The Silence of Gethsemane

by Michel Benoît

  They would listen avidly – as wives and mothers, the law of the heart struck a chord with them.

  One day, Martha burst into the room. Seeing her sister Mary sitting at my feet, drinking in my words, she rebuked me: with so many guests in the house, didn’t I care that she had been left to wait on everyone and prepare all the parts of the meal? With a smile I told her not to be so worried and distracted by things: by listening to me, Mary had chosen the better part, which could not be taken away from her.

  Nicodemus also came to see me, bringing a man called Joseph, who was from the Jewish village of Arimathea, and who like him was a member of the Sanhedrin. They confirmed what the Judaean feared: people in high places were troubled by my behaviour. Yet individual Pharisees within the Council had differing opinions: Hillel’s disciples preferred to allow a colleague to interpret the Law as he wished, while those who followed Shammai were outraged by what they saw as my liberal approach. As for the Sadducees, as long as I wasn’t critical of the Temple and its form of worship and didn’t cause trouble in Jerusalem, unrest in far-off Galilee was of little interest to them.

  Nicodemus made me promise to follow our friend the Judaean’s advice, and not draw attention to myself while I was in Jerusalem.

  So I took to spending part of the night in the Garden of Gethsemane, which played its part by being dark and deserted. On the other side of the Kidron Valley, the great walls of the Temple were bathed in spring moonlight just as they are tonight. I could hear the murmur of the festive crowds quite clearly, and gave myself up to memories of my childhood.

  Ever since the Law was handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai, the Jews have stopped asking questions about God. Petrified at the thought of the Last Judgement, they regard this all-powerful and distant lawmaker as the supreme arbiter. Yet in their oracles, for a long time the prophets have painted a quite different picture of God, that of a deeply compassionate father who is moved and even distressed by his children’s suffering.

  Steeped in a Mediterranean culture where the father figure has the power of life and death over his family, haunted by fear of the Law, the Jews have eventually lost sight of God’s other side, which the prophets describe in such a circumspect way. During my long nights of solitary prayer, it was to him, father and mother at once, that I opened my heart.

  In the presence of God’s loving kindness, I saw how vital it was to return to childhood, the childhood of hearts and minds.

  During my first year of travelling in Galilee, having left the fear and trembling proclaimed by John the Baptist behind, I had made happiness the ethos of a new law, a breath of fresh air with which I invited the Jews to fill their lungs. But now I had to go further, demonstrate that they would only achieve this happiness by totally transforming their everyday relationship with God. A child wasn’t merely that unfinished human being who was looked down on throughout the Roman Empire, and who was worth nothing – in fact who didn’t exist until he or she reached adulthood.

  I began to see that this new law would have unforeseen consequences: to attain God’s plenitude, people would have to change, become like little children again.

  In my Kingdom, the child was the young prince.

  I celebrated the Passover at Lazarus’s house, carving and sharing the paschal lamb with his neighbours at nightfall, as was customary. The grandeur of the age-old rituals, the sumptuously laden table lit by the menorah, the baskets of unleavened bread, the plates of bitter herbs, the traditional dialogue between the father and son, the two cups of wine passed round among the members of the assembled family, the singing of Psalms, all this filled me with boundless delight…

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but this would probably be my last Passover.

  At dawn the next day, the beginning of the week, we set off back to Galilee.

  33

  The memories of my second year of teaching are still buzzing around inside my head. The people of Galilee were overjoyed to see me again. Often I found myself surrounded, almost crushed by the crowds. On more than one occasion I had to ask my disciples to keep a boat ready, so I could stand in it and still be heard by the vast numbers who gathered on the shore to listen with an enjoyment that was plain to see.

  When I first began preaching, still in awe of John the Baptist, I had tried to put Hillel’s words into practice: “If I am not for myself, then who will be?” Now free to be myself quite unrestrainedly, I remembered what he had also said: “But if I am only for myself, then who am I?”

  I no longer existed for myself, but for them. A prophet’s life is not his own, it belongs to the people among whom he was born, from whom he distances himself only in order to draw closer to them. I have never sought fame, nor to be loved for myself, yet I felt a deep emotional attachment to these destitute people, a feeling they heartily reciprocated.

  The reaction of those who came to listen to me at Lazarus’s house prompted me to start teaching in parables again. What did it matter if I wasn’t understood by priests locked away inside entrenched opinions, or by self-important disciples! I knew the common people would hear me, because I spoke their language.

  I must admit that the hostility shown towards my earliest teaching by a section of the Pharisees wasn’t wholly unfounded. Inner purity is a private, individual matter; my Beatitudes and the law of the heart now had to enter the public domain, the community outside of which no Jew can reach an understanding of himself or apprehend what destiny holds for him.

  During the course of my different healings, it occurred to me that rebirth is a form of new creation: the young man in Nain, Jairus’s daughter, the paralytic at the pool in Beth-zatha, the repentant prostitute… after meeting me, these people would never be the same again. Being healed had brought a new order to their lives.

