understand them and to understand the difference between the message of
John and the message of Jesus, they need to be translated into our
language, filled again with their eternally living meaning.
“The time has come!” The time for which men have been waiting, which
they have prophesied and announced. John said that a King would come
ready to found the new Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven. The King has come
and announces that the doors of the Kingdom are open. He is the guide,
the path, the hand, before being King in all the splendor of His
celestial glory.
When Jesus says “The time is accomplished,” he does not refer to the
exact date, to the fact that it was the fifteenth year of the reign of
Tiberius. The time of Jesus is now and always is eternity. The moment of
His appearance, the moment of His death, the moment of His return, the
moment of His perfect triumph, has not yet arrived, not even yet! And
yet, at every moment the time is accomplished, every hour is the
fullness of time, on condition that the workers are ready. Every day is
His; His era is not written down in numbers: there is no chronology in
eternity. Every time a man tries to enter into the Kingdom, confirms the
Kingdom by believing, enriches the Kingdom, consolidates, defends,
proclaims its perpetual sanctity and its perpetual rightness in
opposition to all the inferior kingdoms (inferior because they are
human, not divine, earthly not heavenly) then always the time is
accomplished. This time is called the epoch of Jesus, the Christian era,
the New Covenant. Not quite two thousand years divides us from that
time; not quite two days, because for God, and for men of understanding,
a thousand years are as a day. The time is ripe; even to-day we are in
the fullness of time. Jesus calls us even now. The second day has not
yet expired, the foundations of the Kingdom are scarcely begun. We who
live to-day, this year, in this century (and we shall not always be
alive, and we shall perhaps not see the end of this year, and certainly
we shall not see the end of this century), we, I say, the living, can
take part in this Kingdom, enter into it, live in it, enjoy it. The
Kingdom is not the worn-out fancy of a poor Jew nearly twenty centuries
ago; it is not an archaism, a dead memory, a bygone frenzy. The Kingdom
is of to-day, of to-morrow, of always; a reality of the future always
just-realized, alive, actual, ours; a work started a short time ago, a
work to which every one is free to put his hand to take it up, to carry
it on. The word seems old, the message dim with antiquity repeated by
the echoes of two thousand years, but the Kingdom—as a fact, true,
accomplished—is new, young, born yesterday, still to grow, to flower, to
prosper. Jesus threw the seed into the earth, but the seed has scarcely
germinated in two thousand years passed like a stormy winter, in the
space of sixty human generations. Is it perhaps possible that our own
time after the flood of blood is the divine and longed-for period?
What this Kingdom is, we shall learn page by page in the words of Jesus;
but we must not imagine it as a new Paradise of Delight, as a wearisome
Arcady of beatitude, as an immense choir singing Hosannahs with their
feet on the clouds and their heads among the stars.
Christ describes the Kingdom of God as opposed to the Kingdom of Satan,
as the antithesis of the Kingdom of Earth. The Kingdom of Satan is the
Kingdom of evil, of deceit, of cruelty, of pride, the Kingdom of
baseness. Therefore the Kingdom of God means the Kingdom of good, of
sincerity, of love, of humility, the Kingdom of the lofty.
The Kingdom of Earth is the Kingdom of matter and of flesh, the Kingdom
of gold, hatred, avarice, sensuality, the Kingdom of all things loved by
evil and distraught men. The Kingdom of Heaven is to be the opposite of
this: the Kingdom of the spirit and of the soul, the Kingdom of
renunciation and of purity; the Kingdom of all things valued by men who
know the worthlessness of everything else in comparison. God is Father
and Goodness; Heaven is above the earth, hence it is the spirit. Heaven
is God’s home. The spirit is the dominion of goodness. All that crawls
on the earth, grubs in the earth, takes pleasure in matter—that is
bestiality; all that lives with upraised eyes, desiring Heaven, wishing
to live forever in Heaven—that is Holiness. Most men are beasts. It is
Christ’s will that these beasts become saints. This is the simple and
ever-living meaning of the Kingdom of God, and the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Kingdom of God is of men and for men. The Kingdom of Heaven is in
us. Begin at once: it is our work, for our happiness in this life on
this earth. It depends on our will, on our response given or withheld.
