NOTES for Mar 14:43-15:1

The betrayal has taken place, and a raid has been organized against Jesus as against a robber. The attempt of one of the disciples to defend Christ according to the rules of this world is stopped by Him Himself.

Those who arrested Him probably did not themselves believe that Christ would begin actively resisting. But their precautions reveal another fear: fear of the unknown, fear of the other life brought by this incomprehensible preacher, and finally fear of looking into oneself and recognizing one's own wrong. It is fear that makes people attribute the most monstrous absurdities to their victim, just to drown out the voice of conscience.

The flight of the apostles during Jesus' arrest is usually explained by fear and cowardice. Meanwhile, we have no grounds to think that all of them were so cowardly, at least the Gospel accounts do not testify to this. Quite the opposite: some of them, and above all Peter, were very resolute. The same Peter, for example, at the moment of the Teacher's arrest seized a sword, and if Jesus had approved him, it is quite possible that if not all, then most of the disciples would have supported Peter in one way or another. The apostles were ready for an uprising and for war; they were ready to fight, defending their Teacher, and in this war they were ready to die for Him.

The problem was that no war lay ahead. Jesus was not going to fight; He was not even going to defend Himself from the people who came to arrest Him. The messianic war for which the apostles were inwardly preparing existed only in their imagination, and this was the main problem. They prepared for one thing, while in reality something entirely different happened to them; in such a situation a spiritual breakdown is not only possible but almost inevitable.

More precisely, it is inevitable to the extent that a person is immersed in his imagined reality, and to the extent that he spends much, or conversely comparatively little, spiritual effort in order to exist in it. For the disciples, the picture of the messianic war they had drawn was so real that they could not even imagine any other development of events. Peter grabs the sword precisely because his picture of reality in the situation that arose allowed only one possible course of action. Meanwhile, Jesus acts completely differently, not as the apostles expect.

At that point they are lost: what indeed remains for soldiers to do when their commander not only does not try to resist, but himself, completely voluntarily, surrenders? Surrender together with him? This is absurd and cannot fit into consciousness. The reality constructed by the apostles collapses before their eyes, and they run away because in such a situation nothing else remains for them. Jesus, seeing their spiritual state, had no doubt even during the Last Supper that everything would be exactly so, for in the fallen world all this is so understandable and so human.

The Gospel story of the trial of Jesus is interesting not so much for its unusual character as, sadly, for its ordinariness. History knows many staged and politically motivated trials, and in this respect there is nothing new or surprising in the trial of Jesus. But why did the Temple elite need this trial? Without their participation it could not have taken place at all. It would seem that Jesus had given the religious orthodox plenty of reasons to hate Him, and the Temple priesthood was clearly disturbed by His activity. Yet this concern alone would not have been enough: in those years in Judea a decision to impose the death penalty was not so common, and the sentence would have had to be submitted for approval to the Roman authorities, who were known for their legal meticulousness. This was quite different from a secretly organized assassination: the matter acquired public and political visibility. Besides, the Temple priesthood's hostility toward Jesus could hardly have had a strictly religious coloring: these people traditionally treated the prophetic books in general, and prophecies about the Messiah in particular, with restraint and even skepticism, and they considered only the Torah proper, the Pentateuch, to be Sacred Scripture. The messianic expectations of the Synagogue were in many ways foreign to the Temple. Therefore they viewed every messianic movement from an exclusively religious-political point of view, which is hardly surprising: it was precisely the Temple, or more exactly the High Priest, that then held the highest political authority in Judea; above him stood only the representative of Rome, the procurator, who at that time was Pontius Pilate, mentioned in the Gospel. From the point of view of high politics, any messianic movement was undesirable, and on this the procurator and the High Priest agreed, since any such movement could easily grow into an uprising against Rome, which in the end is what happened in A.D. 70. But the representatives of the Temple, and first of all the High Priest himself, were playing their own game, using the messianic expectations widespread among the people and the religious-political tension in Judea connected with those expectations to put pressure on Roman power and bargain for political concessions for themselves. They regarded this political game as a good for Judea and for the Jewish people, and they saw their main task in it as keeping the process under control in order, on the one hand, to get as much as possible from Rome, and on the other, not to give Rome a reason for direct military intervention in the situation. Jesus turned out in this game to be merely a bargaining chip: His preaching could least of all be a threat to Rome, but through His example they could demonstrate to Roman authority an active struggle against disturbers of order and peace in Judea. At the same time they could get rid of a figure who irritated both the Temple and the Synagogue. Thus casually, while playing politics, the Temple elite handed over to death the Messiah-Christ sent by God.

