Dark Gethesemane

It is Holy Week, and it's been a cool and windy one so far, but that suits me. It reminds me of the arrival of spring in the midwest more than the SC springs I have witnessed the last few years, where we can all be languishing in summer-like warmth even in March.

My sister and I had a good rant the other day about the necessity of Easter hymns at Easter. It looks as though this year we'll both be celebrating the day at churches where the powers-that-be don't share our convictions on this question. And at my church, mine will be the hands that miscarry the music. Haha. I'm playing for the kids, a song I had no say in choosing, but I couldn't refuse. It's Easter. And kids. Though I do think we could do better by them.

There's a scene in Gilead where John Ames tells his son about having been frightened of him when he was a little baby. He writes: "I would sit in the rocking chair and your mother would put you in my arms and I would just rock and pray until she finished whatever it was she had to do. I used to sing, too, 'Go to Dark Gethsemane,' until she asked me if I didn't know a happier song. I wasn't even aware of what I was singing."

I didn't grow up with "Go to Dark Gethsemane," but I know my mom did. I've heard her mention it. So I've been trying to learn it this week, I guess to more deeply itch exactly where church won't scratch me. I was listening to versions of it yesterday on my way to school, and the song is so very bleak that it was making me laugh, maybe in the way Marilynne Robinson is getting at when John Ames sings it to his baby son:

Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter's power;
Your redeemer's conflict see, watch with Him one bitter hour,
Turn not from his griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.

Follow to the judgement hall, view the Lord of life arraigned;
O the wormwood and the gall. O the pangs his soul sustained.
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss; learn of Christ to bear the cross.

Calvary's mournful mountain climb, there, adoring at His feet,
Mark the miracle of time, God's own sacrifice complete.
"It is finished," hear him cry. Learn of Jesus Christ to die.

Early hasten to the tomb, where they laid His breathless clay;
All is solitude and gloom, Who has taken him away?
Christ is risen. He meets our eyes. Savior, teach us so to rise.


Learn to pray. Learn to bear the cross. Learn to die. It's quite the pitch James Montgomery gives us in this hymn, or I guess I could say that it's quite the call to follow Christ. I could also pretty honestly say that I've spent lots of time and effort trying to avoid suffering, shame, and loss, and maybe especially the Christian variety of those. I used to pray that the people I respect wouldn't find out I was a Christian and thus think less of me. Now I hope they will find out I am a Christian and that I will not fall for some diminished version of what that means. I'm maybe not prepared to propose singing "Go to Dark Gethsemane" with the kids on Sunday, but I do love the resources this song suggests Christians have in Christ's example. If we aren't afraid of suffering, shame, or loss, we have something pretty tremendous at our disposal. Because the truth is those things are unavoidable anyhow, but Christ gives them meaning. But who, being on the outside of faith, would ever be drawn to this? It is the foolishness of the Gospel. It is wonderfully counter-intuitive and it's funny to see it both ways at once.