His earthy mission came clear. Humanity was trapped in the deadly destructive poison of man’s sinful nature. Jesus had been sent to take that deadly poison…. away. 

Can you imagine someone handing you a cup and telling you that it was filled with the poison of all men’s souls. Then telling you that you must rid the world of that cup forever. You could not pass it on to someone else --you could not hide it or bury it – you could not pour it out lest its systemic characteristics would allow the sinful corruption to spread. 

The only way to finally cleanse the poison of men’s and women’s souls would be for a man totally free of the poison to drink every drop…. Into his own being.

It would be painful…. Excruciatingly painful. It would mean that He would experience in His own person the pain of all men’s sin. Imagine the pain of rejection… rejected because you are different… rejected because where you were born… or who bore you. Rejected because of some misunderstanding or mistake. Rejection for any reason is painful… the pain of rejection would be in that cup. The pain of all men’s rejection…. past, present, and future. There would also be the pain of resentment. The pain that comes on top of the pain of being injured. The pain that comes when someone has injured you, and is getting away with it! There would be the pain of indifference, neglect, anger, and separation. All men’s indifference, neglect, anger, and separation.

There would be the pain of abuse and torture, of hunger and thirst… the pain of never being loved.

Even thinking of the pain of any one of the sins in that cup…. Is AWFUL! 

OUR Lord, on His knees, in the Garden of Gethsemane, realized that His mission was to drink that cup and by so doing, take away the destructive, deadly, poison of sin.

Drinking the cup would mean that all the pain of all the world’s sin would be experienced in our Lord’s body and soul.

It is no wonder in another Gospel we are told that our Lord sweat great drops of blood. Then He prayed these most significant words in the Gospel, “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me….”

Can we imagine the horror He saw as He looked into the poisonous contents of that cup? Yes, if there could be any other way….

Nevertheless, “Not my will, but thine be done.”

Our Lord drank the cup and died.

Philippians 2: 5-11

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on the earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

We all know that suffering is still a part of life. we also know that when Jesus drank that cup, He gave us a new creative way of going through the darkness of our pain. Because Christ drank the cup, the destructive poison of our sins has been taken away by His love.

When we put our selves along with our suffering in God’s word and sacraments and we allow God’s word and love to dwell in us… LOVE WINS!

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