In the Garden

I am still in Luke and it is after the last supper when Jesus leaves the upper room and resorts to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. His disciples follow – all but Judas, who shows up later.

In the supper, Jesus was explaining to them that things were coming to an end. The disciples were a state of uncertainty. Perhaps they felt they were being hung out in the wind, left on their own. While they did eat a meal under these circumstances, in all likelihood, the meal was more ceremonial, more of a function, than filling.

In the Luke account, found in chapter twenty-two, Jesus indicates that one of the twelve will betray him. Then, one of them leaves. How did the rest of them not connect the dots? Why did they not recognize Judas as the betrayer and stop him? Perhaps, that was one of the points that weighed heavily on their spirits as they followed Jesus into the garden.

Gethsemane was a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives. It was a place with old large olive trees in it. Wikipedia gives this account of its location:

William M. Thomson, author of The Land and the Book, first published in 1880, wrote: "When I first came to Jerusalem, and for many years afterward, this plot of ground was open to all whenever they chose to come and meditate beneath its very old olive trees. The Latins, however, have within the last few years succeeded in gaining sole possession, and have built a high wall around it. The Greeks have invented another site a little to the north of it. My own impression is that both are wrong. The position is too near the city, and so close to what must have always been the great thoroughfare eastward, that our Lord would scarcely have selected it for retirement on that dangerous and dismal night. I am inclined to place the garden in the secluded vale several hundred yards to the north-east of the present Gethsemane."

Wikipedia tells us that the Mount of Olives is a mountain ridge east of and adjacent to Jerusalem's Old City. While modern scholarship fails to pinpoint the location of the original garden, another place to which Jesus was known to resort was Bethany. His friend Lazarus lived there. Bethany is identified with the present-day West Bank city of al-Eizariya. Bethany was approximately 1.5 miles east of Jerusalem on the south-eastern slope of the Mount of Olives. The traditional site of the Ascension of Jesus is the Mount of Olives, on which the village of Bethany sits.

In the Garden, it is stated in Luke 22:41, that Jesus was a distance of a “stone's cast” from his disciples as he prayed. He could well have been within visual range of the disciples. He might have been within earshot of his disciples. This means that the disciples may have been able to see and hear Jesus while he prayed in the garden.

The Luke account of Jesus' prayer does not seem overly long. That is to say that Jesus' audible prayer may not have lulled them to sleep. The account does state that it was shortly after the prayer ended that Jesus was betrayed. The timeline goes like this: Jesus prayed (however long that was) and returned a short distance to his sleeping disciples. He wakes them and speaks. In Luke 22:47, at the very moment that he was speaking to his disciples, the multitude showed up to arrest him.

In a broader sense, the timeline boils down to: last meal, trip to garden, prayer, betrayal. When the disciples awoke, the crowd was upon them. It is said that Jesus prayed earnestly because he was in an agony. I have to ask, how long is earnestly? The account of Jesus' disciples falling asleep is not attributed to them being up all night and into the wee hours of the morning. A different reason is cited.

Could Jesus have prayed for an hour? I can pray for about a half hour before I run out of things to say. After that, I am just repeating myself. When did they finish the last supper? When did they arrive in the garden, perhaps a mile from the supper location? Was it around seven, eight or nine in the evening? Did Jesus pray until around ten or eleven?

One has no hard evidence upon which to work out the mechanics of the event. The best we can do is to sort of feel our way along the walls of the account as if groping in the dark. We all get a feel for the event when we consider it at length. If Jesus came back from his prayer and was almost immediately arrested, he would not have had time to tell his disciples that an angel showed up to comfort him, or that his sweat was like drops of blood.

The feel is that not all there were asleep. At least part of his prayer was heard and recorded. Someone saw an angel comfort the Lord. Had it been one of the disciples, they would have shaken awake the others to corroborate what they saw. Which of them witnessed the sweating? The disciples had been dealing with finality for hours, they were on overload, and while they 'slept for sorrow', I think that seeing an angel would have kept them awake.

During the death of her father, my wife slept. Sleep helps many to deal with matters that are beyond our control. All of our concern and focus on events can reach a point where there is nothing else the mind can do. Some slept during the prayer in the garden – they had reached that point. Not all slept. Those who sleep miss the angels.

If all the disciples, minus Judas, was asleep. Who saw the angel? The prayer of Jesus took place in a place frequented by him. It was near to Jerusalem and it was near to Bethany. An account from another gospel places an unknown male in a linen cloth at the scene. Who was he? Did the account of blood-like sweat and a comforting angel come from him?

I have written in another study about the unknown man. I conjectured that it could have been a high-ranking Roman or the rich young ruler. Now, in consideration of the garden's proximity to Bethany, I would venture to include Jesus' friend Lazarus.