Was Jesus alone in the Garden?Jesus may as well have been alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, for all the practical use his disciples were to him. Whatever their reasons for falling asleep, Jesus didn’t excuse them. He had spelled out, on more than one occasion, what his end would be—“He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day” (Mt.16:21; 20:18).
To demonstrate how unwilling they were to believe that their Lord and Saviour should suffer such an ignominious end, an incredulous Peter scolds Jesus with: “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You” (Mt.16:22). Jesus was not going to give this a gentle pass to spare Peter’s feelings. His answer resounds to this very day as the severest of all counter-rebukes: “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” The journey between Caesarea Philippi and Gethsemane was full of warnings of the betrayal, denial, torture and death to come—all fell on deaf ears. Who would deprive the disciples the euphoria of triumphal entry into Jerusalem? I can hear at least one saying out loud, “Your Kingdom has come!” The disciples began the passion week in public celebration but ended it in fear and hiding.
Thursday night’s Passover meal, a scene that our 2020 hindsight sees in technicolour, was full of last-minute instructions and warnings that were lost on all of them at the time. The garden scene followed. Everyone wants to sleep after a celebration. The disciples did. Betrayal was filling the air while sleep was in their eyes. Jesus knew what was coming and he was not about to flinch from ‘the joy set before him’—joy that must first be secured by ‘enduring the cross and despising the shame’ (Heb.12:2). His 3-fold prayers were identical, but without a hint of vain repetition. On the contrary, they expressed the depth of his divinity and his humanity.
Thousands upon thousands of humans died by crucifixion. However, Jesus was crucified, not just as a man, but for who he really was: God in the flesh. In the garden, while his nearest and dearest slept, Christ lived out the agony of accepting that there was no other way to save you and me, than to be the blood sacrifice to avert the wrath of the Father from a hell-bound humanity—‘For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit;’ (1 Peter 3:18). No, Jesus was not alone in the Garden. He was with the Father. Praying the prayer that united his will with the Fathers: “Yet not as I will, but as You will” (Mt.26:39). With these words on our lips, we will never be alone in prayer, either.
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