After seizing Jesus, they brought Him to the house of Caiaphas. To put Him to death, they needed the agreeing testimony of at least two people, but this was not easy. At last some were found who distorted Christ's words and said, "We heard Him say, I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands" (compare John 2:19).

But even this was not enough. The defendant answered nothing, just as Isaiah had prophesied (Isa. 53:7). The high priest was perplexed: "Do You answer nothing?" (v. 60). Silence in reply. "Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" What would He say? This time the answer rang out firmly and confidently: "I am; and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven."

This was more than enough. By acknowledging Himself as the Messiah, Jesus condemned Himself to death. Blasphemy was a crime worthy of death under Jewish law. The high priest, tearing his garments, as Jews did as a sign of bitter grief or when witnessing sacrilege, said, "What further need do we have of witnesses?" Jesus was judged worthy of death.

Peter was in the courtyard all this time, and one of the servant girls recognized him: "You also were with Jesus of Nazareth," she said. Peter loved the Teacher with all his soul. Moved by this love, he had followed the Teacher to the high priest's house. Peter had even been ready to die for Him (Mark 14:31). But now the one who would become the first of the apostles gave way to fear. Everything was different from what Peter had expected. "I do not know or understand what you are saying," he answered the servant girl. Twice more that day he denied the Teacher. The rooster crowed twice, and he, remembering Christ's prophecy, went out and wept bitterly.

How often we too give way to fear and are ready to deny the Lord, largely because His actions do not fit our ideas about Him.

Darkness thickened, and a succession of false testimonies began. Peter bears false witness by denying Him. Many bear false witness before the Sanhedrin. Yet no one could be found to give reliable testimony proving that He had committed evil deeds.

When slander and distortion fell silent, His testimony about Himself was heard. It was not given at the very beginning of the proceedings, but only when every version had already been voiced and it was time to choose: to accept or reject the truth that came from God.

We can construct theories, think through different scenarios, and surround ourselves with an invented little world, but sooner or later the hour of an unavoidable choice comes. Anyone who hopes to evade it rejects the truth by the very act of evading the choice.

The "trial" of Jesus can be called a trial only in quotation marks. It is entirely clear that no one in the Sanhedrin intended to examine the substance of anything or sort anything out. The evangelist says directly: the Sanhedrin gathered in order to condemn Jesus, to condemn Him at any cost, even if it was necessary to resort to false testimony. Where does such hatred come from? And is it even hatred?

In a certain sense, of course it is: everyone gathered then in Caiaphas's house wanted the Man who stood before them to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet the hatred here was cold and calculating. There was nothing personal in it, only politics and religious-political interests. The temple elite is often presented to oneself and others as some kind of infernal villains. If that were so, we today would feel calmer, because no one would call us infernal villains.

In reality, however, and unfortunately for us, everything here is more frightening: Jesus is killed by the most ordinary people, though highly placed ones, for the most ordinary, entirely earthly, and not at all "otherworldly" interests, the interests of religious politics and politics in general, which are usually called "higher" interests but do not cease under that name to remain quite earthly. He simply got in the way of the temple elite, in the complex game it was playing with Roman power, with the Synagogue, and with the Zealots. In this game Jesus turned out to be the factor outside the system that could spoil everything, and something had to be done with Him. The whole horror of the situation was that Jesus' "judges" were completely indifferent to who stood before them. It really could have been the most ordinary teacher or preacher, and the same fate would have awaited him.

