The Contemplative Imperative and Evangelism

Introduction

Something very powerful and something very important has led me to put my thoughts into print in what, I hope, you will continue to read. What I am referring to is my fundamental belief that the contemplative life and evangelism are directly and inseparably linked. Let me explain.

I sometimes hear it said that the contemplative life, by which I mean a person’s prayerful attendance upon God, is something separate from and quite distinct from the life of Christian action out in God’s wider world alongside God’s people.

The contemplative way of things, it is often said, is for monks and nuns in a sheltered and separated cloister. The other is for those who, as we say in Britain, are prepared to get their hands dirty in the real world, perhaps in social activism, perhaps in the mission territory of evangelism. Or wherever.

This dichotomy, this distinction between these two worlds is I believe false. The powerful and important urge that lies behind this article is my belief that these two worlds are not separate but are distinct voices within God’s calling to each of us and that we must respond to both.

It was a conversation with two of my evangelically and evangelistically minded colleagues which gave rise to the suggestion that I put my conviction in this regard into print. Their initial view was that evangelism is something different and distinct from contemplation. I needed to persuade them that the Christian life of discipleship was broader and deeper than they thought. Yes they should keep evangelism; yes also to the need for social concern; but also there must be a contemplative waiting upon God.

The method I will adopt for what follows will be to unfold a passage of scripture through a narrative reading of the text and from it I will draw out the twinfold response of contemplation and evangelism.

The Gethsemane Imperative ‘Will you not watch with me one hour?’

My starting point should be obvious. We are with Jesus in Gethsemane. Not long before his arrest, summary trial, scourging and execution.

By way of background, Gethsemane is a name which means olive press. The easy way by which it is introduced in each of the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke suggests that this was a place familiar to Jesus and his band of followers. Certainly we know from elsewhere in the scriptures that Jesus would go somewhere to be by himself, or to spend the night in prayer. Sometimes we are told he went to a ‘lonely place’ or onto a ‘hillside’. Gethsemane was one such place where we know Jesus went, at least once, and in the text I’m using for this article, decisively so.

Gethsemane, traditionally given to be on the lower and western side of the Mount of Olives, is barely any distance from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Indeed the Temple Mount overshadows ‘the garden’ with only the shallow Kidron Brook in between them, and nowadays a fast and busy road.

The event of Jesus going to Gethsemane with his followers is well attested in the gospels. In common with other sections of scripture differences in detail are not ironed out or resolved. Authenticity in each of the different narrative reporting of the same event is preserved. For example, Luke speaks in general terms of Jesus being followed by his disciples to the Mount of Olives, whereas Mark and Matthew locate the place more precisely as Gethsemane. Matthew, moreover, specifies three followers being there, “Peter and the two sons of Zebedee”. In his account Mark names those who were there as “James and John”. The writer of Hebrews also refers to it in 5:7-8. (These are an interesting couple of verses and I’ll come back to them shortly.)

Developing the picture

Anyway, with the scene set, here’s a question: How does the scene in Gethsemane fit in with the earlier recorded teaching of Jesus? In Luke we find Jesus announcing “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God … for I was sent for this purpose.” ¹ For there to be coherence in Jesus’ life and ministry what he did earlier on in his work and what he said by way of his teaching must dovetail together and be part of the whole direction of his life. Everything must fit together and be a part of his whole life purpose.

We can see signs of the way that everything in Jesus’ ministry in Galilee developed and how, with the advantages of overview, we can see how it led in one direction. Ever more resolutely he set his face “toward Jerusalem” not least because “the days [were drawing] near for him to be taken up [to heaven]”. ² In passages like this the link between what Jesus was doing in his teaching, healing and proclaiming work with what was increasingly moving his way begins to come into sharper focus.

However, whilst I still haven’t yet raised the real prospect of a direct bond between contemplation and mission for us, I am nonetheless offering the working suggestion that Jesus’ direction was unitary and all that he did in every aspect of his life as recorded in the gospels points to this. In other words, and to project my conclusion, his time in prayer to the Father (whether alone or with others) cannot be separated from his teaching upon, let us say Mosaic law, his work of healing and of his lived and voiced proclamation of God’s kingdom.

