GETHSEMANE
“After saying these things, Jesus went forth with his disciples beyond the torrent of Cedron, where there was a garden. ..” (Jn 18:1) “according to this custom” adds Luke.
“And they came to a country place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit down here, while I pray.’ And he took with him Peter and James and John, and he began to feel dread and to be exceedingly troubled. And he said to them, “My soul is sad, even unto death. Wait here and watch. And going forward a little, he fell on the ground, and began to pray that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him; and he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee. Remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou willest.’
“Then he came and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, ‘Simon, dost thou sleep? Couldst thou not watch one hour? Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak? And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words over. And he came again and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And they did not know what answer to make to him” (Mk 14:32-40).
Then he went back again “And there appeared to him an angel from heaven to strengthen him... And his sweat became as drops of blood running down upon the ground” (Lk. 22:43, 44). And he rose and returned a third time to the disciples and said to them: “Sleep on now, and take your rest! It is enough; the hour has come. Behold, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go. Behold, he who will betray me is at hand” (Mk 14:41, 42).
After Jesus had ended the sacerdotal prayer he and the little group walked down the hill and out of the city. According to tradition, the house in which the Last Supper had been held belonged to the family of the John who later was called Mark, Peter's assistant missionary and author of the Gospel that bears his name. He is believed to be the John who, ‘having a linen cloth wrapped about his naked body” was also there that last night (until he too was put to dramatic flight—Mk 14:51-51). Jesus, then descended to the brook Cedron and crossed it—possibly at the same spot that his ancestor, the ancient King David, had fled from Absalom. Then they walked up the valley until they came to a farm called Gethsemane. Jesus has often sat there with his disciples, teaching (18:2). Now they feel that things are drawing to a close, and are not surprised when he tells them to wait while he prays. They are quite accustomed to his leaving them in order to speak alone and undisturbed with God. Only the three who had recently been with him on the mountain of the Transfiguration, Peter, John and James accompany him.
A terrible sadness overcomes the Lord—sadness “unto death” says Holy Scripture. Then Jesus tells also the three to wait—perhaps they are surprised to hear him say they should watch with him; it is probably the first time he has ever asked them to. Alone he advances a few paces, falls on his face and prays.
This is no place for psychology. When. guided by reverence and warmed by generosity, psychology is an excellent thing, doing much to help one human understand another. Here though it must fail, for it could only say that this was another instance of natural reaction: after the tension of tremendous religious concentration and the climb to dizzying spiritual heights of surrender, love and revelation—the collapsed, depression. We have only to recall the life of the prophets to see what is meant. Psychology would explain Gethsemane similarly: the rejection by both the ruling class and the masses, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem with its tremendous experiences, the entry into the city, the terrible waiting of the preceding days, the treachery and the Last Supper—as a result of the prolonged strain now the breakdown. In the case of any human fighting under duress for a noble cause, the analysis very likely would be correct, also (at least partly) for a prophet. But with Jesus any such explanation is bound to founder. If it is insisted upon, Holy Thursday is robbed of that weight and salutary power which can be sensed only in contrition and adoration. Here we can proceed solely through faith guided by revelation.
And it must be living faith—no mere passive acceptance of facts. We participate in this mystery only when we realise and admit that its content is our sin. Mankind’s sin constantly being relived in our own deeds and omissions today and yesterday and always; in all our daily rebellion and lassitude, interestedness and sharpness; in the indescribable evil deep at the root of our whole attitude towards existence. We understand here as much as we understand that in the agony of Gethsemane the ultimate consequences of our sin had their hour. Not before we have surrendered ourselves to the dreadfulness of that hour will we understand, really, what sin is. In the measure that we comprehend sin, we comprehend Christ; and we comprehend our own sin only in the measure that we experience what he experienced when he sweated blood in the night.
What does faith tell us? Before all else who this man is there on his knees—the Son of God in the simplest sense of the word. For that reason he sees existence in its ultimate reality.
Wherever we encounter Jesus, it is as the Knowing One, as he who knows about man and world, All others are blind; only his eyes are all-seeing, and they see through to the very ground of human depravity. The forlornness Jesus beholds there embraces the whole of human existence. And he does not see it as one who has broken through to spiritual health and clarity with the help of grace. Jesus’ knowledge of sin is not like that of fallen mankind; he knows about it as God knows—hence the awful transparency of that knowledge. Hence his immeasurable loneliness. He is really the Seer among the blind, sole sensitive one among beings who have lost their touch, the only free and self-possessed one in the midst of general confusion.
