Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadChrist In His Suffering, Trial, and Crucified by Klaas Schilder: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 1 - Christ In His Suffering: 19. Chapter 19: Christ’s Sorrows Have Their Own Peculiar Law of Revelation
TOPIC: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 1 - Christ In His Suffering (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 19. Chapter 19: Christ’s Sorrows Have Their Own Peculiar Law of Revelation
Other Subjects in this Topic:
C H A P T E R N I N E T E E N
Christ’s Sorrows Have Their Own Peculiar Law of Revelation
And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast.
—Luk_22:41 a.
IN view of the many tremendous realities with which the account of Christ’s sufferings in Gethsemane overwhelms us, beneath which, in fact, it almost buries us, so trivial a fact as Christ’s removing Himself from His disciples about a stone’s cast hardly seems necessary.
The Gospels in various ways indicate that Christ is being led into constantly deepening solitude in Gethsemane. These inform us that Christ left the room of the Passover and approached the garden in the company of eleven disciples. Once there, He has eight of them stay behind at a particular place in the garden, charging them to remain until He joins them again. The three intimates, the three especially trusted disciples, were permitted— or were they compelled? — to penetrate farther into the garden with Jesus. Finally, Jesus left even these behind. Although He stayed closer to them than to the eight, He separated Himself from them, and entered into deep solitude. There He devoted Himself to prayer.
Luke indicates that the distance between Jesus and the disciples was a short one. He denominates the distance that of a “stone’s cast,” that is, about fifty or sixty feet.
It is worth remarking that Luke’s reference is not to the distance between Jesus and the three aforementioned, intimate disciples (from whom He also separated Himself); his designation must be taken in a general sense; it refers to the disciples as a group of eleven, without further modification. The whole group, then, was not farther from Christ than some fifty or sixty feet. The three intimates, accordingly, were even nearer Him.[1]
[1] Compare: Zahn, Das Evangelium des Lucas, Leipzig, 1913, p. 688, Note 74.
Again, therefore: This simple indication points to nothing extraordinary; is hardly worth dwelling upon; there is so much to consider, there are so many factors to weigh, we might as well neglect to pause over this one ....
Still, it cannot be that Luke’s description in this matter is pointless. The Spirit does not record any trivialities in the account of the passion. The Gospel is not wasted upon what are called “insignificant details.” Everything in it has a meaning; and the inclusion of peculiar details has its meaning also.
Obviously, Christ defined the distance between Himself and the disciples. When He left His disciples and sought out alone the place where He kneeled to pray, He did so consciously. Naturally, the conception of a Master who stumbles His way into the night unwittingly, and unconsciously segregates Himself from His disciples, is incompatible with everything that we believe about Jesus Christ. But, in this instance, the very phrasing of the text indicates that Jesus calmly and deliberately separated Himself from His disciples.[2] True, Luke in the phrasing of the text usually employed, used a word which might be construed to mean that a strong influence impelled Jesus to leave His disciples (a conception more or less permanently crystalized in the Vulgata[3]). However, it is also true that Jesus leaves the others, motivated by His own will. The word used by Matthew and Mark must be interpreted to mean a conscious and deliberate departure. Moreover, there are other versions of Luke’s usage which employ a verb form which points not to a passive permitting oneself to be taken away but to a voluntary leaving.
[2] The reader must know that the Dutch text used by the author at the head of this chapter has the active rather than the passive form of the verb. In other words, the text preferred by the author reads not “he was withdrawn,” but “he withdrew.”
[3] Avulsus est. Vulgata, the Roman Catholic translation of the Bible.
Hence there is no doubt about Jesus’ having voluntarily chosen to leave His disciples. Even the Roman Catholics, who, in their
Vulgata, employ the word which suggests that Jesus was constrained, was wrenched away from His disciples, in the last analysis explain His going as an act prompted by the motivation of His own soul or by the influence of His own Spirit.[1] According to their view, His own inner prompting impelled Him to leave them.
[1] Obviously, the issue has significant implications for the Roman Catholics. It affects the relation between the human and Divine natures of Christ as expressed in their dogmatics.
It is certain, then, that Christ was not driven from His disciples by a force which seized Him, apart from His own will, but that He personally willed that some distance should obtain between the place of His anguish and the place where the disciples had to stay behind. That leaves the question: What significance has this matter for us?
