Christ in Gethsemane

Today's Reading

Read Mark 14:32-42 — Gethsemane, the most exposed prayer in the Gospels: "And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, 'My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.' And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, 'Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.'"

Read Luke 22:39-46 — Luke's account, which adds the line that disturbed early scribes so much that some manuscripts left it out: "And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground."

Read Hebrews 5:7-9: "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered."

Read Hebrews 4:14-16: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

Read 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 — Paul's parallel, three prayers for the thorn to be removed, none of them granted: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

Reflection

There is a garden on the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley from the eastern walls of Jerusalem, where olive trees still stand whose root systems may be old enough to have been there on the night the Son of God knelt in the dirt and prayed not to die.

The Gospels do not soften the scene. Mark says Jesus "began to be greatly distressed and troubled." The verb ekthambeisthai means something like aghast, horrified, paralyzed with dread. Jesus tells his three closest friends, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death." Then he goes a little further and falls on the ground. Not bowed, not knelt — fell. Luke adds the medical detail Christian copyists later tried to remove: "his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Hematidrosis, the rare condition in which extreme stress causes capillaries beneath the sweat glands to rupture, was known to ancient physicians. The Gospel writers are giving us, with restraint, a portrait of a man whose body is being destroyed by what is in front of him before the soldiers ever arrive.

This is the Son of God. This is the man Hebrews 1 calls "the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature." This is the eternal Word through whom the worlds were made. He is on his face in the dirt, asking the Father for the cup to pass.

Three times, Mark tells us. He prays the same prayer three times. The cup does not pass.

Hold this scene next to the prayer life of every Christian who has ever begged God for the chemo to work, the marriage to be saved, the depression to lift, the child to come back. Hold it next to Paul, who in 2 Corinthians 12 says he prayed three times for his thorn to be taken away — clearly, deliberately, echoing Gethsemane — and was given the answer "my grace is sufficient" instead of the thing he asked for. The pattern is not accidental. The man Paul is patterning his refused prayer on is the Lord Jesus, whose own three prayers were also refused. The cross was the cup that did not pass.

Now hold this next to the question we have been asking for nine days: where is God when we suffer?

The Christian answer, in its most concentrated form, is Gethsemane. The God we have been wondering about — the one who seems absent in the cancer ward, the one whose silence in the bereavement is so deafening, the one who has not, in our experience, lifted the cup — is the God who, in his Son, has prayed the prayer we are praying, in the same posture, with the same anguish, and has had the same prayer refused. He has not asked anything of us he has not undergone himself.

Bonhoeffer, in the Tegel letter, wrote "only the suffering God can help" — and the reason it is true is Gethsemane. A God who has only watched suffering from the outside cannot help in the way we need help. A God who has prayed the prayer of dread to a Father who answered no — that God can help. He is not, in our hour, an outsider giving us advice. He is not even a sympathetic friend who has heard about loss but never had it. He is the man on the floor of the garden, sweating blood, asking for what he is not going to be given. Hebrews 4 says it without ornament: "we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are." Sympathize is too weak a word in English. Sympatheō — suffer with. The high priest of the Christian faith is one who suffers with the people he prays for, because he has done it himself.

There is something else here that often gets missed. The prayer of Gethsemane is not just a model of submission. It is a model of honest petition with a final yielding. Jesus does ask. He asks specifically, urgently, for the cup to be removed. He does not pre-spiritualize the prayer. He does not say whatever you want, Father. He says remove this cup from me — first. Only after the asking does he add yet not what I will, but what you will. The two halves are not interchangeable. The asking has to come first. If you skip the asking, you have not yet prayed the Gethsemane prayer; you have only prayed the second half of it, and the second half without the first is fatalism, not faith.

This permission is enormous, and most Christians do not use it. We are afraid to ask God for the thing we actually want, because we are afraid of being disappointed, or of seeming faithless, or of pretending we have not been told to die to ourselves. So we pre-edit our prayers. We pray if it be your will, that the test result would be good — and we mean it as humility, but we are also using the if it be your will as insulation against the asking. Jesus does not insulate. He asks. He asks more than once. He asks until his blood is on the ground. And then he yields.

If you have a prayer you have been afraid to pray, Gethsemane is your permission. The Son of God has been there. He has prayed the unpruned, unedited, agonized version of it before you. He has not been struck down for it. He has, in fact, been honored for it. Hebrews 5 says he was heard because of his reverence — the asking was the reverence. The asking and then the yielding. The bleeding and then the rising up to face what was coming. This is not despair. This is the highest form of faith Scripture knows.

What does this give you, in your suffering today?

It gives you, first, a companion in the worst place. Whatever is in front of you, the Lord Jesus is not standing somewhere up the road waiting for you to catch up. He is on the floor next to you. He is praying with you. He is sweating, in his own way, the same sweat. He has been here. He is here.

It gives you, second, permission to pray honestly. The cup is real. Asking the Father to remove it is not faithless. Asking three times is not faithless. The Lord Jesus did all of that. The yielding came after. It will come, in time, after for you too. Until then, ask.

It gives you, third, a different relationship to the prayer that has been refused. The Christian whose prayer has been answered with no is not, in that refusal, abandoned by God. He is in the company of Christ in Gethsemane and Paul on the road and ten thousand saints who prayed the prayer that did not, in the form they prayed it, get its yes. The yes came differently. For Christ it came in the resurrection. For Paul it came in the sufficient grace. For you it will come — in the form God knows is the right form, on the day God knows is the right day. Until then, you are praying the prayer the Son of God prayed first.

Going Deeper

Pray Mark 14:36 as your own prayer tonight, slowly, twice. Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. Notice that you are praying, word for word, the prayer of Christ. Notice that the prayer makes room for the cup not passing. Notice that Christ, on the other side of the night, was raised. The prayer is not finished in Gethsemane. The prayer was finished on the third day.