'And He came out, and went, as He was wont, to the
mount of Olives; and His disciples also followed Him.
40. And when He was at the place, He said unto them,
Pray that ye enter not into temptation. 41. And He
was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and
kneeled down, and prayed, 42. Saying, Father, If Thou
be willing, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless, not
My will, but Thine, be done. 43. And there appeared an
angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him. 44. And,
being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly: and His
sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down
to the ground. 45. And when He rose up from prayer,
and was come to His disciples, He found them sleeping
for sorrow. 46. And said unto them, Why sleep ye? rise
and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. 47. And while
He yet spake, beheld a multitude, and he that was
called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them, and
drew near unto Jesus to kiss Him. 48. But Jesus said
unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a
kiss? 49. When they which were about Him saw what would
follow, they said unto Him, Lord, shall we smite with
the sword? 50. And one of them smote a servant of the
high priest, and cut off his right ear. 51. And Jesus
answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And He touched
his ear, and healed him. 52. Then Jesus said unto the
chief priests, and captains of the temple, and the
elders, which were come to Him, Be ye come out, as
against a thief, with swords and staves? 53. When I
was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth
no hands against Me; but this is your hour, and the
power of darkness.'--Luke xxii. 39-53.
'Put off thy shoes from off thy feet.' Cold analysis is out of place
here, where the deepest depth of a Saviour's sorrows is partly
disclosed, and we see Him bowing His head to the waves and billows
that went over Him, for our sakes. Luke's account is much condensed,
but contains some points peculiar to itself. It falls into two
parts--the solemn scene of the agony, and the circumstances of the
arrest.
I. We look with reverent awe and thankfulness at that soul-subduing
picture of the agonising and submissive Christ which Luke briefly
draws. Think of the contrast between the joyous revelry of the
festival-keeping city and the sadness of the little company which
crossed the Kedron and passed beneath the shadow of the olive-trees
into the moonlit garden. Jesus needed companions there; but He needed
solitude still more. So He is 'parted from them'; but Luke alone
tells us how short the distance was--'as it were a stone's throw,'
and near enough for the disciples to see and hear something before
they slept.
That clinging to and separation from His humble friends gives a
wonderful glimpse into Christ's desolation then. And how beautiful
is His care for them, even at that supreme hour, which leads to the
injunction twice spoken, at the beginning and end of His own
prayers, that they should pray, not for Him, but for themselves. He
never asks for men's prayers, but He does for their love. He thinks
of His sufferings as temptation for the disciples, and for the
moment forgets His own burden, in pointing them the way to bear
theirs. Did self-oblivious love ever shine more gloriously in the
darkness of sorrow?
Luke omits the threefold withdrawal and return, but notes three
things--the prayer, the angel appearance, and the physical effects
of the agony. The essentials are all preserved in his account. The
prayer is truly 'the Lord's prayer,' and the perfect pattern for
ours. Mark the grasp of God's fatherhood, which is at once appeal
and submission. So should all prayer begin, with the thought, at all
events, whether with the word 'Father' or no. Mark the desire that
'this cup' should pass. The expression shows how vividly the
impending sufferings were pictured before Christ's eye. The keenest
pains of anticipation, which make so large a part of so many
sorrows, were felt by Him. He shrank from His sufferings. Did He
therefore falter in His desire and resolve to endure the Cross? A
thousand times, no! His will never wavered, but maintained itself
supreme over the natural recoil of His human nature from pain and
death. If He had not felt the Cross to be a dread, it had been no
sacrifice. If He had allowed the dread to penetrate to His will, He
had been no Saviour. But now He goes before us in the path which all
have, in their degree, to travel, and accepts pain that He may do
His work.
That acceptance of the divine will is no mere 'If it must be so, let
it be so,' much as that would have been. But He receives in His
prayer the true answer--for His will completely coincides with the
Father's, and 'mine' is 'thine.' Such conformity of our wills with
God's is the highest blessing of prayer and the true deliverance.
The cup accepted is sweet; and though flesh may shrink, the inner
self consents, and in consenting to the pain, conquers it.
Luke alone tells of the ministering angel; and, according to some
authorities, the forty-third and forty-fourth verses are spurious.
But, accepting them as genuine, what does the angelic appearance
teach us? It suggests pathetically the utter physical prostration
of Jesus. Sensuous religion has dwelt on that offensively, but let
us not rush to the opposite extreme, and ignore it. It teaches us
that the manhood of Jesus needed the communication of divine help as
truly as we do. The difficulty of harmonising that truth with His
divine nature was probably the reason for the omission of this verse
in some manuscripts. It teaches the true answer to His prayer, as so
often to ours; namely, the strength to bear the load, not the
removal of it. It is remarkable that the renewal of the solemn
'agony' and the intenser earnestness of prayer follow the
strengthening by the angel.
Increased strength increased the conflict of feeling, and the
renewed and intensified conflict increased the earnestness of the
prayer. The calmness won was again disturbed, and a new recourse to
the source of it was needed. We stand reverently afar off, and ask,
not too curiously, what it is that falls so heavily to the ground,
and shines red and wet in the moonlight. But the question
irresistibly rises, Why all this agony of apprehension? If Jesus
Christ was but facing death as it presents itself to all men, His
shrinking is far beneath the temper in which many a man has fronted
the scaffold and the fire. We can scarcely save His character for
admiration, unless we see in the agony of Gethsemane something much
more than the shrinking from a violent death, and understand how
there the Lord made to meet on Him the iniquity of us all. If the
burden that crushed Him thus was but the common load laid on all
men's shoulders, He shows unmanly terror. If it were the black mass
of the world's sins, we can understand the agony, and rejoice to
think that our sins were there.