Obviously it is not enough to simply say that Jesus separated Himself from His disciples a few paces. In a sense the distance between them was very short, and could hardly be called any distance at all. What do fifty or sixty feet amount to? But Jesus deliberately would have it so. The distance was so short that the disciples, doubtless, were able to hear Him in the restiveness of the anguish of His soul.
Just that perception imparts some meaning to the fact that all of the disciples were but a stone’s throw removed from Jesus, at the most. Yes, it is true that those three intimate ones, Peter, James, and John, fell asleep, that they stood at the edge of the precipice without knowing it; but that gives us no reason to believe that all of them, including the other eight, fell asleep. If we remember that (according to Hebrews 5) Christ offered Himself up with strong cryings, that the nameless anguish of His soul therefore also issued in plaints which broke the silence of the night, in penetrating cries shattering the darkness, then we can know that the apostles must have noticed something of the excruciating passion which moved His soul unto death.
That, then, is the importance of this matter.
It appears that Christ, even as He enters into the holiest of the temple of passion, does not withdraw behind curtains through which no sound can pass, but that, on the contrary, all those who have been with Him during these years of His oppression may be with Him now also. The man Jesus did not hide Himself from His friends, and the Mediator Jesus Christ did not hide Himself from His appointed office-bearers, His apostles, His missionaries. He did not segregate Himself behind the heavy curtains of those solitary souls who admit no one to their holy of holies. True, Christ wanted some little distance to separate them, but He desired that only in view of His prayer. Prayer is a confidential matter. There is such a thing as a public worship, also in prayers; there is such a thing as social worship, also in prayers. But there is a personal worship, too, solitary, intimate, confidential; and there is that in prayers. This is the hour in which Christ must personally pray for Himself. His human soul needs it. He wants to strengthen Himself in God. And this, His personal worship, is also an official ministration of the Mediator: He prays for all. Hence, this prayer exacts a complete consecration. To this extent it is not extraordinary to observe that Christ wants to be alone. It is not the first time. There were other occasions on which He withdrew into solitude to pray. Nevertheless, His prayer is not made personally in this instance: His office, His mediatorship exacts it of Him.
It is in view of that official work that Christ’s conduct becomes significant in this instance. Christ does not withdraw into a solitude in which no eye can see Him, and no ear can hear Him. He lets the heaviest official duty that was ever required of Him be seen (to the extent possible in the night) of all who were constantly with Him, and lets all of these hear it.
Christ is entering the most holy place. And, in that holy of holies, there is, it is true, a mystery no one can understand.
But what of that? The mystery is not being sought out; nor is it being proposed, externally, as a riddle. The mystery is an inner reality.
And, precisely because the mysteries of God, of which we tremulously saw something in the preceding chapters, are contained in the essence of Christ’s official work, in Gethsemane also, therefore this essential mystery needs no external display of secrecy but discovers itself unreservedly to the true lovers who would see with their eyes. Moreover, it discloses itself presently to the ears that would hear, for it fills the ears of the disciples with the grievous plaints and anguished cries of its terrible suffering.
Whoever calls these concerns trivialities in the Gospel story which are best left alone, forgets that the ground on which he is standing is “holy ground,” is, in fact, a temple floor.
We are so indisposed to call this a “triviality,” a little feature which had better be ignored, that, on the contrary, we want to see in it especially how the temple of God’s justice and grace remains faithful to its pure and exalted style not only in broad, general outlines, but also in detail.
A connoisseur of architecture is able to describe the style and pattern of a building, after he has studied some segment, some part, some subsidiary piece of it; that is, he can do so if the architect of the building was sufficiently an artist to manifest his stylistic principle even in the little details.
Zoologists, when they find the bone of a skeleton, are able very frequently to reconstruct the whole skeleton by reason of it. They proceed on the principle that the relationships of the whole are those of the part in its detail; thus they infer the design of the whole from the nature of an individual part.
May we, then, when we hit upon this or that detail in the temple of the passion, call it a triviality and say of it: This is an accidental part of what is essentially a severely artistic structure? To say that, certainly, would be to insult the great Architect of this temple of passion: His name is Lord of Lords.
