'Tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before yon into
Galilee.--Mark xvi, 7.
This prevailing tradition of Christian antiquity ascribes this Gospel
to John Mark, sister's son to Barnabas, and affirms that in composing
it he was in some sense the 'interpreter' of the Apostle Peter. Some
confirmation of this alleged connection between the Evangelist and the
Apostle may be gathered from the fact that the former is mentioned by
the latter as with him when he wrote his First Epistle. And, in the
Gospel itself, there are some little peculiarities which seem to look
in the same direction. A certain speciality is traceable here and
there, both in omissions of incidents in the Apostle's life recorded
by some of the other Evangelists, and in the addition of slight facts
concerning him unnoticed by them.
Chief among these is the place which his name holds in this very
remarkable message, delivered by the angels to the women who came to
Christ's tomb on the Resurrection morning. Matthew, who also reports
the angels' words, has only 'tell His disciples.' Mark adds the words,
which must have come like wine and oil to the bruised heart of the
denier, 'tell His disciples _and Peter_.' To the others, it was of
little importance that his name should have been named then; to him it
was life from the dead, that he should have been singled out to
receive a word of forgiveness and a summons to meet his Lord; as if He
had said through His angel messengers--'I would see them all; but
whoever may stay behind, let not _him_ be absent from our glad meeting
again.'
We find, too, that the same individualising of the Apostle, which led
to his being thus greeted in the first thoughts of his risen Lord, led
also to an interview with Him on that same day, about which not a
syllable of detail is found in any Gospel, though the fact was known
to the whole body of the disciples. For when the two friends who had
met Christ at Emmaus came back in the night with their strange
tidings, their eagerness to tell their joyful news is anticipated by
the eagerness of the brethren to tell _their_ wonderful story: 'The
Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.' Paul, too, gives
that meeting, when the Lord was alone with the penitent, the foremost
place in his list of the evidences of Christ's resurrection, 'He was
seen of Cephas.' What passed then is hidden from all eyes. The secrets
of that hour of deep contrition and healing love Peter kept secretly
curtained from sight, in the innermost chamber of his memory. But we
may be sure that then forgiveness was sought and granted, and the bond
that fastened him to his Lord was welded together again, where it had
snapped, and was the stronger because it had been broken, and at the
point of fracture.
The man must be first re-united to his Saviour, before the Apostle can
be reinstated in his functions. In secrecy, not beheld by any, is the
personal act of restoration to love and friendship effected; and then
in public, before his brethren, who were concerned in his official
position, but not in his personal relation to his Lord, the
reappointment of the pardoned disciple to his apostleship takes place.
His sin had had a public aspect, and his threefold denial must, in so
far as it was an outward act, be effaced by his threefold confession.
Then he becomes again 'Peter'--not merely 'Simon Bar Jonas'; and, as
the Book of the Acts shows, never ceases to hear the divine
commissions, 'Feed My sheep,' 'Follow Me'; nor ever forgets the
lessons he had learned in these bitter hours of self-loathing, and in
the rapturous moments when again he saw his Lord.
Putting all these things together--this message from Christ, the
interview which followed it, and the subsequent history of the
Apostle--we have a connected series of facts which may illustrate for
us, better than many dry words of mine could do, the triumph over sin
of the forgiving love of Christ.
I. Notice, then, first, the loving message with which He beckons the
wanderer back.
