SUGAR & SPICE

After the Last Supper, Jesus and His disciples went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. Jesus asked God if this cup (His suffering and death) might pass by Him. He implored a group of His disciples to pray with him, but they kept falling asleep. The time had come. Soldiers and officials appeared, and Judas was with them. He gave Jesus a kiss on the cheek to identify him and the soldiers arrested Jesus. One disciple tried to resist the arrest, brandished his sword and cut the ear off one of the soldiers. Jesus admonished him and healed the soldier's wound.

     The garden at Gethsemane, a place whose name literally means “oil press,” is located on a slope of the Mount of Olives just across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem. A garden of ancient olive trees stands there to this day. Jesus frequently went to Gethsemane with His disciples to pray (John 18:2). The most famous events at Gethsemane occurred on the night before His crucifixion when Jesus was betrayed. Each of the Gospel writers describes the events of that night with slight variations, so reading the four accounts (Matthew 26:36-56, Mark 14:32-52, Luke 22:40-53 and John 18:1-11) will give an accurate picture of that momentous night in its entirety.

      As the evening began, after Jesus and His disciples had celebrated the Passover, they came to the garden. At some point, Jesus took three of them—Peter, James and John— to a place separated from the rest. Here Jesus asked them to watch with Him and pray so they would not fall into temptation (Matthew 26:41), but they fell asleep. Twice, Jesus had to wake them and remind them to pray so that they would not fall into temptation. This was especially poignant because Peter did indeed fall into temptation later that very night when three times he denied even knowing Jesus. Jesus moved a little way from the three men to pray, and twice He asked His Father to remove the cup of wrath He was about to drink, but each time He submitted to the Father’s will. He was “exceedingly sorrowful unto death,” but God sent an angel from heaven to strengthen Him (Luke 22:43).

     The night before Jesus Christ was crucified, He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. It is in Luke’s gospel where we see that His sweat was like drops of blood: “And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). “Hematidrosis” is a rare, but very real, medical condition where one’s sweat will contain blood. The sweat glands are surrounded by tiny blood vessels. These vessels can constrict and then dilate to the point of rupture where the blood will then effuse into the sweat glands. It’s cause – extreme anguish. In the other Gospel accounts, we see Jesus’ level of anguish: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38; Mark 14:34).

     The intense anguish and sorrow Jesus felt was certainly understandable. Being God, Christ knew “all that was going to happen to Him” (John 18:4). He knew in painstaking detail the events that were to follow soon after He was betrayed by one of His very own disciples. Although our Savior never lied (1 Peter 2:22; Isaiah 53:9), He knew was about to undergo several trials where all of the witnesses against Him would do nothing but lie. He knew that many who hailed Him as the Messiah only days earlier would now be screaming for His crucifixion (Luke 23:23). He knew He would be flogged nearly to the point of death before they pounded the metal spikes into His flesh. He knew the prophetic words of Isaiah spoken seven centuries earlier that He would be beaten so badly that He would be “disfigured beyond that of any man” and “beyond human likeness” (Isaiah 52:14). Certainly these things factored into His great anguish and sorrow, causing Him to sweat drops of blood.

 

Yet there was more. He knew He would died on the cross for you and me.

 

   The events that occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane have reverberated down through the centuries. The passion Jesus displayed on that momentous night has been depicted in music, books, and films for centuries. From the 16th century, when Bach wrote two magnificent oratorios based on the gospel accounts of Matthew and John, to the present day with the film The Passion of the Christ, the story of this extraordinary night has been told again and again. Even our language has been affected by these events, giving us such phrases as “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword” (Matthew 26:52); “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38); and “sweating drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). Of course, the most important impact of this night was the willingness of our Savior to die on the cross in our place in order to pay the penalty for our sins. God “made Him who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). This is the gospel of Jesus Christ.