Or, inasmuch as only a subsidiary part of the divine scheme of Gethsemane apparently comes to our attention, shall we pass by and say: It is impossible to determine or recognize the pattern of the whole from this little part? Surely not, for that would be an insult to a God who makes the spiritual temple of Gethsemane, terrible as it may be, infinitely more beautiful, more harmonious, than the skeleton of an animal, the structure of a plant, or the movement of His stars.
Again in this instance, you see, faith reverses the situation. It must be a matter of conviction with us beforehand that this particular “detail,” too, has a weighty significance.
Consequently if we proceed from the vantage point of this preconception and try to find the pattern, the design of God’s architecture in every detail of His perfect building, we shall discover that all the lines of God’s revelation converge at a point in that reference at the distance of a stoned throw. Then we shall be able to read from this specific detail also the adequate, rich, artistic thoughts which are being expressed by God Himself in the redemptive work of Christ.
We alluded just now to the word revelation and did so designedly, for, to a person who believes the Scriptures, revelation is a discovering of mysteries, a disclosure of them. In revelation God Himself makes it possible to know Him and His thoughts. True revelation, therefore, discloses mysteries; mysteries which we should never become aware of except as they were discovered to us by grace. We should never become aware of them ourselves, for we should have to attain the awareness at the cost of our lives.
Now that which is revealed will eternally and in the deepest essence of its being retain the character of a mystery. Man will never comprehend his God. The dream of those many mystics who believed they had peered so far into the depths of God’s being that they actually had exhausted it was just that — a dream. And not a particularly pleasant dream at that. For it is precisely the glory of all flesh and is nourished by the Spirit to know that the finite can never comprehend the Infinite. And that we can never let the plumb-line out into the depths of God so far that it reaches the bottom. Indeed, always there is a distance between God and us; our eyes will never penetrate to the farthest essence of His being. A space of distance separates Him from us. The space is as wide as the distance between finitude and infinitude; the distance is greater than that between heaven and earth; wider than that between East and West.
Nevertheless, God, on His own part, reveals Himself to us. He comes to us to reveal Himself to us, to give Himself away, to satisfy us more and more with the pure waters of the knowledge of the Lord, and, to curtail the distance between Him and us so much at least as to make it as short as is possible. True, as far as the essence of God’s being and ours is concerned, the distance between Him and us is infinite. But, next to that fact is the fact of God’s will to come to us, to remove what conceals Him from us as far as such is possible, and to have us see and enjoy Him to the extent that we can sustain the sight and endure the joy in our enlightened condition.
For that reason those forms have been chosen for the revelation of God which speak to us in our own language, appear before us in guises susceptible to our eyes, and make themselves heard in this world of space and time in a manner our ears can apprehend. The distance between God and man obtains nowhere unless fellowship in revelation is desired and commanded there.
For that reason God brings revelation as close to us as is possible. He knows that we shall never fathom His depths; nevertheless the forms by which He makes Himself known to us are brought very near to us.
This general law can be discerned as operative also in the comparatively trivial particular of the distance of a stone’s throw which separates Jesus from His disciples.
Yes, there is such a distance. According to the essence of what is being achieved and suffered in Gethsemane, that distance is as great as ... as ... a stone’s cast. Absurd! As great as infinitude! No one can fathom what is happening here; not even these disciples can. Disciples are not mystics. The world now pouring its flames through Gethsemane is of so patently different an order that the disciples can sleep while the enormities are taking place; or, to the extent that they are awake, they can only, like children, stand spellbound, with mouth agape, and, wide-eyed with amazement, look on, and listen to the penetrating cries of the Master in His dire need. Indeed, there is a distance separating them. This very night they will all be offended because of Him. A stone’s cast removed, you say? Yes, a stone’s throw; but also an infinitude. The mystery of God’s counsel and work is hidden here in the conflict of Jesus’ soul and in the convulsion of Jesus’ body; He is being tossed to and fro between two worlds—those of heaven and of hell. But was any onlooker struck blind by the spectacle? They fell asleep. The mystery was too . . . incomprehensible. But the fact that there is a mystery here Jesus impresses upon the memories of the disciples by withdrawing from them. By that act He seems to say: something is about to happen now which you cannot understand; a whirlwind will come, out of which I alone shall be able to raise my head, waiting for what God has decided to send over it.
