'And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast,
while the bridegroom is with them?'--Mark ii. 19.
This part of our Lord's answer to the question put by John's disciples
as to the reason for the omission of the practice of fasting by His
followers. The answer is very simple. It is--'My disciples do not fast
because they are not sad.' And the principle which underlies the
answer is a very important one. It is this: that all outward forms of
religion, appointed by man, ought only to be observed when they
correspond to the feeling and disposition of the worshipper. That
principle cuts up all religious formalism by the very roots. The
Pharisee said: 'Fasting is a good thing in itself, and meritorious in
the sight of God.' The modern Pharisee says the same about many
externals of ritual and worship; Jesus Christ says, 'No! The thing has
no value except as an expression of the feeling of the doer.' Our Lord
did not object to fasting; He expressly approved of it as a means of
spiritual power. But He did object to the formal use of it or of any
outward form. The formalist's form, whether it be the elaborate ritual
of the Catholic Church, or the barest Nonconformist service, or the
silence of a Friends' meeting-house, is rigid, unbending, and cold,
like an iron rod. The true Christian form is elastic, like the stem of
a palm-tree, which curves and sways and yields to the wind, and has
the sap of life in it. If any man is sad, let him fast; 'if any man is
merry, let him sing psalms.' Let his ritual correspond to his
spiritual emotion and conviction.
But the point which I wish to consider now is not so much this, as the
representation that is given here of the reason why fasting was
incongruous with the condition and disposition of the disciples. Jesus
says: 'We are more like a wedding-party than anything else. Can the
children of the bridechamber fast as long as the bridegroom is with
them?'
The 'children of the bridechamber' is but another name for those who
were called the 'friends' or companions 'of the bridegroom.' According
to the Jewish wedding ceremonial it was their business to conduct the
bride to the home of her husband, and there to spend seven days in
festivity and rejoicing, which were to be so entirely devoted to mirth
and feasting that the companions of the bridegroom were by the
Talmudic ritual absolved even from prayer and from worship, and had
for their one duty to rejoice.
And that is the picture that Christ holds up before the disciples of
the ascetic John as the representation of what He and His friends were
most truly like. Very unlike our ordinary notion of Christ and His
disciples as they walked the earth! The presence of the Bridegroom
made them glad with a strange gladness, which shook off sorrow as the
down on a sea-bird's breast shakes off moisture, and leaves it warm
and dry, though it floats amidst boundless seas. I wish now to
meditate on this secret of imperviousness to sorrow arising from the
felt presence of the Christ.
There are three subjects for consideration arising from the words of
my text: The Bridegroom; the presence of the Bridegroom; the joy of
the Bride-groom's presence.
I. Now with regard to the first, a very few words will suffice. The
first thing that strikes me is the singular appropriateness and the
delicate, pathetic beauty in the employment of this name by Christ in
the existing circumstances. Who was it that had first said: 'He that
hath the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom
that standeth by and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the
bridegroom's voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled'? Why, it was
the master of these very men who were asking the question. John's
disciples came and said, 'Why do not your disciples fast?' and our
Lord reminded them of their own teacher's words, when he said, 'The
friend of the bridegroom can only be glad.' And so He would say to
them, 'In your master's own conception of what I am, and of the joy
that comes from My presence, you have an answer to your question. He
might have taught you who I am, and why it is that the men that stand
around Me are glad.'
But this is not all. We cannot but connect this name with a whole
circle of ideas found in the Old Testament, especially with that most
familiar and almost stereotyped figure which represents the union
between Israel and Jehovah, under the emblem of the marriage bond. The
Lord is the 'husband'; and the nation whom He has loved and redeemed
and chosen for Himself, is the 'wife'; unfaithful and forgetful, often
requiting love with indifference and protection with unthankfulness,
and needing to be put away, and debarred of the society of the husband
who still yearns for her; but a wife still, and in the new time to be
joined to Him by a bond that shall never be broken and a better
covenant.
