'Arise, let us go hence'—a word of swift alacrity. Evidently He rose to
His feet whilst they lay round the table. He bids them rise with Him
and follow Him on the path.
But there is more in the words than the mere close of a conversation,
and a summons to change of place. They indicate a kind of divine
impatience to be in the fight, and to have it over. The same emotion is
plainly revealed in the whole of the latter days of our Lord's life.
You remember how His disciples followed amazed, as He strode up the
road from Jericho, hastening to His Cross. You remember His deliberate
purpose to draw upon Himself public notice during that dangerous and
explosive week before the Passover, as shown in the publicity of His
entry into Jerusalem, His sharp rebukes of the rulers in the Temple,
and in every other incident of those days. You remember His words to
the betrayer: 'That thou doest, do quickly.' These latter hours of the
Lord were strongly marked by the emotion to which He gave utterance in
His earlier words: 'I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished!' Perhaps that feeling indicated His
human shrinking; for we all know how we sometimes are glad to
precipitate an unwelcome thing, and how the more we dread it, the more
we are anxious to get it over. But there is far more than that in it.
There is the resolved determination to carry out the Father's purpose
for the world's salvation, which was His own purpose, and was none the
less His though He knew all the suffering which it involved.
Let us adore the steadfast will, which never faltered, though the
natural human weakness was there too, and which, as impelled by some
strong spring, kept persistently pressing towards the Cross that on it
He might die, the world's Redeemer.
And do not let us forget that He summoned His lovers and disciples to
follow Him on the road. 'Let us go hence.' It is ours to take up our
cross daily and follow the Master, to do with persistent resolve our
duty, whether it be welcome or unwelcome, and to see to it that we
plant no faltering and reluctant foot in our Master's footsteps. For
us, too, if we have learned to flee to the Cross for our redemption and
salvation, the resolve of our Redeemer and the very passion of the
Saviour itself become the pattern and law of our lives. We, too, have
to cast ourselves into the fight, and to take up our cross, 'that the
world may know that we love the Father, and as the Father hath given us
commandment.' And if we so live, then our death, too, in some humble
measure, may be like His—the crowning act of obedience to the Father's
will; in which we are neither passively nor resistingly dragged under
by a force that we cannot effectually resist, but in which we go down
willingly into the dark valley where death 'makes our sacrifice
complete.'