WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: Recall your experience of a plan going wrong, only to find that the end result was better than you planned.

The end
This story unfolds on two planes. First, there’s the view of Judas, the guards and the disciples that this was ‘the moment’. It was either to be a great victory for the authorities, finally capturing this dangerous madman, or a tragic end to a potential and promising messianic mission.

Either way, this night would end it! Hacking off the guard’s ear was the last act of defiance by a hopeless zealot (v 47).

No stopping it
The story also unfolds on a far higher level than the events in the garden. The hypocrisy of both Judas, betraying Jesus with a friendly kiss (v 44), and the authorities, who chose night time to do their ugly deed rather than in daylight, in crowded public spaces (vs 48,49), is the signature of the whole chapter: humans conspiring in vain to frustrate God’s master plan of redemption.

Instead they unwittingly fulfil everything God had purposed – bringing about the greatest victory of all (v 49), the reconciliation of a broken world. It may not look like it, but God is working out his plan to save the world, and nothing can stop it.

Respond: How hard it is to cope when everything is unravelling around us! When our plans are wrecked and all looks lost, if we can look at things from God’s view, it can be the beginning of something better. What are you facing that requires you to take another viewpoint?

http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-03-30