Go To Dark Gethsemane

Even after all these centuries, there is still a garden called Gethsemane on the hill across a valley from Jerusalem. It has been walled off and protected from the modern world. When I entered the garden through a door in the stone walls, I immediately sensed the peace of this place. It is beauty and tranquility are ironic, because it is famous as a place where one man underwent great spiritual agony. His torturous physical agony was still ahead of him at Pilate's seat and on the streets of Jerusalem and at Golgotha. At Gethsemane, he underwent a wrenching struggle to accept the bitter cup that was before him.

There is now a church next to Gethsemane. It is called the "Church of all Nations" and also the "Church of the Agony." It was built in the 1920s, so it's fairly recent.



It is called the Church of the Agony because when you go inside, you find a piece of bedrock where Jesus may have sweated out his struggle the night before his death. It is called the Church of all Nations for at least 2 reasons:

First and most practically, because churches from many different countries financed the building, which was telling after World War I.


Second, because of the depiction of Christ above the church doors as the mediator for humanity. Christ is clothed in red, kneeling and looking up above him to his Father, who is surrounded by angels. To Jesus' left and right are people. Those to his left are the poor and troubled - a woman weeping and carrying the body of her dead child is the most striking figure in this group. Those to his right are the powerful - a soldier, a philosopher, a rich man, all kneeling and bowing their heads. In his agony he is lifting up the sorrows of all nations - both the sorrows that come through power and those that come through weakness.

A verse from Hebrews 5:7 is in inscribed in Latin across the front of the church:

preces supplicationesque cum clamore valido et lacrymis offerens exauditus est pro sua reverentia

"Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence."

I think of a different verse from Hebrews when I see this mosaic (4:15-16):

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace,
that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

Here's another hymn about Gethsemane (click the link for an instrumental guitar arrangement):

Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see, watch with Him one bitter hour,
Turn not from His griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.