Gethsemane and Webb

My heart felt weak, trembling beneath the weight of the knowledge I had of this place. Groves of ancient Olive Trees littered the small plot of land. Despite the mass enterings and exoduses of tourists from every country imagineable, the sound of hawking vendors hoping to sell a vile of anointing oil from the trees, and the busy ramble of tour guides on their cell phones arranging schedules, my soul felt indescribably quieted. Every other person seemed to melt away as I pictured that cool night, two thousand years ago, Jesus bleeding drops of blood for the cup His Father refused to take away, Peter, James, and John using the knots of these tree trunks to cushion their heads while they slept.

The heaviness of what happened here weighed upon me tangibly. My eyes filled with tears, not for the first or last time, and I sat down on a nearby wall and opened my Bible. I read all of the accounts of Gethsemane from each Gospel, taking time to picture everything in my mind: Jesus waking his friends, over and over again; Judas running up to his teacher and kissing him in betrayal; Peter cutting off the soldier’s ear; and Jesus, in the midst of chains and insults, humbly picking up the mangled flesh and restoring it back to the man who, amidst a situation so terrifying it elicited drops of blood, Jesus still saw as loved, innocent, and a candidate of healing.

Dwelling on these things, the strangest thing happened. Often in life, amidst great heights and achievements, we are reminded of the small beginnings which brought us to where we now stand. And so it happened with me.

I closed my eyes and instead of seeing Jesus being led away to the Sanhedrin, I see a very familiar green carpet. I see the mosaic of stained glass in the form of the Holy Spirit descending as a dove, I see the pews of my home church and the distinctive places in which each church member sits. I hear the chorus of thirty-five some-odd Southern drawls, lifting old hymns to the wooden arches of the ceiling, borne from the inspiration of the hunter green 1993 edition of The Baptist Hymnal. I see the bulletins, meticulously folded by Mylinda, bearing some inspiriational picture with an accompanying verse on the cover, the inside displaying my father’s name as pastor. I see Mrs. Lenagene’s sweet smile, eyes crinkling slightly, as she greets each person as lovingly as she can behind the same organ which I, as a child, was only allowed to play when the power button was switched to “off”. I see the places once filled by people who loved me as child, but who have long since passed. And in spite of their passing, I see Mrs. Ruby Garner, Mrs. Excel Taylor, Mrs. Mildred Pitts, all filling the pews on the left side of the church that have missed their presence for so many years.

I see Mrs. Jacqueline Reeves and Mrs. Joann Hill, standing in front of the church and leading the congregation in Southern Gospel hymns that everyone loves – The Old Rugged Cross, Victory in Jesus, At the Cross – and I feel the overpowering swell of gratitude fill the small sanctuary as we worship Jesus, old and young, one in Christ. I see my father, younger, taller, and with a little more hair, standing in front of the pulpit, raising his hands and singing to Jesus alone. I see my mama, also younger, sitting on the front pew, wearing her black, white, and gold necklace she wore to church every Sunday of my childhood, smiling sweetly, being filled with the Spirit of God. I see my brothers and sisters, all of them, sitting on the second pew of the sanctuary’s right side, Lora standing as straight in her high heels as I’ve ever seen a person do, Mark projecting every last ounce of gusto he has into the chorus fill-ins, John and Erin racing each other to see who can get to the next hymn first.

I see the children who have filled the nursery over the years, children of every era, age, and color, running through the double doors by the piano once church is over, waving the sheets they water-painted, pictures of Jesus healing, praying, and loving all the sinners like me. I see Mrs. Catherine Fong and Mrs. Cora Walters, the dear ladies who took care of me when I was just another pig-tailed girl in a frilly dress, who taught me to pray over my snacks, who taught me the way to always win at tic-tac-toe, who taught me that Jesus could always hear me, no matter where I am.

And I remember those things. As I sit in the Garden of Gethsemane, a world away from that small church in the Delta, I realize the greatness of Jesus and all of His love. Because of one man’s willingness to obey God, what happened in Jerusalem two thousand years ago is felt vividly among a tiny congregant of believers in Webb, Mississippi. What Jesus was willing to suffer is why I hear Mr. Billy Joe’s voice joyfully singing, it is why I feel Mrs. Doris’ hugs each Sunday, it is why I see Mrs. Earnestine’s smile, it is why I feel the love in Mrs. Dot’s words. It is through Jesus’ obedience, his eagerness to bridge the divide between us and God, that we can exist in joy and love and peace in this fallen world. It is why we live and move and have our being. The people of Webb Baptist Church, a tiny congregation in rural Mississippi, are the thirty-five to forty reasons He submitted to the ultimate will of God, underneath the same Olive Tree which now shades me from the bright Israeli sun.

The song that, for so many years I recognized as ringing through the white sanctuary walls my daddy painted, rang through the garden then, the same garden I sang of all those worlds and years away. And, funny as life would have it, as I sing the same song in the garden I imagined in my mind all those years, I now close my eyes in that very garden and see my home church. Every face that loved me, every hand that instructed me, every life that encouraged me. I see those that loved me so dearly as child, those who loved me as a teenager, those who love me as a woman. I see those that have gone away, moved away, and passed away. I see them all there, filling a huge part of life that bridged me from the girl who liked to read missions stories to the woman who is sitting on a floor in Uganda and writing these words.

And one day, because of the submission Jesus made in this very garden, we will all worship together once more, this time, never to be parted again. This time where thieves cannot steal and where moth and rust cannot destroy. This time where cancer cannot kill us, where strokes and heart disease are a distant memory in some long-ago life.

And this time, dressed in our Sunday best, surrounding the very man that is the theme of all our songs, we can sing as one: