The Garden at Night

a sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois, on Palm Sunday, March 16, 2008

Last fall, my wife Linda and I and a couple of close friends went for a walk in the Missouri Botanical Gardens over in South Saint Louis.  It’s nothing unusual for us to do that:  We’ve walked the paths of the Garden on many days and in many seasons and we always enjoy the beauty of the landscape, the colors and scents and variety of the plants, the general peacefulness of the place.  The paved walkways flow up and down the gentle hills; numerous water features gurgle and foam.  The English woodland, the Japanese Garden, the Climatron’s tropical rainforest all call to us in slightly different voices, inviting us to enjoy nature with its best and most-manicured face on.  When we go, we ask ourselves why we don’t go more often. 

So it’s nothing unusual for us to go for a walk in the Garden, except that this time it happened to be after dark.  And the Garden at Night is a different prospect than the Garden during the day.

Oh, sure, the carved stone art objects from Africa were well-lit in their displays at the edge of the bushes.  The Chihuly glass shimmered in deep recesses, white light pouring through its swirls of color.  Even some of the walkways were lit by those little low-voltage lighting systems - nothing too bright, just accents along the path so it wouldn’t be too scary to explore the Garden at night.

It was interesting, though, this night walk, with friends that I trusted, in a place I knew well enough, that I knew was surrounded by high walls and sturdy fences to keep the real world at bay while we strolled in the dark.  No real reason to have a sense of foreboding, no real reason to jump at a few unidentifiable night sounds, no real reason to begin to see dark forms moving along with us at the edges of the visible world.  Oh, yes, the Garden at night can be a different prospect than the Garden during the day.

It is with this as background that I want to approach a particular Holy Week topic, that being the night Jesus is said to have spent in the Garden of Gethsemane with a few of his closest friends.  That night in the Garden is skipped over in many modern-day American Christian churches.  Church growth consultants now counsel that people no longer want to hear about all that shameful, painful stuff that happens during the middle of the Holy Week story: the doubt, the questions, the wavering faith.  Much better to start the week celebrating the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and to end the week happily proclaiming the ecstasy of Easter the next Sunday:  in the American vernacular, it’s all good; no fear; don’t worry, be happy.  If you want to grow a church, the consultants say, you best skip right on over the night in the Garden, the arrest and betrayal, the trial and crucifixion, those long days of uncertainty and loss. 

This not being your typical American Christian church, I think it’s important to face up to the hard parts of the story, the hard parts of our traditions, the hard parts of our lives.  So at the risk of not growing the church at least for today, I’d like us to take a little walk in the Garden and see what we find, see if we hear any night sounds or witness any dark forms, see if we can tell if there are still night runners out and about these nights - those night runners we heard Senator Obama mention in his book, Dreams from My Father, that we read from a few minutes ago.

Let’s start with that word, Gethsemane - the place itself.  The author of Mark uses the term ‘Gethsemane’ alone, meaning literally an olive oil press or vat but probably in this context referring to a stand of olive trees.  Matthew and Luke simply say, “they came to a place,” presumably the same as Mark’s Gethsemane.  It is only the last gospel, John, that calls this Gethsemane a Garden, and that is the image that has stuck somehow.  Whether the place was an actual Garden or not seems immaterial, especially since the historical veracity of any of these tales is open to question - it is not the plain fact but rather the poetry of the narrative that we are almost always after in this little book. 

At any rate, and as I’ve said before, the trajectory of the four gospels is such that Mark’s Jesus, coming so early in the written tradition (Mark’s gospel having been written about 70 c.e., some forty years after Jesus’ death) - Mark’s Jesus seems pretty much human - a special human to be sure but still a human - who learns, who grows, who suffers.  By contrast, by the time of the gospel of John (written another twenty-five years later, about 95 c.e., some sixty-five years after Jesus died) John writes of a Jesus who is almost certainly God already, in control of himself and his surroundings, all-knowing, no need for growth or learning.  In John’s gospel, Jesus has already accepted all that he knows is about to happen.  In Mark’s narrative - let’s face it - at this point, Jesus is something of a mess, but give him a break:  the power of Rome as well as the power of the Jerusalem Temple are arrayed against him and he is during this week a hunted man.  His friends are no help; indeed, one has already turned him in to the authorities.  It seems the only task left to Jesus that night in the Garden is to deal with and get through his strong emotions and to learn to give of himself freely and to accept his fate voluntarily. 

So it is not John’s Jesus I relate to - the all-knowing, the all-powerful, the masterfully in-control messianic figure.  Rather, it is Mark’s character who speaks most strongly to me:  that troubled, worrisome, struggling son of humanity left alone in the dark.  That is something I have experience with, and I imagine you might have experience with it as well.  And that is the experience I want to focus on here while we are still together in the light of day.

The Jesus of those early traditions spent a tough night trying to keep it together, trying to find solace, trying to stay grounded in the face of overwhelming odds.  The New Revised Standard translation of Mark we read earlier says Jesus was ‘distressed and agitated.’  No joke.  Been there, done that.  The connection Jesus has had to the God he had spoken to as a son would speak to a father seems for all the world to be breaking apart, and the cracks in that relationship allow doubt to be sown, allow uncertainty to take root, allow fear to blossom and flourish.

