The Prayer Life of Jesus – Gethsemane
The Prayer Life of Jesus – Gethsemane.
“Tremendous power is released through the passionate, heartfelt prayer of a righteous man!” (James 5:16).
The Lord Jesus always was and still continues to be the ultimate prayer warrior. He prayed to the Father even before He was born (Hebrews 10:5-7), and He kept praying until the moment of His ascension (Luke 24:50-53). But He didn’t stop praying when His work on earth was done, for He continues to intercede for us at the right hand of the Father as we read this! (Hebrews 7:25). His ministry was largely a prayer ministry in the sense of prayer being the foundation for everything He did. He prayed for saints and sinners, privately and publicly, with His face to the ground and His head up facing the heavens. He prayed in grief and He prayed in gratitude, while exhausted and while full of energy. Jesus prayed with His dying breath and He prayed after He rose from the dead. He prayed before major decisions and during dramatic miracles. He prayed spontaneously and He prayed in words prepared thousands of years before Him. He prayed short, one-sentence prayers (John 12:28), and He prayed in at least one long prayer that seemed to encompass just about everything (John 17). Jesus developed a lifestyle of prayer that was common to observant Jews, but nonetheless uncommon in its intimacy with the Father.
Jewish Lifestyle. Being born and raised in an observant and orthodox Jewish household, Jesus was immersed from Day One on earth in prayer, in the centrality of prayer to one’s life and faith. Observant Jews practiced formal prayers frequently during the day, and spontaneous prayers throughout each day. They would pray the Sh’ma twice a day, the primary statement of faith for all biblical Jews, starting with its first line, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might…” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Then there’s the Amidah, a series of 18 sacred benedictions that each Jewish father would recite at home twice a day, or perhaps each rabbi in the local synagogue. The Psalms were memorized and on the lips of all believing Jews, as were other classic prayers from the Hebrew Bible, most notably Aaron’s Priestly Blessing in Numbers 6:24-26, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace.” But by no means were the Jews content with all those formal prayers each day. The rabbis taught each Jew to offer up sincere blessings for just about everything in the course of each day, as many as a hundred blessings, giving God praise and thanks for every common blessing enjoyed. There were blessings for practically every conceivable grace and event, from successfully going to the bathroom, to waking up each morning, to the blessing of being able to retire at the end of the day. These formal prayers and the more informal blessings developed a habit of prayer in each earnest Jewish believer, and made sure that God was seen as the main reference point all day for everyone in the faith. The Jewish prayers were constant reminders of God’s grace and goodness, and made sure that each Jewish home and synagogue were cultures of prayer. Jesus was shaped and directed and nurtured in this Jewish prayer life, and since He was a faithful Jew, prayer was certainly second nature to Him throughout His time on earth.
Inner Dialogue. Few mysteries in the faith are less likely to be understood than the union between the Father and the Son. Their level of intimate, eternal communion is well beyond our grasp. “The Father is in me, and I am in the Father.” (John 17:21). The prayer life of Jesus has everything to do with their intimacy. Somehow, the Father and the Son were inside each other in Spirit. So when Jesus prayed to the Father, He was spiritually looking inward to the Father’s presence. Jesus was speaking to the Father in a secret place within Himself where the Father dwelled. The prayer life of Christ was an inner dialogue between Father and Son, a private conversation of two divine Beings who love each other. Jesus said that He would not even take a step without the direction from the Father, He wouldn’t say a word without the Father’s approval. Jesus placed Himself completely at His Father’s disposal, such was the level of trust between the Father and the Son. Certainly, Jesus was the perfect example of one who “prayed without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:16-17). Jesus’ prayer was conscious and deliberate, and it was also subconscious and intuitive. Jesus walked prayerfully every second of every day, out of devotion to the Father.
“Then Jesus led His disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane. He told them, ‘Sit here while I pray awhile.’ He took Peter, James and John with Him. An intense feeling of great horror (ekthambeo) plunged His soul into deep sorrow and agony. And He said to them, ‘My heart is overwhelmed with anguish and crushed with grief. It feels as though I’m dying. Stay here and keep watch with me…” (Mark 14:32-34, TPT).
ekthambeo (ek-tham-bay-o) = to feel overwhelming anguish; to be thrown into terror; to be thoroughly terrified; to experience profound horror.