If everything in Jesus’ life therefore fitted together as one totality for Jesus I suggest it should do so for us as well as we live his life in discipleship.

I referred to the Letter to the Hebrews earlier. Verses 7-8 of Chapter Five point to the events that took place on the evening of Jesus’ arrest in Gethsemane, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered…”

This is an important text for it gives us an insight into why Jesus went into Gethsemane (‘obedient submission’), and what happened there (‘offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears’) and was heard as a consequence of this.

How did Jesus pray? The text from Hebrews supports the gospels’ account where we read that Jesus “threw himself on the ground and prayed”. He had already described his mood as “[deeply…] grieved and agitated”. ³ Not for Jesus on that occasion the kneeling posture, ⁴ nor yet standing, ⁵ or with uplifted hands. ⁶ To fall down in prayer is the humblest posture for prayer. It denotes, and for Jesus on this occasion signals, the attitude of self-abasing reverence to the familiar Father who, in an echo of the Lord’s Prayer, accepts that it is the Father’s will that must be done. It is God’s kingdom that must come.

So to summarise thus far. Jesus in Gethsemane with his followers is at one with all that he did and taught in Galilee. His teaching and his ministry placed in sharp focused relief the coming of God’s kingdom. What happened in Gethsemane was one of the final acts of the trajectory begun in Galilee. In his anguished prayer Jesus uses the familiar form of address to the Father that he had used previously when his disciples had asked him to teach them how to pray.

His entry into Gethsemane that evening to pray was consonant with similarly recorded events from Galilee when he obeyed the Father’s will for personal prayer, mostly away from people, rather than continue in unrefreshed activism. There is consonance throughout. In Gethsemane however there is a difference. On this occasion we are explicitly told about his emotional state; his mind was in anguish. I need to say more about that.

The anguish of Gethsemane

It is necessary to refer to this because the mental anguish that Jesus undoubtedly felt had its physical side as well. The word for sorrow lype refers both to emotional and physical pain. This need not surprise us. In any state of anxiety one’s pulse is likely to race. And most people know the feeling all too well when your stomach churns upside down and back to front, so to speak, with anxiety, or worry, or upset. I’ve known my legs to feel wobbly when in deepest dread. And some people faint. One’s emotions impact upon one’s body.

For Jesus this was not a situation to avoid, though the temptation to do so would have been great. Grief, anguish, agitation, sorrow – all of these – seared deep into his soul as he prayed in Gethsemane. Though his disciples were not far away they did not give him the companionship or comfort he asked of them. They could not simply stay awake. He was alone, with the Father, with his fate. His was a real dark night of the soul.

And so in Gethsemane he prayed for the ‘cup’ to pass from him. There’s another interesting reflection here. In the Old Testament the ‘cup’ is (or rather, can be) a symbol of retribution or judgment, “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath…” ⁷ , and again, “Stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath…”. ⁸ Jesus, obediently going the way the Father requires him to go, must experience and take on himself the wrath of God. In our western, comfortable, times we may not like that notion, but we can not evade or avoid it. It was part of Jesus’ Hebrew understanding. Little wonder he prays that this cup should pass him by. And yet in submitting himself to the will of the Father he abandons himself for others.

When Jesus prayed for the cup of suffering, what we might call the cup of God’s anger towards humanity, to be taken from him, Jesus did not so much get the answer to the prayer he offered as the world was given what it needed.

Jesus’ prayer in that special place was personal. Yes he prayed for himself. But he also enjoined the sleeping disciples, slumbering and seemingly unaware in every respect of his distraught state, that they be spared the test and the trial that was, with increasing unavoidability, pacing towards him at that very hour.

