A Little Farther

“And, he went a little farther, and fell on his face and prayed, praying, 0 my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matthew 26:39)

Spiritual stagnation is a most tragic reality in the experience of many church members and people of the modern world. This is indeed strange, when we consider that progress has become the watchword of our generation. We have seen the world advance from the day of the horse and buggy, the coal-oil lamp, silent movies, the Gramophone, and the Nickelodeon, to the luxury liner, limousine, airplane, fluorescent lighting, radio and television, computers, and the great sound movies of our day. 

But, what great spiritual advance have we made in our generation? In what way have we fortified our inner life and strengthened our spiritual resources to prepare ourselves for the shock and the stress of this new age? It amazes me to find out how many people have a mental age of twenty and a spiritual age of two. In this IQ conscious age, is it not strange that parents are so flustered if their child’s IQ is below ninety, yet they care little if their spiritual IQ is in the moron bracket or lower?

We have all laughed at the educated fool, who was educated above his capacity. Did you ever realize that the same individual is a glowing effigy of this world in which we live? What is the basic trouble in this world? It is very simple to dispose. We are educated beyond our capacity. Our generation is like a child playing with a razor blade. A razor blade is a very handy and useful thing, but a child does not have the intelligence, experience or coordination to use it properly. Modern science and culture have placed many things in our hands that are perfectly good things, but we do not have the spiritual qualifications or inner wisdom to use them properly. Because of this, advancements have become the companion of danger. Progress has become the edge of our pending annihilation. We have unlocked doors to the great power of nature, but we have opened these resources to the trigger-itchy fingers in the world, who threaten our destruction.

Is it not high time that we paid more attention to spiritual advances? Dare we continue to combat the forces of evil in an atomic age, with a horse and buggy religious experience? Will we forever be content with mental giants and spiritual morons and with a generation that finds a value and a use for everything but life itself?

Thank God there was once a man who was spiritually advanced beyond his age. In fact, he was spiritually advanced beyond the moral and spiritual needs of any age. He was a spiritual giant who dwarfs all others in the things of God. For indeed, he was God in the flesh.

It is so strange, but still so true. To learn the real values of life and obtain the religious and moral fortitude so necessary to give us the poise and direction in this new age, we must return to the shores of Galilee, the plains of Nazareth, the vineyards of Gethsemane, the busy little street of Old Jerusalem, and to Golgotha, on Calvary’s brow, the place of a skull. There we must walk with the stranger, sit with the teacher, follow the lonely burden-bearer as he makes his way from the manger to the cross. Only there can we learn the real meaning of life for our day. Only there can we find wisdom, strength and salvation to save us from our modern madness.

Let us join hands and set off in search of that little band of disciples, who we may sit with and with them learn from the Master. The Holy week is draw­ing to a close. It is Thursday night. A few days earlier was the day that Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The mob had acclaimed him with their mighty hosannas. They had strewn palm branches, and cloaks to prepare his way. They were ready to proclaim him King in Jerusalem. 

Now five days have passed. The tone of things is different in Jerusalem. The rulers of the Jews have hatched their cruel plot to slay this self-styled Messiah, who now threatens their position. Already, they have sent their men into the busy, festival-crowded streets to incite them against this Jesus of Nazareth. Their whispering campaign has been a tremendous success. A few well-chosen rumors were all that was needed. The rumors had spread from mouth to mouth like wildfire. The arrangement has already been made with Judas. For thirty pieces of silver he will deliver his master to the rulers. That fateful Passover supper had been eaten with his disciples. And, Judas went out into the night, yes into the night of tragedy and despair-to betray his Lord.

Then, the Lord arose from the table and took his three beloved disciples with him and made his way out through the city gate into the beautiful vineyards beyond the brook of Kedron. As they moved silently along, the pitter pat of foiling dew, the distant roan of the night-owl, and the wailful tone of the whippoorwill melted into the grand and harmonious symphony of the night. They were all tired. This had been a busy end to a hard week. It was the week of the feast of Passover. Many thousands of pilgrims jammed the narrow streets of Jerusalem. Whenever the master went out into the street, he was followed by the multitude-some needful, some curious, others maliciously stalking their prey. There was the strain of the impending. The disciples had heard the rumors. The Master knew his hour had come.

Now in the quietness of the night, the strain seems to lift. At last they are alone. The disciples were overcome with fatigue. Peter was perhaps the first to speak, “Master let us stop here and rest.” How unmindful were they of the tremendous struggle that was going on with the bosom of the master? This was D-Day. This was zero hour. Etched across the horizon or that dark night stood three crosses and the center cross was his. The other two disciples soon added their plea to that of Peter. Finally, the Master stopped and turned to his disciples and said: “Alright, you stop here and watch and pray.” It did not take then long to find a dry place, under the many olive trees. Jesus did not stop. He went a little farther, and there alone in the stillness of the night, he fell on his face before his God. The struggle that was within his heart now burst their confining bonds.

We will never fathom the depth of the experience in the garden that night. We read that he sweat great drops of blood, and he returned to find his disciples sleeping. We heard his awful cry of despair: “0 my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

But the awfulness of the darkness of that night cannot be comprehended by our shallow minds: “But, none of the ransomed ever knew. How deep were the waters crossed, nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed through, ere he found his sheep that were lost?”

We do know this one thing. It was there in the garden he was alone in his awful struggle. It was there the master obtained the strength to go to his cross. Before he left that lonely spot, he was able to pray: “O my father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it. Thy will be done.”