If we try to throw ourselves back into the Apostle's black thoughts
during the interval between his denial and the Resurrection morning,
we shall better feel what this love-token from the grave must have
been to him. His natural character, as well as his real love for his
Master, ensured that his lies could not long content him. They were
uttered so vehemently because they were uttered in spite of inward
resistance. Overpowered by fear, beaten down from all his
vain-glorious self-confidence by a woman-servant's sharp tongue and
mocking eye, he lied--and then came the rebound. The same impulsive
vehemence which had hurried him into the fault, would swing him back
again to quick penitence when the cock crew, and that Divine Face,
turning slowly from before the judgment-seat with the sorrow of
wounded love upon it, silently said, 'Remember.' We can fancy how that
bitter weeping, which began so soon, grew more passionate and more
bitter when the end came. We are singularly happy if we do not know
the pang of remembering some fault to the loved dead--some hasty word,
some momentary petulance, some selfish disregard of their happiness,
some sullen refusal of their tenderness. How the thought that it is
all irrevocable now embitters the remorse! How passionately we long
that we could have one of the moments again, which seemed so trivial
while we possessed them, that we might confess and be forgiven, and
atone! And this poor, warm-hearted, penitent denier had to think that
his very last act to the Lord whom he loved so well had been such an
act of cowardly shrinking from acknowledging Him; and that
henceforward his memory of that dear face was to be for ever saddened
by that last look! That they should have parted so! that that sad gaze
was to be the last he should ever have, and that _it_ was to haunt him
for the rest of his life! We can understand how heavily the hours
passed on that dreary Saturday. If, as seems probable, he was with
John in his home, whither the latter had led the mother of our Lord,
what a group were gathered there, each with a separate pang from the
common sorrow!
Into this sorrow come the tidings that all was not over, that the
irrevocable was not irrevocable, that perhaps new days of loyal love
might still be granted, in which the doleful failure of the past might
be forgotten; and then, whether before or after his hurried rush to
the grave we need not here stay to inquire, follows the message of our
text, a word of forgiveness and reconciliation, sent by the Lord as
the herald and outrider of His own coming, to bring gladness and hope
ere He Himself draws near.
Think of this message as a revelation of love that is stronger than
death.
The news of Christ's resurrection must have struck awe, but not
necessarily joy, into the disciples' hearts. The dearest ones suffer
so solemn a change to our apprehensions when they pass into the grave,
that to many a man it would be maddening terror to meet those whom he
loved and still loves. So there must have been a spasm of fear even
among Christ's friends when they heard of Him as risen again, and much
confusing doubt as to what would be the amount of resemblance to His
old self. They probably dreaded to find Him far removed from their
familiar love, forgetful perhaps of much of the old life, with other
thoughts than before, with the atmosphere of the other world round
about Him, which glorified Him indeed, but separated Him too from
those whose grosser lungs could live only in this thick air. These
words of our text would go far to scatter all such fears. They link on
the future to the past, as if His first thought when He rose had been
to gather up again the dropped threads of their intercourse, and to
carry on their ancient concord and companionship as though no break
had been at all. For all the disciples, and especially for him who is
especially named, they confirm the identity of Christ's whole
dispositions towards them now, with those which He had before. Death
has not changed Him at all. Much has been done since He left them; the
world's history has been changed, but nothing which has happened has
had any effect on the reality of His love, and on the inmost reality
of their companionship. In these respects they are where they were,
and even Calvary and the tomb are but as a parenthesis. The old bonds
are all re-knit, and the junction is all but imperceptible.
This is how we have to think of our Lord now, in His attitude towards
us. We, too, may have our share in that message, which came like
morning twilight before He shone upon the apostles' darkness. To them
it proclaimed a love which was stronger than death. To us it may
declare a love which is stronger than all change of circumstances. He
is no more parted from us by the Throne than from them by the Cross.
He descended into 'the lower parts of the earth,' and His love lived
on, and so it does now, when He has 'ascended up far above all
heavens.' Love knows no difference of place, conditions, or functions.
From out of the blazing heart of the Glory the same tender face looks
that bent over sick men's pallets, and that turned on Peter in the
judgment-hall. The hand that holds the sceptre of the universe is the
hand that was nailed to the Cross, and that was stretched out to that
same Peter when he was ready to sink. The breast that is girt with the
golden girdle of priestly sovereignty is the same tender home on which
John's happy head rested in placid contentment. All the love that ever
flowed from Christ flows from Him still. To Him, 'whose nature and
whose name are Love,' it matters nothing whether He is in the house at
Bethany, or in the upper room, or hanging on the Cross, or lying in
the grave, or risen from the dead, or seated on the right hand of God.
