Broadneck Baptist Church is located in Anne Arundel County, on Hilltop Drive, just off Cape St. Claire Road, northeast of Annapolis. The church is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches, D.C. Baptist Convention, and Alliance of Baptists. Their former pastor, Rev. Abby Thornton, served from June 2010 until December 2024. The church has been worshipping and ministering on the Broadneck peninsula since 1982.

I was blessed to be asked to preach at Broadneck several times as they begin the process of seeking an interim pastor. The past two Sundays I offered sermons from my book, Spelunking Scripture: The Passion of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels. The sermons were “The Pointer,” based on Mark 14:26-31, and “Abba Father,” based on Mark 14:32-36; Romans 8:15-16; and Galatians 4:6.

Since these last two weeks were the Third and Fourth Sundays of Lent, it seemed appropriate to focus on Jesus’s last days before the cross. The passages in Mark 14 took place on the Mount of Olives and in a place called Gethsemane. It was immediately after Jesus shared the Passover meal with his disciples and offered them bread and the cup, interpreting the elements as symbols of his body and blood, and coming death on the cross.

In Mark 14:26-31 Jesus predicted the disciples’ desertion and Peter’s denials. In Mark 14:32-36 Jesus took with him Peter and James and John to Gethsemane to be with him while he prayed. Jesus prayed to “Abba, Father,” that if it were possible he might be spared the coming suffering. “Yet, not what I want,” Jesus prayed, but what God wants.

The Passion of Christ is about his suffering and death. Jesus suffered in many ways. He suffered the desertion of his friends, the twelve disciples. He suffered the betrayal of one of them, and the denials of another of them. He suffered from anticipating what would happen to him, feeling such anguish and despair that he prayed that if it were possible, he might be spared, and the cup of suffering might be taken away from him.

He suffered tremendous physical abuse, being struck, beaten, spat on, forced to carry a heavy cross, nailed to the cross, suspended on the cross, thirst, stabbed in the side, and ultimately killed. He suffered verbal abuse, cursing, mocking, derision, scoffing, and pronouncements of ridicule and scorn. Not only was crucifixion a horrifyingly painful form of execution, it was humiliating. No wonder that Jesus prayed to Abba, Father, for some way out. No wonder that Jesus prayed from the cross the prayer of forsakenness from Psalm 22.

Because we know how the story ends, with Jesus resurrected from the dead, we tend to rush through the darkest cave of the Bible to the light at the story’s end. Perhaps we need to stay awhile in the darkness and explore more fully the Passion of Christ, what Jesus suffered for us.