Word: jesus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...half-hour later he'd led them back to the olive grove and the cave at Gethsemane where they'd been sleeping. Eight of them went straight in, dead beat, and stretched out on the floor near the oil press. But Jesus took Peter, James and John and pressed on a few yards into the dark grove. He asked the inner three to wait while he prayed. They were tired as the others, but they nodded that they'd wait, and he walked ahead some dozen paces to the oldest tree. It had half consumed one end of a table...
...John especially thought it was eerie and unbecoming. The God who was leading this man was no father tossing a child. By then Peter and James had dozed off, but John--being younger--managed to stay half awake through most of the prayer. He could hardly see Jesus, just flashes of his face when the moon broke clear, and then it was wrenched by an agony greater than the joy they'd seen when he came down toward them on Mount Hermon after his meeting with Moses and Elijah...
...whoever this despairing demon was, John could at least try the things he'd learned about demon expulsion. But then he'd catch a new glimpse of the face, and he'd stay where he was. Maybe this was no demon at all but the bitterest lesson Jesus must learn before the incomparably bitter cross--Jesus had told John more than once that a cross would stand near the end of his road. Now John heard one more thing, several times: "Let this cup pass. Abba, not this cup. But, sir, your will." Appalling as the transaction was, even John...
What woke him fully was the Temple police, led toward them by Judas. Judas at least kissed Jesus with the standard student's greeting, "Rabbi!" John and the other pupils ran like shot dogs...
Judas lasted on, entirely alone, through the Sabbath night and day after Jesus' death. He'd stood on the ground not 10 yards from the cross and heard his teacher's astounding final words--"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And he'd stayed for Jesus' final hoarse shout a moment later. Then Judas had found his way to the house of another old pupil, one whom Jesus had been forced to send home when he caught him tampering with children for the second time--Hamer from Bethlehem...