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Gettysburg and Gardens: Holy Week Thursday

One of my favorite movies is Remember the Titans. It follows the story of a black football coach hired at a newly integrated high school in Virginia. The year is 1971 and racial tensions are high. Half of his team is black and the other white. There is enough hatred to go around. Caught in the middle is Coach Boone, hoping football can cross the racial divide and unite a high school, if not a community. 

A key moment in that movie takes place during the team’s training camp where Coach Boone leads them on an early morning run to Gettysburg National Cemetery.

Gettysburg. 

Just that word alone evokes an emotional response. It takes the hearer back to Union and Confederate soldiers engaged in fraternal conflict. In an impassioned speech, Coach Boone makes the case that these young football players are still engaged in the same fight that happened there—Gettysburg—where fifty-thousand men killed their brothers with malice in their hearts. Something about that place, and Coach Boone’s speech invoking the history that made Gettysburg sacred, spurs these young black and white high school children to start playing like men. Eventually they went on to win a state championship. 

It is amazing how just a name can engender in our minds all sorts of responses. They can mysteriously transport us back to a faraway place to watch events unfold as if they were happening in front of us for the very first time.

Mark 14 gives us such a place. “Gethsemane” might not evoke the same emotion that "Gettysburg" does. But for anyone familiar with the Bible, “Garden” is laden with meaning. Jesus’ anguished prayer, the disciples’ sleep, Judas’ betrayal—it all happens in the Garden of Gethsemane. Maybe this is a random meaningless detail.

Then again, maybe not.

Something else happened once in a Garden long ago, and Mark is, in a way, taking us back there. We see the events of Genesis 3 unfold before our eyes. We see Eve, wrestling with a snake. We see an internal conflict brewing in her heart and mind. We see the agony—yes, that is the right word—of the emotional and psychological war being waged. Will she choose to remain faithful? Or will she submit to short-term pleasure and betray her first love?

Adam is there too; Eve does not bear all the blame. Will he fight alongside the one he loves, or will he “fall asleep,” so to speak, and eat the fruit too?

It all happened in a Garden: Setup. Betrayal. Failure. And the two of them fled, naked and ashamed. 

Mark brings us back to where it all started; to another Garden. In the same way Coach Boone invoked Gettysburg for the sake of his team, Mark invokes Eden for the sake of his readers. 

This time, it is Jesus wrestling with a snake. It is Jesus’ internal conflict brewing in his heart and mind. It is his agony—yes, that is the right word—of the ensuing emotional and psychological war being waged. 

In Eden, it was fruit they were to avoid but ate anyway. In Gethsemane, it is a cup Jesus must drink but hopes to be removed. The scene in this Garden takes us back to the scene in that Garden, and the tension ramps up now as then. Will Jesus drink the cup, or flee naked and ashamed? 

No! The author of life will drink the cup of death. He will not run and hide. He will not fall asleep. He will not betray. He will see it through to the end. There is still work for Jesus to do. Friday is still on the horizon; Sunday not far behind. The first triumph, the seed of more to come, happens here. Jesus’ victory in this garden begins to unravel the failure of that one.  

When our own temptation arises, when our own heart and mind wrestle in agony over a decision we would rather not make, may God give us the courage to remain awake, the strength to drink the cup set before us; may we find victory in our own gardens. May we never be numbered among those who leave our linens behind and run away naked and ashamed (Mark 14:52).

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