"We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are.” Hebrews 4:15

We don't often speak of the ways Jesus was tempted. Of his sacrifice, sure. Of his resurrection, of course. But of those things that could have swayed the son of God from following God's purpose, we are surprisingly reticent, even though we have ample material from the gospels. And when we do spend time there, we usually camp out on the titular temptations of Jesus in the wilderness.

However, Jesus was also tempted in another place. Far from conversing with the devil, as it happens, this time he is talking with God in a garden. We've seen that sort of thing before, with Adam and Eve in Eden, but this time it's different: the garden is not paradise, and Jesus is not walking tall. In this place, Jesus was letting down some of his boundaries.

Here, the existential pain of humanity was entering Jesus' conscious experience as his own pain. As we get overwhelmed when we contemplate the amount of pain and wounds we have experienced, Jesus saw the same as he considered the full weight of not just my pain, but yours and the rest of humanity's also. He also began to realize that his human relationships were about to break down catastrophically, as he would be betrayed and deserted by many closest to him. And he understood that his God-ward relationship would be broken down as well, on the cross itself.

Most often in this garden, Gethsemane, we observe Jesus there during the season of Lent, on Good Friday, in commemoration of the events that led to the cross. When we do, we're usually looking at a single portion of his words: "Not my will, but yours." That choice is the foundation of our salvation - of course we are right to employ careful, singular focus on that point.

We say the rest of the words, and we'll even discuss them a bit. But we seldom sit for any length of time on the experience of Jesus as he interacted with God at that time in his life. Staying on the choice Jesus makes allows us a certain distance from the painful reality of that moment, which can be overwhelming. In doing so, though, we can overlook and underappreciate the perspective of the son of God: his emotional state.

What we see in Jesus in the garden is a pleading with God himself to spare him this excruciating experience: "Take this cup from me!" We see him sweat drops of blood as his focus is drawn to the totality of human experience at once, with all of the sins, wounds, pains, and suffering, which is excruciating and quite probably the essence of hell.

The Functional Hurting in the fog, as aware as we are of pain, are closer to hell in our experience than we are in reality. For Jesus, it became very real: all of that pain of human experience came crashing down upon him on the cross. Where we are unable to realize our inclination to make our own pain climax into peace, He did that all in the time from this garden to the cross, and peace did begin to flood the cosmos.

So, we have the right plot in our minds, that both sin and pain need to be resolved. But often, we have the wrong players on the stage, thinking that we need to be the ones to resolve them. We know that Jesus has taken on our sin. What we see in the garden, though, is that he has also assimilated our pain.

He reacted to that pain by asking God to take the experience away from him, just as we do. He was able to process that reaction and proactively shift the message, but the sameness in his experience allows him to sympathize with our weakness. He knows we are overwhelmed, and he understands the fog we are walking through.

In our most raw moments, we end up weeping tears, we have strong bouts of anxiety, and we experience the angst of our souls as the sheer weight of our existence bears down upon us. We lose sleep and expend vast amounts of energy to stabilize our experience.

We want all our hard work to pay off - the Bible study, the self-examination, the hours in prayer. Why can't we have that experience of God's voice, harmony, peace, and fellowship like those other Christians do? Why do they get to see the light, while our vision is clouded with darkness?

And the what-ifs: what if I only need to persevere a few more days, or a week, to get the breakthrough I've longed for? What if I give up right before the payoff, and miss out? The thought of giving up seems like a threat, like it will upend a system that we perceive to be fragile because it has not rung true for us.

It is okay (really, it is!) for our spiritual siblings to have the experiences they do. And it is fine for them to validate each other as they try, in their own lives, to navigate what it looks like to follow Jesus. Being focused on the results keeps us from questioning the premise and becoming aware of the unfair expectations being laid on us. The cognitive dissonance will come through, though, as our subconscious calls out against the weight.

Hear this: there is no shame in Gethsemane. If the sinless Jesus went there, certainly we can too. If Jesus pleaded with God to take away painful and excruciating experience, we can too. If Jesus expected (and he did) that God may allow the experience to continue, we can too.

But we know that our experience is tied up with Jesus in the garden and on the cross, which can begin to free us of our impulse to keep score. If we don't need to keep score with our fellow Christians, we don't have to feel like we are missing out on essential experiences. Our experience, while within the same gospel boundary lines, can be entirely different.

Sometimes we can feel like life is a giant, cosmic-scale buildup to a misfire, like it is inevitably a waste of time and space. We feel like we're trying to set up spiritual fireworks - that every prayer, every Bible study, every devotional, every witnessing experience, etc., will add to the powder. Someday, we think, the fuse will be lit, and all of that work will burst forth in beautiful light and shape. Surely, we think, that breakthrough experience will bring glory to God!

Then we feel like the fog is dampening the powder, and we haven't been lit yet. Or that we have been lit, and the dampness made it all fizzle out. But the point of life is not to be spectacular or to be one of the "super-saints" - many of us can't handle the pressure that would come with that anyway.

If we encounter Jesus in Gethsemane, he is with us in temptations. And he is with us in the pain. He understands our experience and sympathizes with our weakness. He's dealing with our sins, and he's working with our reactions. Our conscious existence is affected, and Jesus makes inroads into our subconscious too.

Over time, he may rewire some of the neural networks that hold us in the mist from day to day. We're not walking with him in the garden - we can't even stand up under the weight of our experience. We are on our faces in the grief of our pain and loss.

He is right there on the ground with us. He validates our experience and lays the foundation for our hope. Time spent with Jesus there is never wasted.

* Adapted from Christ in the Fog, chapter 11, "Garden."

Photo by Rey Proenza on Unsplash