Groaning in Gethsemane

Jesus in the garden was much on my mind on Sunday.

First because I heard a terrific sermon at church - twice in fact - because I stayed for the second sitting to play in the band. What struck me most forcefully was this verse:
And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Luke 22:44

I've often wondered about why the Gospels speak so neutrally about the death of the Lord Jesus. The details of his scourging, mockery and death on the cross are told with almost the minimum of detail. My temptation as a writer would have been to paint in detail the cruelty, pain and injustice of this execution of an innocent man. The gospel writers do not. They simply say: "and they crucified him." It's one of the things I had against the film The Passion of the Christ. It shows details that, while true, are not part of the the way the Gospels are written.

The only real reference to Jesus' suffering in Luke is in this verse where Luke tells us that the Lord was " in agony". It was the choice to face the cross that Luke focusses our eyes on.

That agony came into stark focus in the afternoon. I went to see The Mark Drama performed by members of a local church.

It was fantastic. The whole of Mark's Gospel acted out in the space of 90 minutes. It was a funny, shocking, perplexing, thought provoking and deeply, deeply moving by turns. One of the most poignant moments was the scene in Gethsemane, where the director had chosen to give a long stretch of time to seeing the Lord experience this agony of choice.

It was uncomfortable to watch. I stared at the ceiling.

But the sense of time was surely right. For the disciples to fall asleep - three times in Mark's account - means that the prayers in Gethsemane must have taken a long time. An hour or more would not be stretching it.

You can read the words of Jesus prayer quickly: "Take this cup from me - but not my will but yours be done". But the protracted pain of that choice stretched out for minutes and hours as the Lord Jesus faced the spiritual torment of the cross, and the genuine choice he had. To experience hell for the people he loved. He sought from his father the strength he needed to stay the course. And he did it for me.

As my discomfort grew and grew during the protracted depiction of Gethsemane, so did my appreciation of the agony he endured for me, and his final decision to walk that path to Calvary.

What a saviour!