The oil press
Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane.”
Matt 26:36 (NRSV)
Some words are so redolent, so full of beauty and meaning, that your eye can’t slide past them without pausing.
Bethlehem, “house of bread,” is such a word—Bethphage and Bethany, two others, the first meaning “house of figs”; the second, “house of the poor.”
Bethany, among the poor, is where Jesus stayed the night before his final confrontation with religious authorities. The next day in powerful action parables he cursed the fig tree and cleansed the Temple. (Mark 11.1-14)
Alone
Gethsemane is another word, which needs nothing but itself. It’s found in today’s gospel reading of the Daily Lectionary, BCP. Here, in an ancient olive grove named for the olive presses that might have stood there in the garden, Jesus spent the night before his arrest, praying.
Though he longed not to be, he was alone. (NRSV brackets the angel of Luke 22.43.) From the larger group of 11 men and others perhaps, he invited Peter, James and John to go a little farther with him.
Some people have a vocation to go deeper with God in prayer, if they will.
Despite his repeated requests and warnings that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” the disciples fell into a sleep heavy with grief and confusion. They did not understand, yet they surely must have sensed their Master’s mood was grim, even before he told them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death.”
Moment of decision
The real moment of decision did not come during the trials before the high priest or Pilate or Herod. It didn’t come when Pilate asked the crowd, “Which man shall I release to you?”
No, it came now in this quiet garden, here on the side of the Mount of Olives.
Precedents
Maybe he recalled the prophecy of Zechariah, how in the end time
the LORD will go forth and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives.
Zech 14:3-4 (NRSV)
Or perhaps he remembered how David fled Jerusalem, ascending the mount, bare-foot, his head covered, weeping. (2 Sam 15.30)
Whom did he identify with more—the triumphant Son of Man, or the failed aging king?
Before they are useful
Jesus knew what awaited the fruit of these trees. The first to be produced was light, fruity virgin olive oil. Further pressings produced lower grade oil used for lamps. Prized as a cosmetic, as an emollient and medicine; blended with spices, it provided the basis for the holy oil to light the Temple and to anoint prophets, priests, and kings.
But Jesus knew what stood between the oil of such glorious usefulness, and the fruit developing on the tree. Raw olives are too bitter to eat. Immature green olives, struck or picked from the tree, are brined or soaked in water or oil.
Those allowed to mature are crushed by a huge millstone. The resulting mash is pressed through screens, vegetable matter and water are then removed.
In this verse John acknowledges in a similar image that Jesus knew self must die on the cross:
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12:24 (NRSV)
A Post-Easter realization?
The gospels agree that he repeatedly predicted
The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.
Mark 9:31 (NRSV)
Is this actually a post-Easter realization? Did he never wonder (as most of us would), there alone in the darkness: “What if I am wrong? What if there is nothing more?”
Blowin’ in the Wind
Perhaps a light wind stirred. It was months before the olive harvest. Did the breeze unveil cream-colored blossoms now and then among the thick gray-green folliage? Did their fragrance scent the night air?
What passed through his mind?
We are told he prayed, ”Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”
The cup of wrath. Staggering. Drunkenness. Vomit. Judgment. Not at all like the cup of salvation he had so recently shared with his closest friends.
He groaned—groans too deep for words.
Intimations of Life
Perhaps he gripped the twisted trunk of a stump before which he knelt. Perhaps from the old ax blows he saw new foliage sprouting. Perhaps he remembered what Job said:
There is hope for a tree,
if it is cut down, that it will sprout again,
and that its shoots will not cease.
Job 14.7 (NRSV)
Perhaps.
Unveiling Jesus’ psyche
How did this account of Gethsemane come to be told? Jesus’ friends lay all asleep. He was alone, but for the wood, the leaves, the blossoms.
Did the Risen Christ tell the story, fill in the gaps the disciples didn’t know or couldn’t remember?
Here’s what we know: he came from that place, put on trial the greatest legal system known to humanity, and won eternal life for us and all our kind.
The best words about Gethsemane
The best account, apart from the glimpses preserved in the gospels, is in the words of Sidney Lanier, writing in 1880 (according to Oremus):
Into the woods my Master went,
clean forspent, forspent,
into the woods my Master came,
forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to him.
the little grey leaves were kind to him,
the thorn tree had a mind to him,
when into the woods he came.
Out of the woods my Master came
and he was well content;
out of the woods my Master came,
content with death and shame.
When death and shame would woo him last,
from under the trees they drew him last,
’twas on a tree they slew him last
when out of the woods he came.
Tags: Gethsemane, Lanier, prayer, religion
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:24 am
“the little grey leaves were kind to him.”
I did not know this one, so beautiful.
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:19 pm
The tune LANIER is exquisite as well.