Become perfect and the Kingdom will extend even on earth. The Kingdom of
God will be founded among men.
It is true that Jesus added “repent,” but the old word has been
distorted from its true and magnificent meaning. The word of
Mark—μετανοειτε—should not be translated “repent”; μετανοια means rather
the changing of the mind, the transformation of the soul. Metamorphosis
is a change of form; “metanoia,” a changing of the spirit. It ought
rather to be translated “conversion,” that is, the renewing of the inner
life of man. The idea of “repentance” is only an illustration of
Christ’s command.
As one of the conditions of the arrival of the Kingdom and at the same
time as the very substance of the new order, Jesus demands complete
conversion, a revolution of life and of the common values of life, a
transmutation of feelings, of opinions, of intentions. This He called,
speaking to Nicodemus, “the second birth.” Little by little He was to
explain in what way this total transformation of the ordinary human soul
is to be effected. All His life was devoted to this teaching and to
setting the example. But in the meantime, He contented Himself with
adding one conclusion, “Believe in the Gospel.”
By “Gospel” men nowadays mean usually the book where the quadruple story
of Jesus is printed; but Jesus neither wrote books nor thought of
volumes. By “Gospel” He meant, according to the plain and sweet meaning
of the word, “good tidings.” Jesus is a messenger (in Greek “angel”) who
brings good tidings: He brings the cheerful message that the sick will
be cured, that the blind will see, the poor will be enriched with
imperishable riches, that the sad will rejoice, that sinners will be
pardoned, the unclean purified, that the imperfect can become perfect,
that animals can become saints, and saints become angels, like unto God.
If this Kingdom is to come, if everybody is to prepare himself for its
coming, we must believe in the message, believe that the Kingdom is
possible and near. If there is no faith in this promise, no one will do
what must be done to fulfill the promise. Only the certainty of the
truth of this good tidings, only the conviction that the Kingdom is not
the lie of an adventurer or the hallucination of an obsessed zealot;
only the certainty of the sincerity and validity of the message can
arouse men to put their hands to the great work of its foundation.
With those few words, obscure to the majority of men, Jesus began His
teaching. The fullness of time, the need to begin at once! The coming of
the Kingdom, victory of spirit over matter; of good over bad, of the
saint over the beast. “Metanoia”—the total transformation of the soul.
The Gospel—the cheerful assurance that all this is true and eternally
possible.
CAPERNAUM
Jesus taught His Galileans on the threshold of their shabby little white
houses, on the small shady open places of their cities or the shore of
the lake, leaning against a beached boat, His feet on the stones,
towards evening when the sun sank red in the west, summoning men to
rest.
Many listened to Him and followed Him because, says Luke: “His word was
with authority.” The words were not wholly new, but the man was new, and
new was the warmth of His voice, and the good done by that voice,
overflowing from His heart and going straight to the hearts of others.
The accent of those words was new, and new the sense that they took in
that mouth, lighted by His look.
Here was no prophet of the mountains shouting in waste places, far from
men, solitary, distant, forcing others to come to him if they wished to
hear him. Here was a prophet living like a man among other men, a friend
of all, friendly to the unfriended, an easy-going and companionable
comrade, searching out His brothers where they work in the houses, in
the busy streets, eating their bread and drinking wine at their tables,
lending a hand with the fisherman’s nets, with a good word for every
man, for the sad, for the sick, for the beggar.
The simple-hearted, like animals and children, know instinctively who
loves them, they believe him, are happy when he comes (their very faces
suddenly transfigured) and are sad when he goes. Sometimes they cannot
bring themselves to leave him and follow him to the death.
Jesus spent His time with them walking from one region to another, or
talking, seated among His friends. Always dear to Him was the sunny
shore of the lake, along the curve of quiet clear water scarcely ruffled
by the wind from the desert, dotted with a few boats silently tacking
back and forth. The western coast of the lake was His real Kingdom;
there He found His first listeners, His first converts, His first
disciples.
