embittered to the point of plotting His death. And they have grown more
openly aggressive. There are three attempts at His arrest. Yet that
strange noiseless power of restraint is upon them. They do not do as
they would. Clearly they cannot. They are restrained. The man whose
presence so aroused, also held them in check, apparently without
thinking about it. His _presence_ is a restraint.[97]
Then a second clash of wills comes a day or so later. Their opposition
is yet intenser. There has been no cooling-off interval. His continued
open teaching in face of their attempts at arrest puts fresh kindling on
the fire. "No man took Him," but clearly they wanted to. Their open
relations become more strained. He uses yet plainer speech in exposing
their hypocrisies. This stirs them still more. Their hooked fingers
reach passionately for the stones that would make a finish at once, and
the green light flashes out of their enraged eyes. It's the sharpest
clash yet. They are at a high fever point.
It seems to take a greater use of power to restrain. "He hid Himself" is
the simple sentence used. This is one of four times that we are told of
His overcoming the hostile attack of a crowd by simply passing through
their midst and going on His way.[98] Perhaps something in the glance of
that eye of His, or in the set of His face,[99] _something_ in Him
restrained them as He quietly passes through the uproarious crowd and
goes on His way undisturbed. They are held back against their wills from
doing the thing they are so intent on doing.[100]
A few months later He is back in Jerusalem. But the interval seems not
to have cooled their passion, only to have heated and hardened their
enmity. They at once begin an aggressive wordy attack. Then losing
self-control in their rage they again reach down for the stones to kill
Him at once. And again they are restrained from their passionate
purpose, as Jesus quietly goes on talking with them. Again they attempt
to seize His person. And the simple striking sentence used, "He went
forth out of their hand," points to the extent of their purpose and to a
yet greater use of His power of restraint over their unwilling
wills.[101]
The last incident of this sort is the kingly entry into the city amid
the enthusiasm of the pilgrim and city crowds. It says not a word about
any attempt on their part nor of His restraint over them. But the very
boldness of this wholly unexpected move on His part constituted a
tremendous restraint. Their hate had gone through several stages of
refined hardening during the few months preceding. The formal decision
to kill, the edict of excommunication, the public notice that any
information of His whereabouts must be made known, and the decision to
kill Lazarus also,--all indicate the hotter burning of the flames of
their rage.
Yet into just such a situation He quietly turns the head of His untamed
unridden young colt of an ass and rides through the city surrounded by
the crowds under the very eyes of these leaders and their hireling legal
minions. The tenseness of the whole scene, the power of restraint so put
forth, the volcano smouldering underfoot waiting the slightest extra jar
to loose out its explosion, all are revealed in the little sentence so
pregnant in its concealed dynamic meaning, Jesus "_hid Himself from,
them_." There's an exquisite blending of restraint over them and
boldness with cautious prudence. He was walking very close to the edge
that time.[102]
So His power, shown so quietly but irresistibly before the eyes of all
during those brief years, rises to a double climax nothing short of
stupendous. Miraculous power in the realm of nature and of the human
body had reached its climax in the raising of Lazarus, attested beyond
question. Power over the human will both in affecting a voluntary
change, and in actually restraining its action against its own set
purpose, had risen to its climax in the bold open entry in broadest
daylight into the capital where His death was officially and publicly
decreed. The two climaxes touch. And it is tremendously significant that
whereas they sometimes question His miraculous power, they could not
deny His restraining power over themselves. How gladly they would if
only they could.
And all this, mark you keenly, is a bit of His wooing. The wooing is
ever the dominant thought in His heart. So He was revealing to them who
He was. He claims to be the Son of God, their kingly Messiah. And _He
lived His claim_. Power is the one universally recognized touchstone by
which we judge God and man. His power told _who He was_ even more than
His tremendous words did. He was acting naturally. His presence among
them thus natural, true to the power native in Him,--this was the
wooing.
But there was more than power. There was _love_. There was a perfect
blend of the two. With the power went the love. Nay, rather, with the
love went the power. Love was the dominating thing. Jesus was love in
shoes, God in action. Always there was the tenderness, the gentleness,
the patience, the purity, the unflinching ideals, yes, the courage, the
utter fearlessness tempered with a wise prudence. All _these are the
fuller spelling of love_.
Always these went in closest touch with the resisted but resistless
power. These are the two traits of God, two traits that are one. Men
always think most of the power. God Himself always emphasizes most the
love. But true power is simply love in action. The power is the outcome
of love, and under the control of love.
This is the second of John's great impelling pictures. The first shows
us _the Person,_ the Man Jesus, God with us, God making a world, and
then, in homely human garb walking amongst its people, one of
themselves.