Hereagain is something important for us to note. The disciples are asleep. Not even awake or watching. What is Jesus to do … Let them get their rest? Rouse them? First one, then the other? Upbraid them with words of urgency for what is about to unfold? All of these responses are there in the scriptures. But Jesus also voices his concern for them. And he returns to his praying – three times as given in Matthew, twice in Mark though not, it has to be said, in Luke.

And so to us

Here is a direct missionary motif for us. What do we do when others in our Christian communities are asleep on the job? When they fail to watch for the coming of the Lord personally and uniquely? What range of options are available to us? Yes, to say to them ‘get on, wake up, and pray!’ Yes, to wake them up when they doze off, metaphorically speaking. Yes, to speak to them as they sleep. And yes, to pray for them as yet again they fail us and sleep on. All of this is what Jesus did in Gethsemane. And the link between prayer and action is as equally available to us, as it was to Jesus, as those who seek our demise if not our downfall pace in our direction.

But there is also something more. Let me explain. The ‘sleep’ (hypnos) that has overcome the disciples in the Gethsemane narratives also has a negative connotation in that it can signify a failure to watch out both for danger on the one hand, and for opportunity on the other.

The point of this negative connotation is that the disciples have to answer the question “Can you not watch with me one hour” suggesting that if they can’t do this then what else will they fail to do. Think now of oneself. If one cannot meditate upon a passage of scripture, or if one cannot open oneself to the inrush of the Holy Spirit, or if one simply can’t take one’s post at the gate and watch for the coming of the Lord then what else can one do? Simply and contemplatively waiting for the Lord is the touchstone of everything else. If one can’t do that then what use is one going to be in any number of Alpha course sessions, for example? How can one be an activist for long periods of time if one can’t even spend a comparatively short space of time in quiet reflection in obedience to the will of God along the trajectory of obediently following the demands of discipleship? This critique can be applied to the followers of Jesus in or near Gethsemane. The same critique applies now to the disciples of today.

Textually, Mark’s gospel offers a wonderful continuum when the disciples are told to ‘stay awake’ in Gethsemane. ⁹ This is a direct reprise of Jesus’ teaching in the final parable cited by Mark in his gospel at the end of Chapter 13, “Therefore, keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” ¹⁰

If the cup must be drunk then so be it in order that God’s will be done. Jesus did it. The disciples came to do it. We aren’t to be let off.

To do the will of God is all-embracing. It isn’t restricted to what we might do on this day, or on that day. Nor is it restricted to bringing people to salvation, though of course it does mean that. It refers to the whole of life, in fact to the total orientation of life towards God’s invitation to salvation.

Very familiar to most Christians is the command given in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel to, ‘Go into all the world’. Meanwhile, here in Gethsemane with Jesus’ Galilee mission now ended his ultimate obedience is being tested to its limits. Jesus takes his closest followers with him and encourages them to pray (Luke). In Matthew and Mark he tells them to sit and to stay awake and to pray. Again the Greek is interesting for meno means both to stay in one place, or to stay with someone in a place.

So then, to stay awake. To watch. To watch out for and resist temptation. To watch and be alert that if God’s cup of wrath has to be drunk by us, then like Jesus, we go his way of obedience and accept the Father’s will. To rest, to stay, in the Lord’s presence in one place is his will. But lest we be tempted to remain there and do nothing then the moment will arrive when we are jolted into readiness and back into direct action.

Matthew and Mark both record Jesus waking his disciples out of their slumbers. Luke records them being told to get up and pray. Why? Because the betrayer is at hand. Mark, with characteristic bluntness, portrays it best, “Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand”. ¹¹

Contemplation (watching, waiting, staying with the Lord) has as its onward outflow ‘getting up and going’. The two are inseparable. Contemplation, waiting on and with the Lord, is fundamentally a part of his mission. Contemplative waiting and watching as well as the activist doing and going are inseparably linked in the trajectory of discipleship.

Mission without contemplative waiting and watching fails to recognise the fundamental place of Gethsemane in the life of Jesus and of his companionship with his followers. That is why I could have called this article the Gethsemane Imperative. It is an imperative in which contemplation and action, staying and going are both held together in an indivisible bond of discipleship.