When I noticed how often Person of Jesus study participants, like me, feel surprised by Jesus in the lesson on Gethsemane called “Symphony of Love”, I wondered: What is it we were expecting, and what did we find?
As the lesson begins, we see Jesus under pressure as Judas and the crowd approach in Luke 22:47-48:
47 While [Jesus] was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, 48 but Jesus asked him, "Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?"
The scene is well known. Hundreds of different artists have painted it, all with their own take. My personal favorite is The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio. The painting was lost for years, misattributed to a student of Caravaggio’s, and rediscovered hanging in the lunch room of a Jesuit residence in Dublin. But one thing I notice about this painting of Jesus’ arrest, and about many others of the scene, is how everyone is active but Jesus himself.
But one thing I notice about this painting of Jesus’ arrest, and about many others of the scene, is how everyone is active but Jesus himself.
Images like Carravaggio’s have shaped our shared imagination of this scene and drawn our attention to the violence that came into the garden at this moment. But the Person of Jesus lesson draws our attention to other details in John 18:3-8:
3 So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons. 4 Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, "Who is it you want?" 5 "Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "I am he," Jesus said (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them). 6 When Jesus said, "I am he," they drew back and fell to the ground. 7 Again he asked them, "Who is it you want?" And they said, "Jesus of Nazareth." "I told you that I am he," 8 Jesus answered. "If you are looking for me, then let these men go."
Jesus doesn’t passively wait for the soldiers to come and get him, he moves toward them (v 4), asking them who they have come for -- in spite of the fact he knows what lies ahead. When the soldiers fall forward, seemingly bowing in instinctive response to Jesus (and fumbling their orders), he initiates again, directing their focus back to himself and protecting the disciples. This does not read like a typical arrest scene – it seems the one they seek to capture is the one in control.
We see more evidence of Jesus’ active command of the scene when Simon Peter takes up his sword and strikes Malchus. Luke records Jesus’ response, “'No more of this!’ And he touched the man’s ear and healed him” (Luke 22:51). Jesus both heals Malchus’s ear and speaks as commanding officer to Peter.
Jesus’ authority extends even over his captors. “'Am I leading a rebellion,’” he asks, “‘that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled’” (Mark 14:48). His honesty slices through this show of force – pointing out the cowardice of the religious leaders who were afraid to confront Jesus in the daylight.
Reading the story slowly and taking in all these details, Jesus comes alive.
Reading the story slowly and taking in all these details, Jesus comes alive. We see him not as a wan figure being led passively along – but active, dynamic, and very much engaged. In our podcast on this lesson, Paul Miller remarked how Jesus’ many moves of love make him recall Bruce Lee (star of ninja movies in the 1970s).
“Many organizations do important work helping the church be the hands and feet of Jesus,” I say when I open our podcast, “but seeJesus works on the imagination and heart.” On the one hand, "imagination work” sounds kind of fanciful, like there may be a dress-up bin around the corner. But, as Matt Reynolds put it in a recent book review in Christianity Today, “Our imaginations run like operating systems in the background, working below the level of conscious thought.”
There’s something about that subconscious thought level that affects my desire to imitate Jesus. I can appreciate the sacrifice of a Jesus who passively submits to being drawn by force to the cross, but he seems fairly flat. He doesn’t seem very human! The “love ninja” Jesus, on the other hand, is vivid, stunning, and beautiful. When I see how full of life this Jesus is, I want to be more like him, and I see that the path to get there will be filled with a lifetime of small choices to see and love others.
If you’d like a Jesus imagination tune-up, I invite you to join seeJesus trainers and me for our free Lent Lunch series, on Thursdays at 12 pm ET starting Feb. 19. View the details here.
