A Night with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

Anyone who has ever been in Jerusalem and searched for the place where Jesus had his last meal with his disciples may have difficulty in finding it.

According to the account in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus had instructed two of his disciples to go to the old city of Jerusalem (which is currently the old walled city of Jerusalem that is at the eastern part of present day modern city of Jerusalem)

The old city is only about 1 kilometer across and is a maze of twisting narrow alleyways. The walls surrounding the old city were not built in Jesus’ time but rather, they were built on the orders of the Ottoman Turk, Suleiman the Magnificent during the first half of the sixteenth century.

It was in that small city that the two disciples were to meet a man carrying a jar of water, who would then lead them to a house, where they were to ask for the room where Jesus had previous arranged to use as a guest room for Jesus and his disciples. This room was specifically the upper room of the house. It was there that Jesus and his twelve disciples would participate in the Jewish tradition of the Passover.

The difficulty in finding the exact location of that upper room is that none of the scriptures actually states where it was. Some believe that it was just outside the existing walls of Jerusalem however it is generally believed that it was in one of the suburbs some distance from the old city of Jerusalem, such as the small village of Bethany. Incidentally, that is the small village where it is said that Jesus raised Lazarus.

Bethany is currently identified as the present day village of al-Eizariya that is located on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, approximately two and a half kilometers east of the eastern walls of Jerusalem and out of sight of the old city. If you were standing in Bethany, the old city would be to your right over the other side of the Mount of Olives and the city of Bethlehem would be slightly to your left and immediately south of the old city of Jerusalem by about four kilometres and it too would be out of sight.

To appreciate the surrounding area, one has to imagine standing on the eastern wall of the old city of Jerusalem with the Dome of the Rock immediately behind you and looking in an easterly direction. The land slopes quite sharply downwards towards a small narrow valley called the Kidron Valley. Ahead of you is the Mount of Olives, a small hill east of the old city, and slightly northeast of you where there are olive groves that have been there even before Jesus was born.

One of them has been referred to for many centuries as the Garden of Gethsemane however that is a misnomer. It really wasn’t a garden at all but rather one of many olive groves surrounding Jerusalem. It later became referred to as the Garden of Gethsemane simply because in those days, as it still is, gardens are places where people can relax; with or without flowers. That is what Jesus intended to do, relax while praying to God.

Jesus knew when he was breaking bread with his disciples in Bethany during the evening before his death, that he didn’t have long to live. It was for this reason that he wanted to pray to God alone. To do so, he had to find a place where he could be alone and undisturbed. When I say alone and undisturbed, I mean that he didn’t even want to be disturbed by his own disciples.

He had passed the olive groves many times in his travels to the old city of Jerusalem when he approached the city from the east so he was familiar with one particular olive grove and decided that it would be an appropriate place to pray. In fact, it was one of his favorite spots to visit with his disciples when he often stayed at Bethany. It was quiet when the owner of the grove and his men had gone home after a hard day’s work. While in the grove, he had the old city with the Jewish Temple in full view. The guards that protected the grove, the olive press and containers of olive oil, permitted Jesus and his disciples to enter the grove for the purpose of either talking amongst themselves or meditating. They had no reason to fear that Jesus or his disciples would steal anything from the grove.

The people in that era didn’t have flashlights nor were there streetlights so Jesus and his disciples had to carry lit torches in order to find their way over the small hill and down the other side of the hill to the olive grove at the bottom of the narrow valley at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

When they reached the top of the hill, they could see the twinkling lights of the city west of them. Keep in mind that at that time, there were no walls surrounding the city so most, if not all of the buildings in the city ahead of them were in darkness except for the hundreds or perhaps thousands of small pinpoints of light seen against the dark horizon.

When they reached the olive grove, they were stopped by several guards hired by the owner of the grove. It goes without saying that these guards must have been curious when they seen the approaching torches heading their way and then became concerned when the men carrying these torches approached the entrance to the grove. There were obviously more of the strangers at hand than there were guards so one can appreciate the concern of the guards. However as they saw Jesus, their fears were lessened but when Jesus asked the guards if they could enter the grove, the guards weren’t too happy with that prospect. After all, why would Jesus and his followers want to enter the grove late at night?

Jesus told them that he wanted to pray. The guards accepted his explanation and told him that they would permit him and three of his disciples to enter the grove while the others remained outside the grove. As Jesus passed his remaining disciples, he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.”