No one in the Sanhedrin intended to kill the Messiah. They only wanted to remove from the road a man who was interfering with high politics, and in the end the One they "removed" was precisely the Messiah. This is understandable: murder is murder, and the murder of any innocent person is the same sin as the murder of the Messiah. In the fallen world the life of an outstanding person is valued differently from the life of an unnoticed one, but in the Kingdom the arithmetic is different. The Messiah dies as the most ordinary person because each person is as precious to God as He is.

Peter did not limit himself to denying that he knew Jesus. He began to swear and call God as witness, and as a result he aggravated his denial with the blasphemy of a false oath. In many Gospel episodes the words spoken by Peter turned out to have been spoken on behalf of all the apostles. This was so, for example, when in the name of all he confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

Should we consider that he also spoke the words of denial not only in his own name? If so, this means that in different situations he expressed not only the faith and wisdom given to the apostles from above, but also their old human weaknesses. Then it turns out that he also accepted the shame for all who faltered, for all who were ashamed of their faith, and not only for his own weakness. But it appears that he also had to realize the fall more deeply than the others. And therefore the repentant words of love for Christ that Peter later spoke were spoken not only for himself. Perhaps not only for the apostles...

The trial before Pilate is one of the most terrible moments in the Gospel narrative. The fate of Jesus of Nazareth no longer depends at all on His teaching or on the attitude of the Jewish authorities toward Him. What He did and what He said no longer matters. Here the Lord encounters an impersonal machine created by people, built from the balance of their momentary interests and career calculations. Even the question of Pilate's responsibility looks pale and not very meaningful... And, of course, the incompatibility between God and this impersonal machine is striking.

The behavior of all the participants in the proceedings, except the Lord Jesus Himself, gives us a very vivid example of what lack of freedom is. Even Pilate, who pretends that everything depends on his decision, is not free. His actions are determined by circumstances. Right in front of him stands the Son of God, and he functions instead of living. In a certain sense this is a very instructive moment, because most of us take part, one way or another, in the grim work of this social machine.

In the situation that led to Jesus' crucifixion, what is perhaps most frightening for us is precisely that it happened in a rather ordinary way. Ordinary in the sense that Christ was not crucified by some terrible villains or servants of the devil for some mysterious goals known only to them, but by very ordinary people moved by very ordinary human motives and interests. If everything had been otherwise, we could feel uninvolved in the Savior's death; but it turns out that in principle any one of us could have become involved in it if we made the wrong choice in one or another very concrete life situation. What moved those who wanted to get rid of Jesus? For some, as for example for a certain part of the Pharisaic brotherhood, He was a destroyer of religious foundations and traditions and for that reason alone deserved death. For others, for the Temple elite, for example, He was a threat to national peace and well-being; and if so, let Him die for the good and peace of the people (John 11:50). And for Pontius Pilate He was merely a threat to his personal well-being and career: what sense was there in "quarreling with the people" if it was simpler to do what the shouting crowd demanded and thereby calm that crowd (vv. 5-15)? And the Temple representatives are here too; the matter may reach Rome, and then perhaps it will not be so easy to wash oneself clean of accusations (John 19:12)... All these motives and considerations have moved people in every age; there is nothing new here. But in a situation where one must choose between Christ and something that obscures Him, these human motives and considerations become a real instrument of the devil, and this instrument works all the more effectively the less noticeable it is. It becomes especially dangerous when the issue is not simple human egoism, but such lofty, though somewhat abstract, concepts as "the good of the people" or "religious tradition." Of course, neither concern for the good of the people nor the preservation of religious tradition is bad in itself. Trouble comes when they move into first place and become ends in themselves. One only has to put the good of the people ahead of God and Christ, and both are lost (the fate of Judea and Jerusalem in A.D. 70 is a vivid witness to this). And religiosity cannot be preserved by making it the sole goal; it will spiritually degenerate and die. But the most terrible thing turns out to be not even the death of religion or social catastrophe. The most terrible thing is what precedes it: the rejection of God and of Christ. That very rejection which condemns the Savior to the cross.

