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.