Jesus in the Garden at Gethsemane
Now all that evening Jesus had been sitting with his disciples and talking with them, but at midnight he said āIām going out. Peter, James, John, come with me; the rest of you can stay and sleep.ā
They left the others and walked towards the nearest gate in the city wall.
Peter said āMaster, be careful tonight. Thereās a rumour that theyāre reinforcing the temple guards. And the governorās looking for an excuse to crack down ā everyoneās talking about it.ā
āWhy would they do that?ā
āThings like this,ā said John, pointing to the mud-daubed words KING JESUS on the nearest wall.
āDid you write that there?ā said Jesus.
āOf course not.ā
āWell, it doesnāt concern you, then. Ignore it.ā
John knew that it concerned them all, but he said nothing. He stayed to brush the words off and then hurried after the others.
Jesus went across the valley to a garden on the slopes of the Mount of Olives.
āWait here,ā he said. āKeep watch. Let me know if anyone comes.ā
They sat down under an olive tree and wrapped their cloaks around them, because the night was cold. Jesus went apart a little way and knelt down.
āYouāre not listening,ā he whispered. āIāve been speaking to you all my life and all Iāve heard back is silence. Where are you? Are you out there among the stars? Is that it? Busy making another world, perhaps, because youāre sick of this one? Youāve gone away, havenāt you, youāve abandoned us.
āYouāre making a liar out of me, you realise that. I donāt want to tell lies. I try to tell the truth. But I tell them youāre a loving father watching over them all, and youāre not; youāre blind as well as deaf, as far as I can tell. You canāt see, or you just donāt want to look? Which is it?
āNo answer. Not interested.
āIf you were listening, youād know what I meant by truth. Iām not one of these logic-choppers, these fastidious philosophers, with their scented Greek rubbish about a pure world of spiritual forms where everything is perfect, and which is the only place where the real truth is, unlike this filthy material world which is corrupt and gross and full of untruth and imperfection . . . Have you heard them? Stupid question. Youāre not interested in slander either.
āAnd slanderās what it is; you made this world, and itās lovely, every inch of it. When I think of the things Iāve loved I find myself choking with happiness, or maybe sorrow, I donāt know; and every one of them has been something in this world that you made. If anyone can smell frying fish on an evening by the lake, or feel a cool breeze on a hot day, or see a little animal trying to run around and tumbling over and getting up again, or kiss a pair of soft and willing lips, if anyone can feel those things and still maintain theyāre nothing but crude imperfect copies of something much better in another world, they are slandering you, Lord, as surely as words mean anything at all. But then they donāt think words do mean anything; theyāre just tokens to play sophisticated games with. Truth is this, and truth is that, and what is truth anyway, and on and on they go, these bloodless phantoms.
āThe psalm says āThe fool has said in his heart, There is no God.ā Well, I understand that fool. You treated him as youāre treating me, didnāt you? If that makes me a fool, Iām one with all the fools you made. I love that fool, even if you donāt. The poor sod whispered to you night after night, and heard nothing in response. Even Job, for all the trouble he had, got an answer from you. But the fool and I might as well be talking into an empty pot, except that even an empty pot makes a sound like the wind, if you hold it over your ear. Thatās an answer of sorts.
āIs that what youāre saying to me? That when I hear the wind, I hear your voice? When I look at the stars I see your writing, or in the bark of a tree, or the ripples on the sand at the edge of the water? Lovely things, yes, all of them, no doubt about that, but why did you make them so hard to read? Who can translate them for us? You conceal yourself in enigmas and riddles. Can I believe that the Lord God would behave like one of those philosophers and say things in order to baffle and confuse? No, I canāt believe it. Why do you treat your people like this? The God who made water to be clear and sweet and fresh wouldnāt fill it with mud before giving it to his children to drink. So, whatās the answer? These things are full of your words, and we just have to persevere till we can read them? Or theyāre blank and meaningless? Which is it?
āNo answer, naturally. Listen to that silence. Not a breath of wind; the little insects scratching away in the grasses; Peter snoring over there under the olives; a dog barking on some farm out behind me in the hills; an owl down in the valley; and the infinite silence under it all. Youāre not in the sounds, are you. There might be some help in that. I love those little insects. Thatās a good dog out there; heās trustworthy; heād die to look after the farm. The owl is beautiful and cares for her young. Even Peterās full of kindness, for all the noise and the bluster. If I thought you were in those sounds, I could love you with all my heart, even if those were the only sounds you made. But youāre in the silence. You say nothing.
