The Loneliness of Jesus

It can be very hard to stay awake if you are really tired. If what your body is telling you is that you really need to be asleep then it is very difficult to over-ride that by using reason. I don’t know if you have ever felt sleepy while driving: it’s a very frightening experience, isn’t it? You open the windows to let the air rush over your face; you find the most discordant music you can and play it at jumbo jet levels; you pinch yourself and you try to talk to the other people in the car. But still, your eyelids droop, and still you catch yourself drifting out of consciousness, barely aware of what you are doing. Even though we know rationally the consequences of napping while in charge of a speeding automobile are deadly for ourselves and for others, the imperatives of the body command us; and we tend to respond.

Part of being human is this ongoing struggle with the weakness of our flesh. We cannot escape the needs of our physical natures, or pretend that somehow our rational capacity will always override our appetites. Our intentions may be noble or profound; but somehow the weakness of our flesh tends to result in compromises that disappoint us or worse. Not that the need for sleep is sinful any more than our desires for food or sex or water or reality TV are as fundamental human appetites.

In this series we have been trying to understand who we are as human beings, theologically speaking. But we have taken an unusual tack, admittedly; seeing Christ as the human being par excellence, we have honed in on the moment of crisis in his life, the point at which his humanness seemed to collide most directly with his mission: the scene in the garden of Gethsemane. First we spoke of the horror of Jesus in this story, his terrible confrontation with the meaning of his own mission. This man was true human being, tested to the limit, knowing himself the frailty of a bodily existence, with its tears and tremors. And then we saw how this true human responded to this extreme situation in prayer and obedience. Obedience to the Father is proper for humankind, we learn; and prayer to God is likewise the reaction of the real man to the extremity of a situation like this.

But we have still only considered the story in two of its three dimensions

. The perspective we have missed so far is the perspective of the disciples who were with Jesus in the garden and who witnessed his agony. Or who would have, if they could have stayed awake. For the disciples, it had been an alarming evening to say the least: Jesus had predicted to them that one of their number would betray him, to which they all answered “surely, not I?” (14:19-20). But Jesus had gone on to say:

“You will all fall away…for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.” (14:27)

And then he had predicted that Peter, even Peter! would deny him three times that very night. “But Peter insisted emphatically “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the others said the same.” (14:31) They had all the best intentions in the world as they entered the Garden of the olive-oil press, or Gethsemane.

And entering the garden, Jesus tells them to “sit here, while I pray”. Jesus seeks for a quieter spot and so takes along with him Peter, James and John, the trio who had selected as his chief witnesses: they had witnessed the raising of Jairus’ daughter; they had witnessed the transfiguration and heard the voice of God; and with Andrew they had heard Jesus talk of the signs of the end of the age, in chapter 13: it was they who had heard Jesus deliver his eschatological imperatives, (13:35ff) “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back - whether in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: “Watch!” This trio had also had their moments of pride: Peter’s rebuke of Jesus at Caesarea, and James and John’s request for the best seats in the eschatological house.

And now to them comes the instruction “Remain here and keep awake”, or “keep watch” (14:34), as Jesus moves a little further on and falls on his face in desperate prayer to his Father. Why are they to watch? What are they to watch for? Are they to be sentries to alert Jesus to the approach of his capturers? Perhaps, on this literal level that makes sense: but the command so strongly echoes the commands of chapter 13 to watch for the coming of the Son of Man that we are meant to hear this as a testing for the disciples of their capacity to this other “watching” too.

And it is a test that they fail badly, isn’t it? Jesus returning to his disciples, found them sleeping. “Simon” says Jesus “are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour?” Evidently not - it had been a busy day and so Peter and the others had nodded off, unable to stop themselves though they heard the direct command of Jesus to stay awake and watch. Not a lot of watching was going on at all.

And so Jesus delivers this lesson: “Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (14:38). The echoes of the Lord’s Prayer in this passage are fascinating: Jesus prays “Abba, Father”, and that his will be done; and now, they are to pray not come to the time of testing. Of course, the time of testing is just round the corner. But here is a lesson in discipleship: stay awake, and pray. Be alert to the possibility of NOT doing what God wills, but what you will instead; of choosing the weakness of your flesh over the intentions of your spirit, so to speak. Jesus knows that the only way to meet this terrible trial is to keep awake and call on God.