If He returned to Nazareth, He stayed there but a short time. He was to
go back later, accompanied by the Twelve and preceded by the renown of
His miracles, and they were to treat Him as all the cities of the
world,—even the most renowned for amenity, Athens and Florence, have
treated those of their citizens who made them great above others. After
ridiculing Him (they had seen Him as a child, it is out of the question
that He can have become a great prophet) they tried to cast Him down
from the precipice.
In no city did He make a long stay. Jesus was a wanderer, such a man as
is called a vagabond by the pot-bellied and sedentary citizen rooted to
his threshold. His life is an eternal journey. Before that other Jew who
was condemned to immortality by one condemned to death, He is the true
Wandering Jew. He was born on a journey. Still a baby at the breast, He
was carried along the sun-parched road to Egypt; from Egypt He came back
to the waters and greenness of Galilee. From Nazareth He often went to
Jerusalem for the Passover. The voice of John called Him to the Jordan:
an inner voice drove Him out into the desert; and after the forty days
of hunger and the Temptation, He began His restless vagabond life from
city to city, from village to village, from mountain to mountain, across
Palestine. Most often we find Him in Galilee, in Capernaum, Chorazin, in
Cana, in Magdala, in Tiberias, but often He crosses Samaria to sit down
near the well of Sychar. We find Him from time to time in the Tetrarchy
of Philip at Bethsaida, at Gadara, at Cæsarea, also at Gerasa in the
Perea of Herod Antipas. In Judah He often stops at Bethany, a few miles
away from Jerusalem, or at Jericho, but He did not shrink from
journeying outside the limits of the old kingdom and from going down
among the Gentiles. We find Him in Phœnicia, in the regions of Tyre and
Sidon, and in Syria, if the transfiguration took place on the summit of
Mt. Hermon. After the resurrection He appears in Emmaus, on the banks of
His lake of Tiberias and finally at Bethany near Lazarus’ house, where
He leaves His friends forever.
He is the traveler without rest, the wanderer with no home, the wayfarer
for love’s sake, the voluntary exile in His own country; He says Himself
that He has not a stone on which to lay His head, and it is true that He
has no bed where He may lie down at night, nor a room that He can call
His own. His real home is the road which takes Him along with His first
friends in search of new friends. His bed is the furrow in a field, the
bench of a boat, the shadow of an olive tree. Sometimes He sleeps in the
houses of those who love Him, but only for short periods.
In the early days we find Him most often at Capernaum, His journeys
began there and ended there. Matthew calls it “His city.” Situated on
the caravan route which from Damascus crosses Iturea and goes towards
the sea, Capernaum had become little by little a commercial center of
some importance. Artisans, bargainers, brokers, and shopkeepers had come
there to stay. Men of finance—as flies swarm on rotten pears—had come
there; publicans, excise men and other fiscal tools. The little
settlement, half-rustic, half a fishing village, had become a mixed and
composite city where the society of the times—even to soldiers and
prostitutes—was fully represented. And yet Capernaum, lying along the
lake, freshened by the air from the near-by hills and by the breeze from
the water, was not a prey to stagnation and decay like the Syrian cities
and Jerusalem. There were still peasants who went out to their fields
every day, and fishermen who every day went forth to their boats. Good,
poor, simple, warm-hearted people who talked of other matters than money
and gear. Among them a man could draw his breath freely.
On the Sabbath Jesus went to the Synagogue. Everybody had the right to
enter there, to read aloud and also to expound what had been read. It
was a plain house, a bare room where people went with their friends and
brothers to reason together and dream of God.
Jesus stood up, had some one give Him one of the scrolls of the
Scriptures (more often the Prophets than the Law) and recited in a
tranquil voice two, three, four or more verses. Then He commenced to
speak with a bold and forceful eloquence which put the Pharisees to
confusion, touched sinners, won the poor, and enchanted women.
Suddenly the old text was transfigured, became transparent, belonged to
their own times; it seemed a new truth, a discovery they had made, a
discourse heard for the first time; the words withered by antiquity,
dried up by repetition, took on life and color; a new sun gilded them
one by one, syllable by syllable; fresh words coined at that moment,
shining before their eyes like an unexpected revelation.