āGod, is there any difference between saying that and saying youāre not there at all? I can imagine some philosophical smartarse of a priest in years to come pulling the wool over his poor followersā eyes: āGodās great absence is, of course, the very sign of his presenceā, or some such drivel. The people will hear his words, and think how clever he is to say such things, and theyāll try and believe it; and theyāll go home puzzled and hungry, because it makes no sense at all. That priest is worse than the fool in the psalm, who at least is an honest man. When the fool prays to you and gets no answer, he decides that Godās great absence means heās not bloody well there.
āWhat am I going to tell the people tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that? Am I going to go on telling them things I canāt believe? My heart will grow weary of it; my belly will churn with sickness; my mouth will be full of ash and my throat will burn with gall. Thereāll come a day when Iāll say to some poor leper that his sins are forgiven and his sores will heal and heāll say āBut theyāre as bad as they ever were. Where is this healing you promised?ā
āAnd the Kingdom . . .
āHave I been deluding myself as well as everyone else? What have I been doing, telling them that itās going to come, that there are people alive now who will see the coming of Godās Kingdom? I can see us waiting, and waiting, and waiting . . . Was my brother right when he talked of this great organisation, this church of his that was going to serve as the vehicle for the Kingdom on earth? No, he was wrong, he was wrong. My whole heart and mind and body revolted against that. They still do.
āBecause I can see just what would happen if that kind of thing came about. The devil would rub his hands with glee. As soon as men who believe theyāre doing Godās will get hold of power, whether itās in a household or a village or in Jerusalem or in Rome itself, the devil enters into them. It isnāt long before they start drawing up lists of punishments for all kinds of innocent activities, sentencing people to be flogged or stoned in the name of God for wearing this or eating that or believing the other. And the privileged ones will build great palaces and temples to strut around in, and levy taxes on the poor to pay for their luxuries; and theyāll start keeping the very scriptures secret, saying there are some truths too holy to be revealed to the ordinary people, so that only the priestsā interpretation will be allowed, and theyāll torture and kill anyone who wants to make the word of God clear and plain to all; and with every day that passes theyāll become more and more fearful, because the more power they have the less theyāll trust anyone, so theyāll have spies and betrayals and denunciations and secret tribunals, and put the poor harmless heretics they flush out to horrible public deaths, to terrify the rest into obedience.
āAnd from time to time, to distract the people from their miseries and fire them with anger against someone else, the governors of this church will declare that such-and-such a nation or such-and-such a people is evil and ought to be destroyed, and theyāll gather great armies and set off to kill and burn and loot and rape and plunder, and theyāll raise their standard over the smoking ruins of what was once a fair and prosperous land and declare that Godās Kingdom is so much the larger and more magnificent as a result.
āBut any priest who wants to indulge his secret appetites, his greed, his lust, his cruelty, will find himself like a wolf in a field of lambs where the shepherd is bound and gagged and blinded. No one will even think of questioning the rightness of what this holy man does in private; and his little victims will cry to heaven for pity, and their tears will wet his hands, and heāll wipe them on his robe and press them together piously and cast his eyes upwards and the people will say what a fine thing it is to have such a holy man as priest, how well he takes care of the children . . .
āAnd where will you be? Will you look down and strike these blaspheming serpents with a thunderbolt? Will you strike the governors off their thrones and smash their palaces to rubble?
āTo ask the question and wait for the answer is to know that there will be no answer.
āLord, if I thought you were listening, Iād pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive. That it should be not like a palace with marble walls and polished floors, and guards standing at the door, but like a tree with its roots deep in the soil, that shelters every kind of bird and beast and gives blossom in the spring and shade in the hot sun and fruit in the season, and in time gives up its good sound wood for the carpenter; but that sheds many thousands of seeds so that new trees can grow in its place. Does the tree say to the sparrow āGet out, you donāt belong here?ā Does the tree say to the hungry man āThis fruit is not for you?ā Does the tree test the loyalty of the beasts before it allows them into the shade?
āThis is all I can do now, whisper into the silence. How much longer will I even feel like doing that? Youāre not there. Youāve never heard me. Iād do better to talk to a tree, to talk to a dog, an owl, a little grasshopper. Theyāll always be there. Iām with the fool in the psalm. You thought we could get on without you; no ā you didnāt care whether we got on without you or not. You just got up and left. So thatās what weāre doing, weāre getting on. Iām part of the world, and I love every grain of sand and blade of grass and drop of blood in it. There might as well not be anything else, because these things are enough to gladden the heart and calm the spirit; and we know they delight the body. Body and spirit . . . is there a difference? Where does one end and the other begin? Arenāt they the same thing?