II. The arrest. Three points are made prominent--the betrayer's
token, the disciples' resistance, the reproof of the foes, and in
each the centre of interest is our Lord's words. The sudden bursting
in of the multitude is graphically represented. The tumult broke the
stillness of the garden, but it brought deeper peace to Christ's
heart; for while the anticipation agitated, the reality was met with
calmness. Blessed they who can unmoved front evil, the foresight of
which shook their souls! Only they who pray as Jesus did beneath
the olives, can go out from their shadow, as He did, to meet the
foe.
The first of the three incidents of the arrest brings into strong
prominence Christ's meek patience, dignity, calmness, and effort,
even at that supreme moment, to rouse dormant conscience, and save
the traitor from himself. Judas probably had no intention by his
kiss of anything but showing the mob their prisoner; but he must
have been far gone in insensibility before he could fix on such a
sign. It was the token of friendship and discipleship, and no doubt
was customary among the disciples, though we never hear of any lips
touching Jesus but the penitent woman's, which were laid on His
feet, and the traitor's. The worst hypocrisy is that which is
unconscious of its own baseness.
Every word of Christ's answer to the shameful kiss is a sharp spear,
struck with a calm and not resentful hand right into the hardened
conscience. There is wistful tenderness and a remembrance of former
confidences in calling Him by name. The order of words in the
original emphasises the kiss, as if Jesus had said, 'Is that the
sign you have chosen? Could nothing else serve you? Are you so dead
to all feeling that you can kiss and betray?' The Son of man flashes
on Judas, for the last time, the majesty and sacredness against
which he was lifting his hand. 'Betrayest thou?' which comes last in
the Greek, seeks to startle by putting into plain words the guilt,
and so to rend the veil of sophistications in which the traitor was
hiding his deed from himself. Thus to the end Christ seeks to keep
him from ruin, and with meek patience resents not indignity, but
with majestic calmness sets before the miserable man the hideousness
of his act. The patient Christ is the same now as then, and meets
all our treason with pleading, which would fain teach us how black
it is, not because He is angry, but because He would win us to turn
from it. Alas that so often His remonstrances fall on hearts as
wedded to their sin as was Judas's!
The rash resistance of the disciple is recorded chiefly for the sake
of Christ's words and acts. The anonymous swordsman was Peter, and
the anonymous victim was Malchus, as John tells us. No doubt he had
brought one of the two swords from the upper room, and, in a sudden
burst of anger and rashness, struck at the man nearest him, not
considering the fatal consequences for them all that might follow.
Peter could manage nets better than swords, and missed the head, in
his flurry and in the darkness, only managing to shear off a poor
slave's ear. When the Church takes sword in hand, it usually shows
that it does not know how to wield it, and as often as not has
struck the wrong man. Christ tells Peter and us, in His word here,
what His servants' true weapons are, and rebukes all armed
resistance of evil. 'Suffer ye thus far' is a command to oppose
violence only by meek endurance, which wins in the long run, as
surely as the patient sunshine melts the thick ice, which is ice
still, when pounded with a hammer.
If 'thus far' as to His own seizure and crucifying was to be 'suffered,'
where can the breaking-point of patience and non-resistance be fixed?
Surely every other instance of violence and wrong lies far on this side
of that one. The prisoner heals the wound. Wonderful testimony that not
inability to deliver Himself, but willingness to be taken, gave Him
into the hands of His captors! Blessed proof that He lavishes benefits
on His foes, and that His delight is to heal all wounds and stanch
every bleeding heart!
The last incident here is Christ's piercing rebuke, addressed, not to
the poor, ignorant tools, but to the prime movers of the conspiracy,
who had come to gloat over its success. He asserts His own innocence,
and hints at the preposterous inadequacy of 'swords and staves' to
take Him. He is no 'robber,' and their weapons are powerless, unless
He wills. He recalls His uninterrupted teaching in the Temple, as if
to convict them of cowardice, and perchance to bring to remembrance
His words there. And then, with that same sublime and strange majesty
of calm submission which marks all His last hours, He unveils to
these furious persecutors the true character of their deed. The
sufferings of Jesus were the meeting-point of three worlds--earth,
hell, and heaven. 'This is your hour.' But it was also Satan's hour,
and it was Christ's 'hour,' and God's. Man's passions, inflamed from
beneath, were used to work out God's purpose; and the Cross is at
once the product of human unbelief, of devilish hate, and of divine
mercy. His sufferings were 'the power of darkness.'
Mark in that expression Christ's consciousness that He is the light,
and enmity to Him darkness. Mark, too, His meek submission, as
bowing His head to let the black flood flow over Him. Note that
Christ brands enmity to Him as the high-water mark of sin, the
crucial instance of man's darkness, the worst thing ever done. Mark
the assurance that animated Him, that the eclipse was but for an
'hour.' The victory of the darkness was brief, and it led to the
eternal triumph of the Light. By dying He is the death of death.
This Jonah inflicts deadly wounds on the monster in whose maw He lay
for three days. The power of darkness was shivered to atoms in the
moment of its proudest triumph, like a wave which is beaten into
spray as it rises in a towering crest and flings itself against the
rock.