However, this mystery, on the other hand, is directed to man. The distance will remain because no one can restrict infinitude. Nevertheless God, by means of the forms of His revelation, comes as close to His people as He possibly can. Hence the distance remains as short as possible. Think! Is it not a wonder: to be but fifty or sixty feet removed from heaven? To be only twenty paces away from infinitude?
And it is a miracle, it is a wonder of seeking grace, of that revelation-urge which forcibly causes God to go out to us in a will-to-fellowship, in the election of approach and of entrance to His people.
In order to actualize this communion as really as possible, to show that nothing is being withheld or tempered of that which God can shriek into our delicate ears without rending them, Christ takes people with Him as close to the place as He possibly can.
Nothing more overwhelming than this ever took place in the world.
This was nothing less than the beginning of the descent into hell. That is saying: He who came from above goes down, down to the bottom. He who dwells amidst His eternal luxury sinks down into the most abject impoverishment. He who is from heaven turns toward hell. In this moment revelation itself passes from the highest height to the deepest depth.
But the people are allowed to be present — some fifty or sixty feet removed. Yes, the people are allowed to be present. Many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which they see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which they hear, and have not heard them (Luk_10:24). But the fishermen of Jesus are allowed to be present, and they may see and hear.
A mystery moves through the night of Gethsemane and it is a mystery greater than that of Jacob when he came to Bethel. The disciples may witness its passing. Jacob had a ladder; its end rested against heaven; and angels climbed up and down. But that was only a dream. In this case the ladder extends not merely from heaven to earth but reaches down through the earth to hell. Those who move up and down it are not only the angels: the devils also are there. And this is not a dream; it is an awful, bloody, oppressive reality.
But people — people were allowed to witness it. Those who are called of God may approach not only up to the fountains of bliss rippling out in the inner court of His palace, but may come to the inner room, to the place of profound concern, where the will of the Almighty proves the ground to find a foundation for His temple.
Separation . . . distance!
And communion.
A stone’s throw, a short distance — but its two ends extend out on both sides and reach into infinitude. And, in another sense, this is an infinite distance which is conquered by God’s desire for fellowship, His will to communion, which discloses to the hearing and souls of a few fishermen the conflicts of God. That is a little thing, is it not? And also a very great thing?
Has the style, the pattern of God’s building, even as manifested in a “detail,” not some significance for you now?
The nobility and authenticity of the Christian faith are closely related to this. In fact, faith in the atoning strength of Christ’s passion and death depends on these matters.
We have several times referred to the difference between the mysteries and mystery-cults of heathendom, on the one hand, and the Christian faith with its redeeming content, on the other.[1] The difference is one of essence. But it is a difference of concrete manifestation just as well. We think of that again in this connection.
[1] It is impossible to go beyond mere suggestion in this book, which is designed for popular use. This is not the place for the science of theology, particularly in controversial matters. Only here and there is it possible to point out how a Reformed view of the Scriptures affects theological problems, also in relevance to the passion of Christ, and that maintaining a Reformed conception over-against the views of Bousset, Reitzenstein, Heilmuller and others, affects definitely the Christian life and faith.
At the time when Christianity came into the world there were many preachers of pagan or semi-pagan origin. All these preached saviours, redeemers, Messiahs, who had to lift the world out of its distress. And, irrespective of the differences in these many, they were all alike in two important respects.
This is the first difference. These saviours are not “worms”; they are men, heroes, the sons of gods. Nectar drips from their locks. Wisdom creates a halo around their heads. They have been wedded to heavenly wisdom. The translucence of their human form, their airy moving over their heights of earth is merely a pleasing fancy. They are not under the compulsion of partaking of the flesh (Hebrew 2:14). They are half god, half man. They can leave and enter heaven at will. They differ greatly from Jesus as He is here, who exists in the flesh because necessity demands it, and who cannot enter heaven except by blood.