  I had to draw attention to the connection between rebirth and divine creation. The Jewish Law holds that God the Creator is the supreme ruler of the world, which he created out of nothing. So rebirth could only mean taking your place in a universe that was under the sway of God’s kingship. Yet the phrase Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven doesn’t appear anywhere in the sacred texts: to say that God is the ruler of his creation (and of Israel) is one thing, but claiming that a “Kingdom of God” exists somewhere is quite another. Ever since the Jewish people became dispersed, the word kingdom has acquired political overtones, a whiff of restoration that sustains the desire for rebellion that lies buried inside every Jew.

  Was I empathizing with the mostly ill-defined longings of these people in order to be better understood by them? I began referring to the happiness I promised them as the “coming of the Kingdom of God”. I thought that all I needed to do was fill this empty shell, this rarely used expression, with something completely unequivocal that couldn’t be appropriated for political purposes.

  If I keep watch tonight, waiting for the end to come, it could be that in making this choice I assumed that the people around me were capable of understanding what my intentions were.

  This Kingdom had to become part of everyday life for the Jewish people. In Israel, the tradition of mealtimes is one that breathes life into the community. The sumptuous food, the copious quantities of wine are an excuse to enjoy each other’s company, a group of individuals who are very different from one another yet who are brought together by table fellowship. A momentary happiness, yes, but the very real one of taking our rightful place at a banquet where the host accords each guest his share of food and honour, so no one feels forgotten or ignored.

  I began by telling the story of the king who gave a banquet to celebrate the marriage of his son, and sent his servants to call those who had been invited. Or the bridegroom who asked his friends to stand outside the room where the wedding feast was taking place, holding lamps to light the way for the guests… but what if the king’s guests refused to come? Or the bridegroom’s friends let their lamps go out before the guests arrived?

  What they lacked in education, my listeners made up for with sound comm
on sense. For them, their wedding day was a once-in-a-lifetime event for which they had burdened themselves with enormous debts so as to make it a special occasion. In that case, they replied, if the guests won’t come, the king should invite anyone to the feast, even people who happen to be walking past! As for the friends of the bridegroom who let their lamps go out, they should be made to stay outside the banqueting hall while the couple celebrate inside!

  I went on: the Kingdom of God is like a field where a farmer accidentally unearths a chest full of gold while he is ploughing. He immediately hurries off and sells all he owns so he can buy the field. Viewed in another way, it’s a form of mortgage on the future, like sowing seed. The farmers sow the seed then gather in ripe grain and couch grass alike. It’s only afterwards (when it’s too late) that they separate the good from the bad and burn the weeds.

  I wanted them to understand that to enter the Kingdom is to turn your back on the past and embark on a different venture, that of a new way of life. The law of the heart involves a gamble. You know what you are leaving behind, but not what lies ahead, or whether you will find it equally satisfying. Not only that, we live in a world where everything is mixed together, the good with the bad. For if the Kingdom promises harmony, this world brings only discord and confrontation.

  My parables opened up old wounds among my audience. There was one question that they asked incessantly – when will we see this Kingdom? As John the Baptist had done, I said that it was nigh, that the time was fast approaching. But when, they exhorted me? Will it be soon, how much longer must we wait? They were so impatient, filled with such despair, such yearning for change that I eventually said:

  “There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come with power.”

  So it would come to this generation! When I saw how excited this made them I realized I might have gone too far. But their elation was such that there was no going back. So I tried to qualify these parables by telling others: the Kingdom of God is like yeast mixed in with the dough, it takes all night to make it rise! Or a single seed that someone sows in a field and which eventually, but much later, grows into a great tree where the birds of the air make nests in its branches. I wanted them to realize that the timescale of the Kingdom is not the same as our own. In his lifetime, none of the prophets saw the seeds he sowed grow into ears of ripe corn rippling in the breeze.

  So, was the end of the world imminent, would it come soon or later? I would pay a high price for the ambivalent replies I gave them.

  After a long period of travelling punctuated by teaching, we made our way along the lake to Capernaum. As was now usual, I went on ahead by myself. Behind me my disciples were engaged in a vigorous discussion, snatches of which reached me on the breeze.

  When we got to the town, I turned round and asked them:

  “What were you arguing about on the way?”

  Clearly embarrassed, at first they wouldn’t tell me. Eventually they admitted that throughout the journey they had been arguing about which of them was the greatest. I was so astonished that I had to sit down. So when I said “Kingdom”, they had taken this to mean “power”! From all my parables, the only thing that stuck in their minds was that they would see the Kingdom of God come with power in their lifetime. To them, this meant I had committed myself to restoring a Jewish state straight away, that they would share the spoils. Weren’t my healings an enduring sign of my strength? The people were with me, power was within my grasp. And besides, why would I have singled them out as the Twelve if I weren’t planning to appoint each of them as the head of one of the twelve tribes of Israel, this fragmented nation that would rebuild itself under my kingship?