POOR PEOPLE
Nobody in Capernaum could remember having heard such a Rabbi. The
Sabbaths when Jesus spoke, the Synagogue was full, the crowd overflowed
out on the street, everybody was there who could come. The gardener
comes, who for that day had left his spade, and no longer turned his
water wheel to irrigate the green rows of his garden, and the smith, the
good country smith, black with smoke and dust every day, but on the
Sabbath washed, neatly dressed, his face still a little dusky, although
scrubbed and rinsed in many waters like his hands, with his beard combed
and anointed with cheap ointment (but still perfumed like a rich man’s
beard), the smith all whose days are spent before the fire, sweaty and
dirty except this day which is the Sabbath, when he comes to the
Synagogue to hear the ancient word of the Ancient of Days, the God of
his fathers. He comes devoutly, but he comes too because his family, his
friends, his neighbors come there, and he finds them all together, and
he comes also because the day is long (all that long holiday without any
work, without any hammer in his hand, without the pincers) and in
Capernaum there is nothing to do on Sabbaths except go to the Synagogue.
The mason comes, he who has worked on this little house of the Synagogue
and made it small because the Elders—good, God-fearing people, but
inclined to be stingy—did not wish to spend too much. The mason still
feels his arms a little numb and lame from his six days’ labor, no
longer keeps track of the stones which he has laid in courses and the
trowels full of mortar which he has thrown between the stones during the
week. The mason puts on his new clothes to-day and sits down on the
ground, he who on all other days stands upright, active, watchful so
that the work may go well, and the employer be satisfied; the good mason
too has come to the house which seems to him partly his own.
The fishermen have come too, the young and the old, both of them with
faces tanned by the sun and with eyes half-shut from the constant glare
of sunlight reflected by the water. (The old man is handsomer because of
the contrast of his white hair and white beard with his weather-beaten
and wrinkled face.) The fishermen have turned over their boats on the
sand, have left them tied to a stake, have spread the nets on the roof
and have come to the Synagogue, although they are not used to being
within walls and perhaps continue to hear a confused murmur of water
lapping about the bow.
The peasants of the neighboring countryside are here too, prosperous
farmers who have put on a tunic as good as anybody’s, who are satisfied
with the harvest almost ready for the scythe. They do not mean to forget
God who brings the grain to a head and makes the grape-vine to blossom.
There are shepherds come in to town that morning, shepherds and
goat-herds with the smell of their flocks still on them, shepherds who
live all the week in the mountain-pastures without seeing a soul,
without exchanging a word, alone with their quiet animals peacefully
grazing on the new grass.
The smaller property owners, the small business men, the gentry of
Capernaum, all have come. They are men of weight and piety. They stand
in the front row, serious, their eyes cast down, satisfied with the
business of the last few days and satisfied with their conscience
because they have observed the law without failing and are not
contaminated. The line of their well-clad backs can be seen, bowed backs
but broad and masterful, employers’ backs, backs of people in harmony
with the world, and with God, backs full of authority and of religion.
There are also transient foreigners, merchants going towards Syria or
returning to Tiberias. They have come from condescension or from habit,
perhaps to try to pick up a customer, and they stare into everybody’s
face with the arrogance which money gives to poverty-stricken souls.
At the back of the room (for the Synagogue is only a long white-washed
room a little larger than a school, than an inn, than a kitchen) the
poor of the countryside are huddled together like dogs near a door, like
those who always stand in fear of being sent away. The poorest of all,
those who live by odd jobs, by ungracious charity and also—oh,
poverty!—by some discreet theft, the ragged, the vermin-ridden, the
timid, the wretched; old widows whose children are far away, young
orphans not yet able to earn a living, hump-backed old men with no
acquaintances, strengthless invalids, those who are incurably sick,
those whose wits no longer rightly serve them, who have no
understanding, who cannot work. The weak in mind, the weak in body, the
bankrupt, the rejected, the abandoned, those who one day eat and the
next day do not, who never have enough to satisfy their hunger, those
who pick up what others throw away, the pieces of dry bread, fish-heads,
fruit-cores and skins; and sleep now here and now there, and suffer from
the winter cold and every year wait for summer, paradise of the poor,
for then there are fruits to be plucked along the roads. They too, the
beggars, the wretched, the ragamuffins, the sickly and the weaklings,
when the Sabbath comes, go to the Synagogue to hear the stories of the
Bible. They cannot be sent away: they have as much right to be there as
any one, they are sons of the same Father and servants of the same Lord.
On that day they feel a little comforted in their poverty because they
can hear the same words heard by the rich and the strong. Here they are
not served with another sort of food, poorer and coarser, as happens in
the houses where the owner eats the best and the beggar on the threshold
must content himself with scraps. Here the fare is the same for the man
of possessions and him who has nothing. The words of Moses are the same,
everlastingly the same for him who owns the fattest flock and for him
who has not even a quarter of lamb on Passover day. But the words of the
Prophets are sweeter to them than those of Moses, harder on the great of
the world, but kinder for the humble. The poverty-stricken throng at the
back of the Synagogue waits every Sabbath for somebody to read a chapter
from Amos or from Isaiah because the Prophets take the part of the poor,
and announce the punishment and the new world. “And he who was clothed
with purple shall be made to handle dung.”
And behold on that Sabbath there was One who came expressly for them,
who talked for them, who had come back from the desert to announce good
tidings for the poor and the sick. No one had ever spoken of them as He
did, no one had shown so much love for them. Like the old prophets, He
had for them a special affection which offended more fortunate men, but
which filled their hearts with comfort and hope.
When Jesus had finished speaking they observed that the elders, the
bourgeois, the masters, lords, Pharisees, men who knew how to read and
make money, shook their heads forebodingly, and got up, making wry faces
and nodding among themselves, half contemptuous, half scandalized; and
as soon as they were outside, muttered a grumbling of prudent
disapprobation through their great black and silver beards. But no one
laughed.
The merchants followed them, erect, already thinking of the next day;
there remained behind the working men, the poor, the shepherds, the
peasants, the gardeners, the smiths, the fishermen, and all the herd of
beggars, orphans without inheritance, old men without health, homeless
outcasts, friendless unfortunates, penniless men, the diseased, the
maimed, the worn-out, the rejected. They could not take their eyes from
Jesus, they would have liked Him to go on speaking, to reveal the day of
the New Kingdom when they too would have their return for all this
misery, and see with their own eyes the day of reckoning. The words of
Jesus had made their bruised and weary hearts beat faster. A gleam of
light, a glimpse of the sky and of glory, the hallucination of
prosperity, of banquets, of repose and abundance, sprang up from those
great words in the rich souls of the poor. Perhaps they scarcely
understood what the Master meant to say, and perhaps the Kingdom
glimpsed by them had some resemblance to a materialistic Land of
Cockaigne. But no one loved Him as they did. No one will ever love Him
like the poor of Galilee, hungering after peace and truth. Even those
who were less destitute, the day-laborers, the fishermen, the working
men, though less hungry for bread, loved Him for the love of those poor.
And when He came out from the Synagogue all those stood waiting in the
street to see Him again. They followed Him timidly as if in a dream;
when He entered into the house of a friend to eat they were almost
jealous and some waited outside the door until He reappeared; then,
grown more bold, they accosted Him and went along together beside the
shores of the lake. Others joined them on the way, and now one and now
another (they were braver under the open sky and outside the Synagogue)
began asking questions. And Jesus paused and answered this obscure crowd
with words never to be forgotten.
THE FIRST FOUR
Among the fishermen of Capernaum, Jesus found His first disciples.
Almost every day He was on the beach of the lake; sometimes the boats
were going out, sometimes they were coming in, the sails swelling in the
breeze; and from the barks the barefooted men climbed down, wading
knee-deep in water, carrying the baskets filled with the wet silver of
dead fish piled together, good and bad, and with the old dripping nets.