Peter was a successful fisherman before Jesus talked him into being one of his disciples. He was quite big and very forceful in his manner in which he spoke to others. It follows that Jesus in effect made Simon Peter his second in command. It was he who carried a sword with him at Jesus request when they left Bethany and entered the olive grove. I want to point out that when he first met this disciple, he called him Simon but later he called him Peter. Why he did this, I don't know.

James, like his brother John, came from a fishing village along the shores of the Sea of Galilee and was, along with their brother Andrew, successful fishermen before they accepted Jesus’ invitation to join him on his crusade. The gospel texts offer no information on how old these three men might have been when they became Jesus’ disciples.

When Jesus and his disciples were entering the grove, he said to one of his disciples as he passed him, “I am in low spirits.” Mark later stated in his testament in the New Testament that Jesus appeared to be restless and depressed. Considering what Jesus knew about what was going to happen to him, one can appreciate why he was depressed. I suppose the same thing can be said about condemned prisoners on the night before their executions. Mark must have got that information from Peter because Mark never met Jesus. He was Peter's disciple, not a disciple of Jesus.

As his death came ever so closer to him, Jesus dwelled on the prospects of being tortured and then hanging on a cross in the hot sun with nails pounded through his wrists and feet. He even questioned his own ability to actually go through with it. After all, he had the option of fleeing the province of Judea and seeking sanctity elsewhere but chose not to take that opportunity. It was while undergoing this dread that he entered the quiet confines of the olive grove with three of his faithful disciples.

Imagine if you will the stillness of the night at that moment. Birds don’t sing late at night but the voices emanating from the old city nearby would mingle with the wind gently blowing among the leaves of the olive trees so that the voices in the distance and wind became indistinguishable as if a mere whisper.

Jesus looked for a spot in the grove in which he could pray alone. He asked the three disciples that had accompanied him into the grove to remain nearby while he prayed by himself. He said to them as he moved away from them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

He wanted them to keep watch with him so that they could intervene if anyone approached Jesus while he was alone praying to God.

As Jesus prostrated himself on the cold ground and prayed to God, he became increasingly dismayed as the hours passed. He agonized over the knowledge that the people in his own city, Nazareth has turned against him. In fact many of its citizens had actually carried him to the top of a high cliff on the outskirts of that small city for the purpose of throwing him off the cliff to his death on the rocks below. Many of the people in Capernaum at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee had also rejected him and he had also been hounded out of most of the surrounding areas of Galilee. And now, he knew that the priests and leaders of the people in Jerusalem were waiting for the right moment to find justification in slaying him.

He said in his prayer to God, “My Father. If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken from me. Yet, I want your will to be done, not mine.”

This can be found in the Book of Mathew and from that, we have to presume that one of the three disciples that were near to Jesus at that moment overheard Jesus praying and related what he overheard to Mathew who was also one of Jesus’ disciples.

When he spoke of the cup of sorrow, we are forced to ask ourselves, what did he mean? In the ancient times, the cup came to symbolize one’s lot in life so if you said you had a cup of joy; your life was one of joy. So when Jesus was asking God to take his cup of suffering from him, he was in essence asking God to make him feel better than he actually was feeling at that moment. He no longer wanted to feel the anguish of knowing that many people about the land hated him and some even wanted him dead. Further, he didn’t want to feel the dread of knowing that he was soon to face a horrible death.

But Jesus also knew that what ever cup he was given in life, it represented his fate in life. However he also believed that a person can decide his own fate. For example, a person raised in a poor country like Haiti can emerge from that fate and become anyone he chooses to be by working hard at whatever he does in life.

Let me explain what he meant when he said to God, “I want your will to be done, not mine.”

What he was saying in his prayer was that he wanted God to make the decision for Jesus and not let Jesus choose his own fate. That’s ironic when you think of it. Up to then, Jesus was the master of his own soul and his life. Everything he did in life was as a direct result of his own volition.

For example, he could have picked an earlier day in the week to be arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death on the cross but instead, he chose Friday to be the day of his demise. Why, you may ask.

Well, Jesus was no fool. He was very familiar with the laws of his people and in some instances; the Romans who had conquered them didn’t interfere with those laws. Jesus knew that the Sabbath began on late Friday afternoons and ended the next day. It was the custom in those days that anyone nailed or otherwise placed on a cross had to be removed before four on Friday afternoons. They would be killed first and then taken down from the cross. It was conceivable that they would only suffer on the cross for perhaps a half day or as little as a few hours before they were killed. That was better than suffering on the cross several days before the condemned eventually died.