And so Christ lays His hand upon all that old history and says, 'It is
fulfilled here in Me.' A familiar note in Old Testament Messianic
prophecy too is caught and echoed here, especially that grand marriage
ode of the forty-fifth psalm, in which he must be a very prosaic or
very deeply prejudiced reader who hears nothing more than the shrill
wedding greetings at the marriage of some Jewish king with a foreign
princess. Its bounding hopes and its magnificent sweep of vision are a
world too wide for such interpretation. The Bridegroom of that psalm
is the Messiah, and the Bride is the Church.
I need only refer in a sentence to what this indicates of Christ's
self-consciousness. What must He, who takes this name as His own, have
thought Himself to be to the world, and the world to Him? He steps
into the place of the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and claims as His
own all these great and wonderful prophecies. He promises love,
protection, communion, the deepest, most mystical union of spirit and
heart with Himself; and He claims quiet, restful confidence in His
love, absolute, loving obedience to His authority, reliance upon His
strong hand and loving heart, and faithful cleaving to Him. The
Bridegroom of humanity, the Husband of the world, if it will only turn
to Him, is Christ Himself.
II. But a word as to the presence of the Bridegroom. It might seem as
if this text condemned us who love an unseen and absent Lord to
exclusion from the joy which is made to depend on His presence. Are we
in the dreary period when 'the Bridegroom is taken away' and fasting
appropriate?
Surely not. The time of mourning for an absent Christ was only three
days; the law for the years of the Church's history between the moment
when the uplifted eyes of the gazers lost Him in the symbolic cloud
and the moment when He shall come again is, 'Lo, I am with you alway.'
The absent Christ is the present Christ. He is really with us, not as
the memory or the influence of the example of the dead may be said to
remain, not as the spirit of a teacher may be said to abide with his
school of followers. We say that Christ has gone up on high and sits
on 'the right hand of God.' The right hand of God is His active power.
Where is 'the right hand of God'? It is wherever His divine energy
works. He that sits at the right hand of God is thereby declared to be
wherever the divine energy is in operation, and to be Himself the
wielder of that divine Power. I believe in a local abode of the
glorified human body of Jesus Christ now, but I believe likewise that
all through God's universe, and eminently in this world, which He has
redeemed, Christ is present, in His consciousness of its
circumstances, and in the activity of His influence, and in whatsoever
other incomprehensible and unspeakable mode Omnipresence belongs to a
divine Person. So that He is with us most really, though the visible,
bodily Form is no longer by our sides.
That Presence which survives, which is true for us here to-day, may be
a far better and more blessed and real thing than the presence of the
mere bodily Form in which He once dwelt. We may have lost something by
His going away in visible form; I doubt whether we have. We have lost
the manifestation of Him to the sense, but we have gained the
manifestation of Him to the spirit. And just as the great men, who are
only men, need to die and go away in order to be measured in their
true magnitude and understood in their true glory; just as when a man
is in amongst the mountains, he cannot tell which peak is the dominant
one, but when he gets away a little space across the sea and looks
back, distance helps to measure magnitude and reveal the sovereign
summit which towers above all the rest, so, looking back across the
ages with the foreground between us and Him of the history of the
Christian Church ever since, and noticing how other heights have sunk
beneath the waves and have been wrapped in clouds and have disappeared
behind the great round of the earth, we can tell how high this One is;
and know better than they knew who it is that moves amongst men in
'the form of a servant,' even the Bridegroom of the Church and of the
world. 'It is expedient for you that I go away,' and Christ is, or
ought to be, nearer to us to-day in all that constitutes real
nearness, in our apprehension of His essential character, in our
reception of His holiest influences, than He ever was to them who
walked beside Him on the earth.
But, brethren, that presence is of no use at all to us unless we daily
try to realise it. He was with these men whether they would or no.
Whether they thought about Him or no, there He was; and just because
His presence did not at all depend upon their spiritual condition, it
was a lower kind of presence than that which you and I have now, and
which depends altogether on our realising it by the turning of our
hearts to Him, and by the daily contemplation of Him amidst all our
bustle and struggle.
Do you, as you go about your work, feel His nearness and try to keep
the feeling fresh and vivid, by occupying heart and mind with Him, by
referring everything to His supreme control? By trusting yourselves
utterly and absolutely in His hand, and gathering round you, as it
were, the sweetness of His love by meditation and reflection, do you
try to make conscious to yourselves your Lord's presence with you? If
you do, that presence is to you a blessed reality; if you do not, it
is a word that means nothing and is of no help, no stimulus, no
protection, no satisfaction, no sweetness whatever to you. The
children of the Bridegroom are glad only when, and as, they know that
the Bridegroom is with them.
