The second-most stressful 24 hours of Jesus' life (Part 1)

I think we can all agree that Jesus' life was by no means easy. When you look at all he did, and all he had to go through, whether you're a Christian or not, whether you believe all the accounts of his life or not, there's no way you could say he didn't struggle. And to anyone who knows anything about Jesus' life, it's almost a given that the 24 hours before his death would almost certainly have been the most difficult 24 hours in his life. The agony he felt before anything even happened to him was enough to make him sweat blood, and yet his three closest followers fell asleep when he most needed their support; one of his twelve followers betrayed him into the hands of enemies using a symbol of friendship; none of his disciples stood by him when he was taken; he was sentenced to murder for extremely sketchy and unjustifiable reasons; he endured humiliation and torture beyond the legal limit at the time; he hung in one of the most excruciating positions ever devised for hours until his death; and perhaps most painful of all, he felt guilt for the first time ever as all the sins in the history of the world were laid on him. To say his last day was stressful would be the ultimate understatement.

But as I was reading some of the gospels, another day really stood out to me as a point which, the more you look into it, also looks unbearably stressful. I'm referring to the 24-hour period in which Jesus fed 5000 men from five loaves of bread and two fish - recorded in Matthew 14, Mark 6, Luke 9, and John 6.

So what exactly happened in this 24-hour period that made it so stressful? At this point, I'm actually going to take a bit of liberty in my interpretation of the bible (better to tell you that straight out), because I actually don't know if everything I'm going to talk about occurred in the same day. If there's one thing you learn from reading the gospels, it's that chronology wasn't the main thing on the writers' minds - to them, what happened and who did it was much more important than when it happened. Except perhaps for Luke, the doctor who "carefully investigated everything from the beginning" in order to "write an orderly account" (Luke 1:3) - but even he was just collecting memories from eyewitnesses, not recording the events as they happened. So it's impossible to know what order all the events actually happened in - but the more you find similarities between the different accounts, the more you can assume that they happened in that order. If the 24-hour period really did progress in the way I propose it did, then it would have had more stressors than almost any other similar day you could find recorded in Jesus' life, other than that of his death. But even if it didn't, you can still probably learn something about Jesus and how he handled difficult situations.

All right, enough with the technicalities. Let's see what went down in Galilee that day.

Jesus leaves in a boat across the Sea of Galilee in order to be alone; to take a break from noisy crowds and spend some time with just him and his disciples. Mark and Luke both say that this was just after Jesus' disciples came back from some amazing (yet certainly tiring) experiences, going around proclaiming who Jesus was and performing acts of power in his name, but that the crowds were too excited to give them even a chance to eat, let alone rest. And in fact, though they sail all the way across to the other side of the lake in order to have some peace and quiet, the crowds travel around the lake just to catch up with them.

So here Jesus is, facing this crowd of crazed people, disillusioned by life, desperately longing for someone to lead them - and Jesus, though he wanted to be alone, has compassion on them. He stays with them and teaches them for hours on end, and they eagerly swallow up his words.

His disciples come up to him, asking him to send the crowds away so they can go into the nearby villages and buy supper because it was getting late. Which sounds nice on the surface. But you learn something as you read through the gospels - with a few exceptions, people who interact with Jesus are always wearing some kind of mask. What they say is hardly ever what they mean - they claim to have good motives to hide selfish intentions; they ask tricky questions that they don't really want answers to; they talk about the abstract in order to direct attention away from their personal life - but Jesus always slices right down to the heart of the issue. Even the people who have been with Jesus for years don't seem to understand that he can see right through them.

So here are the disciples, asking Jesus to send the crowds away (so they can buy supper). They probably did care about the people somewhat, but it's not too hard to think up another possible motive - they wanted to be left alone. These ordinary people Jesus calls his disciples - fishermen, tax collectors, etc. - have just spent weeks doing intense travelling, speaking, and healing, way beyond anything they ever expected they would do, and were looking forward to some time to rest - and these crowds are keeping them from relaxation. They've had enough of masses of people. So they tell Jesus to send them away.

They don't want to be involved with the crowds. So how does Jesus respond? I mean, he did take them away in the boat to be alone before, so wouldn't he support their wish to be alone now? But for whatever reason - maybe to reveal their mask, maybe to teach them something about compassion - He makes them get as involved as they could possibly get... "you feed them."

Typical. Jesus always does that - tells people the exact opposite of what they want to hear.

Now, there's a lot of insight to be gained from this short, simple event, about trust, about power, about compassion, about prayer, about submisssion, but I'm sidetracking from my original point - to talk about why this 24-hour period was so stressful. So here's a quick rundown of the rest of the story: the disciples freak out at Jesus' request. So Jesus just asks them for what they've got - turns out one boy (out of thousands of people) was smart enough to pack some food. Jesus is satisfied; he divides the people into organized groups, gives thanks for the food, starts distributing this boy's meal... and everyone somehow has enough to eat. The disciples then went around picking up basketfuls of leftovers.

Immediately after this happens, Jesus sends his disciples away on the boat and dismisses the crowd. Which is kind of odd if you think about it - Jesus did everything - traveling, sleeping, talking, eating - with his twelve disciples. But now he sends them away, and goes off on a mountainside to pray. Now, this isn't odd in itself - there are other instances of Jesus spending time alone in prayer. It seems likely to me that he would have spent hours every day in time alone with the Father - and every waking second in communication with him.

But what is odd is the amount of time he spends in prayer this night. He starts in the evening, just after everyone's eaten the miracle meal and gone home. And he stays there until just before dawn. 4 in the morning. That's like 8 hours in prayer. Now, Jesus was fully human. Meaning he needed sleep in order to keep his biological processes going. Meaning spending the entire night in prayer is not something he'd do all the time, especially considering how busy his days were. So this is something special. He must have a good reason to want to spend this night in particular in such deep connection with his Father...

(continued in Part 2)