Standing before Pilate, Jesus does not defend Himself. This is not surprising, since what the members of the Sanhedrin rejected would be even harder for Pilate to grasp.

Though he finds no guilt in Christ, Pilate nevertheless grants amnesty not to Him, but to Barabbas, whom the people demand. Strictly speaking, Pilate has no concern for the wishes of conquered provincials, but political circumstances required him to curry favor with them. To this day even many Christians repeat the pagan proverb, "The voice of the people is the voice of God," forgetting or not knowing the people's own wisdom: "The voice of the people crucified Christ." On that day the openly pagan Pilate and the Jewish crowd that supposedly knew Scripture united in rejecting the true God in the name of unstable immediate interests.

Scripture does not tell us the later fate of the freed Barabbas. Yet he became the first of sinners whom Christ saved by dying in his place. Barabbas accepted salvation not for eternal life, but for temporary earthly life, and we do not know whether he used his chance for full salvation. But after Barabbas, this chance has now been given to each of us by the sacrifice of Jesus. How we use it is for us to decide.

High politics does not notice the little person; it has always been this way, and this has long been known. In the fallen world the Messiah's path could only be the path of a little person. This is understandable: He Himself said that His Kingdom is "not of this world." And if so, then for the fallen world He is nobody, and His Kingdom is nothing. So they deal with Him accordingly: not as some great nobody, but as the most ordinary nobody. In the way any little person in that time and place would have been treated.

And in any other time and place as well: different in form, perhaps, but the same in essence. Jesus' arrest, the sentence of the Sanhedrin, the confirmation of the sentence by Pilate as Rome's representative, the shameful execution itself; all this was ordinary and typical. In those days in Judea, something like this could have happened to anyone under similar circumstances. Pilate has nothing personal against Jesus; in some sense he even finds Him sympathetic. But for a high-ranking official there are, of course, things more important than personal sympathies and antipathies.

He understands that Jesus is guilty of nothing. But what difference does that make when the interests involved are, if not Rome's, then at least those of Pontius Pilate's own career? Quarrel with the temple elite, go against the crowd stirred up by them? For what? In the name of justice? Pilate, apparently, was a skeptic and cynic, like most of Roman high society in those days. Judging from everything, he did not believe in higher justice, just as he did not believe in truth; both were relative for him.

If it had been safe, he could have displayed showy nobility and principle; perhaps he even knew how to be kind and generous, so long as neither burdened him much or threatened him in any way. Here, however, there was a threat: the high priest and his circle could have had their own connections in Rome, and who knows how they would view a procurator there who indulged dangerous preachers. It was better to be cautious, and who cares about the fate of some wandering teacher? So the path to the cross passes through the hatred of some and the indifference of others.

Today's passage is devoted to something we usually do not find joyful to think about at all and by no means pleasant to remember: human weakness. For Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane revealed not only the suffering of Jesus' own soul, but also the weakness of His disciples, who proved completely unready to support Him (vv. 33-41). It is noteworthy that in the end they all ran away (vv. 50-52), although not long before they had all expressed their readiness to die with their Teacher (vv. 27-31).

Of course, the easiest thing would be to explain everything by hotheadedness and, perhaps, youthful maximalism, which often lets its possessor down at the most unsuitable moment. But among the apostles there were people of different ages and temperaments, and many of them were far from being boys. Evidently, the apostles' expressed resolve to follow Jesus, if necessary, to death, was not the fruit of emotion alone. And yet at the moment when the Teacher so needed support, the disciples, even the closest ones, could not hold out and fell asleep.

