What many people don’t know about our first president, George Washington, is that, when he was the General of the Continental Army in the War for Independence, he lost more battles than he won.  In war, however, it doesn’t matter who wins the most battles.  It’s who wins the last battle that counts.  Washington lost at Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth, and many other places along the way.  But, on October 19, 1781, when the British General Cornwallis laid down his command at Yorktown, Washington was still standing over his.  Washington may not have had a winning average as a general; he lost more battles than he won.  But, he won the last battle.  So, in the end, Washington won the war because he didn’t lose the one battle that mattered. 

It was the one battle that mattered, the battle that would determine the outcome of the war for the souls of all men, women and children for all time, that had Jesus on his knees and praying until “his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.”  It was also that battle that had Jesus concerned for his disciples so that, when he returned to them and found them sleeping, he said, “‘Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.’”  What temptation was it that had Jesus so concerned?  The disciples were just “a stone’s throw” from Jesus.  When you’re that close to Jesus what temptation could possibly get to you?  Whatever it was, it was big enough that Jesus got up off his knees and went to warn the disciples about it.  But, instead of finding them in prayer, he found the disciples “asleep, exhausted from sorrow.” 

The disciples remind me a great deal of a college dorm mate of mine.  When finals rolled around Clayton went to bed.  Just the overwhelming thought of the exams exhausted him.  While the rest of us were in the deep anguish of study, Clayton was asleep even during the middle of the day.  Whether he ever finished his degree or not I don’t know.  What I do know is that, eventually, you have to wake up and face the test.  Anguish can do that to you, though.  It’s emotional overload can physically exhaust you.  What the disciples and my college friend had in common was a struggle with anticipatory grief. 

There is always grief on the backside of nearly any loss.  The loss of a job, someone you love, a dream and even the death of a pet can make people grieve.  Anticipatory grief is the grief you experience when you haven’t actually lost something yet but you anticipate losing it.  Maybe that explains what we all experience in the last few days before April 15 every year.  We haven’t lost the tax battle yet but we know who will win.  We can sleep all we want.  But, April 15 is coming and, eventually, we have to write the check.

Maybe that’s something of what Troy Aikman is going through right now.  Just released from the Cowboys but not yet signed with another team, no one is exactly beating down his door to sign him at the only position he says he’s willing to play.  You could say that his car’s been on the lot quite a while and no one’s even taken a test drive.  He says he’ll let us know in the next few days whether he’ll make a career change or not.  In the meantime, he’s having to face the possibility that, at the elderly age of thirty-four, all the beatings he’s taken for twelve years may finally rob him of his dream of winning just one more Super Bowl.  It’s called anticipatory grief, the grief you experience when you know you’re going to lose something but you haven’t actually lost it yet.

And, there’s one particular temptation you face in the moment of anticipatory grief that can set you up for winning the battle that doesn’t matter and losing the war that does.  For example, what if, in the anguish of anticipatory grief, Aikman gives in to the temptation to play just one more year?  What if he wins the battle against everything and everyone telling him he’s too unhealthy to play and he gets just one team to sign him?  Looks like a victory, doesn’t it?  Unless he gets hit just one more time just hard enough in the just the right place.  What if that happens and, even though he wins the battle and gets to play one more year, he loses the war and lives the rest of his life so addled that he can’t even count all the money he made much less enjoy it?  What difference does it make if you win the battle that doesn’t count and lose the war that does?

That’s the temptation that had Jesus concerned for the disciples.  He knew what it was like.  Remember when he was praying?  He was so overwhelmed in just anticipating the cross that he actually faced the temptation of walking away from it.  That’s why he prayed, “‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.’”  Jesus knew what was coming.  He’d known for years that, in order for us to live, he’d have to die a torturous death.  In anticipation of a loss he knew was coming but that he had not yet experienced, he was grieving.  In the grief, he was tempted.  That’s why he was praying.  And, that’s why he wanted the disciples to pray instead of sleep.  Their temptation would come soon enough, too.  In fact, it was walking up just as Jesus finished waking them up.

And, you know how it is when you first wake up.  Your brain has cobwebs a circus tightrope artist would be proud to walk.  You haven’t had your first shot of caffeine.  Clear thinking is hours away.  Ever say or do anything when you first woke up you later regretted?

