The Battle of Easter: Part 1
In my essay about Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, I wrote about how Jesus’ choices there were not merely resisting temptations but to choose the path of human life and subsistence. His choice was to join us in our ordinary struggles without using his extraordinary power, privilege, or authority to benefit himself and transcend human existence. His choice was to be with us.
For Jesus to have been fully human, his life must end in death. In his final days, he observes Passover, is consequently betrayed, wrongfully accused and arrested, tortured, abandoned, and then sentenced to death. Finally he is resurrected three days later, which is what we celebrate every year on Easter Sunday in the traditional Christian calendar.
Jesus often foretells his death to his closest friends, which they respond to with denial and confusion. When his friend Peter says, “Never Lord!” to this, Jesus goes so far to call those words from Satan (Matt 16:21-23). Why? Wouldn’t it be natural for Jesus’ friends to not want him to die? It’s pretty extreme to call someone who cares about you the devil, especially when they want to stop something bad from happening.
Well, if we look at it from Satan’s perspective, he wants to prevent God from reuniting with humans at all cost. If recreating the union of God and humans required Jesus to complete his human life, then Satan must prevent Jesus’ death. This is Satan’s last chance, and he is going all out.
The Passover dinner before his death he gives his disciples bread saying, “this is my body”. He gives them wine and calls it his “blood.” In his 40 days in the wilderness, Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” We realize now that the bread and the words Jesus was talking about were himself. When he didn’t make bread for himself then, it wasn’t to withstand physical starvation, it was to prepare for this moment. In this metaphorical act, Jesus asks us to remember while we subsist on physical food and drink, we also subsist on God, and that God is one with us.
Later that evening in Gethsemane, we find Jesus praying alone and in a fierce battle of will. He asks that God’s will and not his be fulfilled. Wait, what? Jesus doesn’t want to follow God’s plans! When his disciples fall asleep on him when he needs them the most, he says, “Watch and pray so that you will not enter into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” (Mark 14:38). I have to admit, sleep is very tempting, especially every morning when my alarm goes off, or in the middle of a boring lecture. It’s the middle of the night, they just drank a bunch of wine, presumably 4 glasses, so it’s just natural. Look, if he wanted his friends to pull an all-nighter, all he had to do was give them a can of Red Bull, problem solved.
The Greek word that is translated to “body” is “sarx” which is also “the flesh” or “human nature”. Could he have been talking about himself as well? Maybe Jesus’ spirit was wholeheartedly willing, but his human being was not? Jesus’ friend, Judas, betrays him, and his other friends abandon him when he is arrested by the temple guards. It was so easy for Satan to take Jesus’ friends away. Were these friends even worth what he was going through?
This is the moment for me when Jesus reveals the man behind the curtain, and all of a sudden you glimpse the powerful son of God. When Jesus is about to be arrested he says:
“Don't you know that I could call on my Father for help, and at once he would send me more than twelve armies of angels? But in that case, how could the Scriptures come true which say that this is what must happen?” (Matthew 26:53-54)
When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they moved back and fell to the ground. (John 18:6)Here Jesus reveals, it was a conscious choice of his to not escape.
See also: He Chose Us: A Reflection on Lent
