NOTES for Joh 18:1-18

In describing Jesus' arrest and the events that preceded it in the Garden of Gethsemane, John is noticeably more laconic and restrained than the other evangelists. In particular, he mentions neither the prayer the Savior offered before His arrest nor how the apostles, unable to withstand a strain too great for them, fell asleep despite their Teacher's requests. He reports only briefly that Judas knew the Garden of Gethsemane well, as did the other apostles, because it was a customary place for Jesus' gatherings and conversations (vv. 1-2). According to the evangelist's testimony, those who came to arrest Jesus were not Roman soldiers but the temple guard, and the arrest was carried out in the presence of representatives of the Pharisaic movement (v. 3).

Jesus, who was expecting the arrest, Himself went out to meet the authorities who had come for Him (vv. 4-5). The effect of the Savior's Person on everyone who found himself near Him was so great that those who came for Him did not immediately dare to do what they had come to do (vv. 5-12). Meanwhile, Jesus did everything possible to spare His disciples from arrest (vv. 7-9).

He evidently understood that the apostles had great difficulty grasping the meaning and significance of what was happening, and He may have feared that they would try to seize the moment by offering armed resistance to the authorities and thus begin an uprising which, according to their plan, was to grow into a full-scale war under religious and messianic slogans. His fears were evidently not unfounded: Peter, the most resolute of the apostles, did indeed try to resist (v. 10), but Jesus stopped him (v. 11).

This response from Jesus obviously left the apostles completely bewildered. Not knowing what to do next, they simply scattered, according to the testimony of the other evangelists, and thereafter they are mentioned again only in the accounts of the Savior's crucifixion. John does not speak directly of the apostles' flight, but his description of subsequent events makes it clear that only two followed Jesus: Peter and another disciple whom the evangelist does not name (vv. 15-16). They too, however, apparently no longer hoped for anything and wished only to see how their Teacher's trial would end.

As for their messianic expectations and hopes for the Kingdom's imminent triumph, most likely nothing remained of them: their Teacher Himself had only just voluntarily renounced all resistance! Now all they could do was wait to see how the judicial proceedings would end. What remained was a personal, human attachment to the Teacher who, as it seemed to the apostles, had lost, but whose Person evidently had not lost its hold on the disciples. It seemed that all the disciples had left was the memory of their Teacher. Yet in their eyes that memory was sacred.

Apparently, Jesus' disciples were completely unprepared for what would happen in the Garden of Gethsemane, for the arrest of their Teacher. According to the other Evangelists, they all scattered at the moment of His arrest. The only exception was Peter, who tried to resist and took up a sword. Jesus stops him — and it is then that everyone except two, Peter and John, runs away. Why was this? Only a short time before, they had all sworn that they would not abandon the Teacher. Yet only Peter tried to keep his promise.

The explanation for what was happening, however, is quite plain, and is linked precisely to the messianic ideas that the apostles shared with most of their contemporaries of the same faith. They shared them despite their Teacher's words. Whatever He said, the disciples remained certain: an uprising and a great messianic war lay ahead. They probably imagined it as something like the war of the Maccabees, still remembered by everyone, but on a larger scale and probably with more miraculous events, such as the appearance of angelic armies. What they certainly did not expect was the arrest of their Teacher.

Especially not an arrest like the one that took place — foolish and inept, from their point of view. It was a catastrophe. The leader had been seized before he could do anything, the uprising had been crushed before it was born; it was all over before it had begun. The most resolute among them tried to do at least something, but the Teacher Himself stopped him. What did it all mean? It was impossible to understand. The Teacher seemed simply to have surrendered to the authorities. Why? To what end? They did not know. One thing was clear: they had nothing more to do at His side; He no longer needed them, since He had abandoned all His plans.

And the disciples scatter to save themselves, as the participants in a failed conspiracy or an abortive uprising often do, or soldiers of a defeated army who understand that further resistance is pointless. In what was happening at Gethsemane, the apostles saw only defeat and nothing more. Jesus understands this perfectly. More than that: He knows beforehand that it will be so. His disciples' behavior came as no surprise to Him. He is even glad that they have all scattered. He knew that at that moment no greater understanding of the situation could be expected of them. And the last thing He needed was for them to resist.

He was probably rather glad that matters had gone no further than Peter's one attempt. The main thing at that moment was to keep all the disciples safe, so that none of them would die needlessly in an attempt to start a wholly unnecessary war. So that none of them would be arrested: that would have done nothing to help Him. Only deep, concentrated prayer could have helped Him — but that was precisely the kind of prayer of which the disciples were then completely incapable. Jesus remains alone.

