This is a key passage to my misunderstanding of John’s Gospel. I originally read this as a snarky dismissal of the agony in the garden which the other Gospels describe. “Yeah, right, like I’d say save me from this hour – no way.” That was what I heard before I realized John puts post resurrected Jesus’ words into pre-resurrected Jesus’ mouth.

And in this particular case, it’s a post decision Jesus. It’s post Jesus saying your will not mine. For all the times I’ve read it, I never picked up on the admission of a troubled soul. This suggests to me that it’s not a matter of Jesus’ soul ceasing to be troubled, but rather Jesus is determined to follow through on His decision despite a troubled soul.

And quite frankly, troubling your souls was something I worried about but decided to risk in picking the theme of living like you’re already dead. Dying to this world, dying to the life of the perishing, and living God’s will, living out love on God’s scale, wasn’t even easy for the fully God fully man Son.

In Mark and Mathew’s Gospels, the angels come and tend to Jesus after the temptation in the desert. In Luke, the temptations are called trials and the angel comes to comfort Jesus in the garden, after His last trial; the final temptation to avoid the cross. The trial in which he makes his decision to fully submit to God’s will.

One hopes, that whichever service you attend on Easter Sunday, you will be asked to renew your baptismal vows; the baptism in which you symbolically die with Christ to be born anew. It will be your time to make the decision again to love on God’s scale. Love on a scale that sadly will separate you from this world, separate you from the values of the perishing, values based in very limited love, if love at all.

So if this is about love, why is the word hate in our Gospel today? What does Christ mean by hating your life? Again sadly, for many Christians, that means hating yourself. It’s certainly the view I was raised to have. But that doesn’t make much sense if we’re to love our neighbor as ourselves. It’s our life, not who we are that’s the issue. Christ promises a life beyond our meager and limited one, the one that we think belongs to us.

Our life-force, which keeps us alive, never did belong to us. It was a gift from God in the first place. In the mad scramble for money and power, for the anti-beatitudes of this world, we’re taught to own things, to steal our life from God and call it ours. So when comes the time for god to take our life back, we lose it forever. So if we, now, make a decision to give our lives back to God, to admit it was never ours to begin with, it will never be lost.

I do believe, as our other texts claim that God’s law is written in our hearts. The ways of the perishing teach us otherwise. We learn to fear and be defensive and look at others as less than, or for that matter even more than us. We learn hate and greed and we learn to use others. We cling to things and even people, and try to own them; just as we are deluded that we own our own lives.

There is so much to let go of, so much to die to, ironically it can take a lifetime to do this. It will not happen without trouble in our souls. We cannot do this instantly, without help and support from others who are on this path as well. What we can do right now, what we can do on Easter, what can be done in a moment is make a decision. Make a decision to go forward with this work despite our troubled souls, our doubts and even our confusion at this seeming paradox.

We won’t do this alone - can’t really. Even Jesus brought his closest friends with him to the Garden. In fact trying to go this alone is one of the ways the values of the perishing diminish - if not outright kill - love. We also have Jesus’ who promises to be with us. He guides us in scripture, prayer and meditation. He is in the bread and wine we’ll share very soon. We’ll share that with each other, the very ones we, as a community, support in the work ahead.

A long time back, when a trending topic in the news was courthouses that displayed the Ten Commandments, a co-worker of mine asked “What was wrong with that?” He went on to say don’t we all agree to not steal or murder, etc.? And I looked at him and said, “Do you know what the first commandment is? He looked at me blankly. It wasn’t that he assumed everyone should have no other God but the Judeo-Christian one; it was that he didn’t even remember that was the first commandment.

And while the televangelists and prosperity gospel preaches may at first glance seem the obvious modern day equivalent to the money changers that Christ got so upset with, I suggest that a closer equivalent are those trying to make the U.S. a theocracy.

I’m not even talking about the evangelicals who exposed their hypocrisy in supporting the current president. They’ve proven that their so-called Christianity is a façade for their political agenda. I’m talking about the folks who sincerely think Christianity should be enforced by law.

We’ve been talking throughout this liturgical year about living as if you’re already dead. That living a Christian life is living a life of the spirit and detaching from the ways of the perishing. Enforcing Christianity by using the ways of the perishing is clearly opposed to this view of the Christian life.

You can’t force someone to detach. You can only force them to attach to something else, some other aspect of the perishing world. So it is no wonder that those inclined to force faith on others embrace the anti-beatitudes we discussed last Lenten supper: Blessed are the rich, those who make others mourn, the violent and the invincible, the proud and the powerful, the domineering and oppressive, those who hunger and thirst for injustice, those who show no mercy, the impure of heart, the warmakers, those who never stand up for justice, who do not rock the boat.

The beatitudes are not describing those that the perishing should be charitable toward. Those who live by the anti-beatitudes see those who Christ calls blessed as less fortunate than they are; missing the whole point.

Paul really gets at this in today’s Epistle. “For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.” Repentance, metanoia, the change we’re getting at, the dying and being reborn is living out God’s foolishness and weakness.

It’s worth noting that Jesus’ summary of the law does not quote the Ten Commandments. Rather they are drawn from Deuteronomy & Leviticus. The Ten Commandments are to be understood only in the context of love, certainly not in the context of a justice system based in punishment.

For Christ, the second person of the Trinity, our Lord and our God suffered under a system of punishment. Imagine how that sounded in Paul’s time; that the Messiah, the Son of God, suffered humiliation and torture unto death. That would sound foolish indeed.

But further, Christ didn’t just come to help the unfortunate; Christ said he WAS the unfortunate. God IS the hungry, the naked, the sick, the refugee, the prisoner. This is truly God’s foolishness and weakness.

So is this the life God promises - A life of hunger and thirst and imprisonment? Not in the sense that we’re to deliberately bring ourselves to ruin. In the sense of vulnerability, however, yes that is the life God promises. We’re to understand ourselves and live as if we were as vulnerable as the unfortunate.

And the truth is that the unfortunate are not actually unfortunate, they are the oppressed. Oppressed by the few who live the anti-beatitudes and who convince others to agree to the anti-beatitudes despite themselves.

Part of dying to the ways of the perishing is not only to wake up to the ways we unjustly benefit from the system, but to be conscious of the ways the oppressors do not benefit us; that we, in admitting our vulnerability before God, understand our solidarity with the vulnerable about us.

And this is where the righteous anger of Jesus in our Gospel tonight resides. As Christians, in solidarity with the oppressed, we should chase out those who want to legislate faith, and in doing so remain vulnerable, at risk. For we have already died and have been raised in this new life. Our temples rebuilt in a spiritual body, a spiritual life that endures.