This second shows us _the wooing_. This Man, so tender in touch, so
gentle in speech, so thoughtful in action, so pure in life, so unbending
in ideals, so fearless in the thick of opposition, so faithful to the
chosen faithless nation,--this Man Himself is the wooing. His words, His
actions, His power, His persistence, His patience, this also is the
wooing of this great God-Man-Lover. This is God spelling Himself out
into human speech, wooing men out and up and in to Himself.
Jesus Recognised by all the Race.
And it is most striking to sit still and think into how this Lover was
_recognized_ by men of all nations, and how His wooing was _understood_
and yielded to by men of all sorts. The intense Jew, the half-breed
Samaritan, the aggressive Roman, the cultured refined Greek,--that was
_all the world_. And all these recognized Him as some one kin to
themselves, bound by closest spirit-ties, to whom they were drawn by the
strong cords of His common kinship with themselves. The waves of His
personal influence were, geographically, like His last commandment to
His disciples. The movement was from Jerusalem to Judea, through
Samaria, and out into the uttermost part of the earth and the innermost
heart of the race.
And all sorts of men understood. Jesus wiped out social differences and
distinctions in the crowds that gently jostled each other in His
presence. The aristocrat and the cultured, the student and the gentle
folk, mingled freely with simple country folk, the unlettered, the
humblest and lowliest, all drawn alike to Him, and all unconscious of
differences when under the holy spell of His presence. The wealthy like
Joseph of Arimathea, and the beggar like the man born blind, the pure in
heart like Mary of Bethany and the openly bad in life like the accused
woman of Jerusalem,--all felt alike that this Jesus belonged to them,
and they to Him.
The underneath tie of real kinship of heart rubbed out all outer
distinctions. The old families of Jerusalem were glad to unlock their
jealously guarded doors to Him. And the simple Capernaum fisherfolk were
grateful when He shared bread and roof with them. All men recognized
Jesus as belonging to themselves.
And the calendar has not changed this, neither Gregorian nor Old Style.
Time finds the race the same always. Centuries climb slowly by, but the
human heart is the same, and--so is Jesus. I was greatly struck with
this in my errand among the nations. The East balks at the ways of the
West sometimes. Many books say there is no point of contact between the
two. The East balks at our Western organization, our rule of the clock,
and our rush and hurry. Our Westernized church systems and our closely
mortised logical theologies are sometimes a bit bewildering, not exactly
comprehensible to their Orientalized mode of thought.
But they never balk at Jesus. When they are told of Him, and get some
glimpse of Him, their eyes light, their faces glow, their hearts leap in
response. You book people say there is no point of contact between
Orient and Occident? But there is. Jesus is the point of contact. One
real touch of Jesus makes all the world akin. No; that can be put
better. One touch of Jesus reveals the kinship that is there between Him
and men, _and_ between all men.
In Japan it was the Portuguese that first took the Gospel a few hundred
years ago. And you still find Japanese churches founded by the
Portuguese. Fifty odd years ago it was the English tongue that again
brought that message of life to them. But as I mingled among Japanese
Christians of different communions and heard them pray, they were not
praying in Portuguese nor in English. They had no thought that He was a
Portuguese Saviour they prayed to, nor yet an English. _They prayed in
Japanese_. They felt that Jesus spoke their tongue. He belonged to them.
He and they understood each other.
As I listened to Manchu and Chinese, to Korean and Hawaiian pour out
their hearts in prayer, I could feel the close personal burning touch of
their spirits with Jesus. They and He were kin to each other. Their
very voices told the certainty in their hearts on this point.
I recall a little old bent-over woman of seventy-odd years up in
northern Sweden, a Laplander. She had come a long three days' journey on
her snow-shoes to the meetings. Night after night as I talked through
interpretation her deep-set black eyes glowed and glowed. But when one
night an hour or more was spent in voluntary prayer she needed no
interpreter. And as I listened I needed none. I _felt_ that she _knew_
that _Jesus spoke Lappish_. The two were face to-face in closest touch
of spirit.
And so it is everywhere. The flaxen-haired Holland maid kneeling by her
single cot _knows_ that Jesus talks Dutch, and her homely hearthfire
Dutch, too, at that. And the earnest Polish peasant in his Carpathian
cabin bowed before the symbol his eyes have known from infancy is
talking into an ear that knows both Polish accent and Polish heart. So
with the German of the Saxon highlands, and of the simpler speech of the
Teutonic lowlands. So with the olive-skinned Latin and the darker-hued
African kneeling on opposite sides, north and south, of the great
Central-earth Sea. Wherever knowledge of Jesus has been carried, He is
_recognized_ and claimed _as their own_ regardless of national or social
lines.
I knew a minister of our Southland, but whose public service took him to
all parts of our country. He had been reared in the South and knew the
coloured people by heart, and loved them. And when he returned to his
Southern home town he would frequently preach for the coloured people.
He was preaching to them one Sabbath with the simplicity and fervour for
which he was noted.
