The Cup

As Jesus knelt to pray with his disciples nearby he uttered a short prayer:  Luke 22:42 (ESV) 
⁴²  ...  “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

What does Jesus mean when he says "this cup"?  Reasonably he's talking about the suffering that is ahead of him.  He knows that just ahead of him is the arrest, the abuse of the soldiers, and the torture that will leads eventually to the cross.  The suffering of the cross looms in front of Him, and he knows it is His to endure.  That makes sense.
It may not be the issue.

Consider the prophets words:
Isaiah 51:17 (ESV)
¹⁷  Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering. 



and from Jeremiah 25:15 (ESV) 
¹⁵  Thus the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. 

and a little later in Jeremiah 25:27-29 (ESV) 

²⁷  “Then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink, be drunk and vomit, fall and rise no more, because of the sword that I am sending among you.’
²⁸  “And if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand to drink, then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts: You must drink!
²⁹  For behold, I begin to work disaster at the city that is called by my name, and shall you go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished, for I am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth, declares the LORD of hosts.’ 

The words that the Prophets used were severe:  judgment, disaster, punishment, and perhaps most severe of all - wrath.  

Is Jesus referring to the suffering ahead; or does He know that what he is about to enter into is God's judgment and wrath for the sins of the world?

It's hard for us to comprehend that THIS is what God the Father had in mind for His son...it's hard for us to comprehend that this is how God feels about Sin.

Have we become immune to Sin?  Have we excused it, diminished its effects, lost the awful taste it should leave in our mouths?

God sent His Son to take away our Sin...2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV) 

²¹  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 

In 2000 I traveled with a group of folks from the church I was pastoring to Poland.  We worked in a building project in a small Polish village near Krakow.  The work was part of an outreach for the sake of Christ and I loved the opportunity to work with my hands.

Towards the end of our time, we took a road trip to visit the infamous Birkenau-Auschwitz concentration camp museum.  I add museum to make the point that it was "cleaned up", but left as it was after WWII.  

I had always wanted to visit one of the German concentration camps.  I had been reading about the Nazis in Germany for 40 years at that time, so it was a fitting desire to connect the things I had been reading to the real place.  I wanted to get a sense of what it was, and some sense of how something this horrible could exist, and why?

Auschwitz and Birkenau connected to it, were the biggest of the Nazi's camps.  The Nazis had started to build a complex of concentration camps in 1941, and estimates are that they killed 2-4 million people at this camp alone.  The experience began with the sign over the camp entrance - The German words mean "Work makes you free".  

A walk through Auschwitz-Birkenau's grounds was chilling.  Walking into the entrance you are immediately surrounded by a corridor of barbed wire and guard towers.  The barracks were not huge, and were originally set up for 40 people, but eventually they held as many as 400.  Remember God's word to Cain in Genesis 4:10? 

¹⁰  And the LORD said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. 

In a small way I felt that!  It is one of the most sobering walks I've ever taken and in a group of 20, the group was silent, each sticken by the awfulness of the evil that was done there.

No, we are not Nazis.  Yet we fool ourselves when we fail to see the awfulness of Sin.  

Why did Jesus say "this cup"?  Auschwitz-Birkenau helps us understand why God's wrath, his judgment against Sin, was so real, necessary, and needed.  

The Peace of Christ be with you,