“Could you not keep watch for one hour?” No he could not; and neither could the others. Again and again he was to find them sleeping: “because their eyes were heavy”; and from embarrassment and shame, caught like rabbits in the headlights of their own disobedience, they did not know what to say to him. Entering the garden with all the devotion to service of their Lord, they fall asleep at the very moment they ought to be most alert and calling on God to deliver them.

And so it is no surprise, with disciples such as these, that we find Jesus deserted, betrayed and denied. Remarkably, Peter denies him three times, pretending dishonestly that he has no first-hand knowledge of Jesus, for fear perhaps of sharing the same fate as Jesus. So much for taking up your cross and following Jesus.

Of course Judas’ betrayal is as one of Jesus closest circle: his is not a denial of Jesus but an acknowledgement of him by a kiss.

And the disciples as group dishonoured themselves in the crucial moment by fleeing from the armed mob that had come to capture him. This included even the mysterious streaker of 14:51, who fled naked: perhaps, people have suggested, this is the author, too ashamed to add his own name to his disgrace. The disciples lose their nerve: they fall into an unruly mob. In contrast, Jesus faces his trial and death with calm composure, having expressed his fears to God in prayer.

This desertion means that in this moment Jesus is utterly alone. It is not self-evident that he should be alone at this point. He had called his disciples to be his apostles, the foundation of his community in the world. He had made his cause theirs. He himself would be there in their midst, as he says in Matthew. It was perfectly possible that the disciples might have been crucified along with him. But, though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. The flight of disciples and the denial of Peter show just how weak it is. Though he asked them to watch and pray with him, they could not do it; and just at the crucial moment they dozed. While the saviour wept, the Church slept! Though the Christian community could say, yes, we were there, in the Garden of tears, alongside the saviour, it could never say its behaviour at that moment was honourable or that it contributed to the work of Jesus in even a supporting role at this point. No: Jesus is utterly alone in his prayer in the garden and his going to the cross. (K. Barth)

This is an important rebuke to any sense of ecclesiastical triumphalism, any sense in which churches might think of themselves as contributing to the work of Christ. Of late we have seen the impressive grandeur of a particular church on display in the pageantry of the late Pope’s funeral and the selection of his successor. And according to one commentator favourable to Leo XIV, “the church is in good hands”. The church is certainly not in good hands if it is in any hands but those of Jesus, its Lord. How did Leo’s supposed predecessor, Peter, behave when it came to the crunch? But we too are frequently guilty of this pretension: that by our activity and relentless pragmatism we may somehow think we share Jesus’ burden, or repeat his work. The danger of success in church-building may be that we forget that the church was forged in a terrible failure of its own nerve: and that only the saviour went forward at the vital moment. In our current environment of planning and planting and building and leading and vision-statement creating we must take great care not to think we ever supplant or contribute to what Jesus did for us once for all. This is blasphemy of the highest order, but it is a real temptation for us in the culture we inhabit.

And so it was Jesus who watched and prayed in their place. They left him in frightful loneliness, asleep when it most mattered: and he did it for us, willing to obey God, though he full knew the horror of what was to come. As one writer puts it, “if there is anything which brings out clearly this simple “for us” as the content of the Gospel, then it is this aspect of the event in Gethsemane, in which the act of God in Jesus Christ had absolutely nothing to correspond to it in the existence of those who believe in him. They could not watch with him even one hour. He alone watched and prayed in their place.”

And so: Stay Awake! Keep Watch! Pray lest you fall into temptation! Following Jesus is about being on your guard and, because the flesh is weak, praying for God’s help. We ought not to be found dozing at the wheel in our lives of faith, but rather found alert and prepared. We need to recognise our body’s weaknesses and our dependence on God for mastery of them. Obedience to God, which is what liberates human beings to be themselves, is a hard road to follow, and full of pot-holes. And yet someone has gone there for us.

Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.