by Bryony Wood
On what we now call Maundy Thursday, after their ‘last supper' together, Jesus and his disciples walked the short distance to Gethsemane just outside Jerusalem's city walls. It was a place they visited often, a garden or orchard full of the silvery green, gnarled olive trees that covered the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives. A place where the harvested olives were pressed to make the oil that was so much part of everyday life.
It was springtime, the trees were in blossom with fallen petals carpeting the ground; and chances are their walk would have been well lit by a full moon. Because it was Passover time with thousands of pilgrims visiting Jerusalem, accommodation would be expensive and scarce so it was possible that Jesus and his team camped under those trees that week.
In Gethsemane, Jesus knew what lay ahead for him; so he asked his friends to stay awake and watch as he went to pray. For three years he'd been sharing everything with them, teaching them, showing them how to live God's way. However, in his hour of need they fell asleep. As Jesus struggled alone, God sent an angel to sustain him, reminding us that even when we feel alone, perhaps abandoned by friends, God is able to offer comfort and strength.
In times of despair
All of us will have had a Gethsemane time in our lives, when we've been dreading events to come, when we feel something of what Jesus felt that night. When fear, uncertainty, worry or grief is so overwhelming that sleep is impossible. When a sick feeling makes your heart heavy and you want to sob, hide, give up or run away. That's when we have to rely on something that's deeper than our own understanding.
For Christians it's often in the testing times that we find out just how strong our faith is. Do we rely on our own resources and go it alone, or is this when we do what Jesus did, and hang on to our relationship with God?
In the Bible accounts of Gethsemane, we discover that Jesus, being totally human, felt the same fears you or I would. He was facing the ultimate cup of suffering and frankly, he didn't want to go through it – no man, however righteous, would.
But because Jesus the man was also fully divine, he knew the punishment he was to face wasn't just a physical pain – as terrible as that was. No, what caused his anguish was the anticipation of that horrific moment when he would feel forsaken, spiritually separated from his Father, to look into the very depths of hell.
This was his dilemma as he prayed, ‘take this cup from me…' followed by ‘yet not my will but yours be done' – this last declaration echoing what he'd taught his followers in the ‘Lord's Prayer' and now said with the deepest conviction. So great was his torment that Luke's Gospel records he sweated drops of blood – a recognised medical phenomenon in extreme human anxiety when sweat actually mingles with blood.
The closer we get to God the more likely we are to understand his will for our lives. Jesus knew what he was on earth to do.
Facing up to trials
Yet Jesus didn't run away that Thursday night, and he did win that last great battle over Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Because of that, whatever we go through, nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not trouble, not illness, not redundancy, not bullying or gossiping, not the worst of sins nor the grimmest of situations. That's the awesome legacy of Gethsemane and Easter. That Jesus understands our feelings and walks through them with us.
However, knowing that and putting it into practice can sometimes prove more challenging than we'd like to admit.
So how can we learn from the experience of Jesus in Gethsemane? First, we will face tough times. A difficult situation has to be gone through, there is no way to avoid it, but somehow God gives us the strength to deal with it. As Psalm 23 says, ‘even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death…' We walk through it, not detour around it. Yet ‘I will fear no evil for you are with me…'
It might mean we're hanging to the promises and love of God by our fingernails, but we're still hanging on. Jesus had the strength to face Gethsemane because he knew his heavenly father so well, and that relationship is available to us too.
Understanding God's purpose
When we spend time with God through prayer and reading the Bible, we start to understand his character and purposes. Not so long ago I immersed myself over a few days in John's Gospel and felt that by the end of it, I'd been reading about someone who'd become so real to me I almost expected to see him standing before me when I looked up from my book.
The closer we get to God the more likely we are to understand his will for our lives. Jesus knew what he was on earth to do. Do we? Because when we do, when we have a God-given dream, an idea, a goal, then it's a whole lot easier to weather the storms along the way.
Prioritise our time
In order to deepen our relationship with God, we have to make the time – perhaps reorder our priorities – and fix our eyes and minds on the one who enables us to make our faith real.
Then, like Jesus, we can become so grounded in faith, that trust develops in our heavenly father and the need to worry becomes redundant. It's all in God's hands and he's much more able than we are.
Gethsemane situations often come at unexpected times. But because Jesus went through his Gethsemane then we can be sure we won't go through ours alone. Our situation will never be as bad as Jesus', because his was a ‘once and for all' situation. Never again will anyone have to go to the depths of hell to save his friends. Jesus has already done that for you and for me.
Paid once and for all
Never again will God turn his back on one of his children, (that's you and me,) because of Jesus' decision to stay and face his Gethsemane. Only once was it legitimate for a child of God to say, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me'. That's when Jesus bore the punishment that was ours on the cross, a punishment paid once and for all time; for all people.
As long as mankind has free choice to follow or to ignore God, then there will be difficult times for us all, there will be illness, suffering and dying to face. But Jesus sweated drops of blood, showing he understands our anguish. But he offers more than empathy; because he became our Saviour he made it possible for us to have a living relationship with God himself.
The garden of suffering transformed into the place of obedience, love and faith. Perhaps then, not such a hopeless place for us after all?
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