Even Unto Death
Meditating on the depression of Jesus
36 Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.” 37 He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed. 38 He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39 He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.
Matthew 26:36-39
I am comforted to know Jesus was so sorrowful that he wanted to die.
This scripture presents the paradox of depression, at least as I experienced it—the notion of not wanting to be here but still fearing death. Jesus was so horrified by whatever prophetic notion the Father gave him about the coming violence that he knew he’d rather die on his own terms, and it was grief that put him there. Grief might be the heaviest of our emotions, and it does not animate us like love, anger, or fear. In the right doses, it is meant to slow us down and help us reconcile our losses, but too much can crush us.
Recent chatter among mental health professionals surrounds the difference between Trauma and trauma. “Big T” trauma is familiar to all of us: the sudden passing of immediate family or a spouse; the experience of physical violence, whether from another person or through something like a car accident; or the trauma of soldiers in war. But “little t” trauma is no less potent. Little t trauma is a daily assault over years and years, the way a a highway overpass cracks after winter freezing and unfreezing, endlessly supporting the weight of commerce until it starts to fall apart. It doesn’t matter if it was an earthquake or the slow march of time, abuse, and the weather—either way, the bridge is broken, and so all the losses break us.
Psychology Today defines little t trauma this way:
Small ‘t’ traumas are events that exceed our capacity to cope and cause a disruption in emotional functioning. These distressing events are not inherently life or bodily-integrity threatening [like big T trauma], but perhaps better described as ego-threatening due to the individual left feeling notable helplessness. Some examples include:
Interpersonal conflict
Abrupt or extended relocation
Legal trouble
Financial worries or difficulty
In the garden on a Thursday night, Jesus broke. I said before it was the vision of his coming torture that broke him, but I am inclined to think maybe everything hit him in that moment—being a political refugee as a toddler, the loss of his earthly father, the murder of his friend and cousin, and now the coming tribulation of his betrayal, abandonment, torture, and crucifixion. Just one of those prolonged or sudden traumas is enough to break any one of us.
This is the paradox of the comfort of Jesus and his Spirit—we are rarely pulled from our circumstances with a miracle or some other supernatural intervention; rather, we find that Jesus was also abused, also poor, also lonely, also grieved, also abandoned. We are comforted not usually how we wish to be, by relief from our trial, but by the knowledge of a God who became a man to share in our sufferings and invite us into his own.
Yes, even the suffering of his mental health.
It’s jarring for me and my fellow pentecostals to think of Jesus that way after we’ve been brainwashed by the always-happy, name-it-and-claim-it (even your mental health!), television Jesus salesmen, but the suffering of Jesus is unmistakable, suffering he did not escape until his death, and even in his resurrected body he retains the scars of his suffering.
I recently wrote a very short story about those scars and the humanity of Jesus, and one of the things I hoped came across in the story was that what happens here to us and how we respond matters. The earth will pass away one day, but our memories will not. The suffering of Jesus was not wasted, and so ours will not be wasted, and the love we gave despite our suffering will not be wasted. We have to reject the gnostic fallacy that this present time will be erased, washed down the drain or lost like fog to the morning sun.
And therein we find a means of joy in suffering, that our hearts will be mended and our traumas fully healed, perhaps in this time, but certainly once we are with Christ in the fullness that he promised, in the place he has prepared for us.
This is a much needed read in this time. Thank you for your research and insight.