A Progressive Christian in Gethsemane
Fear & Faith: Exploring Why Jesus Saved Others but Couldn't Save Himself
As a progressive Christian, I've often wrestled with the narratives we've inherited about faith, redemption, and sacrifice. With no substitutionary atonement, the crucifixion becomes a very different story. It transforms into a story of a man grappling with a crisis of faith that would soon lead to his death.
Damn.
In light of this, I’ve been reading the Gospel Mark again
This time, it hit me hard how Jesus “fell to the ground,” pleading with God to save him. He’d saved so many other people, even raising three—the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus—from stone-cold death. But when the chips were down, he couldn’t save himself.
This strikes fear in the hearts of those, like me, who rely on the faith of the mustard seed on a near-daily basis. It usually works (thanks, Big Guy) as reliably as turning on a switch for light or the tap for water. A rock-solid certainty in goodness coming through in the end has has gotten me through some spine-chilling moments, gut-wrenching hours, and torturous years.
But sometimes, as anyone who’s ever relied on faith knows, some situations just get under our defenses. It’s those times when fear just eats us alive.
I find it touching that Jesus, like us, experienced this when the game got serious. At that moment, he reached to his friends for help.
Sometimes friends fail you, and sometimes they save you
32 They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 He took Peter, James, and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. 34 “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.” — Mark 14:32-34
Jesus needed to call up my old prayer circle or something. When I got third-degree burns from boiling water while in the divinity school dorms, my prayer circle in Florida gathered and laid some effective whammy on my problem. Three days later, the doctor was calling in colleagues because the healing was unprecedented. I never got the skin grafts, and now don’t even carry any scars.
Clearly, Jesus needed to call up my old prayer circle or something. During my first few weeks in Cambridge, I dropped boiling water all over myself — boiling water which soaked into my cotton sweats and clung to me as I desperately tried to peel them off. Doctors looked on grimly and told me I had third-degree burns that needed skin-grafts. I was alone in a new city, without medical insurance — so I felt I couldn’t afford to stay in the hospital, but couldn’t figure how I’d manage alone in my crappy efficiency apartment, either.
This is when my old prayer circle back in Florida gathered and started laying some pretty effective whammy on my problem.
Could I have done that under my own steam?
Probably not. I was in scream-worthy pain — especially during the debridement, where they pulled the dead skin off in thick, gray sheets. That kind of pain leaves you with a new outlook on life. The physical world was too close, too immediate, breathing its hot breath all over my face.
It seemed like the realm of God receded from me, but the truth was I had tumbled out of it, weighed down by worry. Yet, this medical problem of mine was nothing compared to cancer and myriad other ways the human body can suffer.
It’s also nothing like crucifixion.
Jesus needed someone alongside him to shoulder some of the burden and shore up his emotional strength so he could regain his faith.
That’s why it’s such a big deal when the disciples fall asleep again and again.
Here’s Jesus in Gethsemane again
35 Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 36 “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Mark 14:35-36
Most of us like to give God the option. In the end, however, we need shit fixed. God is a loving parent, as Jesus taught us, right? We understand that sometimes a loving parent says no if what we want is unhealthy. But nothing is too hard; nothing’s impossible. When an injured child holds its arms up in expectation of a parent’s loving embrace, no loving parent is going to say, “go away.”
So if our prayers don’t get answered, the fault must be ours, somehow. Yet that kind of thinking is a blame-the-victim black hole. That’s where logic turns against us, and we simply have to back away, repeating, nope, nope, nope.
Avoiding blame, let’s turn our attention back to fear
How does it work its dark mission? By shaking us loose from our carefully cultivated Zen/groove/kingdom mentality, and dumping us right in the middle of the human-made, “worldly”construct.
The one that Jesus inhabited was full of religious conservatives who hated him, and a Roman colonial administration that eyed anyone who might become a lightning rod for dissent. He was usually able to remain mentally in the Kingdom of Heaven, but now he was struggling.
39 Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. 40 When he came back, he found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. — Mark 14:39-40
See? A good old prayer circle would have been hot on the job. Those disciples, though…man. Their description is a literary device used by the writers of the gospels who needed a foil.
Let’s fast forward from the wee hours of the morning to the crucifixion later that day.
29 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” 31 In the same way, the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him, “He saved others, but he can’t save himself!” — Mark 15:29-32
It’s asking a lot to ask someone to perform when they’re nailed to a plank. Jesus was probably pretty psyched-out by the shit-talk he was getting. By this time, his disciples had deserted him, trying to save their own lives. Peter had denied him three times. Only his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and a few other women remained to comfort him in his final hours.
The Romans, Jewish elders, casual bystanders, and even other criminals being crucified were jeering at Jesus.
Emotionally, he was far away from being the guy who said,
23 “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart, it will be done for them.” — Mark 11:23
In the worst, most frightening moment of his life, Jesus just could not get himself to the place where he harbored no doubt.
Jesus — like all of us do sometimes — needed someone to hold faith for him. He needed someone to help carry the emotional and psychic burden, get him back into a stable mindset, and then get to healing, or saving, himself.
So, what are we supposed to take away from this anti-lesson from Mark?
If you don’t accept the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, which I don’t, then what the crucifixion story reveals to us is a raw and gritty story of a man whose faith had left him—or perhaps of a man whose most heartfelt and desperate prayers God did not hear.
Either way, that’s a pretty damning moral. It’s hard to wrap our minds around, raised as we were with the edited and smoothed over apologetics provided by writers of the gospels, many decades later.
Claiming that Jesus had to die so we could receive our ‘Get Out of Hell Free’ card is a narrative I might be inclined to adopt, especially if I needed to craft quick justifications to unite a splintering Jesus movement. I think it does a disservice to Jesus the man, however, as well as obfuscate and overshadow his mission of teaching and healing.
People need explanations, like walls need putty—to smooth over the rough bits. They hunger for stories that answer their jagged midnight questions, or put a warm blanket over their shivering fear.
It’s not even a bad metaphor, if you want to believe in a God that loves us enough to sacrifice his child for us—until you ask the inevitable question of why a benevolent deity would demand blood sacrifice in the first place.
It’s okay to feel weak sometimes
If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that there are probably as many morals as there are people who read this passage in Mark. We all bring to it our personal experience, education, and prejudices, and walk away with a product of those things.
For me, however, it’s that sometimes, even the best of us fail. It’s not our fault. It’s part of how we’re made—with our endocrine and emotional systems going off road at times.
As long as we’re alive, however, we have another minute, another day, another chance to regain our faith and turn things around.
And if we’re really lucky, some loving person will shoulder our burden for a while, help us regain our hope, faith, and perspective.
Pray us back to life.
Hello, Enthusiasts! I’m a writer specializing in world religions. With M.Div. in hand, I’ve spent the past couple of decades exploring Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, and Shinto, as well as traditional Incan practice. Check out some of my other Religion and Spirituality stories here.
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