Scandal (Matthew 26:30-56; 69-75)

“You will all fall away because of me this night.” -ESV
“All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night.” -NKJ
“All of ye shall be offended in Me this night.” -ASV

This sentence had me caught as I read this chapter again. At first it was because of the preposition “en” which carries the meaning of in, because, or with instead of the “from” that I would have expected. Jesus says that the disciples will fall away because of Him, not from Him. All that leads us to look more closely at the verb “fall away” which in the Greek is “skandalizo.” If you were to think that sounds a lot like scandal, you would be right.

Scandal has come to mean an event or someone’s action that is morally or legally wrong that causes outrage. Etymology dictionaries say it was “discredit caused by irreligious conduct.” They will further say it comes from the Latin, scandalum meaning “cause for offense, stumbling block, temptation.” All of that comes from the Greek word that literally means “a trap laid to ensnare an enemy.”

This is the word that the bible uses when it talks about people falling away from the faith, but mostly in the sense of things that are so offensive that they become stumbling blocks to faith. This is what Jesus says when He hyperbolically tells His disciples to tear their eye out or cut their hand off if they are “scandalizing” them. It is a “scandalized” response that caused Jesus to declare that a prophet was never accepted in his hometown. And Paul calls the gospel of the cross a “scandal” to the Jews.

The Gospel is a scandal. But it is a necessary scandal. Jesus’ death on the cross is a shocking but necessary truth. Perhaps we have become desensitized to the fact that Jesus died in our stead. Maybe we let the resurrection erase that reality in our minds. But the resurrected Christ is still the crucified Christ!

Jesus leads the disciples out to the garden, and takes Peter, James and John on further, asking them to “watch and pray.” They fall asleep.

I can understand why the disciples would fall asleep if they were praying the way we envision prayer today. Ever tried to close your eyes and pray in the middle of the night? But Jesus was asking His disciples to stand and watch with Him. In Matthew 26, prayer is about being alert. It is about standing and supporting Christ in the moment. It is about awareness. They all fail miserably and repeatedly. And, then they fall away as predicted.

To be fair, they can’t help themselves. They do not have the Holy Spirit empowering them. They do not have Jesus as He is headed to the cross for their sins. In their own strength they have no hope.

And neither do we. We can’t do what is expected of us in our own strength. We can’t stand and watch and be alert either. If we try, we will fail too. Like Peter, we will protest our faithfulness and determination, but we will not follow through. We need our shepherd. We need the crucified Christ.