III. And now a word, last of all, about the joy of the Bridegroom's
presence. What was it that made these humble lives so glad when Christ
was with them, filling them with strange new sweetness and power? The
charm of personal character, the charm of contact with one whose lips
were bringing to them fresh revelations of truth, fresh visions of
God, whose whole life was the exhibition of a nature beautiful, and
noble, and pure, and tender, and sweet, and loving, beyond anything
they had ever seen before.
Ah! brethren, there is no joy in the world like that of companionship,
in the freedom of perfect love, with one who ever keeps us at our
best, and brings the treasures of ever fresh truth to the mind, as
well as beauty of character to admire and imitate. That is one of the
greatest gifts that God gives, and is a source of the purest joy that
we can have. Now we may have all that and much more in Jesus Christ.
He will be with us if we do not drive Him away from us, as the source
of our purest joy, because He is the all-sufficient Object of our
love.
Oh! you men and women who have been wearily seeking in the world for
love that cannot change, for love that cannot die and leave you; you
who have been made sad for life by irrevocable losses, or sorrowful in
the midst of your joy by the anticipated certain separation which is
to come, listen to this One who says to you: 'I will never leave thee,
and My love shall be round thee for ever'; and recognise this, that
there is a love which cannot change, which cannot die, which has no
limits, which never can be cold, which never can disappoint, and
therefore, in it, and in His presence, there is unending gladness.
He is with us as the source of our joy, because He is the Lord of our
lives, and the absolute Commander of our wills. To have One present
with us whose loving word it is delight to obey, and who takes upon
Himself all responsibility for the conduct of our lives, and leaves us
only the task of doing what we are bid--that is peace, that is
gladness, of such a kind as none else in the world gives.
He is with us as the ground of perfect joy, because He is the adequate
object of all our desires, and the whole of the faculties and powers
of a man will find a field of glad activity in leaning upon Him, and
realising His presence. Like the Apostle whom the old painters loved
to represent lying with his happy head on Christ's heart, and his eyes
closed in a tranquil rapture of restful satisfaction, so if we have
Him with us and feel that He is with us, our spirits may be still, and
in the great stillness of fruition of all our wishes and fulfilment of
all our needs, may know a joy that the world can neither give nor take
away.
He is with us as the source of endless gladness, in that He is the
defence and protection for our souls. And as men live in a victualled
fortress, and care not though the whole surrounding country may be
swept bare of all provision, so when we have Christ with us we may
feel safe, whatsoever befalls, and 'in the days of famine we shall be
satisfied.'
He is with us as the source of our perfect joy, because His presence
is the kindling of every hope that fills the future with light and
glory. Dark or dim at the best, trodden by uncertain shapes, casting
many a deep shadow over the present, that future lies, unless we see
it illumined by Christ, and have Him by our sides. But if we possess
His companionship, the present is but the parent of a more blessed
time to come; and we can look forward and feel that nothing can touch
our gladness, because nothing can touch our union with our Lord.
So, dear brethren, from all these thoughts and a thousand more which I
have no time to dwell upon, comes this one great consideration, that
the joy of the presence of the Bridegroom is the victorious antagonist
of all sorrow and mourning. 'Can the children of the bridechamber
mourn, while the bridegroom is with them?' The answer sometimes seems
to be, 'Yes, they can.' Our own hearts, with their experience of
tears, and losses, and disappointments, seem to say: 'Mourning is
possible, even whilst He is here. We have our own share, and we
sometimes think, more than our share, of the ills that flesh is heir
to.' And we have, over and above them, in the measure in which we are
Christians, certain special sources of sorrow and trial, peculiar to
ourselves alone; and the deeper and truer our Christianity the more of
these shall we have. But notwithstanding all that, what will the felt
presence of the Bridegroom do for these griefs that will come? Well,
it will limit them, for one thing; it will prevent them from absorbing
the whole of our nature. There will always be a Goshen in which there
is 'light in the dwelling,' however murky may be the darkness that
wraps the land. There will always be a little bit of soil above the
surface, however weltering and wide may be the inundation that drowns
our world. There will always be a dry and warm place in the midst of
the winter, a kind of greenhouse into which we may get from out of the
tempest and fog. The joy of the Bridegroom's presence will last
through the sorrow, like a spring of fresh water welling up in the
midst of the sea. We may have the salt and the sweet waters mingling
in our lives, not sent forth by one fountain, but flowing in one
channel.
