Plenty of studies show how people need to control their environment to feel secure. This makes responding to a crisis a true test of character because it is not usually anticipated. The events surrounding the last days of Jesus were just such a crisis. How, then, did his friends respond?
Judas was the first to crack. We can only speculate about his motive but his decision to betray a private friendship for personal gain put him in a position he was incapable of handling. The next line of failure was found in the sleeping disciples. While Jesus was overwhelmed with the gravity of his destiny, they could not keep awake in Gethsemane. When they woke to a crisis, they were unprepared. The resort to physical violence by Peter was the instinct of a panicky and fearful man. When it became apparent that Jesus would not resist, they ran for it. When the options in a crisis are either fight or flight and one of these is taken away from you, there is no room for manoeuvre.
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Gethsemane: pastoral scene of a terrible crisis |
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In fairness to Peter, his conscience prevailed. His denial of Jesus was the headline story but at least he was in the courtyard. In a crisis where hard choices need to be made about personal safety or public heroism, some people cannot make up their mind and hover fatally in-between where they put themselves at more risk of harm than either the coward or the hero. The harsh judgment of history appears to be that Peter’s denial was worse than the fleeing disciples.
The other thing about a crisis is the way unexpected people enter the storyline. The female followers of Jesus largely stayed with him at the cross to his Godforsaken end. The authorities may not have seen them as a threat, but the emotional cost of watching a friend being tortured to death is beyond calculation. And when the body of Jesus was taken down, it was two peripheral acquaintances, Joseph and Nicodemus, who dignified his burial.
These last hours of Jesus are a story of human weakness in the face of evil and a warning against hubris in following Christ. Until a moment of crisis comes, we cannot be sure of the strength of our commitment. Yet we have gained so much control over our immediate environment today that we can go for long periods without our faith being tested. This is one reason why a correct response to this story is one of silence and humility.
All those caught up in the final hours in Jerusalem had genuine choices to make which would shape the future, but little time in which to make them. At certain key moments in our lives, this is true of us also. This story helps us to make our responses, but only if we resist that depressing sense of fatalism which can grip people during Holy Week: that the friends of Jesus were always going to react the way they did and nothing could have prevented this.
Even when we make bad choices, the grace of God is there for us, as it was then. The story of the disciples quietens us as we see how easy it is to make the wrong call under pressure, yet offers the encouragement that God still makes his strength perfect in the demonstration of human weakness.
Perhaps when the time of trial arrives we can be sure of only one thing: this Jesus won’t desert us, won’t deny us and won’t disappoint us. Such is the living God we worship this Easter.
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