The Garden and the Fire in the Courtyard

The singing was still in their ears when they came down out of the city gate, across the little stream in the valley, and up among the olive trees on the other side. There was a garden on that slope of the Mount of Olives, with an old stone press in it for crushing olives into oil, and the place was called Gethsemane, which means the oil press. He had taken them there many times before. Judas knew it as well as any of them. It was late, and the moon was full, the way it always is at Passover. He said to his followers, “Sit here while I pray. And pray yourselves, that you do not come into testing.” Then he took Peter and James and John a little further in with him, and something came over him there that they had never seen in three years of walking behind him. He was in great distress and trouble, and he did not hide it from them.

He said to the three of them: “My soul is very sad — sad enough to die. Stay here, and stay awake with me.” Then he went on a little way by himself, about as far as a man can throw a stone, and knelt down, and then went right down on his face on the ground. And he prayed. “Abba, Father — everything is possible for you. Take this cup away from me. But not what I want. What you want.” Abba is what a small child in that country called his father. It is one of the first words a baby there learns to say. A messenger from heaven came to him and made him strong. And he prayed harder, and his sweat fell to the ground like drops of blood.

Then he got up and came back to the three of them, and found them asleep. They were worn out with grief. He said to Peter, “Simon — are you asleep? Could you not stay awake with me for one hour? Stay awake, and pray, so that you do not come into testing. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” He went away and prayed the same thing a second time. “My Father, if this cup cannot pass by unless I drink it, then let what you want be done.” And he came back, and they were asleep again. Their eyes were so heavy they could not hold them open, and when he spoke to them they did not know what to say to him. He left them and went and prayed the same words a third time.

The third time he came back to them he said: “Sleep on now. Take your rest. That is enough — the hour has come. Look: the Son of Man is being handed over into the hands of sinners. Get up. Let us go. The one who is handing me over is here.” And down among the trees, coming up the path out of the valley, they saw lights.

Judas had brought a crowd with him: soldiers, and temple police sent by the chief priests, with lanterns and torches and swords and clubs. He had known exactly where to bring them, because he had sat in that garden more times than he could count. Jesus did not wait among the trees for them to find him. He walked out to meet them and said, “Who are you looking for?” “Jesus of Nazareth.” “I am he.” And the whole crowd of them stepped backward and went down on the ground. He waited, and asked them again who they were looking for, and they said the same thing again. “I told you: I am he. So if it is me you want, let these men go.”

Judas had given them a signal beforehand — the one I kiss is the man. He came straight up to him and said, “Rabbi.” And he kissed him. “Friend, do what you came here to do. Judas — are you handing over the Son of Man with a kiss?” Then they put their hands on him and took hold of him. And the men around him saw what was happening and said, “Lord — shall we strike with the sword?” Peter did not wait for the answer. He had a sword, and he pulled it out and swung it at the chief priest’s servant — a man named Malchus — and cut off his ear. “Put your sword back where it belongs. Everybody who takes up the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I could not ask my Father, and he would send me more than twelve armies of messengers, this minute? The cup my Father has given me — am I not to drink it? Let it go this far.” And he reached out and touched the man’s ear, and healed him. It was the last time any of them saw him heal anybody.

Then he said to the men who had come out after him — chief priests, and captains of the temple guard, and elders: “Am I leading a rebellion, that you come out after me with swords and clubs? Day after day I was sitting in the temple teaching, and you never put a hand on me. But this is your hour, and the power of the dark.” They tied his hands. And every one of his followers left him standing there and ran away into the night.

The first place they took him was the house of a man called Annas. He had been chief priest himself years before, and his sons after him, and Caiaphas was his son-in-law; nothing happened in that family that Annas did not know about. He asked Jesus about his followers, and about what he had been teaching. “I have said everything out in the open, where the whole world could hear it. I taught in the meeting houses and in the temple, where everybody comes together. I never said one thing in a corner. Why are you asking me? Ask the people who heard me — they know what I said.” One of the guards standing by hit him across the face. “Is that any way to answer the chief priest?” “If I said something wrong, then say what was wrong with it. But if I said it right, why do you hit me?” Annas sent him on, still tied, across to the house of Caiaphas, where the council was waiting in the middle of the night — chief priests, elders, teachers of the law.

Two of them had not run all the way. Peter followed at a distance, and so did another of his followers, who was known in that house and got Peter in through the gate. It was a cold night. In the middle of the courtyard the servants and the guards had lit a charcoal fire and were standing around it warming their hands, and Peter went and stood in with them, to see how it would end.

Inside, the council was hunting for something to charge him with — something they could put him to death for. They could not find it. Witness after witness came in and said things about him, and no two of them said the same thing. Some said they had heard him say he would pull the temple down and build it again in three days, and even those two could not tell it the same way. All through it he said nothing at all. At last the chief priest stood up in the middle of them. “Have you no answer? Do you hear what these men are saying about you?” He was still silent. So the chief priest said to him: “I put you on oath by the living God. Tell us — are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” “I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” The chief priest tore his own clothes, the way a man did when he had heard something terrible. “What do we need witnesses for now? You heard it yourselves. What do you say?” And they all said the same thing: he deserves to die. Then some of them spat at him, and covered his face, and hit him, and told him to prophesy and say who had done it. The guards took him away and struck him too.

Out in the courtyard Peter was sitting in the firelight, and the light was on his face. One of the servant girls of the house came by and looked at him, and then looked at him again, and said, “You were with him too — with Jesus, the man from Nazareth.” “I do not know him. I do not know what you are talking about.” He got up and went out toward the gateway. And somewhere in the city a rooster crowed.

Another girl saw him standing there and told the people around her that this man was one of them, and Peter swore that he was not. One of the chief priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear had been cut off, looked hard at him and asked whether he had not seen him in the garden that night, and Peter said no. Then, about an hour later, the men at the fire came back at him again. “You certainly are one of them. You are from Galilee — anybody can hear it the moment you open your mouth.” And Peter began calling curses down on himself and swearing that he was telling the truth. “Man, I do not know what you are saying. I do not know this man you are talking about.” And while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed a second time. And across the courtyard, in among the guards, the Lord turned around and looked straight at Peter. Peter remembered. Before a rooster crows twice, you will say three times that you never knew me. He went outside, and he cried and cried.

When it got light, the whole council met again and had him brought in, to make the night’s work official. “If you are the Christ, tell us.” “If I tell you, you will not believe me; and if I ask you a question, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be sitting at the right hand of the power of God.” “Are you the Son of God, then?” “You say that I am.” “What do we want any more witnesses for? We have heard it ourselves, out of his own mouth.” So they tied him up again and led him out through the waking streets to the Roman governor. They could not put a man to death themselves. Only Rome could do that.

And Judas, when he saw that they had condemned him, was sorry — sorry in a way he could not carry. He took the silver back to the chief priests in the temple and tried to give it to them. “I did wrong. I handed over an innocent man.” “What is that to us? That is your business.” He threw the silver down on the temple floor and went out. And he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests picked the coins up off the floor and said it was not right to put blood money in the temple treasury, so they bought a field with it to bury strangers in. People in Jerusalem called that field the Field of Blood for years afterward. It was early morning. The city was waking up for the feast, and the smoke was going up from the temple, and outside the governor’s house a crowd was already beginning to gather.