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Have you ever been terribly alone,
-- even when other people were all around you?
Perhaps you were walking down a street,
totally absorbed in some personal crisis,
and, despite people coming and going beside you
it seemed there was no one to whom you could go
for encouragement and counsel.
The business of decision-making
is often a lonely matter.
Sometimes you lie awake at night,
when everyone else has gone to sleep.
And you go over in your mind
the worries and decisions of the day past
and of the one to come.
Late one evening
in the last week of his life,
Jesus and the disciples were walking together.
They were climbing a hill in the darkness.
Eventually they came to an olive orchard.

More precisely to a place
where olives are crushed for their oil.
When they came to the edge of the orchard
Jesus asked the disciples to remain there
while he spent some time in prayer.
Then he took three of them,
the inner three, Peter, James and John,
and together the four men went farther on
up the side of the hill a little way.
The inner three were special friends.
Peter had sworn an oath never to deny his master,
no matter who else did,
no matter what should happen as a result of it.
James and John had made a bold claim
that they were prepared to share with Jesus
whatever might happen to him anywhere.
The three men, Peter, James and John,
were the obvious men to be with Jesus
when he most needed the support of close friends.
He shared with them something of his terrible burden.
He told them that what was on his mind
was an issue so serious, so all-consuming, so worrisome,
that he would as soon be dead as deal with it.
In fact, death would be preferable to life
unless he found some relief from his anxiety.
And all he asked of his three friends
was their watchful presence with him.
He needed to know that they were nearby
while he struggled with his lonely decision-making.
The way before him seemed an obvious one,
-- and it was certain to lead to his death.
And so he prayed that some other way
might be found acceptable for him to take.

The depth of his desolation found words
in his plea for relief from his responsibility.
Yet hardly had his prayer been spoken
when he turned to God in obedience and trust.
"Not what I would like to do," he said
"but what you would have me do!"
Decision-making is a lonely business.
And the more serious the decision,
the lonelier it is in making it.
In the midst of his tormented indecision
he turned, naturally enough,
to his friends for support.
And they were sound asleep!
They were indifferent
to what was happening to him.
And seemingly unaware
of what was required of them.
And because they slept during the time of crisis,
they were disobedient to their brave promises.
Promises both of loyalty and of participation
in whatever might happen to him.
Each of three times Jesus came to his disciples
for support and encouragement.
And each of three times the disciples slept on.

The gospel of Mark
was written for a congregation
in which men and women were being harassed
by people hostile to the new faith.

The temptation in the church was to give in
during these times of crucial decision-making,
and to come to terms with the world.
In that way a Christian could escape persecution,
and perhaps even death as well.
In this account of Jesus in the garden
the church was shown how he prepared
for his hearings and trials
before those who were hostile to him.
He prepared for his later rejection
and humiliating experiences of all sorts
through prayer to the One he called Father.
As a result of his time with God in prayer
he faced the future in obedience and trust.
The Christian way to resist whatever opposes you,
according to Mark, is to be prayerful and vigilant.
The instruction to "watch and pray"
given to the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane
is an instruction to Christians everywhere and always.
These same words of Jesus
come with fresh urgency to the church today.
They are an appeal to disciples everywhere
to be aware of what is happening all around us.
And a call to recognize as our source of strength
a life of prayer.
This means, surely, that in our day
the greatest responsibility rests on those of us
who belong to his band of disciples.
You are like James and John, and I am like Peter
in that we have given publicly lifetime
pledges of loyalty and commitment to Christ.

He has found us sleeping,
when we ought to have been watchful and careful
of all the distractions on our loyalty to him.
He has found us sleeping,
and without a word in our defense,
when we ought to have been at prayer
for the strength we need to meet the crises
of faith and practice that confront us each day.
And we haven't been at prayer
because it is at once the most obvious
and the most difficult thing in the world to do.
__________

Jesus was isolated by the disciples.
He was left alone when he needed them most,
so that as companions they might face
a history-making crossroad together.
However, at the crossroad
the disciples had already begun
to look in one direction and Jesus in the other.
The misunderstanding of Jesus by his followers
in the olive orchard outside Jerusalem
was not a matter of harmless naivety.
It was then a matter of life and death,
-- for them as well as for him.
-- Amen.

Prayer

Mark 14:32-42

Mighty God, we remember Gethsemane.
We remember the prayer of Jesus
-- in his sorrow and in his despair.
We remember his loneliness in the Garden,
-- in his need for human companionship,
understanding and support.
We remember the sleep of the disciples,
-- in their misunderstanding both of Jesus
and of themselves.
Help us, Mighty God,
to prepare for the crises in our lives,
to prepare for the challenges to our faith,
as did Jesus,
by the practice of prayer,
and the discipline of watchfulness.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.