08.05 | Oil Press
Mark 14:32-65
‘And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”’
Mark 14:32
The hardest moment of my life came in early April 2011.
Lydia and I had recently lost our first child, who died in the womb due to complications caused by a rare chromosomal defect. We’d spent some precious hours with her little body after she had been born, hours marked by a strange sense of peace and deep gratitude for her beautiful life.
And yet, somehow, I wasn’t prepared for how small her coffin would be. Carrying that tiny coffin to the graveside was the most difficult moment of my life.
It can be too easy, in the rhythms of church meetings and Scripture and prayer, to hold our faith at only superficial levels of the heart, citing truths as clichéd statements, and benefiting only nominally from the community, song, and truths.
But the Scriptures journey us across a greater breadth of human experience. For sure, they take us to laughing meal tables and intimate revelation on mountaintops, to miraculous healings and stories of weakness turned to strength. They take us through disciples snacking with their rabbi in sunny fields and fisherman with mouths hanging open at Jesus’ comedically unconventional fishing methods.
But the Scriptures also take us into our darkest moments too.
And today we maybe find the deepest moments of pain in the whole Scriptures. When God Himself falls to the ground in utter anguish at the physical and emotional and spiritual pain He knows He is about to walk right into.
That God meets us here is certainly of great comfort. That God does not trivialise our deepest wounds, but joins us on the floor with our tears is somehow both so unexpected and so utterly transformative.
But there’s a glimmer of something else here too. Something beautiful and hopeful.
Jesus’ anguish that night was on the hard earth of an olive grove just outside Jerusalem. The name of the grove was Gethsemane. The word Gethsemane came from the Hebrew term for ‘oil press,’ describing the pressing of olives which produces oil.
Pressing.
And oil.
It’s not difficult to see the magnitude of the strain that Jesus is under. We know that feeling of being so deeply pressed, when our lives are under the strangling weight of pain and grief and disappointment and heartache.
And yet, oil is more unexpected.
Oil is a different symbol of the Scriptures. It is the symbol of God’s presence increasing upon a person or place, that it may be used more mightily and beautifully in the purposes of God. It is a symbol of His touch upon a life that this life may become an increased agent of healing and life. Oil is the symbol of anointing.
When we are in the press, we see and feel and know the pain. But, I believe, there is so often something else at work too.
Anointing.
An anointing that comes when pain is reformed into compassion.
An anointing that comes when our yearning for the Kingdom grows through our grief at its absence.
An anointing that comes in a life that is so surrendered, that, in the midst of the darkest night, still finds those words, not my will but yours.
Does this mean we should welcome the pain?
Not a bit of it. The raw honesty of Jesus’ words are so validating:
Remove this cup from me.
It’s ok not to want it. It’s ok to hate pain. It’s appropriate. Pain and grief and gravesides are alien invaders into a world that God created for goodness and life and flourishing.
However, when the pain lingers and we find ourselves in the press, there is an opening, a ray of sunshine not of this age, that holds the raw honesty of grief alongside the beautiful surrender of one who walks the valley of the shadow of death, and yet still knows the eternal arms of the Father.
Here we are, in the pressing and the pain, where,
so very often,
we find that we were not abandoned to sickness and grief and death,
but rather,
in beautiful surrender,
our lives were being anointed.
Reflect:
Be so tender with your heart here. Never diminish nor deny your pain.
And yet, bring it. This may have stirred hard memories in you. You may be walking through something right now.
Bring it to Him, in prayers of utter honesty. It’s ok to ask Him to take it.
And yet, maybe on your knees and with open hands, offer Him that greatest of prayers:
Not my will, but yours.
Be still. And invite His anointing upon your life once again.
Pray:
Father,
I pray with Jesus;
Take this cup from me.
You are the God of my healing and my hope.
You open the eyes of the blind and give strength to the lame.
You can do all things.
And so I bring you the honesty of my desires:
Take this cup from me.
And Father,
I also receive the harder words,
That if your will for me,
As with Jesus,
Leads me through this valley,
Before I reach the mountains,
I surrender.
You are my God,
And I follow you wherever you lead.
May this place be a garden of your anointing —
That I may know your heart,
And my life carry the fragrance of your presence,
And the touch of your power.
In the Name and Way of my Lord Jesus,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
1 Samuel 27-28 | Psalm 60