The starting point of Christ’s Passion was right here in the Garden of Gethsemane. The word gethsemane means ‘oil press,’ and in this passage the final pressing of Jesus begins in earnest until He is out of juice and nothing is left. His profoundly intense prayer time with the Father is often called the Agony. There are many signs of Jesus’ agony that are easy to observe just by reading various translations of the three Gethsemane passages: Matthew 26:36, Mark 14:32 and Luke 22:40. In these passages, which are painful to read whether or not you love Jesus, we see that He was very distressed; that He fervently prayed as He fell on His face; that He was deeply grieved to the point of death; that He was swallowed up in sorrow; that He engaged in an anguished struggle. It is even reported in Luke that sweat fell down to the ground like drops of blood.
One only has to read the definition of the unusual Greek word ekthambeo to realize that Jesus wasn’t merely having an earthly panic attack. What Jesus was experiencing was acute suffering that few people have to go through. As Bible scholar and translator Dr. Brian Simmons says, “The Greek words used in these verses are unusual. The terms are extraordinarily emotional and expressive, describing the deepest feelings a person could experience.”
Dreading the Thought. It’s easy for to see what was causing Jesus such deep agony. He knew what was coming, He understood what He would soon have to experience… betrayal; arrest; severe beatings with fists and clubs; near-fatal whippings; heaps of scorn, mockery and shame; rejection by the religious authorities; considered less worthy than a murderer and terrorist; the torture of huge nails driven through hands and feet; nakedness in the sight of all when He is lifted up on the Cross; being taunted while He is dying; struggling for His last breath in tremendous pain; mourning a brief but profound disruption of the intimate union with His Father; the knowledge that His death would break the heart of His dear mother Mary. This was all going through the mind and emotions of Jesus in the Garden, but we will never be able to understand the depth of His suffering unless we are asked to duplicate His experience in martyrdom. The Father sent an angel to minister to Him in His agony. One translation suggested that Jesus himself requested an angel to come, to comfort and strengthen Him while flat on the ground in anguish.
“… And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground (pipto), and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. And He was saying, ‘Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.’” (Mark 14:33-36; also refer to Matt. 26:36-39).
Weaving together the three Gethsemane texts, the prayer of Jesus, that he repeated three times to the Father, may have looked like this: “Abba Father, Papa in Heaven, I know that all things are possible for you. Could you please take this cup of suffering away from me? If this cup cannot pass away from me unless I drink it myself, your will be done above all else. It is not my will, Father, but your will be done.”
Abba! During His unspeakable suffering in the Garden, Jesus cried out to “Abba, Father.” Abba is an Aramaic word that is a child’s affectionate term for a beloved father. It is a title that directly addresses the father in a family setting much like ‘dad’ or ‘papa.’ Abba is a word that assumes a profound personal relationship between child and father. Abba is a term that refers to God as Beloved Father, and can be a believer’s term of respect, honor, intimacy and trust for our Father in heaven. As we know, Jesus even asked us to address God as Abba in his model of what to pray in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.
“Pipto” = The root Greek word meaning to fall down to the ground, used over 90 times in the New Testament; is the starter word for dozens of terms involving falling downward from a higher place to a lower place; pipto is the biblical term for prostration, falling onto one’s face on the ground, to collapse to the ground; to fall flat down in worship, reverence, allegiance, or submission; to drop down to the earth as if dead. In the Christian tradition, to fully prostrate oneself often includes confession and gratitude, as well as to pray from a low place before God’s greatness and awesome mystery. To prostrate oneself before the Lord is to assume a humble, servile position before our Master, the almighty God.
“Pipto” was fairly commonplace in the biblical era, as well as in other parts of the world right now. The West does not like to be humbled, evidently. The lesser form of pipto is when one would kneel with both knees on the ground and the forehead touching the ground as well. It was a position slaves would take with their master out of duty and respect. Often out of disrespect a person witnessing this would kick the rear end of the person lying on the ground. This would confirm that person’s place in life. The full prostration would be lowering oneself to the ground and assuming a position in which the entire body was flat on the ground, from the head to the toes to all the limbs. Often the phrase “throw oneself to the ground” would indicate a full prostration, with the word pipto more times than not referring to the full prostration.
