Martin LeFevre: Jesus in the Garden

Meditations - From Martin LeFevre in California

Jesus in the Garden

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Churches Whittled Down

Even as a child, the story of Jesus sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane captured my imagination. And even as a teenager, I doubted the Catholic/Christian version of that event.

Though rare, humans can sweat blood. There is a rare condition, called hematidrosis, which results in the excretion of blood in the sweat. It happens under conditions of great emotional stress. Tiny capillaries in the sweat glands rupture, mixing blood with perspiration.

The mind is very powerful, and can do all kinds of things to the body, including making wounds on the hands and feet (stigmata), in a pathological imitation of Jesus’ crucifixion. There is nothing religious about it.

For Christians, the suffering of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is epitomized by his perspiring blood, which “makes the passion of Christ beyond all comprehension.” But that’s nonsense.

Jesus sweated blood not for our sins—“to save you from eternal damnation”--but because he was human. Facing the failure of his mission, knowing what he would soon endure, he went through enormous anguish.

The stress was so great that small blood vessels around the sweat glands constricted. When he came to terms with his fate, and his extreme anxiety passed, the blood vessels dilated to the point of rupture. Since he was sweating profusely, the perspiration pushed the blood to the surface, where it came out as droplets of blood mixed with sweat.

Given that that is almost certainly what happened to Jesus, we are confronted with the falsehood of his deification. After all, why would Jesus, who Christian doctrine says knew all along he was to die on the cross for our sins, experience such extreme anxiety and stress that it would cause him to sweat blood?

The whole edifice of Christianity crumbles under the minimal weight of reason and insight. The theological dodge that Jesus was both human and God only begs the question. Why was Jesus so unprepared?

He was unprepared that night in the Garden of Gethsemane because his entire mission had been turned upside down. Jesus went from a jubilant, prophecy-realizing entry into Jerusalem, to the darkest night of the soul in the Garden. Something had gone terribly wrong, and he full well knew it.

Jesus could have fled the Garden, but he saw things through. Not because he was meant to die on the cross, but because he could not and would not run. That was his greatness. Rather than face what really happened, his disciples, and millions of people down through the centuries, glorified their guilt and projected it onto him.

Jesus mission failed, and not even he understood why. That’s why he cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

To turn Jesus into a divinity, much less make him co-equal with God, however one conceives God (the Trinity in Catholic doctrine) is, to my mind and heart, blasphemy.

The psychological ploy was to make Jesus, and the way he lived, unreachable by ordinary human beings, necessitating intermediaries of priests, bishops, popes, and preachers down through the ages.

After all, if Jesus was “God made man,” who took our sins onto his scourged back upon the cross, we don’t have to take complete responsibility for ourselves, and for humanity, as he did.

It’s sunset of a chilly, windy, and highly variable day. At mid-afternoon, there was thunder and sunshine at the same time.

I sit under the great sycamore at the smaller of two creeks in town, which, after all the precipitation recently, has become an undulating waterway of immense power.

There is an intense sky to the west. It’s almost black in the foreground, and variable gray in the background. Streaks of rain fall in the distance, and a ribbon of white light hugs the horizon.

Unearthly hues infuse the dark clouds as the timeless minutes pass after the sun goes down. A hawk flies high overhead. There is a palpable sense of beauty and mystery. The mind grows completely quiet, and content-consciousness suddenly seems strange.

The love that permeates the cosmos can only flow into the world through the awakened consciousness of a human being. And the human brain can only awaken through the negation of content-consciousness in intense, but passive watchfulness.

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net . The author welcomes comments.

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