But what was it that they could not hold out against? The strain of waiting? A sleepless night? Probably that too. But there was something else: here, in the Garden of Gethsemane, for the first time they saw their Teacher like this: suffering, exhausted by anguish, imploring the Father for mercy, asking that the cup prepared for Him somehow, by some incredible miracle, might still pass Him by. They had always and everywhere seen the Teacher strong, and suddenly, completely unexpectedly, they saw Him weak. They were used to always hoping in Him, relying on Him in all the trials that had until then fallen to their lot, and now suddenly the Teacher Himself asks them for help and seeks support from them.

The apostles were evidently not ready for this. They were, of course, ready to die beside Him, but they probably thought it would be a heroic death in the struggle for the triumph of that Kingdom about which the Teacher had spoken so much and so often, not a meaningless death in a war that had not even begun. It is no surprise that the only reaction of one of the disciples to the appearance of those who came to arrest Jesus was a sword stroke (v. 47): if one is to die, then at least in battle. And when it turned out that there would be no battle, they all immediately ran away, no longer seeing any point in remaining there, in the place of what then seemed to the apostles a complete and final catastrophe.

And now, when the apostles run away, it also becomes clear why none of the three could endure the Teacher's prayer without falling asleep: they evidently understood, no worse than Jesus Himself, that what awaited them was nothing like what they had expected. This was impossible to bear, and, as often happens in such moments, their consciousness simply switched off, unable to withstand the strain. Perhaps the apostles even fled quite unexpectedly to themselves, as sometimes happens to a person in a state of shock, when he simply does not know how to react to a completely unexpected situation that has developed.

Here we have before us a very instructive example that reveals the main cause of every human weakness: spiritual unreadiness to accept a situation as it is. As a rule, we are ready for what we expect and completely unready for surprises. Yet readiness for surprises presupposes spiritual readiness, not merely psychological readiness. We prepare ourselves in advance for what we expect, developing possible models of behavior and preparing answers to possible questions. Sometimes this works, but it is important to remember that our psyche is just as much a part of nature as our body is. And our spiritual "I," the true center of our personality, what the Bible calls the heart, manifests itself when all home preparations, all plans, and all expectations prove untenable and unnecessary.

And here begins what is most important for us: only when a decision is made by our spiritual "I" can it be right in any situation, even the most unexpected. Then situations of "accidental" betrayal and thoughtless, "automatic" treachery become impossible.

After the Passover meal Jesus went with His disciples to the village of Gethsemane. There He asked the disciples to wait while He prayed. Jesus often withdrew for prayer, but now He took the disciples closest to Him, Peter, James, and John, to support Him. On the Mount of Transfiguration they had witnessed the divine glory of the Teacher (Mark 9:3-8). This time the Savior's human nature is revealed to them in its fullness; for the first time the Teacher stands before them as One who needs ordinary human support. But they were unable to give it: drowsiness overcame them.

Jesus knew what awaited Him. His hour was drawing near, and everything human in Him rose up against it. Falling to His knees, He prayed that, if possible, this hour might pass from Him. The heaviness of the struggle the Savior experienced between human feelings and the divine will remains a mystery forever. "Yet not what I want, but what You want," Jesus was able to say. Returning to the three disciples, He finds them sleeping and says: "Watch and pray, that you may not fall into temptation: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Going away from the disciples, He prayed again, saying the same words, until love for the Father strengthened Him.

The Gospel then tells how one of the twelve betrayed the Teacher with a kiss, how Jesus, with the words "but let the Scriptures be fulfilled," gave Himself into the hands of the soldiers who had come to arrest Him, and how all the disciples fled in complete confusion. Yet in a special way Christ's words, spoken also to us, reach us: "Watch and pray, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Only by watching and praying will we be able, overcoming all our fears of the future and of what we do not understand, to say together with Christ to our Heavenly Father: "Yet not what I want, but what You want."