Flat on the Ground. When a defeated soldier is brought to a conquering king, the captured foe lays his body out, face down, fully on the ground. That physical act acknowledges the fact that he is in subjection to the king, that he submits to his power and authority. Prostration is a rather radical, visual way to signal one’s submission and respect to God. It would be interesting to try this posture in private prayer, no less in community worship.
Jesus Prostrates Himself. We see here that Jesus is in desperate distress, and He literally threw Himself to the ground, fully prostrating Himself in prayer to His Father. Jesus is humbly submitting to the Father as He opens His heart to Him. He is fully on the ground, in total privacy, stretching out and remaining vulnerable to whomever might come to Him there. But that is not all he is doing on the ground like that. According to many biblical scholars, Jesus is also identifying Himself with the fall of mankind, kissing the dust of the earth. Jesus “lets Himself fall into man’s fallenness.” (Fr. Ratzinger). With a tormented soul, Jesus collapses to the ground and assumes a servile position before the Father as well as a position of solidarity with His fellow human beings in the flesh.
“And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44).
The Passion of Christ’s suffering truly began in the Garden of Gethsemane. Christ had just finished His Passover meal with His disciples, His Last Supper, and He retired to the beloved Garden to pray as the anguish of what was about to happen hits Him full force. His anxiety was understandably profound as He prays alone to the Father, to His loving Abba, feeling like the whole world was on His shoulders. As it turns out, of course, that burden became literally true later on the Cross.
Bloody Sweat. The physician Luke is the only gospel writer that mentions Christ’s blood and sweat falling to the ground during this anguish. Is this even physically possible? Could Jesus have been so filled with stress and anxiety that this literally occurred? According to medical science, the sweating of blood can actually occur. There is a rare but realistic phenomenon known as “hematohidrosis,” a Greek word meaning “bloody water.” This condition is not life threatening and is temporary. This occurs when the capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands break down from profound mental anguish. During this condition, one’s body can literally sweat drops of blood. Matthew describes the extreme anxiety that Jesus experienced when he reporting Jesus as saying, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death. I feel like I’m dying here.” (Matt. 26:38).
As explained by Dr. Frederick Zugibe: “Around the sweat glands, there are multiple blood vessels in a net-like form. Under the pressure of great stress the vessels constrict. At this time, the blood vessels could very well dilate to the point of rupture. The blood then goes into the sweat glands. As the sweat glands are producing a lot of sweat, it pushes the blood to the surface – coming out as droplets of blood mixed with sweat.”
Figure of Speech. So yes, this rare condition can occur when someone is in unthinkable distress. The Gethsemane prayers of Jesus certainly qualifies. The Greek text says that His sweat became “like great drops of blood.” So it is entirely possible that Luke is trying to describe Christ’s sweat as being poured from his brow in a way that resembled drops of blood, but was not literally blood. The sweat was pouring out from Him in big drops, like blood would have poured out if He were cut badly. So, it’s not definitive that it was hematidrosis which was happening to Jesus. Luke may have been exaggerating, trying to describe the indescribable agony of Jesus in Gethsemane. But what’s the main point here? The agony of Christ as His Passion begins in Gethsemane is the main point, not the ingredients of His sweat. Christ was fully human, and His agony in the Garden exposes that humanity for all to see in the gospels, whether or not we accept that Jesus literally sweat with blood.
Adam’s Curse. It’s interesting that many biblical scholars at this point compare the bloody sweat of Jesus with the cursed sweat of Adam. Adam was tested in the first Garden, and he tragically failed the test. But here in Gethsemane we see the Second Adam being tested in another Garden. Could it be that Christ’s precious blood contained the sweat of the first Adam, who was cursed to bear the sweat of his brow because of his sin? Perhaps we see here that the love of Christ included Adam’s curse. Christ was tempted too, but He passed the test that Adam failed, somehow mixing His blood of salvation with the sweat of the curse. What a poignant picture of redemption.
Real Blood Soon Enough. So, did Jesus agonize with literal bloody sweat in Gethsemane, or with sweat that dropped from Him to the ground in a way that resembled blood? To be honest, we don’t need to have a final verdict on this. We do know that, as Jesus himself knew in Gethsemane, He would soon have the real thing, huge drops of blood, pouring out of Him so He’s literally covered in blood from head to toe, through a crown of thorns, being beaten to a pulp, flayed to within an inch of His life, only to see His final drops of blood emptied from Him on the Cross, the bloodiest form of crucifixion known to mankind.