If Jesus wanted God to make the decision for him, it might have been that he didn’t trust himself to go ahead with his pending fate that was fast approaching him. After all, he could have easily escaped his fate if he wanted to do so. If Jesus’ cup was to be drained, he hoped that God would drain it for him by saving him.

Here is an irony for you to consider. At this time in history, Jesus had not been particularly successful in his crusade to bring God closer to the people than they were at that time. As I said earlier, many hated him and would do him harm if they could. Jesus might have wondered if it might serve God’s purpose to let Jesus live longer so that he may fulfill his goal.

But as history has shown us, often great men like Jesus and his disciples who were martyred after him accomplished much more after they died. Their teachings have continued to survive for almost 2000 years and have had an effect on a quarter of the world’s current population and the lives of billions of people in the ages long gone.

One is forced to ask this rhetorical question, ‘What if Jesus had died of old age and during his life time, he had been unsuccessful in his vocation as he had been, up to the point of his death?’ I will leave that question to others more qualified than me to answer it.

Three times Jesus prayed and three times Jesus went to his three disciples waiting nearby. To his dismay, he found them asleep. So much for keeping a watch over Jesus’ wellbeing.

He spoke to Simon (whom he called Peter) and asked, “Are you asleep, Simon?’ There was no reply. Jesus asked, “Could you not manage to stay awake a single hour?

It may have been difficult for Peter to stay awake since he and the others had been up since early the previous day and after having drunk their fill in food and wine an hour before they arrived at the grove, as Jesus later said to him, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is frail.”

Jesus might as well have been talking to himself as it appeared that Peter had drifted off to sleep again.

Jesus went back to where he was lying on the ground and began praying again. According to Mark, sweat poured from Jesus’ brow like great drops of blood. How he arrived at that conclusion is beyond my understanding. The three disciples next to Jesus, including Peter were still asleep and we know that Jesus never spoke with Mark. That particular gospel writer may have simply made a deduction by assuming that Jesus sweated that cool evening and his sweat was like great drops of blood. This is what we writers refer to as artistic licence.

Soon after he chastised his sleeping followers a third time, he woke them up after seeing the light of many torches heading down the hill from the direction of the Zion Gate at the southeast part of the old city.

He cried out, “That’s enough! Look! The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Come. Let us be going. See my betrayer approaches.”

These sentences need to be explained.

When Jesus said he was the Son of Man, he was telling his followers that he was a normal human being. He never called himself the Son of God. It was a soldier at the foot of his cross that said, “Truly this man is a Son of God.”

He wasn’t saying that Jesus was the Son of God. All Jews believed that when any man helps widows and orphans, he was a righteous man and they referred to him as being a son of God like many other righteous men in that era.

Jesus said he was betrayed into the hands of sinners. The sinners weren’t necessarily the priest’s soldiers that were there to bind him and escort him back to the old city. Jesus was talking about the Pharisees themselves who he felt had betrayed God’s trust in them.

His statement, "Let us be going." is strange indeed. I say this because it implies that he wanted to escape from the armed guards that were following Judas into the grove. According to the writings in the New Testament, it was his intention to be arrested so why would he want to escape?

The betrayer he was referring to was Judas.

The question that has remained unanswered for many centuries, probably as far as back as the time of Jesus’ death is; “Did Judas really betray Jesus? (I will get to that question in another blog)

Now I will return you to the olive grove.

Judas arrived at the olive grove followed by armed guards acting under the orders of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was a council of 71 Jewish men who had executive, legislative and judicial power over the citizens of Jerusalem and the areas around that city. There were also some servants of the chief of the priests accompanying the guards.

According to the instructions given to Judas by the high priest, he was to embrace Jesus as soon as he reached him. That way, the guards would know whom to arrest. As Judas embraced Jesus, he said, “Greetings Rabbi.”

The word, ‘Rabbi’ was a title given to anyone who was recognized as an expert in the Law of Moses. In Jesus’ time, a Rabbi was not an ordained person as they are in our present era.

The guards immediately seized Jesus and bound his hands. At the same time, Peter brought out his sword and struck off an ear of one of the high priest’s servants. That action on the part of Peter upset Jesus who then called out to Peter; “Put away your sword. Those who use the sword will die by the sword.”

The three disciples who had been with Jesus in the grove instantly fled the immediate area along with the eight other disciples who were waiting outside the grove.

Jesus was led out of the grove by the guards and Judas and as they walked along the path leading up the hill towards the Zion Gate, he knew or at least suspected that within a day, he would be dead. What he couldn’t have fathomed at that moment was that his teachings would be the foundations of Christianity that would have an effect on the lives of billions of people in the many centuries to follow.