Luke 22
41 Jesus walked on a little way before he knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if you will, please don’t make me suffer by having me drink from this cup.[f] But do what you want, and not what I want.”
43 Then an angel from heaven came to help him. 44 Jesus was in great pain and prayed so sincerely that his sweat fell to the ground like drops of blood.[g]
45 Jesus got up from praying and went over to his disciples. They were asleep and worn out from being so sad. 46 He said to them, “Why are you asleep? Wake up and pray that you won’t be tested.”
Isaiah 2
This is the message[a] that I was given about Judah and Jerusalem:
2 In the future, the mountain
with the Lord’s temple
will be the highest of all.
It will reach above the hills;
every nation will rush to it.
3 Many people will come and say,
“Let’s go to the mountain
of the Lord God of Jacob
and worship in his temple.”
The Lord will teach us his Law
from Jerusalem,
and we will obey him.
4 He will settle arguments
between nations.
They will pound their swords
and their spears
into rakes and shovels;
they will never make war
or attack one another.
5 People of Israel, let’s live
by the light of the Lord.
The Incarnation of Jesus, A Pioneer
Sun Myung Moon
February 1, 1959
Two thousand years ago, Jesus looked upon the Israelite people, who had the potential to betray him, with great anxiety. He also saw that Judaism, which should have been built on the foundation of the heavenly heart, had become enslaved to the formalities of the Mosaic Law. As Jesus watched the Israelites, who did not know where their home was or in what direction they must head, he understood that God had raised him through a 4,000-year course of pioneering and had sent him with the purpose of bringing them together to pave the way for the new world. You must understand that, at that moment, Jesus could not help feeling tragic.
After he was born in a stable, Jesus led a lonely life and helped his father, Joseph, who was a carpenter. Although he lived in a limited environment, his ideas transcended the Israelites and the world to connect with the whole cosmos. This is how Jesus lived.
Joseph ordered him around, and his younger brothers and sisters, who tagged after him, did not know this. Therefore, Jesus felt unspeakably sad. Jesus came to understand the state of affairs in the world, God’s inner heart found deep inside the providence, and the situation of the earth and his contemporary world. He longed for all of these situations and states of affairs to unite and move in the direction God desired. However, the heart of God, the situation of Jesus, and the state of affairs in the world went their separate ways and the result was utter confusion.
Looking over the situation, what determination must Jesus have made? After passing through thirty years of preparation, he made the determination to complete the Will of God through a life of practice. The more Jesus felt sadness in his heart, the more he called out to God; the more he felt hopeless toward the earth, the more he tried to find a solution to the situation through people.
The closer the heart of Heaven drew toward Jesus, the closer the world should have approached him, and the closer the chosen people and the religious groups should have come to him. Yet, on the contrary, though he was growing closer to God, the people were moving farther away from him. This made Jesus serious beyond our imagination.
Jesus realized that he should not hold grudges against these people, who were ignorant of the serious situation of Heaven. He thought of the path before him: overcoming their lives and opening the doors to their hearts, eventually embracing them. This is what Jesus was like. You must reflect once more upon the sad situation of Jesus, who could not assert, “I am the lord of your hope, the one for whom you have longed.”
Jesus had to stand amid these tribulations and make a new determination. Jesus knew that the foundation which God had established through His pioneering work of 4,000 years was destroyed. Therefore, he knew he could not establish the ideology of Heaven on those grounds. He had to make a bold new determination amid such tragedy to confront the Israelites again. We do not realize this. Under such circumstances, Jesus prayed to Heaven, “God, please give me strength. God, please allow me to set out in a new direction. God, please let me make a bold determination both internally and externally.” We must reflect upon how Jesus persevered through the thirty long years of his life, speaking silently with Heaven and having a conversation with himself in his heart.
What sense of mission did Jesus have in such a position, carrying on the mission of a pioneer for the invisible God? About God, he felt a sense of mission to pioneer and build the Kingdom of Heaven by opening the closed door to heaven. In relationship to earth, He felt the mission to pioneer the world of the people’s confused and isolated minds. Furthermore, Jesus felt the mission to pioneer this sinful world of humanity again.
Jesus would not allow the history of the providence of restoration that God had spent 4,000 years guiding to fall apart. Even if the Israelites were to betray God, Jesus was determined to remain unchanging and accomplish the one purpose. When Jesus thought about the internal, heavenly connection that God had made, he could not help making this kind of bold determination. It was an important issue to Jesus to manage such a mission in the living environment of the time. When he could become such a pioneer, he could represent the chosen people and history in sight of God, and he could manifest his determination as someone in whom God could believe and of whom God could be proud.