And a second difference is that their life-secret is the same as the secret of their office. They all have what is called their great “Messianic secret.” Occasionally a very little of their work may shimmer before the astonished eyes of the people, but their elevation is such that they withdraw behind many curtains. Their evangelists are mere allegorists who understand the language of mysteries. They themselves are wandering myths; their secretiveness looks for no fellowship; does not allow itself to be seen with the eyes, heard with the ears, or touched with the hands (1Jn_1:1). Their heart is not laid bare. The mystery to them is a delight by which they lord it over the people without exercising fellowship with them. How different these are from a Jesus who must elicit the confession My Lord and My God from Thomas by letting him probe His wounds with a finger.
Such is the double and always dominant characteristic of the image of the false Messiahs. Glamour and secretiveness. Those two are always present and are constantly supporting each other.
Christ Himself, we remember, pointed to that fact. He told us that false Messiahs will come who will go to and fro upon the earth, not exercising fellowship with the people in a priestly, humble, patient way, but trekking across the world, high, and lifted up, like living miracles, like wandering wonders. Today, He said, they will be in the desert. And tomorrow they will be in the inner room.
In the desert? Can they exist there? Yes, indeed, for they do not eat the bread of ordinary folk, are not dependent upon a loaf bought at the shop as ordinary mortals, and as Jesus is, who promises the woman of Samaria living water, but has in the
meantime sent His disciples into town to buy some bread. No, these others are giants all, heroes whose lives are self-sufficing: they are not worms, but men, children, of miracles, demi-gods. The first feature of the false picture of the Messiah, therefore, characterizes them completely.
They embody the second feature of the false Messiahs just as fully. For they can be found in the inner rooms. To the extent that they do condescend to come to the people and “make” fellowship with them, the little ones, they do not mingle with the crowd in the market-place, and they do not, as Jesus did, daily sit in the temple, or play with the children, or lay hands upon the leprous head. No, no. These enter into the inner chamber. A cloud of mystery envelops them. Their official conduct accords with their personal conduct. So far from feeling burdened by the feeling of distance separating them from others, they delight in the sense of it. There is only one thing of which they are mortally afraid: of the distance of a stone’s throw.
You ask why they cannot bear the familiarity implied in being but a stone’s throw removed from men? Because of their essential poverty. Because they are essentially poor, appearances must save them.
They do not really have the great mystery in their being; for they are not filled with the same satisfying abundance with which, in the Gospel according to John, the man Jesus is filled by God and by the Spirit. These pseudo-Messiahs do not come from the perfect eternal heights. They are not being driven by the absolute and sovereign-eternal Counsel. And because they do not possess the great mystery in their essential being, they look for it in externals. That remove of a “stone’s cast” simply goes against their grain; the poverty of what is really their profane being requires a show of mysterious forms designed to conceal the absence of genuine mystery.
That is just a suggestion — by no means exhaustive — of the truth about the false Messiahs at which the sentimental imaginations of the world gaped, while Christian slaves and day-laborers preached the Crucified One.
May our souls in response to this fall down and worship the Man of sorrows.
In Gethsemane He appears to be the true Messiah. And He proves Himself such, especially in the so-called “trivialities.” If the actual shedding of blood is all that can make us exclaim Lo, there! Our Messiah! There! Hallelujah! we do Him an injustice.
Our soul must make many amends for Him. For we must learn to see and honor Him as Messiah also as He expresses Himself in what we carelessly called “details which could as well be ignored.”
We must remember that Christ (the true Messiah), and the pseudo-Christ (pseudo-Messiah) eternally are and will remain different. That proved to be so throughout Jesus’ official work. And He proves it again as He achieves His peculiar work now — a stone’s cast removed.
Christ Jesus!
No, He did not reside in the desert in order to live by miracle. He does not call down manna from heaven. He buys bread and promptly pays His taxes. He lives in the city of man, and rubs shoulders with each and all daily. And this common, genuine humanity He asserts in Gethsemane also. He, O church, is your true Messiah. He does not, like the son of a god (recall the first feature of the pseudo-Messianic figure), feel disgraced by those weak moments in which people can see Him in His littleness. He takes the disciples with Him. He cries for company. He beseeches, He implores that they watch with Him one hour. He cannot bear being without love. He is not the son of a god, subsisting on His mystery. In His last hour even, He says, without making any effort at concealment: My soul is sorrowful to death. They may see Him; they may look on and see — as He lies there, crushed, naked, exposed to the whole universe. He makes no attempt to smother His sobbing in the folds of His garment, in order to prevent the children of earth from seeing His brokenness. Instead He fills the air with His cries: the stone’s cast! The stone’s cast! That is manifesting genuine humanity, and is doing it, not in the desert, but in the world of men — of fishermen.