At the close among others, one big black man grasped his hand hard as he
thanked him for the preaching. And then with his great child-eyes big
and aglow, he said, "Youse got a white skin, but youse got a black
heart." And you know what he meant,--you have a black man's heart, you
have a heart like mine. Your heart makes my heart burn.
Now _Jesus had a Hack heart_. He had a white heart. He had a yellow, a
brown heart. He had a Jew heart, a Roman, a Greek, a Samaritan heart.
Aye, He had a _world_ heart, He had _a human heart_. And He _has_.
There's a _Man_ on the throne yonder, bone of our bone, heart of our
heart, pain of our pain.
There's more of God since Jesus went back. Human experience has been
taken up into the heart of God. Jesus belonged to us. And now belongs to
us more than ever, and we to Him. The human heart has felt His
tremendous wooing. It has recognized its Kinsman wherever He has been
able to get to them, and it has gladly yielded to the plea of His love.
Jerusalem might carpenter a cross for Him, but the world would weave its
heartfelt devotion into a crown of love for Him, bestudded with the dewy
tears of its gratitude, sparkling like diamonds in the light of His
face.
IV
Closer Wooing
_An Evening with Opening Hearts: the Story of a Supper and a Walk
in the Moonlight and the Shadows_
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
And past those noised Feet
A Voice comes yet more fleet--
"_Lo, naught contents thee, who content'st not Me._"
--"_The Hound of Heaven._"
"I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I
leave the world, and go unto the Father."--_John xvi. 28_.
"I thought His love would weaken
As more and more He knew me;
But it burneth like a beacon,
And its light and heat go through me;
And I ever hear Him say,
As He goes along His way,
Wand'ring souls, O _do_ come near Me;
My sheep should never fear Me.
I am the Shepherd true."
--_Frederick William Faber._
IV
Closer Wooing
(Chapters xiii.-xvii.)
Knots.
The knot tied on the end of the thread holds the seam. The clinching of
the nail on the underside holds all that has been done. Love ties knots
to hold what has been gotten. The bit of prayer knots up the kindly act.
The warm hand-grasp knots the timely word. The added word and act tie up
all that's gone before. Hate imitates love the best it can. But its
intense fires are never so hot.
The rest of John's book is simple. It is tying knots on the ends of
threads. Five knots are tied on the ends of these same three threads we
have been tracing.
There's a triple knot on the end of the blue thread of acceptance; an
ugly tangled knotty knot on the end of that black thread of opposition
and rejection; and a knot of wondrous beauty on the end of that yellow
thread of winsome wooing. Chapters eighteen and nineteen tie two of
these, the black and the glory-coloured.
Chapters thirteen through seventeen, is the first knot on the faith
thread, the betrayal-night knot. Chapter twenty is the second, the
Resurrection knot; chapter twenty-one the extra knot, the love-service
knot. We take a look now at the patient skilful tying of the first knot
on the end of that true-blue faith thread.
It's taken a good bit of careful work to _get_ that thread, tearing
loose, cleansing, spinning, twisting, careful handling, till at last a
good thread is gotten, and is being woven into the warp. Now a knot is
tied on its end to hold what has been gotten, and keep it from ravelling
out, for there's a desperately hard place coming in the weaving.
There's a clean finish at the end of the twelfth chapter of John.
There's a sharp break, an abrupt turn off to something quite different.
The direct-wooing case is made up. There is no more added to it, except
the indirect, the incidental. The evidence is all in. Wondrous wooing it
has been, in its winsomeness, its faithfulness, its rare power. Now it
is over. It's done, and well done. That door is shut, the national door.
Now another door opens. The inner door into Jesus' heart is being opened
by Him. And the inner door into the disciples' heart is being knocked at
that it, too, may open. It is the betrayal night. Jesus is alone with
the inner circle. They have received Him. Now He will receive them into
closer intimacy than yet before. They have opened their hearts to His
love. Now He opens His heart to let out more the love that is there.
Love accepted is free to reveal itself. And love revealing its warmth
and tenderness and depth yet more calls out quickly a deeper, a tenderer
love.
It's the Passover evening. They have met, the twelve and their Master,
by appointment, in the home of one of Jesus' faithful unnamed friends.
In a large upper room they are shut in, gathered about the supper board.
As they eat Jesus is quietly but intently thinking. Four trains of
thought pass through His mind side by side.[103] The Father had trusted
all into His hands. He had come down from the Father on an errand and
would return when the errand was done.
