Reading the Gospels Together The garden/Gethsemane – Part 2 Mark then tells his readers that the group arrives at a place called Gethsemane where Jesus invites his disciples to sit and pray. Taking the inner circle of three with him Jesus challenges them to watch and pray and then enters into what can only be described as agonizing prayer pleading with God to spare him from the death that Jesus knows is coming. This may seem rather strange since Jesus had predicted his suffering and death. Mark portrays a very human Jesus at this point. It is one thing to know you must die and quite another to actually experience it. The human Jesus struggles with his destiny! Because we have come to think of Jesus as “God” we are tempted at this point to view this episode as play-acting on the part of Jesus. Mark would not have thought of it in that way. For Mark, and for Jesus, this was a real experience of agony and pleading on the part of Jesus. And that means, of course, that the human Jesus may have failed! He does not. We are confronted with the paradox that Jesus is at one and the same time both human and divine. In fact, the first disciples (and likely Mark) only knew Jesus as a human being up to this point. It was only after the resurrection and a great deal of soul-searching and the passage of time that the followers of Jesus came to understand him as also divine. We are very much in need of capturing again the deep sense of the humanity of Jesus. Jesus’ pleading that some other way might be provided goes unheeded and after three attempts Jesus submits to the will of God. Jesus had told the disciples to watch and pray – but they fail miserably by falling asleep instead. Perhaps it was the message conveyed to Jesus in the sleeping disciples that motivated him to take the final journey to the cross. No sooner has the decision been made by Jesus than Judas arrives with a crowd carrying swords and clubs. They have been sent by the religious leaders. Mark’s description is little more than a mob scene. Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss and Jesus is apprehended. Mark tells his readers that one of the bystanders makes an attempt to defend Jesus by cutting off the ear of one of the slave of the high priest. Mark does not identify this attacker and readers are left to speculate that it must have been a disciple. Mark had condensed the Jerusalem Controversy to one day but here he tells us that Jesus protests his arrest by stealth since he had been “day after day” teaching in the Temple. This small reference indicates that Mark had his hand in condensing what likely was a longer period of time for the Jerusalem Controversy as we have noted elsewhere – Mark knows full well that the controversy did not happen on one day. In the end Jesus is deserted by everyone – including a strange young man who has come to Gethsemane wearing nothing but a linen shroud and must flee naked. Just who this young man is continues to escape modern readers of Mark. Speculation that this is perhaps a reference on the part of the author to himself is really unfounded and highly unlikely. Mark will tell his readers of another young man who will appear at the empty tomb wearing a dazzling white linen cloth. Perhaps these two are meant to be connected, but that also is a matter of speculation. We are better off just admitting that this young man remains a mystery. Matthew and Luke were also likely clueless regarding this young man since both of them drop this story from their respective gospels. And so Jesus is arrested and the story moves on.