Last evening we left the upper room and came across to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed in anguish, sorrowful to the point of death. He asks his disciples to keep watch, because the time for him to be handed over is imminent; his betrayer is near. But they can’t fight off their drowsiness any more, and, too tired to stay awake, they snooze while Jesus prays.

This morning the Gospel of John picks up where Matthew left off. Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples. It is a place he often took his disciples. Judas had been there before. That is why he knew where to go. It’s hard to believe anyone would love money so much they would do something like this, let alone one of Jesus’ own.

So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns, and weapons. This has taken some organising and arranging—the religious leaders had long strategized about how to do away with Jesus, and at last they have their moment. In stark contrast, Jesus, unarmed, with only a small band of dozing disciples, simply prays that his Father’s will be done.

Jesus knew what was about to happen, so he went out to meet them. “Who is it you want?” “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.

There they stand, hostile to God, with lanterns and weapons as if they were on a witch-hunt. In this dramatic moment John has captured so profoundly the dividing wall of hostility which is the reality of our natural state before God. That might shock us to hear and think of, but, as Paul would say, in our natural state we are enemies of God, alienated from him, and objects of his wrath.

The image of the hostile mob carrying torches and weapons pictures so well the opposition to God that first appeared in the garden paradise God had created. He had created Adam and Eve as the final act of his very good and very beautiful creation; created in the image of God to be his representatives on earth, to walk and rest with him. They were blessed so abundantly and lacked nothing. But they fell to the Devil’s temptation to believe that they still didn’t have enough; that they needed to be more than God’s representatives, and be gods themselves. “Did God really say?” the serpent hissed, tempting words that have had a devastating toll, ringing throughout time.

Adam and Eve led the rebellion against God. In that Garden paradise came a wilting and withering, a drying and dying, not only of foliage but of people’s hearts. They thought it would be so good but it was so evil; rather than blessing, the curse came. God said to Adam, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:17-19).

“Dust you are and to dust you shall return.’ Those words were spoken when the season of Lent began on Ash Wednesday. Death is now the norm. That death is not only physical, but a spiritual one too. By making themselves the final authority, Eve and Adam brought sin into the world, and with it, separation for all people from God, so that nobody can know Christ as the Son of God or come to him by their own reason or strength.

We see that reality in the Garden of Gethsemane—the Jewish leaders and detachment of soldiers know not who Jesus really is, as they arrest him, and bind him.

We see that in Caiphas, who, although he is the High Priest, knows not God’s holy word or the Word made flesh, and questions Jesus about his teaching.

We see that as Jesus stands before Pilate, who has no idea of Jesus’ identity—asking the King from heaven if he is the king of the Jews.

We see it with the crowd, stirring themselves into a frenzy, in whose eyes Jesus is unwanted, and whose surging thirst for violence rises over Pilate’s plea for reason. “What crime has this man committed?” They want a criminal freed instead: “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!”

We see it with the soldiers who ridicule Jesus with a mock coronation, putting a twisted crown of thorns on Jesus’ head, clothing him in a purple robe, saying over and over: “Hail, king of the Jews!”, slapping him in the face.

We see it as we move to another garden today—the barren garden at Golgotha; ‘The place of the skull’—as Jesus, betrayed, mocked, jeered, beaten, tortured, shamed and crucified, is lifted on the Cross—even though there was no basis for a charge against him.

John tells us several times in his version of the Passion narrative that Jesus’ death—and everything surrounding it—happened so that the Scriptures would be fulfilled. This is a crucial point because it shows us that God brings about what he says he will do. Jesus’ death wasn’t a casual or incidental happening. The Father didn’t hand his Son over to be crucified as a last-minute reaction to the problem of our sin and the consequences of it. This was God’s intention for you from the beginning, when he promised a Saviour who would bruise his heel by stomping on the Serpent’s head to crush him.

God was not obligated to us to do this—yet his love obligates him. The only reason why God could effect this plan, crucifying his innocent Son for the sake of all people, is his love for the world. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (John 3:14-15). God’s love compelled him to follow through with his plan, and so the Father’s own Son hangs on a cross, his death in exchange for the life of the world, his righteousness in exchange for our sin.

In the first garden, after Adam and Eve sinned, they realised they were naked and made coverings for themselves. Jesus is stripped of his clothes, stripped of his dignity, as the soldiers cast lots for his garments.

In the first garden, after Adam and Eve sinned, they tried to hide from God. In the Garden of Golgotha, the sinless Son of God has nowhere to hide. He is shamed publicly, lifted up in disgrace for all to see—despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief…wounded for our transgressions; crushed for our iniquities…The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.

In the first garden, God asked: “Where are you?” at Golgotha Jesus, in agonising suffering, asks where God is: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Wearing the same frail human flesh as yours, God in Christ carried our sins to the Cross and faced the full brunt of sin and evil as he stretched out his hands and took the blows of the hammer that should have been ours. He died in your place. He confronted death head on and defeated it with his own, for you.

And at the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

Will those words really be true for Jesus: “Dust you are and to dust you shall return?”

Now, thinking he has Jesus just where he wants him, Satan roams about like a roaring lion, accusing God’s people day and night, pointing to the commandments; bringing before God our miserable track record, showing how, unlike Jesus, not one of us are innocent. Like Adam and Eve in the first garden, we have nowhere to hide from God.

But in an astonishing twist, Pilate’s words are now the Father’s own for all who look to Christ crucified: “I find no basis for a charge against them.”

Jesus will not be left in the dust—and nor will whoever looks to him in faith. For it is in the dust that the life of a buried seed unfolds, and take roots, and sprouts, and bloom.

How deep the Father’s love for us! Jesus is that seed from whom a new garden will burst forth in bloom, a garden that will never more wither and perish, even long after the world has given way; a garden of living colour testifying that not even death itself can separate us form the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.