Luke says: “And there appeared an Angel from Heaven, strengthening him.”

By that strength, he was able to stand the awful shock of the betrayer’s kiss, the terror of Pilate’s court, the indecency of the Roman Mock Trial, and the crowning shame. He endured the Stigma of the Cross and the guilt of human sin, which was his lot as the scapegoat of mankind.

He even went a little farther. Yes, he only removed himself a stone’s throw. But, on the Spiritual Pathway, he went a long, long way past the sleeping disciples. Have you ever noted the actions of Christ’s disciples on the day of the cross? They were a pitiful bunch of characters. They were totally unprepared for the tremendous shock, that was to be theirs. They were not even able to foresee nor comprehend, when it was all over. They were crest-fallen, dejected, bewildered, and hopeless. All that they had was nailed to that cruel tree.

What a contrast the disciples were to the Master. Every word he spoke had meaning. Every action, every silent moment, every gesture made sense. Even in the awful hours of agony on his cross, he never lost that perspective, that sense of destiny and direction, that quiet of the soul that comes when one’s mind is fixed on the purpose of carrying out the will of God. And, he cried out, with a loud voice: “It is finished!” He bowed his head and gave up the ghost. In this action, you cannot help but feel this was the hour of a most meaningful triumph for him.

Let us never cease to be thankful that he did not sleep that night with disciples and flounder in bewilderment with them on the day of the cross. Instead, he went on a little farther. He went on a great deal farther-into the sanctuary of aloneness with God. There he gained the strength and perspective for the struggle that was already in his soul and would soon be a physical reality.

But you say that he paid a tremendous cost for that spiritual poise and perspective. Indeed, he did. While his disciples were enjoying that much needed rest, he was sweating in the agony of blood. While they were at peace, he was beset by a turmoil too great to even comprehend. He paid a great price, but he purchased a great possession. “It is the little farther that costs, but it is the little farther that counts.”

I am reminded of an experience in my boyhood. It was in the day before the football had valves in them. In fact, the bladder of the ball was not even rubber, but was garnered at a nearby slaughterhouse. Before the game, it was our job to pump up the football, with our human bellows. The whole team would stand around to help. The smallest fellow would start the blowing up the ball with his mouth. After he burned out his best breath, the ball was passed on to another. Each one had to blow a little harder. Finally, it was passed to big burly Tubby Avery. He was the one who could blow the hardest. I shall never forget how his cheeks bulged, his face grew red, and eyes almost popped from their sockets as he gave his last blow. But it was his last blow that really counted. It gave the ball the resilience that was especially needed for a ball in a good old game of Canadian Rugby. It was the last blow that really cost, but it was the last blow that really counted. And that is even more true in Christian experience. “It is the little farther that costs, but it is the little farther that counts.”

What does this world need most? What is the one thing our Church needs most? Our Church needs men and women, who are willing to pay the cost of going on a little farther with God. Before we could play that Rugby game, we had to reckon with the cost of the game. We had to expend our energy to blow up the ball. I know it is a poor analogy, but are we really ready to play the game of life? 

For our lives are to have the true perspective, poise and foresight in our struggle with the great dilemmas through which we are passing in the modern world, we must go on a little farther into our Garden of Gethsemane. We must be willing to leave the rest of the disciples to have their nap, if necessary, and go on alone to blaze a trail of spiritual foresight and leadership in our day.

The great French philosopher Henri Bergson pointed out in his last book that “society in itself is static, and without the foresight of a great leader it will lapse into a state of stagnation.” Each generation has produced its great mystics and leaders, who catch a vision of the possibilities of the great unreached. Stimulated by that vision they step out boldly on the untried path of progress, and the common people follow in their footsteps. Thus, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

From the scientific point of view, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Copernicus, Newton, Pasteur, Edison, Ford and many others have been stirred by unattainable possibilities and potentialities that has caused them to strike out in untried fields, and by hard work and struggle, they attained new heights and left the masses in their wake. Their job was done by wholehearted surrender and dedication to their task.

From the philosophic point of view, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Descartes, Kant and many other men of philosophic foresight, lead their contemporar­ies down the avenue of progress in thought and reflection. So also in the religious and moral realm, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ezra, Paul, Augustine, Luther, Calvin and a whole band of others, were people of vision who boldly followed the guiding hand of God, and lead their world and ours to new heights of spiritual reality and religious experience.

But how did they reach these new heights themselves? There is only one road. It leads through the garden of Gethsemane. Through prayer and tears, struggle and faith, and finally victory and strength from and the Angel of God. This path is the only formula. Great spiritual leaders have always been close friends of Christ, walking the lonely road from the manger to the cross with him.

What does our church need most? I say we need more spiritual leaders. I do no not merely mean, men and women who can teach a Sunday School Class, or lead the choir, or lead a discussion group, or give direction to a drive for new members in the church. I mean real spiritual leaders: men and woman who have been crucified with Christ, who have walked long hours of fellowship with the Master. Men and women of prayer and of the Word of God. Men and women who have really struggled against the forces of evil and of self in their own soul. In other words, men and woman who have paid the cost of “Going a little farther with Christ and are now ready to Count for him in the Kingdom.”

Paul could say to the Christians at Rome: “I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

That’s the thing I am talking about this morning. Our need is men and women who are willing to place their lives unreservedly on the altar of God, as vessels consecrated for the Master’s use, alone. For there is really, no halfway with God. 

“We either crown him Lord of All, or we do not crown him Lord at all.” Will you pay the price, and make your life count for God in this world?