56. Mark 14:32-42: Gethsemane
Jesus next stop is Gethsemane for prayer. Perhaps surprisingly, after predicting his followers’ desertion, they all accompany him. And if the thought of desertion chilled their blood, what the inner three – Peter, James, and John – experienced there surpasses expression. “When the great Greek philosopher Socrates went to his death, he was calm and in control throughout the process. His followers, though distraught and in tears, remembered his steady teaching right up to the end, his coolly ironic last words. Not so with Jesus. This story is neither a Greek-style heroic tale nor a typical Jewish martyrdom. It is unique. Only if we enter into it – which we can hardly do without fear and trembling on our own part – will we understand the human depths, and hence the theological depths, of the story” (Wright, Mark , 244). As they move through the garden Jesus was, literally translated, “overwhelmed with horror and anguish.” These ver...