Besides, He is not found in the inner room. He takes no delight in seclusion. The stone’s cast! The stone’s cast!
Our Lord Jesus Christ can disclose His nakedness to the searching eyes of the Galilean fishermen, because it is precisely in His nakedness that He is beautiful and strong! He is so completely filled with the essential mystery in the real being of His existence, that He has no need of taking recourse to the appearances of the mysterious. He came just in order to discover all that God had concealed. To that end He has come to “this hour” in Gethsemane also. Hence He takes His children, His brethren with Him, keeps them as close to Him as He can.
This was done for our salvation. This will to preach the distance separating us from God and nevertheless to effect communion with God was the secret of every act of revelation, and became the cause, became the real motive of the cross.
What is beautiful in this matter is that the true Messiah, while redeeming our soul by perfectly ministering the service of His Messianic office, is simultaneously able to prepare perfectly for His own soul exactly what it needs in each moment of its conflict. For whom are those words written? For oxen only, or for missionaries also: Thou shalt not muzzle the ox, when he treadeth out the corn? Was the law that the wages are contained in the labor preached only in reference to animals and men?
Certainly not! In the final analysis that law was written for Christ’s sake. Look — see how He treads, how He labors and sweats. But it is exactly that labor which gives Him a chance to breathe, which takes the muzzle off His panting mouth.
Just for a moment, imagine the impossible. Imagine that He had to conceal His sufferings like a pseudo-Messiah, that He had to sustain His “integrity” by taking recourse to an external appearance.
Then His suffering would have been false before God, and for that reason, condemned. But, more than that, He would not then have been able to express His own soul; he would have had to thwart His desires.
Now, however, He can express Himself unrestrictedly, just as He is, and just as He is as a man also. If He desires human companionship, He may ask for it; shame does not keep Him from it. When He has need of some to watch, whose souls’ prayers can pour new strength into Him, no false haughtiness, no false pride keeps Him from the plaint: Can ye not watch with me one hour?
Such is the glory of the true Messiah. The false Messiah lives behind a mask; the true has authentic integrity. Whoever lets God speak unhamperedly is able to speak freely himself.
For us, then, again on this occasion, Christ manifests Himself as rich and adequate in mercies.
Nietzsche drew a picture of His “Messiah” Zarathustra. Just another redeemer, he was, and another false one. In fact, his features resemble the figure of the pseudo-Christ less than they do those, in principle, of the Antichrist. Zarathustra, the creator of new morals and of a new philosophy, also withdraws into the mountains; he, too, cannot believe in “the law of a stone’s throw of distance.” But He refuses to believe in the law because of disdain for the people. He seeks the greater disdainer. He despises the fishermen of Galilee, the simple folk, the docile creatures who simply accept things and believe them. He would rather tread every growing thing, in the neighborhood, into the dust than spare the broken reeds or endure the burning flax within the radius of a stone’s cast.
Not so the Christ. In His suffering, disdain had no part. Who despises the day of small things? All the false Messiahs must answer: I do. But Christ does not despise the day of small things, for this day makes small things great. That was a long distance, was it not, that of the stone’s throw. Infinitude was contained in it. Yes, the mystery has been revealed, but it has remained divine.
Now we ask all men: Who despises the day of a small distance and of small things? Christ, in His direst need and in the weightiest task He had to perform, allowed His disciples to stand by; first, because the law of revelation required it; and, secondly, because His own soul yearned for companionship with them.
Such, surely, is a personal insufficiency which shows us the extent of His humiliation; moreover, it makes us blush deeply in shame. The great disgrace is indeed taking place here. Think: The intimate ones of Jesus, but a stone’s throw removed from Him when the greatest drama that ever perturbed a soul moved Him — fell asleep. That is the worst disgrace, the most painful humiliation that can conceivably be recorded in the records of history.
John, even John slept. He is the evangelist of the Word made flesh.