Jesus’ consciousness of the world’s corruption is not grounded in the world and therefore prisoner of existence. It springs from above, from God, and enfolds the whole globe, seeing as God sees: around existence, through existence, outwards from existence. Moreover, Jesus’ divine consciousness, before which every thing is stripped and lucid, is not extrinsic, but intrinsic, realised in his living self. He knows with his human intellect, feels the world’s forlornness with his human heart. And the sorrow of it, incapable of ripping the eternal God from his bliss, becomes in Christ's human soul unutterable agony. From this knowledge comes a terrible and unrelenting earnestness, knowledge that underlies every word he speaks and everything he does. It pulses through his whole being and proclaims itself in the least detail of his fate. Here lies the root of Christ's unapproachable loneliness What human understanding and sympathy could possibly reach into this realm in which the Saviour shoulders alone the yoke of the world? From this point of view Jesus was always a sufferer. and would have been one even if men had accepted his message in faith and love; even if salvation had been accomplished and the kingdom established alone by proclamation and acceptance sparing him the bitter way of the cross. Even then, his whole life would have been inconceivably painful, for he would have been constantly aware of the world sin in the sight of a God he knew to be all holy and all love; and he would have borne this terrible and inaccessible knowledge alone. In the hour of Gethsemane its ever-present pain swells to a paroxysm.
The life of God is timeless and changeless; it is fixed in a present that is simple and illimitable. The life of men rises and falls like the tides. In the Lord there was both: eternal present and temporal fluctuation; thus also that inner pain will have had its ebb and flow, its variations in volume, pressure, and acuity. Now was the hour in which everything was to be “consummated”.
Who knows how God the Father faced his Son in that hour? He never ceased to be his Father; the band of endless love between them which is the Spirit never broke; and yet—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46). If we do not prefer to pass over this in reverent silence, we must say that God permitted his Son to taste the human agony of rejection and plunge towards the abyss. Christ’s terrible cry from the cross came from the bitter dregs of the consequence of his union with us. But the chalice was given him to taste already in Gethsemane, when, his consciousness of the abysmal forlornness of the world heightened by God’s proximity, his Father began to “withdraw” from him. It was then that Jesus’ knowledge and suffering reached the frightful intensity evinced by his terror, agonised praying, and sweat of blood that streamed to the ground. In much the same way, a whirlpool on the surface of an ocean may be the visible sign of a catastrophe at its depths surpassing imagination.
Gethsemane was the hour in which Jesus’ human heart and mind experienced the ultimate odium of the sin he was to bear as his own before the judging and avenging countenance of God; | hour in which he felt the fury of the Father against sin per se as directed against himself, its porter, and therefore suffered the unspeakable agony of “abandonment” by holy God. We are humanising again. Perhaps it would be better to be silent. But with God’s help, possibly that hour in the garden will not be quite lost on us. There Jesus accepted the Father’s will and surrendered his own. ‘‘His” will was not revolt against God, that would have been sin; it was simply the repulsion of a supremely pure and vital being against the role of scapegoat for the evil of a whole world; revolt against being the one, through no fault of his own) but as the price of self-sacrificing love, on whom all God’s anger must fall. To accept this was the meaning of his words, “...yet not what I will, but what thou willest.”
There the real struggle took place. All that came afterwards was the realisation of that hour, the actual execution of what had already been excruciatingly anticipated by heart and spirit. And in what solitude? So tremendous that we sense the fundamental guiltlessness of the disciples. In the face of such infinite suffering, their little capacity for compassion must have rebounded like the heart of a small child when the grown-ups are engulfed in some shattering experience: it turns aside, begins to play, or simply falls asleep. The fact that there is no alternative shows how hopeless Christ’s isolation is.
No one has ever seen existence as Jesus saw it; neither before nor after. In that hour when his human heart lifted the world from its vapours of deception, he beheld it as otherwise only God beholds it—in all its hideous nakedness. What happened was truth realised in charity. And we are given the standpoint from which we too can see through and reject deception. For that is the meaning of salvation: seeing the world as Christ saw it and experiencing his repulsion of sin.