That’s not quite right. He isn’t
“praying” exactly, in the sense that most people picture the practice.
His hands are not folded neatly before
him, or pressed palms-together with his fingers pointed toward heaven, or even
laid on his knees palms up as if ready to receive something.
He isn’t in the midst of a peaceful
meditation, some Zen trance that calms the spirit.
He isn’t performing some memorized
ritual, like the salah or even the very
Lord’s Prayer that he himself orated
in front of a crowd of intrigued onlookers.
He isn’t even articulating words, so
much. He doesn’t mention his dear friends or his family members. He makes no
reference to political powers pulling the strings in the world at large. He
does not remember those in need: the hungry or the lonely or the sick or the
victims of disaster. He makes no plea on behalf of lost souls. He doesn’t even
give thanks for everyday blessings, the assurance of salvation, or everlasting
divine love.
To use a bold word, his prayer is
selfish. This is not to say that he is being vain. In this moment, he is
concerned solely with his own very immediate needs and desires.
And the prayer comes out in grunts,
wails, clinched fists tearing at his temples, body bent over in the fetal
position, sweat, tears, bitter tears on blotchy red cheeks, stress so severe
that his blood vessels give way under pressure and burst, blood running down
his face, the appearance of injury before anyone has laid a hand on him or used
a weapon against him.
He gasps, he struggles for air, he looks
into the night sky and sees naught but stars.
Meanwhile, his friends sleep nearby in
the garden. Can they really be blamed? They have been up for hours, listening
to their rabbi giving confusing, contradictory, vague instructions. They have
been accused of being ill-prepared and uncommitted, but about what, they aren’t
really sure.
One of them is destined to be a traitor
– just who, exactly? Did each of them say to himself, “Could it be me?”
And then they go into a garden and wait
for some unknown event – but something that can’t be good.
At some point,
weariness and frustration crumble under physical exhaustion, and sleep takes
over.
And so he is alone. He is profoundly
alone.
One biographer, named Luke, says an
angel comes to give him strength, but Luke’s contemporary writers make no
mention of the event. Even then, what bittersweet encouragement can the divine messenger provide? The man has
begun choking out words, pleading, “Is there another way?”
Though angel comes to provide strength, he does not provide comfort. He effectively appears to deliver
the message, “No.”
And so Jesus is in the garden, alone,
and he cries out, “WHERE ARE YOU???”
I don’t know if my imagined depiction of
Jesus in Gethsemane has much root in reality, but this image came into my mind
as I sat in my church last evening participating in a Maundy Thursday service.
I grew up in a Christian home, attending
church twice every Sunday and most Wednesdays. Even so, the Maundy Thursday
celebration – a commemoration of Jesus and his disciples sharing a meal the
night before his death – was foreign to me until at least my college years, maybe
even later. Now I am part of church that celebrates many of the liturgical
holidays (holy-days) and so my family
and I went to a Maundy Thursday service.
The conclusion of this event was a new
ritual for me, though.
The service began with the front altar
and stage area adorned with white and gold decorations, but it concluded with
all of the elements of décor – everything that seemed to designate the building
as a sacred space – being stripped away.
As someone read the words of the 22nd Psalm - “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – all of the vanity of the
sanctuary was removed in a flurry of activity: tablecloths, candles, the
oversized Bible on a stand, the elements of Communion. The pastor and acolytes
even stripped off their white robes, revealing plain black secular clothing
beneath.
The service concluded in a darkened room
with nothing but a bare wooden table on stage – well, a table with a single
embellishment in the form of a wooden cross brought out and laid on its side
where the communion elements usually reside.
And so I pictured Jesus, after the
Passover meal, after praying for himself and his followers, after months of
teaching and praying and healing, in an hour of weakness and loneliness.
I have
always thought of Good Friday as the most somber day in Christian practice, and
certainly I still think it is. Last night, though, I realized the weight of
Maundy Thursday, the night of betrayal, the night of a lonely prayer in a
garden, the night of an unjust seizure and arrest.
Christians believe lots of weird things.
I don’t mean that there are Christians
out there with weird and dangerous fringe ideas (although, yes, that is true).
I mean that when you really start
looking at what the Bible seems to teach and what Church doctrine and tradition
has preserved throughout the centuries, it gets pretty strange. It gets scandalous
even.
I mean, when you look at the Bible, it
usually reads like the main villains are good religious people.
Jesus gets into trouble with a group
called the Pharisees more than anybody else, and they were like the equivalent
of seminary-educated pastors in their day. The same is true for his followers
after Jesus ascends into heaven.
And this isn’t just a New Testament
thing – the Old Testament prophets are full of judgment and warning for people
doing “good religious things” that have no bearing on how they treat others or
live their daily lives.
So of course it’s going to be a
scandalous book at times.
One of the stranger ideas in the Bible
is articulated in the book of Hebrews: “For we do not have
a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in
every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
That's a bombshell statement.
In Christian theology, Jesus is not merely the son of God; he is “Emmanuel,” “God with us.” He is literally God in human form.
So if we take the author of Hebrews at face value, that
means God knows, from personal experience, what it means to feel mad, exhausted,
confused, goofy, crabby, indignant, horny, moody, skeptical, smitten,
depressed, furious, hangry, betrayed, offended, emasculated, joyous, ashamed,
and so on and so on ad infinitum.
This also means that God knows what it feels like to be
abandoned by God.
But that doesn’t make sense, does it? And if it is true,
what good does that do us?
Speaking from personal experience, I have been through a
rough several years. Without getting too far into the details, during that time
I have lived in eight cities in four different states and worked five jobs (two
of which I had hoped to be long-term career track jobs, plus the one I’m
working now which I hope will stick). My son was born about two years ago, and
while he is a source of great joy, having a kid is a landscape-shifting life
event and source of significant transitional stress for anybody.
I have been emotionally and spiritually wounded in multiple separate incidents, and the
most severe wounds have come at the hand of well-intentioned religious people –
well-intentioned people of my own faith, at that. In return, I have been bitter
and unkind in my thoughts toward those who have injured me.
I have been bitter and unkind in my thoughts toward God, as
well.
In some lonely moments,
I sort of feel like he deserves that response from me.
I haven’t teetered over the edge to rejecting my faith, but
I’ve certainly entertained the idea, and on more than one occasion.
What good to me, then, is a crying, desperate, aggrieved
Jesus choking out the words “Not my will but yours” in the Garden of
Gethsemane? What good is a beaten, bloody, dying Jesus on a cross gasping the
words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” on a hill called The Skull
outside of Jerusalem?
Somehow, that crude, violent image feels like salve on a
burn.
That image of abandonment mixed with sincere fear and some
odd mingling of doubtful thoughts and faithful action gives me encouragement.
The example of Jesus shows me that even in my most distant
moments, at my most heretical and defiant, when all is noise and wind and fury
I still have an advocate who understands how I feel.
I scream, “I don’t think you’re doing anything, God!” but he
is not a silent mountain looming in the distance.
He is not an angry Roman deity holding a lightning bolt in
his hand.
He simply comes silently and sits beside me and listens to
me rant.
More than that, he sits with me in the awkward silence when
I’m not even sure why I’m mad anymore.
Grace abounds even in the most quiet and lonely moments.
And this gives me hope when I feel hopeless, because if I
can lament in the Garden of Gethsemane, maybe I too can share in the hope of
the resurrection come Easter Sunday.
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