This is for our service at the hospital today. It’s longer than usual.

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In the days of His humanity, He offered up both prayers and pleas with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His devout behavior. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey Him, being designated by God as High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Hebrews 5:7-9

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We talk all the time about praying.

I say “all the time” because we are standing in the chapel at a hospital.

And hospital and chapels have a lot of praying. Sometimes it is crying. Sometimes it is hollering. Sometimes it is staring.

One time it was a woman lying on the floor at the base of this cross doing most of those, as her husband was down the hall. I wish I could remember how that story turned out. She had a clear picture of what she was hoping for. I think he lived.

A while back, a woman was by the bed of her husband, asking God for two more days. He died just a couple hours short of that.

In the reading from Hebrews earlier, there is a picture of Jesus praying with the passion of those two women, on the ground, clinging to the bed, words and tears flowing mingled down.

Jesus spent time talking to God, praying, having conversations. Regularly, during his ministry life, he goes off by himself. Regularly, during his ministry life, he talks. Usually, we don’t know the content. So we don’t know the balance between thoughtful collegial conversations between the members of the Godhead, expressions of frustration with the slow-learning disciples, and other things.

But during the week of his death, there is something that feels more despairing, more visceral.

During the week before he died, he said, “Now My soul has become troubled; and what am I to say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

In the garden, the night before he died, he was crying out to God with deep groans.

The perfect human, crying and crying out. To the one, to the only one, who could rescue him from death.

His life was perfect in his complete devotion to God, with every thought, every action, every breath in perfect sync with the desires and directions of God. If perfection was enough to get God’s attention, to win favor with God, then this is the test case. This is when it should matter. This is when death should not happen.

In the days of His humanity, He offered up both prayers and pleas with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His devout behavior. 

Ken loved God so much. He preached faithfully, he and Lois loved and equipped their kids for devotion to God. He preached one Sunday morning about drawing people to God. And died early the following morning in his sleep.

Jeanne loved God so much. She lived as a missionary teacher, her kids are missionary teachers. She wrote verses on her arm in English and Japanese on the morning of her surgery, not as magic formulas to ward off evil but as affirmations of the deep trust. And died twenty-four hours later.

Jesus was God so much. And God heard his prayers and petitions.

And Jesus died. Amidst much suffering.

He was heard and still died. Which means that being perfect and being heard doesn’t mean getting what we want in the moment or for our moments.

In the story of the cross, in the reality of the Friday we call good is this honest awareness that our apparent goodness and God’s actual goodness doesn’t keep us from suffering and dying.

Which is, in an odd way, the good news.

After the cross and the death and the resurrection, we read, “He became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey Him”. In all the agony of this day, better, through all the agony of this day, forgiveness and eternal salvation became possible.

And in a couple days, there will be joyous songs about the resurrection, happy affirmational songs people have written about being able to face death with courage and fearlessness.

But for those of us who face death daily, who live aware that bodies fail in sometimes frustrating, sometimes awful ways, who know that humans are horrible to other humans and to themselves, we have an awareness on this day, in this day, because of this day.

The person whose name we use when we pray understands death from the inside.

That’s who we come to and cry out to.

Jesus.

Who understands pain and rejection and abuse from the inside. As we read earlier, “This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.” 

Who is with us. Because He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever abandon you,” 

Who doesn’t hum happy songs all the time and expect us to. After all, his song on the afternoon of his death was the start of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Who knows literally excruciating pain and doesn’t say, “If I can do it, you can do it.”

Who instead says, “I am with you. Always.”

Who loves us.

And of whom it is written, “let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”

Even as we walk through the valley of death.

He, and we, can be here.

Because he was there. On the cross.