They went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be distressed and agitated. And he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.’ And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. (Mark 14: 32-35)
This can be Palm Sunday or the Sunday of the Passion. Shall we toss a coin? Either way, scripture shows that shortly after the jostle and celebration of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, things got pretty real very quickly. Gethsemane means 'oil press' in Aramaic, a simple description that the place had an olive grove and historically a press to extract the oil. It can act as a metaphor for what Jesus experienced there, on his journey to the cross. The human being who was also God was being put through the wringer of considering his own imminent and very painful death. The drowsy indifference of the attendant disciples contrasted with the anguish of Jesus as he travailed in prayer into the night.
Several heresies (wrong teachings or doctrine) that sprung up in the early church concerned the nature of Jesus Christ. They either minimised the God part, or minimised the human part. Various forms of Gnostic thought also sought to separate the functions of body and soul. So, for example, they could minimise the reality of Jesus' suffering because it was all a kind of illusion. How could he be a God if he felt human pain?
Christian teaching through the ages has sought to find the words to express that Jesus is entirely God and entirely human, and that what we do in the body is very much part of who we are. It is a holistic view of life, steering a path through various attempts at making up more palatable religions than the way of the cross, a very real journey that the Christ made.
As the New Testament material was written, the church initially existed in the Greek/Roman thought world which influenced the way we speak and think about God. Even today you hear Christians separating out body/mind/spirit as a matter of course. Jesus at Gethsemane reminds us that the Very God became very human, and that body and soul respond in anguish as one.
Let us remember that when we go through trauma or severe challenges, Jesus journeys with us and identifies with us, having been put through the wringer himself. So many in our community are experiencing challenge and disorientation, let us pray for more wisdom and love to speak into that space with the good news of Jesus.