‘The spirit is willing, but ...’

On the back of a door in a friend’s house there is a poster. As you read, you discover it is a series of quotes from Shakespeare. By the end of the list you’re ready to concede that Shakespeare has single-handedly created almost all the best turned phrases in your linguistic arsenal. What with ‘parting is such sweet sorrow’, ‘method in the madness’, ‘the world’s mine oyster’, ‘a blinking idiot’, ‘out, damned spot’, and ‘off with his head’, what’s left to be said?

If Shakespeare is a powerful shaper of our daily talk, the English Bible can’t be far behind. ‘Pride comes before a fall’, ‘through a glass darkly,’ ‘eat, drink and be merry’, ‘the whited sepulchre’, ‘the second mile’, ‘salt of the earth’—there’s any number of them.

Such phrases, biblical or Shakespearean, have entered our speech because they deftly capture aspects of common experience. We know ‘a blinking idiot’ when we see one. And life has bewildered us often enough to know what peering into ‘a glass darkly’ is about.

But coming into our common talk, these phrases migrate from their original homes in Hamlet or the Gospels, and take on a life of their own, unconstrained by their original context. Sometimes it is worth re-tracing that migration path. Surprises almost always accompany such journeys of retrieval.

I want to consider one such saying this morning. It comes from our Gospel reading: ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ I used it myself not long ago. I was watching one of those 20/20 cricket matches on tele, feet up on the sofa, cup of coffee at hand. It was late in the afternoon. A friend who was with me said, ‘what about our walk?’ He was right. I should walk. We had agreed. But … Mitchell Johnson had just taken the ball … the match was at a critical stage … there’s always tomorrow … And the words just slipped out: ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ My friend needed no explanation. No walk today.

That’s where Jesus’ phrase has migrated to, for me. It’s an excuse for not doing what I know I ought to do. A trade off is struck between my higher self, identified as ‘spirit’, and my lower self, called ‘the flesh’. Basically I’m on the side of the angels. I want to walk. The spirit is willing. But sadly, this ‘good’ self is overwhelmed by my, lazy, indulgent self which won’t be dragged away from its canal pleasures. The flesh is weak. This is a fair way from the sleeping disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. But perhaps we can see the analogy.

Leonard Small, the Scottish preacher, took these words as his text when he was in Melbourne many years ago. I don’t remember much of what he said. But one thing I’ve never forgotten. He talked about how as a young preacher he used to get wild when people fell asleep while he was preaching. ‘I particularly objected to those who started snoring,’ he added. But then he came across a wonderful text in Psalm 127.2. ‘For he [God] gives to his beloved in sleep.’ ‘That changed my whole attitude,’ Small confessed. ‘Now I look out on the congregation and I see the Lord’s saints gathered. They have come from heaven knows what week of labour, worry, and exhaustion. They have actually made it bodily to the church. And if sleep overcomes this one or that, what’s it to me? The spirit is willing, even if, on this occasion, the flesh is weak. For the Lord can give to his beloved in sleep, even while I preach.’

That’s a different take on the text. The emphasis falls not on the slothful self, unwilling to make an effort, but on the devoted self, willing to strain to the last ounce in service of the Lord. And if frailty overtakes us, surely the grace of Christ is there to carry us when we fall.

But again it’s a long way from the original. Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane facing the trial of his life. He prays in desperation, ‘O God, if possible let this cup pass from me.’ Peter, James and John are nearby. But they fall asleep, three times. And this prompts his words: ‘The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ From this original context, these words address every would-be disciple. The story brings us right to the edge of a crucial boundary that defines the life of faith. I mean the boundary between Christ and the Christian; between what is asked of the disciple and what is asked of the Christ. We see this boundary drawn in the journey they make into the Garden. Jesus takes Peter, James and John with him a certain way and says to them: ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here and keep awake.’ That is their job and that is as far as they are asked to go. But, says the text, Jesus ‘went a little farther’, threw himself on the ground and prayed to God that, ‘if it be possible, the hour might pass from him.’ Thus far the disciples come. Then Jesus goes on alone. That’s an important difference. The life of faith certainly has demands: ‘remain here and keep awake.’ But the life of faith is more than demand. It is also recognition of a limit and acceptance of a gift. God in Christ has gone further than we can go. And done for us which we cannot do for ourselves. And the words of Jesus, ‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’ are applicable to both dimensions of faith—its demand and its gift—but in different ways.

On the one hand, Lent is a time in the year when we are invited to reflect on how far we are called to go with Christ. In short how willing are we in spirit and body to follow where we are called? What actions, what words, what prayers, what relationships, what challenges are being put to me now when Jesus says to me ‘remain here and keep awake?’ And how much am I ducking that request? Losing concentration and falling asleep when I should be alert and awake? I really know I could do better as a disciple of Christ. The famous words of the prayer of confession: "we have not loved you with our whole hearts; we have not loved our neighbour as ourselves ...". apply to me. I am not being asked here to do what is impossible. I could do these things better. The spirit is willing. I want to love as that prayer indicates. But the flesh is weak. Many things distract me from the task. Jesus’ words come as a wakeup call. A call to will and to action. A call to love more as Jesus loves. In Lent we ask what we can and should carry for Christ. That is important.

But, on the other hand, perhaps even more important is to ask how we are and have been carried by Christ. This bit of the discipleship equation is also clear in the story. Jesus faces a battle which the disciples watch from afar, but do not and cannot shoulder themselves. Nor are they reproached for being weak and sleepy in face of it. At this point Jesus is alone with God. And God’s battle is with everything in the world that works to distort or destroy God’s cause in creation. The trial that Jesus prays in such distress about is not just looming martyrdom. It is that too, of course. But many disciples have faced that terrible challenge as well. Peter, James and John will face it down the track. But what Jesus, as Son of God incarnate faces here, is the cost of redemption for God’s world. He faces not just an enemy: Caiaphas, or Pilate or Judas, though them too. But here he faces the enemy. The ultimate enemy that is active in all enmity; the original source of evil that is behind all particular evil actions; the elemental violence against life that empowers and inspires all particular violence in the earth, which the Bible calls by various names: chaos, darkness, hell, principalities and powers, the devil, the evil one. We stand here before the centre of all Christian reality and truth—the self-giving of the Son of God, in his incarnation, his acceptance of conflict, suffering and death, even death on the cross in order to liberate creation from exactly this bondage and this violence. This is God’s free act of grace. God takes upon Godself and makes Godself vulnerable to all that threatens God’s good creation in order to defeat it once for all and for all of us once.

This is a journey his disciples cannot undertake with him. Is it any wonder that they are overwhelmed by what they see? And the more clearly they see what is at stake, the harder it is to stay with it. When Jesus says, ‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’ he is also acknowledging this. For all their efforts to stay with him, they cannot take this journey. It is a gift to be received, not an action to be willed.

Here we are deep in Lent. And in Lent we are invited to explore again what is at stake in the company of Jesus, both the demand and the gift. We can walk some of the way of the cross with him. Perhaps this year we will get a little further than last. ‘The spirit is willing, even if the flesh is weak’. These words of Jesus are a wakeup call. A call to do more of what we can do as disciples. And to repent for our sleepiness. But they are also a wakeup call to trust more in what has been done for us. And be grateful for that gift. May the Lord accompany us in both these aspects of the Lenten journey.