Nevertheless we are grateful and give thanks, for we know definitely now that His Gospel is not written in terms of what He saw, is not based on a personal view of the facts and their significance, but is solely the product of the impelling of His soul by the Spirit of God.
You ask how this matter affects us. We need not imagine for a moment that we shall escape from the strictures of Gethsemane, from the awe-inspiring, dread-engendering proximity of the miracle. True, this seemed an exceptional instance, this being but a stone’s throw away from the other world — and what have we, ordinary people, used as we are to ordinary distances, to do with such exceptional incidents?
True. Nevertheless, remember that this situation in the garden obtains just so for you and me each day. By nature we also are but the distance of a stone’s cast removed from eternity — and we are asleep, and are unaware of it.
The fact that we are so close to eternity is not owing to us but is due to the revelation and to the coming of the Kingdom which is the Kingdom of Heaven.
That is, consequently, the great lesson which this narrative has to teach us. The mystery of God’s eternal thoughts are contained in the external circumstances of Christ’s passion and express themselves through these. Yet, no one will ever discover this truth except the person who by faith learns to see the meaning of external things in the light shed upon them through revelation by the Spirit of God.
We are by no means sure that everyone wants to be obedient to the concept of revelation which expresses itself in the law of the stone’s throw of distance. Have there not always been those mystics, masochists and others, who preferred to regard the suffering of Christ primarily, and sometimes solely, in terms of its externalities? They shrank back at the sight of the blood, they shuddered as the nails were driven through the hands and the feet, but they did not penetrate to the profound Justice of God, nor to the laws of the revelation of God.
Such is, as a rule, in fact, the response of all those who do not believe revelation. Unfortunately, the same response sometimes is the rule rather than the conspicuous exception among those rightly-disposed ones who always have the word revelation at the tip of the tongue.
We must, of course, fix our attention upon the bowed soul and the struggling body of the Man of sorrows. And we may — no, we must come up to this human suffering, must come as close as the space of a stone’s throw. But we must remember at the same time that a mystery, entirely hidden, is contained in this matter, and that we are in a different world here, a world we cannot become aware of by thinking. Only faith can grasp that world; only faith can accept it.
And if that faith operates in love, only one effect can ensue. Then the great confusion to which he is prey who sees that distance of a stone’s throw stretching out into an infinitude of space will be restored to order by faith, by childlike faith. He must have faith in the fact that God honors His Word and acknowledges it. He must believe that God came to us to reveal Himself; in other words, that while keeping distance and separation between Himself and us, He seeks fellowship with us in the one Christ who suffered and died, but now lives and triumphs.
If Christ is not the false Messiah, who in celebration of himself turns his back upon mere human beings, but is the true Messiah who, even in His most tragical moment, seeks His own— then we should certainly always seek Him. Indeed, we shall care always to seek Him anew, because we know that He who, while maintaining distance and separation, nevertheless bought the privilege of communion from the Father, also teaches us to believe in God as Father, in and through Himself.
The “stone’s cast,” in the last analysis, you see, is the law of eternity and time; it is the whole fact of revelation which teaches me to say: Abba, Father, from Thee comes strength and power; but from Thee also comes loving-kindness:
Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly.
That is the confession of the believer who at a distance of a stone’s cast has learned to find his Father in Christ.
To our conscience, however, He who is the Father also remains the Judge. It will never be forgotten, not even in heaven, that Jesus’ most intimate disciples slept but a stone’s cast away from the great arena of combat. Yes, yes, it was to be explained —the characteristically human in us will raise arguments by way of excuse. But enough of that. They who are above, all know that the frailty of the flesh closed their eyes, and they willingly confess: The Church, which is the bride, slept while the Bridegroom wooed her—that is and will remain a disgrace to the Church. Nevertheless light breaks into the darkness of this shame. The law of grace is there to console, and it reads: Redemption has taken place, with us, above us, without us.
What the eye did not see a stone’s cast away, what the ear did not hear at a distance of fifty feet, what the heart did not feel in the immediate neighborhood of Jesus’ struggling soul—that God has prepared for those who love Him.
For those who love Him it overcomes even the distance of a stone’s cast, in the form of the mystical union.
Union, yes; and also: mystery.