Prelude

Then they came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be troubled and distressed. Then he said to them, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch.” He advanced a little and fell to the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass by him; he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will.” When he returned he found them asleep. He said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Withdrawing again, he prayed, saying the same thing. Then he returned once more and found them asleep, for they could not keep their eyes open and did not know what to answer him. He returned a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come. Behold, the Son of Man is to be handed over to sinners. Get up, let us go. See, my betrayer is at hand.” (Mark 14.32-42)

Today we begin a week that is called Holy Week, but, of course, it is anything but holy. Instead, it is the week when we see humanity at its worst. As a result, we need to brace ourselves because much of what lies ahead is stomach-churning and head-turning. And it all begins today on Passion Sunday, often called Palm Sunday because of the pageantry of the palms laid on the road before Jesus as he enters Jerusalem. 

But Passion Sunday is the more appropriate term because the suffering and death of Jesus is front and center, whereas the adulation of the crowd as they hail Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is soon replaced with the shouts of the same crowd calling for his death. It seems a mockery, in some way, to give title to an incident that apparently meant little to nothing to the people who dropped the palms at the feet of Jesus, yelling, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” but who were just as quick to jump at the chance to shout, “Crucify him, crucify him!” when their fury was whipped up. 

The whiplash is difficult for us to watch, the crowd’s fickleness and foolishness peeling away for us to see our own faint-heartedness and weak-kneed attempts to stay true to our discipleship when the chips are down. Something about it puts a mirror before us, exposing the ugliness in our hearts that we try to keep hidden even from ourselves. 

Unfortunately, the week ahead brings out all the ugliness and rottenness that we don’t want to see. It’s as if the demons from hell have escaped and frolic in the streets before us. If the weeks of Lent have been a long haul and a sore test, then this final week before Easter is ten times worse and a hundred times more painful.

As we hear Mark put it all before us today in his passion narrative, which ironically breaks away from his usual reticence and is full of detail and description, we are right to think it is too much. Too much ugliness. Too much sinfulness. Too many sorry players in this march to Golgotha where an innocent man is beaten, mocked, paraded through the streets, and finally nailed to a cross while the bloodthirsty crowds hoot and holler as he writhes in pain.

So, if for nothing else but to save our sanity, we take only a slice of the story for our reflection today. The other pieces will have to wait for further in the week. We have time enough to address those parts in the days ahead. We simply can’t take in the shock and horror as a whole. It is too haunting and horrible a story to digest at one sitting.  

For today, then, I want us to look at the night in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is often overlooked because none of the sensory overload is found there, at least not in terms of the brutality, brutishness, and brutal truths that will come down the road. Of course, there is an ugly truth or two that shows up here also, but they have a way of paling in comparison to the wickedness waiting in the wings. 

For the most part, except at the end, there is no noise in the Garden, only the cries of Jesus as he kneels in prayer to his Heavenly Father, asking, begging, pleading that he be spared the suffering that is sure to come at dawn. And even then, they are not loud outcries, only the somber and sober pleas of a soul in distress. There is a solitariness in the Garden that isn’t part of the story elsewhere. Perhaps because each person’s path to death is so solitary.

Actually, the main thrust of the episode in the Garden is not Jesus’ agony in the garden, although it carries that name. As I read it, the main point is the disciples’ stone-cold lack of appreciation for what their Teacher is undergoing. Granted, Mark makes no bones about the thick-headedness of the disciples. Up to this point, he’s made it clear that they all have a failing grade. And, as we will see in the days ahead, that doesn’t change anytime soon. 

We’re told here that Jesus leads his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane after they have finished the Passover meal in the upper room. Once there, he takes with him his trusted three, Peter, James, and John, although we’re left to wonder why exactly he finds them trustworthy, and leads them further into the Garden. 

The evangelist says that it is here in the Garden that Jesus begins to feel troubled and distressed, the full weight of the moment upon him. He turns to the three and tells them, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch.” He takes a few steps away and begins to pray. Returning after a bit, he finds them fast asleep. He says to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test.”