Our joy will sometimes be made sweeter and more wonderful by the very
presence of the mourning and the pain. Just as the pillar of cloud,
that glided before the Israelites through the wilderness, glowed into
a pillar of fire as the darkness deepened, so, as the outlook around
becomes less and less cheery and bright, and the night falls thicker
and thicker, what seemed to be but a thin, grey, wavering column in
the blaze of the sunlight will gather warmth and brightness at the
heart of it when the midnight comes. You cannot see the stars at
twelve o'clock in the day; you have to watch for the dark hours ere
heaven is filled with glory. And so sorrow is often the occasion for
the full revelation of the joy of Christ's presence.
Why have so many Christian men so little joy in their lives? Because
they look for it in all sorts of wrong places, and seek to wring it
out of all sorts of sapless and dry things. 'Do men gather grapes of
thorns?' If you fling the berries of the thorn into the winepress,
will you get sweet sap out of them? That is what you are doing when
you take gratified earthly affections, worldly competence, fulfilled
ambitions, and put them into the press, and think that out of these
you can squeeze the wine of gladness. No! No! brethren, dry and
sapless and juiceless they all are. There is one thing that gives a
man worthy, noble, eternal gladness, and that is the felt presence of
the Bridegroom.
Why have so many Christians so little joy in their lives? A religion
like that of John's disciples and that of the Pharisees is a poor
affair. A religion of which the main features are law and restriction
and prohibition, cannot be joyful. And there are a great many people
who call themselves Christians, and have just religion enough to take
the edge off worldly pleasures, and yet have not enough to make
fellowship with Christ a gladness for them.
There is a cry amongst us for a more cheerful type of religion. I
re-echo the cry, but I am afraid that I do not mean by it quite the
same thing that some of my friends do. A more cheerful type of
Christianity means to many of us a type of Christianity that will
interfere less with our amusements; a more indulgent doctor that will
prescribe a less rigid diet than the old Puritan type used to do.
Well, perhaps they went too far; I do not care to deny that. But the
only cheerful Christianity is a Christianity that draws its gladness
from deep personal experience of communion with Jesus Christ. There is
no way of men being religious and happy except being profoundly
religious, and living very near their Master, and always trying to
cultivate that spirit of communion with Him which shall surround them
with the sweetness and the power of His felt presence. We do not want
Pharisaic fasting, but we do want that the reason for not fasting
shall not be that Christians like eating better, but that their
religion must be joyful because they have Christ with them, and
therefore cannot choose but sing, as a lark cannot choose but carol.
'Religion has no power over us, but as it is our happiness,' and we
shall never make it our happiness, and therefore never know its
beneficent control, until we lift it clean out of the low region of
outward forms and joyless service, into the blessed heights of
communion with Jesus Christ, 'Whom having not seen we love.'
I would that Christian people saw more plainly that joy is a duty, and
that they are bound to make efforts to obey the command, 'Rejoice in
the Lord always,' no less than to keep other precepts. If we abide in
Christ, His joy 'will abide in us, and our joy will be full.' We shall
have in our hearts a fountain of true joy which will never be turbid
with earthly stains, nor dried up by heat, nor frozen by cold. If we
set the Lord always before us our days may be at once like the happy
hours of the 'children of the bridechamber,' bright with gladness and
musical with song; and also saved from the enervation that sometimes
comes from joy, because they are also like the patient vigils of the
servants who 'wait for the Lord, when He shall return from the
wedding.' So strangely blended of fruition and hope, of companionship
and solitude, of feasting and watching, is the Christian life here,
until the time comes when His friends go in with the Bridegroom to the
banquet, and drink for ever of the new joy of the kingdom.