  These few scanty facts preoccupied their overworked minds. Among the whirlwind that raged inside their heads, one question stood out: which of them would sit at my right hand, take the place of honour?

  There wasn’t only a lack of understanding between us, but a yawning abyss. After all these months I still hadn’t managed to get my message across! I called over a little child who was walking past and stood him in the middle of these Twelve pretenders to the throne.

  “Whoever among you wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

  But their God was the God of the Messiah, and the only kingdom they were capable of conceiving was that of a Messiah, in other words a political kingdom. While for me, this child who was toddling around in front of us was the very image of what I wanted to be in God’s eyes. Without another word I ruffled his hair and sent him back to his games.

  The Twelve and I no longer had the same God.

  We continued to travel together, me leading the way. But we were no longer on the same road.

  34

  This incident proved that the most politically aware among my listeners were reflecting on the nature of the Kingdom of God as much as on the moment when it would come. To the former Essenes it meant the end of a corrupt clergy who were leading Israel into darkness. For the devotees of Zealot violence it would bring a drastic change in Jewish society in both social and political terms. But for all the factions there would first be an armed revolt for which they had to prepare themselves, followed by a great bloodletting.

  The Pharisees in Galilee, meanwhile, had managed to decipher my parables without any difficulty. The Kingdom was the Jewish people, who had been invited to a feast and were gathered together round the host in happiness. This host (or this king), was the One God of Israel. Like at all banquets there would be a seating plan, a structure – and this was the Law. Even if the metaphors I used seemed unorthodox to them, they didn’t depart completely from the prophetic tradition, so the Pharisees could bear with them. But they raised one major question that refused to go away, regarding the frontiers of this new Kingdom. Exactly who would be invited to this banquet? Who would be allowed into the room where the marriage feast was held? Only Jews, or would there be Gentiles too? Or… was I suggesting that the Gentiles would eventually take the Jews’ place, as my parable about the king seemed to imply?

  This, I sensed, was the perennial concern of those whose role it was to safeguard the identity of the Jewish people. If we still existed, it was because we had built a wall between ourselves and everyone else – namely, the Law of Moses. It was an invisible wall that wound its way from northern Galilee to the south of Judaea, and which every Jew in the Diaspora carried within him, a place of shelter where he could continue to be a Jew even if he wasn’t in Israel. So was the rabbi saying that one day God would demolish this wall and allow anyone into the citadel of his Kingdom?

  The Syrian woman had forced me to concede that salvation wasn’t restricted to Jews. But my encounter with her had taken place in a foreign land, and word hadn’t filtered through to the area around the lake. On their home ground, I was loath to raise the subject in front of men whose outstanding devotion to the Law I respected in other ways.

  We were now in Capernaum. Here, in the town where I was born, I would have to take a stand in front of the Pharisees who had educated me, as well as my former neighbours.

  A major centre for collecting tolls, the town is home to a garrison of mostly non-Roman auxiliaries, whom the army employs to man outposts that are a long way from Rome, and who are less hostile towards Jews than the Romans themselves. Walking towards me I saw a centurion, accompanied by the usual group of Pharisees, among whom I recognized some of those I had clashed with from the start.

  He came up to me respectfully, and begged me in slightly halting Greek:

  “Sir, my pais is lying at home in terrible distress, and is going to die…”

  He called me kyrie, or “sir” – so it was the man he was addressing, not the rabbi. And he used the word pais, which can mean “boy” as well as “servant”. But what did that matter, it was obvious what he wanted: he was begging me to heal someone who was close to him. I was moved by his anguish, which was plain to see, but he was a Gentile, so I couldn’t go to his house with
out making myself unclean. As with the Syrian woman, I reminded him of this:

  “You want me to come and cure him?”

  The centurion must have been stationed in the town for quite some time, because he seemed to know immediately why I had refused. I will never forget what he said, nor the way in which he said it.

  “Kyrie, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only speak the word and my pais will be healed!”

  Once more the lava of the wilderness surged up within me; I was shaken to the depths of my being. Like all those who had overcome the obstacles of shame or social convention, he believed in the power of my God, he was calling on life itself. I was about to tell him that his dear one had already been healed when he went on:

  “For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me, and I say to one ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another ‘Come!’ and he comes…”

  I stood in the middle of the street, rooted to the spot with amazement in full view of the people who had gathered round. Did he appreciate the significance of what he was saying? He had told me that he knew exactly who I was: a man like him, under the authority of my creator, yet capable, as he was, of mediating between God’s sovereign power and what duty required of me – which was to relieve human suffering. Could I cure people from a distance? Other healers had proved they could. But someone who had the insight to understand the precise nature of my relationship with God, which enabled me to heal people, no, I hadn’t come across that, not since I was by the Jordan. So with all my heart I told him this, then turned to the Pharisees: