On Jesus' Last Night

The City was dark and silent as we traveled in the same city Jesus walked in on his last night

 Bang, bang, bang, bang! As we walked through the low stone arch, the clanging on the metal door startled me as if from a dream. “Everyone out!” a man shouted over the hum of a lingering crowd. It was ten o'clock at night and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was closing its doors. On most nights, there probably wouldn’t be a large crowd at this late hour, but tonight was a special night. 

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is a proposed location of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. It probably has the best claim to being the place, since it was outside the city walls in the first century and has a long-held tradition of being the place of his death. Thus, it was no surprise to see many people flocking to the spot on the night of Good Friday.

The man started banging on the gate as soon as we entered the church courtyard. Slowly, people trickled out the doors, taking a few final looks at the now-dark edifice of the church. Our group clustered around the back wall for a minute, unsure what to do. We had planned to gather here and read about Jesus’ final moments on the cross. 

The jarring noise sounded on the gate again, and the guard started pushing it closed. Yes, it really was closing time. I looked at my watch and realized why my mind was so hazy with exhaustion. We made our way up the steps to the northern entrance and waited for everyone in our group just outside the gate. The custodian shut the wooden door behind the last visitor, and silence prevailed again. All 27 of us circled up in the narrow street and began to read.

When we entered the old city about two hours before from the southwest corner, one of the first things I noticed was the silence. The empty streets felt eerie. I felt like the city was watching, waiting for something to happen. Even when the neighboring town of Silwan launched some fireworks–probably for the Muslim holiday Ramadan–the silence prevailed. 

We started the night on the roof of a building thought to be where the upper room was. This is where Jesus ate the last supper with his disciples. Jesus ate the Passover Seder with his twelve disciples on a Thursday night. Nowadays, in such a Seder, one of the children in the family asks four questions. The underlying question to each question is, “Why is this night different than any other night?” Whoever leads the seder will answer by giving an explanation about the specific customs and how they point to the rescue from slavery in Egypt. But this year, as Jesus gathered around the table with His twelve, the night was different than any other Passover meal.

It began as He knelt to wash His disciples' feet, an act usually reserved for servants. While his disciples argued about who was the greatest and refused to play the part of a servant, Jesus knew that He was soon going to His Father where He would finally be back in all His glory. And what does he do? He kneels down and washes his disciples’ feet. The rest of the evening he spends eating the meal and drinking several cups of Passover with his disciples. 

An olive tree nearby the Temple Mount.
Jesus and his disciples spent the night before his arrest among the
 olives across the Kidron Valley to the East on the Mount of Olives.

Halfway through John’s upper room discourse, we left the roof and proceeded down the western hill toward the temple. The still walls and painfully bright yellow lights seemed to speak of the solemnity of Christ and the insecurity of his disciples that night. After a long discussion of his new commandment to his disciples to love one another and institute the Lord’s Supper or communion, Jesus left to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane where he had been staying for the Passover feast. Matthew 26:30 says Jesus sang a hymn with his disciples. Some think this hymn could have been from the end of Psalm 118. This verse is the very end of the Hillel–a collection of psalms from 113 to 118 that groups recite at the end of the Passover meal. We sing the last verse of this song each Friday evening at the beginning of Shabbat. Sitting on some rocks near the Kotel of the Western Wall, we sang it again:

 Hodu l’adoni ki tov, 

Ki le’olam chasdo

“Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, 

for his steadfast love endures forever.”

Then came Jesus’ arrest. The gospels record multiple trials of Jesus, some of which were illegal since they were conducted at night or outside the temple complex. We read about the first of these trials, conducted in the house of Annas. Today archeologists are divided about where this house was. Some think it was within the city walls close to the western hill, while others believe it was at a spot further south now marked by the church of St. Peter in Gallicantu. Thus, for our next reading, we chose a central location in the city and tried to imagine ourselves in the high priest’s house. 

Seated around a tiny playground on fake turf, each of us took turns reading a verse from booklets that chronologically arranged all the gospels. I watched as two young Orthodox Jewish boys and their baby sister approached the playground. They treated her like a princess, helping her climb each step to the short slide. She sat at the top for a few seconds, staring at us. Once again, I realized how we were strangers here. These children knew this old city's tan and twisty streets, but did they understand why we were there? Did they know who traveled on streets like these so long ago with a crown of thorns on his head and lash marks on his back? 

We continued to move around the city, stopping every now and again to read more of Christ’s last night. Most of the time, I walked in silence, trying to conjure an image of Jesus and his disciples. Certainly, it would be much darker and louder. As we walked on to read at a parking lot where Pilate’s palace may have been, I started feeling very weary. A long day of study and travel was beginning to catch up to me. At first, I felt upset at my own exhaustion. I wanted to focus on the words I was hearing. I wanted my heart stirred up in worship, but all I could feel was weariness. However, as I considered my fatigue, I realized that Jesus endured far worse that night. He kept vigil all night in prayer before facing questioning upon questioning, mocking, the physical torment of whips, beatings, and finally, the cross. 

That night, I realized that sometimes I idealize Jesus’ crucifixion without considering the tremendous bodily torment He suffered. Yes, I’ve heard about the beatings, the spitting and the crown of thorns, the whip with metal balls and bones, and the 39 lashings. I’ve imagined the slow, painful death by asphyxiation while being completely exposed to the elements and jeers of onlookers. But Jesus’ death meant so much more than that. He faced spiritual anguish outside a city where he spent much time teaching and proclaiming the gospel. The crowds that hailed him as a conquering king saw him fail their expectations of a liberator from the Romans and relied on their corrupt authorities for the verdict of their Messiah: death. Yet all of this, every last detail, was a part of God’s plan of salvation. 

When we left the church courtyard door, I could still hear the harsh banging on the gate in my mind. It put this silent night into perspective. Almost 2,000 years ago, the Romans brutalized a man the Jewish leaders wanted dead for calling himself the Son of God. To them, He was just another man they were hammering to a cross. As Jesus lay on the rough wood, the pounding mallet delivering each agonizing stroke, what was he thinking and feeling? Surely He knew that those strokes that held him captive to the cross would echo the sound of true freedom throughout eternity, a sound that cannot be silenced.