āFrom time to time weāll remember you, like a grandfather who was loved once, but who has died, and weāll tell stories about you; and weāll feed the lambs and reap the corn and press the wine, and sit under the tree in the cool of the evening, and welcome the stranger and look after the children, and nurse the sick and comfort the dying, and then lie down when our time comes, without a pang, without a fear, and go back to the earth.
āAnd let the silence talk to itself . . .ā
Jesus stopped. There was nothing else he wanted to say.
The Arrest of Jesus
But a little distance away John was sitting up and rubbing his eyes, and then he kicked Peter awake and pointed down into the valley; and then got to his feet and hurried up to where Jesus was still kneeling by himself.
āMaster,ā he said, āIām sorry, forgive me, I donāt want to disturb you, but there are men with torches coming up the path from the city.ā
Jesus took Johnās hand and stood up.
āYou could get away, master,ā John said. āPeterās got a sword. We can hold them off ā tell them we havenāt seen you.ā
āNo,ā said Jesus. āI donāt want any fighting.ā
And he walked down the path towards the other disciples, and told Peter to put his sword away.
As they came up the path in the torchlight Christ said to the captain of the guards āIāll embrace him, and youāll know who it is.ā
When they came close to Jesus and the other three, Christ went up to his brother and kissed him.
āYou?ā said Jesus.
Christ wanted to speak, but he was shoved aside as the guards moved past him. He was soon lost among the crowd of curious onlookers who had heard rumours of what was going to happen, and come along to watch.
Seeing Jesus under arrest, the people thought that heād betrayed their trust in him; that he was just another religious deceiver, like so many others, and that everything heād told them had been false. They began to shout and jeer, and they might even have attacked and lynched him there and then, if the guards had not held them off; Peter tried to draw his sword again, but Jesus saw him and shook his head.
Peter said āMaster! Weāre with you! We wonāt leave you! Wherever they take you, Iāll come too!ā
The guards marched Jesus off down the path, and Peter hastened after them. They took him through the city gate and along to the house of the high priest. Peter had to wait in the courtyard outside, where he joined the servants and the guards around the brazier theyād lit to keep themselves warm, for it was a cold night.
Jesus before the Council
Inside the house, Caiaphas had called together an emergency council of the chief priests and the elders and the scribes. This was unusual, because Jewish law normally prohibited courts from sitting at night, but the circumstances were urgent; if they were going to deal with Jesus the priests would have to do it before the festival began.
Jesus was brought before this council, and they began to question him. Some of the priests who had lost to him in argument were eager for a reason to hand him over to the Romans, and they had summoned witnesses in the hope of convicting him. However, they hadnāt coached the witnesses well enough, and several of them contradicted one another; for example, one said āI heard him say he could destroy the temple, and build another in three days.ā
āNo! That wasnāt him!ā said another. āThat was one of his followers.ā
āBut Jesus didnāt deny it!ā
āIt was him. I heard him say it myself.ā
Not all the priests were sure that was reason enough to condemn him.
Finally Caiaphas said āWell, Jesus, what have you got to say? Whatās your answer to these charges?ā
Jesus said nothing.
āAnd what about this other charge of blasphemy? That you claim to be the son of God? The Messiah?ā
āThatās what you say,ā said Jesus.
āWell, itās what your followers say,ā said Caiaphas. āDonāt you bear any responsibility for that?ā
āI have asked them not to. But even if I had said that, it would not be blasphemy, as you well know.ā
Jesus was right, and Caiaphas and the priests knew it. Strictly speaking, blasphemy consisted of cursing the name of God, and Jesus had never done that.
āThen what about this claim to be king of the Jews? We see it everywhere daubed on the walls. What have you to say to that?ā
Jesus said nothing.
āSilence is no answer,ā said Caiaphas.
Jesus smiled.
āJesus, weāre trying very hard to be fair to you,ā the high priest went on. āIt seems to us that youāve gone out of your way to provoke trouble, not only with us, but with the Romans. And these are difficult times. We have to protect our people. Canāt you see that? Donāt you understand the danger youāre putting everyone in?ā
Jesus still said nothing.
Caiaphas turned to the priests and scribes, s...