What might Jesus' arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane have looked like? It was probably not very different from other such arrests and “security operations”: a cohort led by an officer, a crowd armed with pikes, darkness, the disciples' pitiful attempts at resistance, their dejection, confusion, and flight... But in the eyes of the evangelist John, who sees the events of the Savior's earthly life in their true spiritual dimension, even at this moment He does not cease to be the King of the universe, the Word through whom all things were created. He speaks the sacred Name revealed to Moses at the burning bush in the wilderness, “I am,” at which the guards fall to the ground in sacred dread. He commands them with authority to let the disciples go and orders Peter to put away his sword and not hinder Him from fulfilling His sacred ministry: drinking the cup offered to Him by the Father. As we shall see, John clearly perceives Jesus' divine dignity even in the most terrible moments, when the shameful interrogation, beatings, and execution become, for the apostle enlightened by faith, the hour of the Messiah's triumph.

What a strange arrest! Armed people come, Jesus asks, whom they seek, they give His name, and Jesus says: "I am He ", - and they fall to the ground. Apparently, the problem is about Jesus’ words, more concretely about one word, because He said only a single word: "Yahweh".

Let us look in another way. We had the opportunity to hear many times people, trying to understand: "why you consider Jesus as God, if He indeed never called Himself like that?" Here we see that He didn't only called Himself, but even did it more concretely: He used this God's name, which was given at first to Moses (Exodus 3:14), and after tabooed in order to avoid blasphemy. It wasn't even allowed to hear this name - that is why the soldiers fell to the ground. So, the pronunciation of this pious and instructor name in the Jewish doctrine, whom Jesus undoubtedly was, couldn't be a fortuity - it was self-testimony.

And the third consideration. It sometimes seems to the readers of the Bible that there is no feat in the sufferings and in the death of Jesus; He undergoes violence, which is unable to bear easily. But this scene shows that even during the arrest he is master of the situation. His suffering and the cross aren't constrained, but are voluntary. What a love of God towards us, if the One whom only His name paralyzes the enemies, goes unto death without resisting, "like a lamb dumb ", for our salvation.

Peter's denial has always been one of the favorite themes for preaching about sin and repentance. Usually in this case parallels are drawn with the denial of Judas, who perished not because he sinned, but because he proved unable to repent. Meanwhile, if one looks carefully at the situation, it is not hard to see that, in essence, everyone left Jesus except two, one of whom was Peter, and the other, if one follows early Christian tradition, John, the author of the fourth Gospel and the Book of Revelation.

And one of them, Peter, in response to accusing testimonies, says about Jesus: I do not know Him. What preceded this? Why did the disciples scatter? They were by no means cowards, and when they promised to die for their Teacher, they were hardly speaking in the heat of the moment. But in practice everything turned out quite differently from what they expected. They thought the time for a messianic uprising had come.

They were ready to die in battle, and Peter, if it had come to war, would have been one of the first; it is no accident that he is the one who snatches out a sword at the critical moment. But it turned out that there would be no uprising, that their Teacher simply gives Himself into the hands of the representatives of authority, that everything is lost: the uprising failed without even beginning. After all, the apostles still did not fully understand what the Teacher had told them about His death and His resurrection.

Peter followed Him into the high priest's courtyard not because he was hoping for anything, but simply in order to be closer to the Teacher, to see how the matter would end, simply in order to remain with Him to the end. And here they accuse him of something, of some kind of participation in the preparation of some uprising. What significance does all this have now, when everything is over? Peter no longer has anything to witness to, nothing to hope for; by and large he no longer cares what people will consider him to be, for everything is already behind him.

His reaction is a rather ordinary reaction of a person who is being pestered with nonsense when he is occupied with an important matter. He brushes off the questioners as though they were annoying flies: leave me alone, I know nothing and no one! And only the rooster's crow brings him out of his spiritual stupor. Peter suddenly understands that the matter is not yet over, that everything they had spoken about so recently during the Passover seder remains in force, that everything in general has gone differently from what he expected, but... But he did deny the Teacher, and he denied Him publicly. This is a bitter and sorrowful fact.

Now all that remains for Peter is to weep, reproach himself for a betrayal unexpected even to himself, and repent of what he has done. He does not yet know that very soon the day will come when he will meet the Teacher, and He will understand him, understand him without long explanations.

