'Who is Jesus? He is God become man. How can we say so radical a thing? It is because through his humanity, we able to see the fullness of his majesty - a majesty so sure that it can serve and die - and still be a source of life'

Ronald Goetz

'He was tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin'

Hebrews 4:15

'Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me'

Mark 14:36

'He always had the nature of God, and of his own free will he gave all that he had' Philippians 2: 6,7

It is often put as a riddle. If Jesus was God then surely he would have known what was going to happen to him, so why is he so disturbed by Gethsemane?

So does this questioner think that what Jesus was doing in Gethsemane was putting on some sort of show? That it was a fake desolation, because really he was God dressed in a human body and knew the resurrection was going to happen?

People from early in the Christian era have struggled how to put God and humanity together in the same space. In the end the conclusion was drawn that our Lord was fully human and fully divine. And whatever that means, it declares the experience of Jesus as a human being was identical to our own. There was no pretence or immunity from human alienation in his Gethsemane experience. Here was a man of his time who did not know the end from the beginning. Indeed here was God stripped of all that would make God invulnerable to human limitation.

The prayer of Jesus was all too human. The prayer to God is all too common. The prayer experienced at one and the same time within the wholeness of the Man who was God is unique.

There is no holding back from its terror and despair. Mark talks of fear, distress, agitation and sorrowing to the point of death. Matthew adds sadness, while Luke talks about deep sweating. Jesus was in the swirling terror of a panic attack - yet even those words seem inadequate.

For whatever 'fully human and fully divine' means, it indicates that at one and the same time in complete unity the twin natures of Christ were absorbed by the consequences of his life.

At one and the same time, here is God unprotected from the grossness of human evil and rebellion. At one and the same time here is a human being contemplating what would happen when complete divine indifference and withdrawal of grace are let loose.

Here is mystery. I don't like using that word because it feels like a cop-out. My thoughts on all this are a work in progress.

What I say now is that at Gethsemane I am invited to know God through the transparency of the human experience of Jesus.