When they enter the Garden, Jesus says to his disciples, “Friends, I know this is not like me, but I am scared to death!  Could you wait here for me while I go ahead a little bit and try for a few minutes to get a grip on these wild and crazy emotions of mine?”  He goes off to pray in distress and agitation; what do the friends do?  Why, they promptly go to sleep.  Jesus comes back, still distressed and agitated, and scolds them, “Couldn’t you stay awake with me for only an hour?  I hope you never have to face anything this hard.  Your spirit sure seems willing, but your flesh is awfully weak.”  Jesus goes away two more times and each time the friends go right to sleep.  Each time there is no one there for him.  Each time, he is left alone in the Garden at night, to deal with his distress and agitation by himself.

Surely we have all felt alone in the middle of the night. Surely we have all sensed the presence of those night runners of one sort or another.  Surely we have all spent at least a portion of a night - if not two or three - in distress and agitation.

What is it that lurks in the darkness at the edge of night for you?  What is the distress and agitation about?  What is the nature of your night runners?

For me, the most innocuous of night visitors are the worries - the laundry list of to-do’s, my concerns for those I care about, or blandly wishing for world peace.  But some nights, some nights, the visitors are far darker.

Some nights are highjacked by regret - regret of things I’ve said or done that I wish I could take back, regret of things I wish I’d said or done but let the time pass for lack of courage or caring.  Sometimes I have a visceral reaction to these feelings of regret;  when I remember some errant word that escaped from my lips, some mean-spirited comment that pierced an innocent heart, I feel a blow to the gut so real that I have actually heard myself moan or cry out.  Memories of my lifetime of betrayals both large and small have similar effect;  I have ended up bent over with head hung low, sometimes only figuratively but more often than I like to admit, literally. 

Other nights, it’s shame that visits.  For one thing, I am ashamed that I haven’t lived up to expectations - those handed me by parents, teachers, or friends long, long ago;  more recently those imposed by society;  but worse, much worse, I have too often not lived up to my own expectations.  You might tell me, in an attempt to comfort, that my expectations are too high.  You might say it’s no shame to be human, and as such imperfect - no shame to be sinful, in a manner of speaking.  In my life I have been fully human in that regard:  I have been exceedingly imperfect, and I have been sinful, willingly and willfully so at times, and shame loves to accompany those images of failure when they drift in through the drawn curtains.

Fear is another unbidden nighttime companion of mine.  I can play all kinds of ‘what-if’ games in my head as I roll around in my bed:  What if that pain gets worse?  What if my kids aren’t okay?  What if that diagnosis was right and my prognosis is grim?  What if I lose everything I ever had, everything I ever loved?  What if I’m not enough?  Fear creeps in during the darkest part of the night and makes it that much darker;  will I ever see the light again?  I’m afraid not.  I’m scared to death that this is it.  I can’t stand the suspense.  I just wish the worst would go ahead and happen because I know it’s gonna come sooner or later.

 

Regret, shame, fear.  Memories of past failures, dread of an uncertain future.  What are the night runners that haunt your dreams or keep you awake nights?

Of course, we know how the Jesus story progresses, and he was right to be distressed and agitated that night in the Garden:  his immediate future included betrayal by those closest to him, a mock trial presided over by an unfeeling government bureaucrat, a tortuous death at the hands of a sadistic state apparatus.  Not many of us have had to face such extremities of experience. 

But we have had things to face.  We have had, and we will have.  While we’re on this earth, nobody lives a perfect life, and in the end, nobody gets out of here alive.  And this is the week in the religious calendar that all those difficult emotions are released from the recesses of our hearts and are spoken aloud, given their freedom, and exposed in the liturgy and the ritual and the practice of gathered communities across the globe.

That is, unless the church growth consultants hold sway and we skip over this week of doubt and pain, of shame, fear, uncertainty.  And maybe the growth guys are right - it is hard.  It is painful. It’s not very inspirational to nurture a sense of foreboding.  It’s not very much fun to remember the unidentifiable night sounds that filled us with terror in the first pace.  It can be flat out panic-inducing to think back on those dark forms moving along with us at the edges of the visible world. 

And yet.  And yet. 

Unless and until we are able to expose and examine that foreboding and terror and panic; unless and until we are able to turn and face the shadows in the darkness, we will undoubtedly carry them unbidden and be driven by them unawares.  And that will keep our connections to our fellows, the universe, and our own selves tenuous at best.

And now for the most difficult part of this week’s message, one that the church growth people knew years ago:  there is no quick resolution of this pain, this agony, this distress, this agitation.  The dark plotline continues to play out all the rest of this holy week, leaving us alone to consider the meaning of the story, leaving us alone to suffer in the darkness each and every night, leaving us alone to the mercy (or lack of it) of our own night runners.  It is - at least on the religious calendar - not until the sun comes up next Sunday morning that comfort becomes available.  My best suggestion to you for relief in this difficult time - since the Garden at night is a different prospect than the Garden during the day - is to take yourself to whatever Garden you can find during the day and, once there, take the time to give thanks for the approach of Spring, the return of the sun, the gathering warmth.  At night, you may want to gather your courage, listen for strange sounds, look into the shadows, and face any night runners as soon as they appear.  Once faced, you may be surprised at how quickly they flee. 

And how good Easter will feel next Sunday.  Because Easter will happen once again.

 

So may it be.