He is the same everywhere and always. 'I have loved thee with an
everlasting love.'
Again, this message is the revelation of a love that is not turned
away by our sinful changes.
Peter may have thought that he had, with his own words, broken the
bond between him and his Lord. He had renounced his allegiance; was
the renunciation to be accepted? He had said, 'I am not one of them';
did Christ answer, 'Be it so; one of them thou shalt no more be'? The
message from the women's lips settled the question, and let him feel
that, though his grasp of Christ had relaxed, Christ's grasp of him
had not, He might change, he might cease for a time to prize his
Lord's love, he might cease either to be conscious of it or to wish
for it; but that love could not change. It was unaffected by his
unfaithfulness, even as it had not been originated by his fidelity.
Repelled, it still lingered beside him. Disowned, it still asserted
its property in him. Being reviled, it blessed; being persecuted, it
endured; being defamed, it entreated; and, patient through all wrongs
and changes, it loved on till it had won back the erring heart, and
could fill it with the old blessedness again.
And is not that same miracle of long-enduring love presented before
every one of us, as in Christ's heart for us? True, our sin interferes
with our sense of it, and modifies the form in which it must deal with
us; but, however real and disastrous may be the power of our evil in
troubling the communion of love between us and our Lord, and in
compelling Him to smite before He binds up, never forget that our sin
is utterly impotent to turn away the tide that sets to us from the
heart of Christ. Earthborn vapours may hang about the low levels, and
turn the gracious sun himself into a blood-red ball of lurid fire; but
they reach only a little way up, and high above their region is the
pure blue, and the blessed light pours down upon the upper surface of
the white mist, and thins away its opaqueness, and dries up its
clinging damp, and at last parts it into filmy fragments that float
out of sight, and the dwellers on the green earth see the sun, which
was always there even when they could not behold it, and which, by
shining on, has conquered all the obstructions that veiled its beams.
Sin is mighty, but one thing sin cannot do, and that is to make Christ
cease to love us. Sin is mighty, but one other thing sin cannot do,
and that is to prevent Christ from manifesting His love to us sinners,
that we may learn to love and so may cease to sin. Christ's love is
not at the beck and call of our fluctuating affections. It has its
source deeper than in the springs in our hearts, namely in the depths
of His own nature. It is not the echo or the answer to ours, but ours
is the echo to His; and that being so, our changes do not reach to it,
any more than earth's seasons affect the sun. For ever and ever He
loves. Whilst we forget Him, He remembers us. Whilst we repay Him with
neglect or with hate, He still loves. If we believe not, He still
abides faithful to His merciful purpose, and, in spite of all that we
can do, will not deny Himself, by ceasing to be the incarnate
Patience, the perfect Love. He is Himself the great ensample of that
'charity' which His Apostle painted; He is not easily provoked; He is
not soon angry; He beareth all things; He hopeth all things. We cannot
get away from the sweep of His love, wander we ever so far. The child
may struggle in the mother's arms, and beat the breast that shelters
it with its little hand; but it neither hurts nor angers that gentle
bosom, nor loosens the firm but loving grasp that holds it fast. He
carries, as a nurse does, His wayward children, and, blessed be His
name! His arm is too strong for us to shake it off, His love too
divine for us to dam it back.
And still further, here we see a love which sends a special message
because of special sin.