Christians have long held differing views on whether Peter's denial should be considered betrayal in the full sense of the word, or whether it is something else. The answer, as so often, depends on what exactly one understands Christianity to be. If Christianity is seen as a kind of new religion, then Peter's denial can be considered merely a misunderstanding, and nothing more. Indeed, the central thing that Peter and the other apostles thought their Teacher had been speaking about had failed. There would be no messianic war. It was all over before it had really begun. In denying Him, Peter was essentially betraying no one and nothing: there was no one and nothing left to betray. All that remained was loyalty to what had once been and was now gone. To former relationships. To former goals and ideals. Of course, someone who keeps such loyalty even in the face of possible death must be considered a hero.

But we can hardly demand such heroism of everyone. Especially since it was important to Peter to keep watch on the high priest's courtyard, on what was happening to the Teacher. His personal relationship with Him remained absolutely important to Peter in any case. And now people were pestering him with awkward questions about something that no longer made any sense, but could prevent him from doing what he was doing. He brushed the questioners away like annoying flies: I know nothing; leave me alone. What difference did it really make now? What had been the meaning of life only an hour before had now collapsed, and there was no point recalling it. If, however, Christianity is seen as a new life, then the denial does turn out to be betrayal.

It is no accident that the crowing rooster reminds Peter of the promises he made to the Teacher. In reality, nothing is over yet. On the contrary, everything is only beginning. The most important thing lies ahead. And for that, nothing matters more than the relationship linking Peter to Jesus. Peter alone went into the high priest's courtyard — seemingly without any particular purpose, since there was nothing he could do to help the Teacher. In reality, it was his sense of the depth of the relationship binding him to Jesus that made Peter go where he did.

And now he casually brushes aside what had been the foundation of that relationship only a short time before. Of course, Peter himself does not yet understand what is happening. He understands only that it has all turned out to be more serious than it seemed to him at first: the rooster really has crowed, just as the Teacher predicted, and the denial really has been uttered. True understanding will come later, at his encounter with the Risen One. Then true repentance will come too — repentance that fully restores Peter's relationship with the Teacher. This time forever.

Peter's denial looks like completely reasonable and sensible behavior in a critical situation. He needs to stay close and wants to learn something, and to do that he must not be recognized. At such a moment, one person runs away and hides while another tries to pass unnoticed into the place where the main events are unfolding. It is foolish to risk one's life by admitting acquaintance with the prisoner. You might be seized too, and whom would that help? We do not know, however, what drove the Apostle Peter. It is entirely possible that these first, superficial reasons, understandable to anyone, were not at all the main thing at that moment. What matters is that a moment sometimes comes when openly acknowledging that you follow Jesus is the only possible choice. On the other side, one hears the terrible word “denial.”

On Good Friday, on a Good Friday that is not distant from us but closer than ever, although we were not yet alive then, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh spoke these words from the pulpit. '<...> The Mother stood by the Cross; Her Son, betrayed, reviled, cast out, beaten, torn, tormented, was dying on the Cross. And She was dying with Him… Many, surely, looked at Christ; many, surely, felt shame and fear and did not look into His Mother's face. And now we turn to Her, saying: Mother, I am guilty—among others, yes—of Your Son's death; I am guilty—intercede for me. Save us through Your prayer, through Your protection, because if You forgive, no one will condemn or destroy us… But if You do not forgive, Your word will be stronger than any word spoken in our defense… <...> Let us stand before the judgment of our conscience, awakened by Her grief, and bring a repentant, contrite heart. Let us bring Christ our prayer that He may give us strength to awaken, come to our senses, come alive, become human, make our life deep and broad, capable of holding the Lord's love and presence. And with this love let us go out into life to create life, to fashion and build a world, deep and spacious, that would be like a garment clothing the Lord's presence, shining with all the light, all the joy of paradise. This is our calling; this is what we must accomplish by breaking ourselves, giving ourselves, dying if need be—and it is needed!—because to love is to die to oneself, to cease valuing oneself and instead value the other, whether God or a human being; to live for another, laying aside concern for oneself. Let us die as much as we can, let us strive with all our strength to die, so that we may live by love and live for God and for others.' So close to us is that Friday on which the Metropolitan spoke these words, as are all the Good Fridays that have been and will be. 'I am guilty.' I was not alive then, but I am guilty. We cannot regard this day as a symbolic commemoration of events that once took place. No. For the Body and Blood of which we partake are not a symbol, but the very Body and the very Blood. Here I am, and I am guilty here and now. It is frightening when people begin to greet one another for Easter in advance—this really happens, and happens often! Today I know nothing of Easter; I know only one thing: whether woman or man, I am guilty, for He died, and I did nothing to prevent it.