John 18:1-12

Jesus’ Hour – Lifted Up to Death

The Passion and Death of Jesus

When approaching the drama of Jesus’ Passion, it is important that readers keep clearly in mind the intention of the narrator. That intention was to help readers to clarify and to deepen their faith in the mysterious reality of Jesus, so that they in turn might have life through his Name. The Beloved Disciple had privileged first-hand experience of the events of Jesus’ Passion. He drew on that experience, but reinterpreted it in the light of his developed insight into the mystery of Jesus. His interests were theological and spiritual, rather than simply historical – a meditation on the meaning of Jesus, rather than a documentary recounting of details. Consequently, he omitted certain incidents found in the other evangelists that did not suit his purpose, and added and reshaped others that served his aims.

Arrested in a Garden

John 18:1-3    Jesus is Betrayed

1 When Jesus finished talking,
he went out across the Kedron creek with his disciples.  
There was a garden there, which he and the disciples entered.

This Gospel did not identify the location as Gethsemane, as do the other Gospels, but called it a garden. The word immediately triggers connections with the creation stories of Genesis. It was in the garden setting of Eden that the first man and woman were created It was there that they disobeyed God, and so initiated humanity’s sad history of sin, alienation and destruction, from which Jesus’ death would bring salvation.

A sense of Jesus as the new Adam – exemplar of the authentically human person – would run as a subtle sub-text throughout the Passion narrative. It would seem that redeemed humanity, essential humanity, needs to go through the garden where the passion begins in order to achieve what was lost in the garden of Eden. Humanity needs to be stripped totally of the self-constructed ego; it needs to stop striving to make of itself a god – to be like God.

2  Judas his betrayer also knew the place
since Jesus often gathered there with his disciples.

During the major Jewish festivals, with accommodation in Jerusalem stretched beyond its limits, pilgrims camped out in their thousands in the surrounding hills and countryside. With Passover always celebrated on the occasion of the full moon, visibility would have been clear enough to facilitate movement; and with all the pilgrims celebrating, there may have been much noise and activity throughout the night.

The Gospel omitted all reference to any inner struggle on the part of Jesus, or even of any repeated and prolonged prayer to the Father. There was no “agony” – in contrast to the synoptic accounts. A struggling Jesus would not have fitted the image that the Disciple wished to convey.

3 So Judas took an detachment of Roman soldiers
along with temple-police from the high-priests and Pharisees
with lanterns and torches and weapons
and came there. 

The Jewish leadership was quite nervous about Jesus and his potential influence, particularly with fervent Galilean pilgrims encamped and celebrating around the mountain. It was important that, as far as possible, they direct popular anger from themselves to the Roman military presence. In which case, they preferred that Jesus be executed by the Roman authority, rather than by them. Apparently, they had made preliminary contact with the Romans and alerted them to the danger that they claimed Jesus presented.  As a result, it was a Roman military detachment, under its own officer [verse 12], that, with the assistance of the temple police, assumed responsibility for the arrest of Jesus.

John 18:4-12     Jesus “In Control”

4 Jesus was well aware of what was going to happen to him.  
He went up to them and said, “For whom are you looking?” 
5 TThey answered, “Jesus the Nazarene.”  
Jesus said, “I am he.”  
Judas the traitor was standing there with them.

In the light of Jesus’ resurrection and later reflection under the inspiration of the Spirit of Jesus, the Beloved Disciple wished to make quite clear that Jesus’ pending death was a totally free and deliberate act, which, in its turn, reflected the mind and heart of the Father. He most certainly would not portray Jesus as a helpless victim of the world’s sin and violence. The narrative had a theological, rather than historical, intent.

6 Now when Jesus said, ‘I am he’, they stepped back and fell prostrate.

The response of Jesus – I am he – (as already noted in the narrative) served to identify his connection with divinity; which was further underlined by the reaction of the soldiers and police. Despite appearances, Jesus was fully in control.

Though the narrative noted the presence of Judas, it omitted reference to any initiative on his part or to his kissing Jesus. 

7 So Jesus asked them a second time, “For whom are you looking?”
and they said, “Jesus the Nazarene.”
8 Jesus replied, “I told you that I am he.

The Disciple was insistent that his readers recognise the freedom and dignity of Jesus.

So if it is I whom you want, let these others go free.”
9 In this way, the comment that he had made when he said
“I lost none of those whom you gave to me”
was fulfilled. 

Apparently, the Roman military had no problem allowing Jesus’ disciples to leave. Their commission had been to arrest Jesus.

The fact of Jesus’ arrest was not accidental. Jesus had long foreseen its inevitability, and deliberately moved towards it. (He had made the statement about the disciples’ immunity, in fact, on three occasions in the narrative: in the discourses on the Bread of Life [6:39] and on the Good Shepherd [10:28], and in his prayer to the Father at the Last Supper [17:12].

10 With that, Simon Peter, who had a long knife, drew it out
and struck a servant of the high-priest and cut off his right ear.
The name of the servant was Malchus. 
11 So Jesus said to Peter, “Put that knife into its sheath.  
Am I not to drink the cup my Father has given me?”

The way of Jesus was not the way of violence, though Peter was slow to learn. The Synoptics had all recounted the same incident, though none of them had noted that the culprit was Peter, that it was the slave’s right ear that was severed, or that the slave’s name was Malchus. Being a slave, and neither a soldier nor one of the temple police, Malchus was possibly unarmed. That his right ear was severed may have indicated an attack from behind – defiant, on Peter’s part, but, perhaps, not courageous. The synoptic authors’ silence in not identifying Peter may have reflected their respect for Peter in the light of his later leadership role in the community – a sensitivity that was not shared to the same extent by the Beloved Disciple.

For Jesus, the greater courage did not consist in being carried along on the adrenalin surge and confronting violence with even greater violence. It consisted, rather, in the freedom to stand vulnerable but undeterred in the face of danger.

Jesus’ readiness to drink the cup that the Father has given me reflected his earlier comment about his impatient longing to accomplish fully the mission of total love on which he had been sent by the 
Father [12:27-28].

12 The Roman detachment and its commander, along with the Jewish temple-police, arrested Jesus.

The narrative deliberately did not mention the disciples’ abject desertion of Jesus.

Next >> John 18:13-28