When Christ came to Gethsemane, He told eight to stay at the outer garden and He took Peter, James and John with Him into the inner garden. And oddly, even though their Master and close friend was suffering, bleeding and enduring tremendous agony, it appears they decided to take a nap. Many sermons have been given with the topic "sleeping through Gethsemane." True, we do have a tendency to miss the greatest and most important things. But is that what happened in Gethsemane? Did the three disciples really "miss" what was happening? Is it really that simple?
When my son, Steven, was just a few months old, he fussed and cried for a bit while his mother tried everything she could think of to calm him. He didn't want fed, changed, or even held. She was baffled by what could be wrong with him. Finally, she stripped off his clothing to see if he was being poked or irritated somehow by his clothing. She took his feet out of their little footies and found out that somehow he gotten a thread twisted around his toe. In fact, it was twisted so tightly that his toe was swelling around the thread. We couldn't get at it to remove it or cut it. We had to take him to the doctor's office to take care of the situation. Obviously, it was very painful for Steven. The thing that amazed us was that after an hour or so of crying, Steven went to sleep. As he slept, his face had a troubled look upon it and his breathing was shallow and rapid. The little guy was obviously in great discomfort, but nonetheless, he had gone to sleep. Health professionals know that this is a protective mechanism that babies and children use when they are under great duress. It is known as the General Adaptive Syndrome. Adults also show this ability to fall asleep when mental strain is such that they cannot handle it. The mind actually starts to shut down and it stops processing information. People will sleep to protect themselves from strain and trauma. Grief and depression are most often the cause in the adult syndrome. They sleep for sorrow.
When Christ became "sin for us" in Gethsemane, He took upon Himself such a burden that the grief and anguish caused even He, the Son of God, to be "exceeding sorrowful unto death." So great was His mental anguish that he apparently suffered hematidrosis, a condition where the strain is so great that the capillaries burst and mingle blood with the sweat. His physical distress was such that He was at the threshold of death. Yet, He had obtained His life from His Father and would not die until it was time. He alone could suffer so and live, for His life could not be taken until He laid it down.
But this was not so for the disciples. They were mere men and could not handle this type of stress upon their systems. We read that even though Jesus left them a stone's throw distance away, they too seemed to be profoundly engulfed in the thickening mists of Gethsemane's horrifying gloom. In JST Mark 14:36 we read that the disciples were sore amazed and very heavy in their hearts. Luke 22:45 is even more clear for as Jesus "rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples," the JST reads "he found them sleeping; for they were filled with sorrow."
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