If one was to be singled out from the little company to receive by
name the summons of the Lord to meet Him in Galilee, we might have
expected it to have been that faithful friend who stood beneath the
Cross, till his Lord's command sent him to his own home; or that
weeping mother whom he then led away with him; or one of the two who
had been turned from secret disciples into confessors by the might of
their love, and had laid His body with reverent care in the grave in
the garden. Strange reward for true love that they should be merged in
the general message, and strange recompense for treason and cowardice
that Peter's name should be thus distinguished! Is sin, then, a
passport to His deeper love? Is the murmur true after all, 'Thou never
gavest me a kid, but as soon as this thy son is come, which hath
devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted
calf'? Yes, and no. No, inasmuch as the unbroken fellowship hath in it
calm and deep joys which the returning prodigal does not know, and all
sin lays waste and impoverishes the soul. Yes, inasmuch as He, who
knows all our needs, knows that the denier needs a special treatment
to bring him back to peace, and that the further a poor heart has
strayed from Him, the mightier must be the forthputting of manifested
love, if it is to be strong enough to travel across all the dreary
wastes, and draw back again, to its orbit among its sister planets,
the wandering star. The depth of our need determines the strength of
the restorative power put forth. They who had not gone away would come
at the call addressed to them all, but he who had sundered himself
from them and from the Lord would remain in his sad isolation, unless
some special means were used to bring him back. The more we have
sinned, the less can we believe in Christ's love; and so the more we
have sinned, the more marvellous and convincing does He make the
testimony and operations of His love to us. It is ever to the poor
bewildered sheep, lying panting in the wilderness, that He comes.
Among His creatures, the race which has sinned is that which receives
the most stupendous proof of the seeking divine love. Among men, the
publicans and the harlots, the denying Peters and the persecuting
Pauls, are they to whom the most persuasive entreaties of His love are
sent, and on whom the strongest powers of His grace are brought to
bear. Our sin cannot check the flow of His love. More marvellous
still, our sin occasions a mightier burst of the manifestation of His
love, for eyes blinded by selfishness and carelessness, or by fear and
despair, need to see a brightness beyond the noonday sun, ere they can
behold the amazing truth of His love to them; and what they need, they
get. 'Go, tell Peter.'
Here, too, is the revelation of a love which singles out a sinful man
by name.
Christ does not deal with us in the mass, but soul by soul. Our finite
minds have to lose the individual in order to grasp the class. Our
eyes see the wood far off on the mountain-side, but not the single
trees, nor each fluttering leaf. We think of 'the race'--the twelve
hundred millions that live to-day, and the uncounted crowds that have
been, but the units in that inconceivable sum are not separate in our
view. But He does not generalise so. He has a clear individualising
knowledge of each; each separately has a place in His mind or heart.
To each He says, 'I know thee by name.' He loves the world, because He
loves every single soul with a distinct love. And His messages of
blessing are as specific and individualising as the love from which
they come. He speaks to each of us as truly as He singled out Peter
here, as truly as when His voice from heaven said, 'Saul, Saul.'
English names are on His lips as really as Jewish ones. He calls to
_thee_ by _thy_ name--thou hast a share in His love. To thee the call
to trust Him is addressed, and to thee forgiveness, help, purity, life
eternal are offered. Thou hast sinned; that only infuses deeper
tenderness into His beseeching tones. Thou hast gone further front Him
than some of thy fellows; that only makes His recovering energy
greater. Thou hast denied His name; that only makes Him speak thine
with more persuasive invitation.
Look, then, at this one instance of a love stronger than death,
mightier than sin, sending its special greeting to the denier, and
learn how deep the source, how powerful the flow, how universal the
sweep, of that river of the love of God, which streams to us through
the channel of Christ His Son.
II. Notice, secondly, the secret meeting between our Lord and the
Apostle.
That is the second stage in the victorious conflict of divine love
with man's sin. As I have said, that interview took place on the day
of the Resurrection, apparently before our Lord joined the two
sorrowful travellers to Emmaus, and certainly before He appeared to
the company gathered by night in the closed chamber. The fact was well
known, for it is referred to by Luke and by Paul, but nothing beyond
the fact seems to have been known, or at all events is made public by
them. All this is very significant and very beautiful.