How could this “servant of the high priest” have known what he was getting into?  Now, for some reason, Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t tell us who it was who actually cut off the servant’s right ear.  But, John coughs it up in his gospel (John 18:10).  It was Peter who was known, of course, for being impulsive.  So, just awakened and seeing Jesus about to be arrested, he decided it was time to take a stand.  They might go down, he probably figured, but not without a fight.  So, drawing down on the closest target within earshot, he lobbed off his lobe.  Maybe this unknown servant is the one who started a now well-known saying about ears.  Having just lost one of his to the sword, perhaps he turned to his friends and said, “Gentlemen, lend me your ears!”  Turns out, he wouldn’t need the loan.  Jesus, the one you’d think would be cheering all this on, said, “‘No more of this,’” and, in giving this guy the best hearing aid he’d ever have, put his ear back on for him.  In the process, Jesus accomplished even more.  He taught us what it means to be careful about what choices we make while living under the stress of anticipatory grief.  We’re never more vulnerable than then to the temptation to win the wrong the battle and lose the war.

By the way, there is a subtle current of anticipatory grief running underground in our souls all the time.  Sometimes it surfaces in a moment of crisis.  But, it’s always there even when we aren’t consciously aware of it.  We know our kids are going to grow up and leave home someday, for example.  We want that for them.  We wouldn’t want to hold them back.  But, every year about this time, I see that undercurrent of grief surface in some of our parents just around graduation time.  Just as the fountain of joy begins to overflow as our teachers see the light of summer at the end of the academic tunnel, some parents, barely holding back tears, know what the summer’s coming means. 

For me, the undercurrent of anticipatory grief surfaces every time I stand behind a hearse just outside Bassett chapel.  It surfaces in the form of a palatable sense of nostalgia.  Like I’m already missing Nancy and I haven’t left yet.  I know of the loss that’s coming and I’m grieving it before it happens. 

By getting in Peter’s face for cutting others down Jesus was saying that we have to be careful what choices we make when the anguish of grief is getting the better of us.  Not only do we sometimes strike out at others when we’re grieving, it’s a real temptation to make choices that sacrifice long term benefits for momentary relief.  A husband, for example, who just has to have a clean house and just has to have his wife keep it that way for him may soon discover that he has a well-made bed but no one to sleep with him in it.  He may win the house-cleaning battle but lose the homemaking war.  Or, anticipating grievous loss, you can write on your 1040, “No thanks, Uncle Sam, I don’t feel like paying this year.”  You will win a very small battle but lose a much bigger war.

Peter was grieving and struck out.  But, by not joining in Peter’s fight with him, and declaring “No more of this,” Jesus was announcing that this wasn’t the battle he chose to fight, the hill on which he’d die.  Whatever else he would do before that terrible night was over, he wasn’t going to turn a very sacred choice over to anyone else thereby winning a momentary battle that would lose the war for our redemption.  He’d once said, “‘I lay down my life . . . no one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (John 10:15, 18).’”  Here again was Jesus’ message to Peter, the disciples and to us.  That one of the most sacred responsibilities you and I carry all of our lives is the choice over which hill we will die on.  For Jesus, it would be a hill not far away in time or space, a place called Calvary.  Jesus would do battle, he was saying, on no lesser hill than the one on which he could and would carry the burden of our sin and win the war for our eternal souls.  In time, grief itself cannot overwhelm the simple power of surrender to greater good.  So, with drops of blood-sweat running down his face, Jesus resolved to his Father, “‘not my will, but yours be done.’”

More often than not, Satan’s greatest weapon is nothing more than to tempt us to turn from the greater eternal good to something of lesser momentary significance on the thin dime of a question.  In another garden, he tempted Eve to question God’s good purpose for her life and made her fear the possibility of losing.  In her anticipatory grief, she made a terrible choice that has rippled throughout all time.  Later, doing the same, Satan simply asked Job to consider whether a good God would allow a good man to suffer.  But, whereas Eve bought the lie, Job would not.  With a “not-my-will-but-yours-be-done” kind of faith, Job cut his bigger losses with a sword-like expression, “though he slay me, yet will I hope in him . . . this will turn out for my deliverance (Job 13:15-16).”  Job knew what Jesus knew.  Evil, as often as not, comes to us in the form of a temptation to die on a lesser hill than the only one that really matters.  You only lose if you die on a lesser hill than the holy hill of self-surrender to God’s greater purpose for your life.  And, those who surrender to God’s greater good on that hill know that he always raises to life those who die to him.  That any death you die for God always turns out for your ultimate deliverance.

In the meantime, Jesus chose to live with a poor win-loss ratio and “they led him away.”  He could do that, though, because he knew, by faith, how the story would end.  He knew the real war being fought.  He knew which battles didn’t matter and he knew who’d win the last one.  So, he said to those who’d come to arrest him, “‘this is your hour – when darkness reigns.’”  Jesus was saying to those who sought to engage him in a lesser battle, “You can have this terribly dark night when evil will win for the moment.  You can have Friday night,” Jesus said.  “But, Sunday morning belongs to me!”