He returns to his place of prayer, beseeching his Heavenly Father to take this cup of suffering and death from him. Going back to the disciples, he finds them asleep again. The evangelist says “they could not keep their eyes open and did not know what to answer him.” And, if that were not upsetting enough, he finds them asleep a third time, saying to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?” 

He then says to them, “It is enough. The hour has come. The Son of Man is to be handed over to sinners. Get up. Let us go. My betrayer is at hand.” They clearly have failed the test, unable to stand beside their Teacher for an hour, unable to offer him any comfort, unable to put their need for sleep on the back burner even though the distress of Jesus is far more important than their rest.

Although very little is said here in the dead of night and the chaos of the crowd is still an hour or so away, this getaway in the Garden is packed with poignancy and with expectancy. In his pain, Jesus rightly expects his closest followers to stand with him. And yet, they do not, instead choosing to sleep away the hour, oblivious to the solitary suffering that Jesus is already undergoing. 

Not once, not twice, but three times in the course of the night he asks them if they are asleep. And each time the answer is the same. They are taking their rest, dead asleep, sleeping off the wine from the Passover meal, leaving Jesus alone in his hour of need. Of course, it is a prelude to what lay ahead, soon all of them deserting him and leaving him alone with the crowd and with the henchmen.

In contrast, if we jump ahead in the story to the end, we will find quite the opposite from the women who have followed Jesus. The evangelist paints a very different picture of them. They stand vigil with Jesus as he suffers on the cross, never taking their eyes off him, never taking a rest, never moving away. They stick to his side, even if they can do nothing to save him.

The evangelist tells us, “There were also women looking on from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James and Joses, and Salone. These women had followed him when he was in Galilee and ministered to him. There were also many other women who had come with him to Jerusalem.” 

Prevented by the soldiers from getting near to Jesus, they stay as close to him as possible, ministering to him by their presence as they have ministered to him in the weeks and months prior to their coming to Jerusalem with him. They, unlike the disciples, refuse to desert him and they do not run for cover. They watch. They wait. And they weep, painfully aware of what Jesus is enduring in his last hours on earth. Their eyes are wide open to all his pain.

So, what can we take from this part of the story? The point seems clear enough. We have a choice to make. Do we choose to behave like the disciples who fail to remain with Jesus, who fail to keep watch with him, who fail to stay awake? Or do we choose to behave like the women who stay with Jesus, as close as they can get to the cross, standing near him, standing with him, standing up for him?

I know what we’d all like to say. But I’m not so sure our actions match our words. Peter was the first to claim he’d never betray Jesus and yet, yet, he was the first to deny his friendship with Jesus three times  as he skulked in the darkness of the courtyard, warming his fingers at the campfire as Jesus stood alone before the Sanhedrin.

And, as we see right here in the story of the Garden, he already failed Jesus three times, taking the easy way out instead of sticking with Jesus in his hour of need. The evangelist makes no attempt to dress up the image of the disciples, offers no excuses, and, in his silence on the matter, puts their behavior before our own eyes, forcing us to see our reflection in them.

As people who claim to be followers of the Lord Jesus, we find ourselves in the Garden every single day. And the same choice is put before us. To remain with Jesus and to keep watch, or to fall asleep on the job, asleep at the wheel, while Jesus continues to suffer in the world, his solitary pain now found in the prayers of the poor, in the pleas of the powerless, in the distress of the dispossessed. 

Are our eyes open to it, or are they closed? Do we hear their soft cries or do we hear nothing, sound asleep? In the end, the story of Gethsemane really isn’t just about the disciples. It’s about us and how we answer the same question that Jesus put to Peter, James and John, a question he asks us not once, not twice, not three times, but every day, “Could you not keep watch for one hour?”

Like I said, the week ahead is a brutal one. But we don’t want to overlook the Garden of Gethsemane. It may seem like a relatively quiet night compared to the disquiet of the coming days, but its lessons are just as hard and just as brutal.

–Jeremy Myers