What tender consideration there is in meeting Peter alone, before
seeing him in the companionship of the others! How painful would have
been the rush of the first emotions of shame awakened by Christ's
presence, if their course had been checked by any eye but His own
beholding them! How impossible it would have then been to have poured
out all the penitent confessions with which his heart must have been
full, and how hard it would have been to have met for the first time,
and not to have poured them out! With most loving insight, then, into
the painful embarrassment, and dread of unsympathising standers-by,
which must have troubled the contrite Apostle, the Lord is careful to
give him the opportunity of weeping his fill on His own bosom,
unrestrained by any thought of others, and will let him sob out his
contrition to His own ear alone. Then the meeting in the upper chamber
will be one of pure joy to Peter, as to all the rest. The emotions
which he has in common with them find full play, in that hour when all
are reunited to their Lord. The experience which belongs to himself
alone has its solitary hour of unrecorded communion. The first to whom
He, who is 'separate from sinners,' appeared was 'Mary Magdalene, out
of whom He had cast seven devils.' The next were the women who bore
this message of forgiveness; and probably the next was the one among
all the company who had sinned most grievously. So wondrous is the
order of His preferences, coming ever nearest to those who need Him
most.
And may we not regard this secret interview as representing for us
what is needed on our part to make Christ's forgiving love our own?
There must be the personal contact of my soul with the loving heart of
Christ, the individual act of my own coming to Him, and, as the old
Puritans used to say,' my transacting' with Him. Like the ocean of the
atmosphere, His love encompasses me, and in it I 'live, and move, and
have my being.' But I must let it flow into my spirit, and stir the
dormant music of ray soul. I can shut it out, sealing my heart
love-tight against it. I do shut it out, unless by my own conscious,
personal act I yield myself to Him, unless by my own faith I come to
Him, and meet Him, secretly and really as did the penitent Apostle,
whom the message, that proclaimed the love of his Lord, emboldened to
meet the Lord who loved, and by His own lips to be assured of
forgiveness and friendship. It is possible to stumble at noontide, as
in the dark. A man may starve, outside of barns filled with plenty,
and his lips may be parched with thirst, though he is within sight of
a broad river flowing in the sunshine. So a soul may stiffen into the
death of self and sin, even though the voice that wakes the dead to a
life of love be calling to it. Christ and His grace are yours if you
will, but the invitations and beseechings of His mercy, the constant
drawings of His love, the all-embracing offers of His forgiveness, may
be all in vain, if you do not grasp them and hold them fast by the
hand of faith.
That personal act must be preceded by the message of His mighty love.
Ever He sends such messages as heralds of His coming, just as He
prepared the way for His own approach to the Apostle, by the words of
our text. Our faith must follow His word. Our love can only be called
forth by the manifestation of His. But His message must be followed by
that personal act, else His word is spoken in vain, and there is no
real union between our need and His fulness, nor any cleansing contact
of His grace with our foulness.
Mark, too, the intensely individual character of that act of faith by
which a man accepts Christ's grace. Friends and companions may bring
the tidings of the risen Lord's loving heart, but the actual closing
with the Lord's mercy must be done by myself, alone with Him.
As if there were not another soul on earth, I and He must meet, and in
solitude deep as that of death, each man for himself must yield to
Incarnate Love, and receive eternal life. The flocks and herds, the
wives and children, have all to be sent away, and Jacob must be left
alone, before the mysterious Wrestler comes whose touch of fire lames
the whole nature of sin and death, whose inbreathed power strengthens
to hold Him fast till He speaks a blessing, who desires to be
overcome, and makes our yielding to Him our prevailing with Him. As
one of the old mystics called prayer 'the flight of the lonely man to
the only God,' so we may call the act of faith the meeting of the soul
alone with Christ alone. Do you know anything of that personal
communion? Have you, your own very self, by your own penitence for
your own sin, and your own thankful faith in the Love which thereby
becomes truly yours, isolated yourself from all companionship, and
joined yourself to Christ? Then, through that narrow passage where we
can only walk singly, you will come into a large place. The act of
faith, which separates us from all men, unites us for the first time
in real brotherhood, and they who, one by one, come to Jesus and meet
Him alone, next find that they 'are come to the city of God, to an
innumerable company, to the festal choirs of angels, to the Church of
the First-born, to the spirits of just men made perfect.'