A Reflection on Mark 14:32-42
Presented in the Passion Narratives is an object which I believe is often overlooked, greatly underrated, and deserving of deeper probing. This object is the place in which Jesus finds himself: a garden. Directly reminiscent of the Hebrew creation narrative, here is God, once again, producing and making fruitful the spiritual life of humanity in a place which, under ordinary circumstances, would be serene and peaceful. Gardens are places of shalom, reprieves from the chaos and outer darkness which often plague the world; places of order, of intention, and places of vast color and beauty. Yet, once again, death is creeping into the garden. Eden is stained. Those who would be loyal and assist now betray the Maker with their lips: Adam and Eve by pressing their lips to the flesh of forbidden fruit, and Judas by pressing his lips to the flesh of the incarnate God.
In the midst of this garden, named “Gaḏ-shmānê,” an Aramaic word revealed to us by Matthew and Mark, there is a pressing weight the likes of which only olives know: olives placed under great stress to produce oil. The fruit of a body for the essence of its soul. Oil spilled. This is literally what the word Gethsemani means: olive press. I wonder if the Christ ever considered himself as an olive, his sweat becoming as blood, recorded only by Luke, a fact which makes the Christ oddly olive-like, as he is pressed by a friend’s betrayal and the weight of the cup from which he must drink. This is anointing. This is the definition of Christ, the definition of the Hebrew mashiach. A sacramental unction which Roman Catholics know well, and which we Protestants view with suspicion, but which has profound implications for a king who has no country, a priest without a temple, and a prophet whose words have been rejected.
Of course, this is not the Johannine Jesus. The Johannine Jesus is less man, more God. Indeed, he is making all things new even as they go awry in the eyes of onlookers who can only see one side of a story, a story which they profoundly wish they could alter. They, too, feel pressed, and this weight is more than just generalized heaviness; it is crushing weight. It is eviscerating weight. It is the weight of death, but it is also the pressure which gives us olive oil, produces diamonds, scatters apostles, and breaks the body of the Messiah. This is weight which has forged for us sin and salvation, justification and the fall, death and life everlasting.
Thanks be to God that the Stone which the builders rejected is more than a cornerstone; it is a weight-bearing load which refuses to sink no matter how much downward force is applied. Thanks be to God that the one who was appointed for the task which only he could fulfill was willing to endure a garden, to endure being pressed, and to reveal to those of us who follow after that the words of the Apostle are true: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed.” For it can be said that even if the Anointed One of God was pressed, we too shall be; and how much more can we endure our garden moments in life, our moments of being refined from raw olive into pure olive oil, knowing that our Enfleshed Deity has already undergone the process and lived to tell the tale! Three days of death in the glimpse of eternity is nothing! This is the gospel narrative of the garden: that in the midst of agony, in the midst of anxiety, in the midst of pressure, death, and God’s deafening silence, God is working in and through the pressures of the garden to redeem that which was perverted, to ransom that which has been held in captivity, which is to say, us! More than us, all of creation.
Our garden moments manifest when we resist tyranny, along with death-dealing systems and actions, instead living into the transformed life, because we know that even if we pay the ultimate price, we are a people who will not stay dead. Because, in a different garden, we find an empty tomb, where the pressure of a rolled-away stone is only problematic to those who try to keep the reign of God locked away from a world in need.