Gethsemane

S. Mark xiv. 32–42

One of the greatest disappointments a traveller meets with in Palestine arises out of the difficulty of identifying the scenes and places which were hallowed by the footsteps of our Blessed Lord. Even the site of the Holy Sepulchre is a subject of dispute. It is no little relief then to be told that the traditional Gethsemane, at the foot of Mount Olivet, almost unquestionably marks the locality of His final Agony. Even the most careless have confessed to a feeling of awe and mystery as they entered “the garden.” It is not so much the Grotto, which is supposed to indicate the very spot where the Saviour knelt to offer His thrice-repeated prayer. Neither is it the bare ground — the terra damnata — on which the pious monks assert that the grass has never grown since Judas stood there to betray the Son of Man with a kiss; but it is more especially a cluster of aged olive-trees, with their great gnarled trunks, and most venerable appearance, wholly unlike any others upon the mountain — it is these which have always quickened the thoughts and emotions of even indifferent observers. “They will remain,” it has been said, “so long as their already protracted life is spared, the most affecting of the sacred memorials in or about Jerusalem; the most nearly approaching to the everlasting hills themselves in the force with which they carry us back to the events of the Gospel History.”

We can imagine the intense reality of the Passion coming vividly before the mind, as one stood and looked up to those time -hallowed monuments, and thought that probably they were the very trees, or at least the immediate successors of those which threw the shadow of the great Paschal moon down upon the Redeemer; and that beneath their branches the sufferings of every age and people had culminated in the awful Agony they witnessed.

It was to this place that our Lord withdrew after the Last Supper was ended. Man craves for sympathy and nearness of friends in times of trouble and distress, and we feel strength and confidence from the presence of those who know most of our inner life. Our Lord was true, then, to human nature when He gathered to His side His chosen disciples, the eye-witnesses of the Transfiguration, Peter and James and John and in their ears spoke of the terrible burden of grief that oppressed His soul. “He began to be sore-amazed;” the original word implies a sense of overpowering surprise, something which made Him “astonied,” and almost start back from its presence; “and to be very heavy:” the most trustworthy etymology 1 indicates a loss of consciousness, the condition of one who is quite dazed, and at his wits’ end.

And He was equally true to human nature when, in the midst of this unutterable anguish, He removed from His companions, and “went forward a little,” “about a stone’s cast,” seeking for solitude, and undisturbed communion with God. We shrink from too close an analysis of His prayer, but at least we can see its intensity in its very repetition. They are lower forms of sorrow that are found to vary their mode of expression; the deepest and sharpest agony is ever content to fall back upon the selfsame words again and again repeated. Those who see in Jesus Christ only the greatest of martyrs maintain that the distress and anguish that He felt in the Garden were nothing more than was natural in the immediate anticipation of death. They say that it was the dread of crucifixion which wrung from Him the eager supplication that “the hour might pass from Him,” and that His Father would take away the cup that He had given Him to drink.

But if it be so, how are we to explain the fact that Christ was less brave than His followers? There was nothing to correspond to this intense shrinking in the stoning of S. Stephen; nothing in S. Paul’s bright anticipation of a death which he knew must be that of martyrdom: nor in the unflinching courage of S. Polycarp: nor in the last hours of a thousand others who have laid down their lives for the Master’s cause. No, to hint even that it was physical pain which drew from His lips that exceeding bitter cry, is to degrade Him below the level of the Christian martyr. If it had been only that, He would have been nerved to bear it by the prospect of the future, by the prevision of the Resurrection and Ascension, of the exaltation and triumph, which He knew would be the sequel of that degradation and defeat.

The Agony in the Garden finds its explanation alone in the one great cardinal truth of the Christian Faith; that He made His soul an offering for sin, that God laid upon Him the iniquity of us all: that He gathered up as it were the sins of the whole world, and then, as though He were Himself the sinner, by an inexplicable mystery which we shall never fathom, but before which we must bow the head in awe, “was made a curse for us,” “was wounded for our transgressions, was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.”

It seems difficult to fix our thoughts in Gethsemane on any other than the figure of our Adorable Lord, but the Holy Spirit has placed before us in this awful crisis men of like passions with ourselves, subject to all the weakness and infirmities of a sinful nature, that, taking warning from them, we may learn how to bear ourselves in the hour of peril and temptation.

It must have added another drop to the cup of sorrow, already so full, to find Himself in the hour of His direst need robbed of the sympathy for the sake of which He had kept His best beloved disciples within His reach. It was part of His predicted sufferings that He should be so bereft: “I looked for some to have pity on Me, but there was no man, neither found I any to comfort Me.” They were there, it is true, but only to increase — not to relieve — His anxiety; and turning to them with all the yearning of the tenderest affection, He forewarns them of approaching danger. “Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.”

He had told them before to “watch,” and it may be they had endeavoured to do it in their own strength, and nature had asserted its mastery. Since the terrible revelation of the traitor at the Last Supper, the anticipation of the Passion had become intensely real to them, and grief had laid such hold upon them, that they were quite overpowered. Poor human nature gave way under the strain, and they slept “for sorrow.” We know in our own experience what that expression means. We have watched, it may be, by the bedside of the sick or dying, hoping against hope, dreading the future when the present is over, till at last the spirit becomes so crushed and prostrate, that it yields to the claims of our lower being, and we too sleep “for sorrow.” They were all asleep, but S. Peter is especially singled out for remonstrance. His repeated protestations had given promise of better things, and there is a world of sadness wrapt up in the expresssion of disappointment, “Simon, sleepest thou? Couldest thou not watch one hour?” Is this the fulfilment of thy boast, “I will lay down my life for Thy sake “?

Well may our Lord have bidden them add prayer to watchfulness; but even then they failed, for again, and yet again, He returned to find them weighed down with sleep.

We may not gather from this that the means within their reach were insufficient, but we are forced to the conclusion that they did not use them to the utmost. The same temptation is certain to be ours. There are times in the lives of most men when they are called upon to pass through a prolonged conflict with the powers of evil. For a season, it may be, they watch and pray; and then the suggestion comes to them that they have watched long enough, and prayed long enough; or that God never expects more than men are able to bear, and that the limit has been reached; and so their efforts are relaxed; and then when the crisis comes, as it came to S. Peter and the rest, they find that they have not strength enough to meet it, and they deny their Lord, or forsake Him and flee. We have been forewarned by this record of the Apostles’ failure: may we be forearmed, and not found sleeping when nothing but continued watchfulness and prayer can save us from falling!

Note: Gethsemane, from gath, a press, and shemen, oil. It is situated about half a mile from the walls of Jerusalem, on the north-west side of Mount Olivet.

Note: The scientific investigations of the French botanist Bovg led him to the conclusion that they are at least 2000 years old. — R£cit in Bullet, de la Soc. Geogr., Paris, 1835, iii. 382. It is said, however, that in the siege of Jerusalem, Titus had all the trees cut down round Jerusalem, — Joseph. Wars, vi. i, 1, and the 10th Legion encamped on Olivet, id. v. 2, 3. If so, the eight olive-trees now living may have sprung from the roots.

Note: dSrjfj.oi’eTu is taken by Buttmann, Grimm, and others, from &8t]/j.os, “away from home, “all abroad,” but it is more likely to be derived from a and 5ar)fxwi>, not knowing, unskilled.