What We Do With Jesus — #1
This is the first in a series based on the story of Tucson’s Garden of Gethsemane, but meant to help us examine what we do with Jesus today.
We Want To Be Saved
Just west of Tucson’s downtown, across the dry Santa Cruz River, under the cover of gangly mesquite trees, surrounded by a imposing yet curvaceous concrete wall punctuated by barred gate-like openings, lays a mostly paved “garden” filled with life-size white plaster sculptures of Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples. You can miss it. Many longtime Tucsonans have no idea that it’s there.
The Garden of Gethsemane is the work of the Knights of Columbus (a Catholic men’s fraternal organization) who later transferred responsibility for its care to the City of Tucson. Today the city opens and closes the garden, keeps a single electrical outlet powered up (though they won’t guarantee that!), and issues permits for the space to be used for events such as religious services. From time to time a passerby wanders through. Often the power outlet serves to charge the phone of someone who doesn’t have a home to charge it in.
The garden though, was a work inspired by a string of good works, by a string of hidden works of art. The embossed metal plaque in the garden tells the story of the man whose white plaster bust sits atop a stucco’d pillar. The man, Felix Lucero, born 1895 and deceased in 1951. The plaque tells us he was born in Trinidad, Colorado and other sources suggest he was Indigenous. He served in the First World War, and he lived to see the second. Lucero had a turning point moment. He was “critically injured” on a “forgotten battlefield.” We know no more, but these words lend to the assumption that he was left for dead. He made a vow with the caveat, “If I live.” He made a vow, because he wanted to be saved.
Have you ever made a promise like that to God? I have. This far in my life I’ve been spared of being hospitalized except for one time. That one time I was terrified. The truth is, I had severe, but very treatable pneumonia. I had nearly passed out at work, trying to be a hero and work through being sick. I had never felt that level of weakness, as if I could not control or carry my body before. I suppose, as I age, I’ll feel it many more times. But at that point, at age 18, I was terrified of death and miserable in the hospital with all the cords connected to me, and the IV inserted into the first puncture in my skin I could remember. I made a promise to God. “God, please help me…get me out of here, I will take my life more seriously! I will give my life to you!” I wanted to be saved, from what felt like the more formidable threat to my life I’d ever experienced.
I knew nothing of the agony or pain Felix Lucero felt on that battlefield. I still don’t. But I did go into ministry at age 18. Turning point moments are real, though that honestly, wasn’t mine. Mine came when I heard the story of a young man who felt worthless, as if he were a no-good meaningless kid. The story of when someone told him that God entered into creation and died for all the times he wasn’t the kind of kid he should have been. When I heard his story, I saw myself. I felt that way too. For the first time my eyes opened up to the news I’d heard a million times, that God loved me and wanted me around. That God loved me so much he was willing to do what had to be done to make me worthy. I knew I wasn’t worthy.
I would be willing to bet Felix Lucero knew he wasn’t worthy too. It’s rare for someone to place their life’s emphasis on the passion of Jesus, unless they realize how much they need Jesus themselves. This is the realization that we need to be saved. Saved from pneumonia, saved from our death-wound, saved from ourselves and our unworthiness. We need to be saved. We can do a lot of different things with that, but those turning point moments are when many of us have tried reaching out to God. These are the times when we realize we may not make it, we may not live, we may not hold onto sanity, we may not be able to hold back the dark idea in our mind.
What do we do with Jesus? Whatever it is, we often take it most seriously when we want to be saved. Have you ever been there?
