Reflections with the Rev. 

Presented in the Passion Narratives is an object I believe is often overlooked, greatly underrated, and deserving of deeper exploration. 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 that, under ordinary circumstances, would be serene and peaceful. Gardens are places of shalom, reprieves from the chaos and outer darkness that often plague the world—places of order, intention, and vibrant beauty.

But 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 revealed to us by Matthew and Mark, there is a pressing weight the likes of which only olives know. Olives are 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 Gethsemane means: olive press. I wonder if Christ ever considered Himself as an olive—His sweat becoming as blood (recorded only by Luke), a fact that makes the Christ wholly 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 sometimes view with suspicion, yet it carries profound implications for a king with no country, a priest without a temple, and a prophet whose words have been rejected.

Of course, this is not the Johannine Jesus. 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 see only one side of the story—a story they profoundly wish they could alter. They too feel pressed, and this weight is more than mere heaviness; it is crushing. It is eviscerating. It is the weight of death, but it is also the pressure that gives us olive oil, produces diamonds, scatters apostles, and breaks the body of the Messiah. This is the weight that has forged for us sin and salvation, justification and the fall, death and everlasting life.

Thanks be to God that the Stone which the builders rejected is more than a cornerstone; it is a weight-bearing stone that refuses to sink, no matter how much downward force is applied. Thanks be to God that the one appointed for the task only He could fulfill was willing to endure a garden, to endure being pressed, to reveal to those 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, anxiety, 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! And more than us: all of creation. Our garden moments manifest when we resist tyranny and 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. For in a different garden, we find an empty tomb, where the pressure of a rolled-away stone troubles only those who try to keep the reign of God locked away from a world in need..