Reliving The Passion #13

Mark 14:32–42

And they went to a place which was called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”

And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here, and watch.”

And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee. Remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.”

And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch, and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to answer him.

And he came a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come; the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise. Let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.”

Night. There is a cold light falling from the indifferent stars—a light like the finest of snows, pale on the ground, pale on the hair and shoulders of a sad band of men moving outside the city.

They pause by a grove of black trees. Four men separate themselves and enter the trees.

Listen! One man is groaning. His breath comes in quick pants, compulsively. Listen: “Oh. Oh. Oh, God. Oh.” He goes alone, now, deeper among the trees—while the other three arrange themselves on the ground, their backs against the treetrunks. These three begin to nod. Soon, they sleep.

The woods are pale and silent.

That one man, totally alone, is swaying back and forth as if dizzy, his face in his hands. Suddenly he crumples to the ground. “Abba! Abba!” The sound is strangled in his throat. His fingers dig dirt like the roots of the trees. His chin and his beard grind against the earth.

“Abba, Father, I don’t want to do this. Please! You can do anything; then take this cup away from me—”

The man’s voice is hoarse, a kind of guttural barking. But then he sucks air and howls at the top of his lungs, “Hell is in that cup! Death and damnation are in that cup! My Father, my Father, it will tear me away from you! No, I don’t want to do this! No! Sin is in that cup—and if I drink it you won’t look at me, you will loathe me, I will hate myself! I don’t want to drink it! Abba, Abba, take the cup away from me—”

The man twists his body underneath the trees, then holds himself in a tense, unnatural posture, his face upward, his eyes shut, his breathing sharp through his teeth. He grimaces, as if smiling, then whispers almost inaudibly, whispers as soft as the leaves: “Nevertheless…not what I want…what you want…do.”

When, in the pale starlight, this man returns to the three he left behind, he finds them slumped and snoring. He is alone. Even beside his friends he is completely alone.

And so he prays a second time as though he had not prayed the first. He prays till the sweat runs down his temples. His voice is a wolfs howl in the woods, “Abba!”—and still his friends are slumbering.

His third prayer is so quiet and so private an anguish that his body does not move. He waits in darkness, in a perfect silence for an answer.

And when he returns to his friends the final time, waking them with the news of his own betrayal—“Rise, let us be going”—this, in that hour, is what the solitary man is doing: drinking. Drinking.

My death, O Lord!

My sin, my hell, and my damnation were in that cup.

My gratitude is unspeakable.

My wonder is silence.

My life is yours.

Amen.