Mark 14:32-42

 

Interpreting Jesus’ Death (3) – Freely Choosing the Father’s Way

Mark 14:32-42 – Jesus Struggles in Gethsemane

32 They came to a plot of land called Gethsemane.
He said to the disciples, “Sit down here while I pray.” 
33 He took Peter, James and John with him.
He became utterly distraught and deeply distressed,
34 and told them, “I feel intense sadness,
and it is killing me.
Stay here, and keep awake.”

Mark specified the spot on the mount where Jesus went – Gethsemane. Jesus asked his disciples to sit and to wait while he went off alone to pray.

Jesus still felt the special friendship with Peter, James and John particularly comforting, despite all there obvious inadequacies. Perfection was irrelevant to friendship and its potential for warmth. He took them aside with him.

Mark said Jesus began to be utterly distraught and deeply distressed.  In the original language the words used convey the sense of psychological break down, of falling apart. It was Mark’s first real illustration of Jesus’ vulnerability, and denoted a particularly intense experience. To Jesus the severity of his sadness felt death-threatening. A wave of depression seemed to roll in beyond his control, as though the inevitability of what was happening suddenly confronted him with an inescapable clarity and force.

At the beginning of his narrative Mark had pictured Jesus driven into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan. This perhaps was the fiercest moment of that interaction. What were Jesus’ temptations? Mark did not tell us what went through the mind and the heart of Jesus. The most anyone can do is conjecture.


Jesus’ Inner Struggle

His imminent arrest and execution stared him in the face. This was the end. The people to whom he had been sent, even his closest disciples, had not understood his message. The leaders of the people, the most powerful potential agents for change, were precisely the ones seeking his death. And there was no more time. His disciples would desert him, and he would not be there to nurture them back to faith. He believed in the eventual resurrection of the just - but in the interim?

Though the earlier narrative had referred constantly to Jesus’ resurrection as happening “on the third day”, it was probable that Jesus’ precise naming of the time was a later interpretation by the early community of disciples in the light of what did in fact happen. If Jesus had known that he was to rise and be with the disciples again three days later, it would be hard to explain the intensity of his emotional struggle. He would unquestionably have been deeply disturbed by the predictable physical pain of his crucifixion and the humiliation of the whole process. Yet, distressing though they undoubtedly would be, the anticipated suffering would hardly have caused grief “even to death”.

Rather, Satan would more likely have been at work tempting Jesus to despair, to lose faith in God, to lose hope that people could truly opt for love, to retreat into resentment and bitterness.

Or perhaps even to follow the path of violent resistance?


35 He went forward a little
and collapsed on the ground,
praying that, if possible, his hour might be averted, 
36 and saying,
“Abba, Father, everything is possible for you.
Make this chalice pass from me.
Still, not what I want but you.” 

Jesus struggled. Mark described his prayer dramatically. Jesus collapsed on the ground. He asked his God to remove the intensity of the pain, his cup of suffering. Whatever about his pain, Jesus found himself empowered to seek what God wanted for him, where life lay. God did not directly want Jesus to suffer; God wanted Jesus, whatever might be the cost, to be faithful to his truest self, enabling him to move beneath his surging, overwhelming, feelings to draw on his deepest convictions and to choose accordingly.

37 He came and found them asleep.
He said to Peter,
“Simon, are you asleep?
Were you not strong enough to stay awake for one hour?
38 Keep awake, and pray,
so that you do not enter the time of trial.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

In his vulnerability Jesus sought the support of human friendship. Yet his energies were not absorbed totally in himself and his needs. He was in touch with the seriousness of the moment. This was the definitive encounter of Good and Evil, and it was happening in his own spirit. It was the time of trial in which not only he but his disciples, too, were irresistibly caught up. He urged them to pray that they be spared the struggle that was crushing him.

39 He went away again and prayed,
making the same prayer.

Jesus’ surrender to the life-giving will of the Father did not necessarily mean that his own feelings were quietened. Feelings have a logic of their own. The struggle continued. Jesus needed to cling resolutely to his former decision, drawing ever more purposefully on his deepest convictions, fashioning his heart according to the heart of his Father, assenting to the meaning and the price of faithfulness and love. Jesus moved beyond the passive acceptance of the inevitable to an active and totally free commitment to true life, integrity and love. This was the decisive struggle for the fate of the world. Jesus knew that his God was strengthening him in his resolve, yet the human support of friendship still mattered - though the sleeping disciples denied him even that.

40  He came back again and found them sleeping,
for their eyes were heavy.
They did not know what to say to him.
41 He came back a third time,
and said to them,
“Are you going to sleep on and take your rest for ever?
You have had enough.
The hour has arrived.
Look, the Son of Man is being handed over into the hands of sinners
42 Get up! Let us go!
Look, the one betraying me is close at hand.”

Having faced his deepest fears and stared into the abyss of his deepest weaknesses, Jesus stood erect and went in freedom to meet his end. But the inner struggle would continue as his passion unfolded, perhaps even to the point of psychological disintegration when all he would be aware of would be his weakness. He emptied himself.

Next >> Mark 14:43-52