And now the hour was come. The turn in the road was reached, the sharp
turn down leading to the sharp turn up and then back. It had seemed slow
in coming, that hour.[104] Dreaded things seem to linger even while they
hasten, dreaded longed-for things, dreaded in the experience of pain to
be borne, eagerly longed for in the blessed result; as with an expectant
mother. Now the hour's here.[105]
And yonder across the board sits the man so faithfully wooed, yet
dead-set in his inner heart on a dark purpose, more evil in its outcome
than he realizes. There must be more and tenderer wooing. He shall have
yet another full opportunity. And under all is the heart-throb of love
for these who are His own, being birthed into a new life by the giving
of His very own life these months past. He loves His own, and will to
the uttermost, the utterest, the mostest, limit of love and of time left
Him before _the_ great event. These are the thoughts passing quietly,
clearly, intensely, through Jesus' mind as they sit at supper.
Teaching Three Things in One Action.
Now He acts.[106] Quietly He rises from the table, picks up a towel and
fastens its end in His waistband for convenience in use, after the
servant's usual fashion. Then He pours water into a basin and turning
stoops over the feet of the disciple nearest Him. And before they can
recover from their wide-eyed astonishment He begins bathing his feet and
then carefully wiping them with the convenient towel. And so around the
circle. Peter, of course, protests, and so calls out a little of the
explanation. And then with tender passionateness he asks for the washing
to take in all his extremities, head and hands as well as feet. How
their hearts must have felt the touch upon their feet!
Then follows a bit of explanation.[107] But the chief thing had already
been done. The acting was more than the speech. Three things the Master
was doing. The teaching about humility lies on the surface, within easy
reach. It was acted, then spoken; done, then said. It was sorely needed,
and is. In it was the key to Jesus' great victory within the twenty-four
hours following,[108] and would have been for them had they used it.
Humility is the foundation of all strength and victory. Only the strong
can stoop. It takes the strongest to stoop lowest. He who so stoops is
revealing strength.
Humility is not thinking meanly of yourself; it is merely getting into
correct personal relation with God, and so with men. It is our true
normal attitude, as dependent creatures, as those who have sinned, as
those who have been bought with blood. Everything we have is from
Another, originally and continuously; we are utterly dependent. All
rights have been forfeited by our wilful conduct; we retain nothing in
our own right. And all we have now has been secured for us at the cost
of blood; we are being carried at enormous expense. Not much room there
for self-satisfaction, is there?
Humility is simply _recognizing_ our _utter dependence upon Another_,
and _living_ it. And this controls our touch with our fellows. In this
lies the secret of all strength,--mental keenness and vigour,
sympathetic touch with others, and power of action in life and in
service. All this touches the _weakest_ spot in these men, and in--us.
But there's more here. The humility teaching is out on the surface.
There's a bit _under_ the surface, that they would soon be needing and
needing badly. It's this: the thing in you that's wrong _must_ be made
right; and it _can_ be. Every sin done by the man who is trusting Christ
as his Saviour, every such sin _must_ be cleansed away. And it _can_ be.
The feet-washing told this bit of tremendous truth.
These men trusted Christ. But their moral feet would get badly messed
that night, mired and slimed by passionate betrayal and blasphemous
denial and cowardly flight. The man going to the bath-house was clean on
returning home except where his sandalled feet had gathered some soil
from the road. These men were cleansed in heart through Christ. But the
foot-soilings must be cleansed. These two things ring out. Sin _must_ be
reckoned with and cleansed out. _And_, blessed truth! it _can_ be. This
is the second bit. It would be brought to their remembrance that same
night when the road they took dirtied them up so badly, and afterwards.
But there's a deeper, a tenderer bit yet here. There is _the love
touch_. Jesus was giving them the tenderest touch yet of His love, to
_hold_ them. The personal touch is the tenderest. Man yearns for the
personal touch, of presence, of lips, of hands. Something seems to go
_through_ the personal touch from heart to heart. The spirit-currents
find their connection so. Jesus gave the tender personal touch that
evening, the closest yet. His hands touched their feet, but He was not
thinking most about their feet. He was reaching higher up. His hands
reached past their feet for their hearts.
And they felt it so. Their hearts understood, if their heads didn't yet.
Judas felt those hands reaching to touch his heart. And he had to set
himself afresh to resist that touch. John felt it, and _remained
steady_. Peter felt it and came back with flooded eyes. The fleeing nine
felt that touch and yielded to it as they penitently returned. Love
won. That personal touch did it.
But Jesus feels Judas' heart hardening as He touches his feet, and the
gentle word already spoken availed not.[109] Now His great heart is
sorely troubled for Judas.[110] He tries once again to reach his heart
and stay his wayward feet. He reaches for his feet through his heart
this time. They're all together about the table again. Quietly, but with
tactful indirectness, Jesus lets Judas know that _He_ knows. He says,
"One of you is planning to betray Me."
The men stare one at another in questioning astonishment. Peter touches
John's arm and with eye and word quietly asks him to find out. John
reclining next to Jesus asks the question in undertone. And as quietly
Jesus makes reply. Then the last appeal is made to Judas in the last
delicate touch of special personal attention. Judas' unchanged spirit
makes wordless answer. The hardening of the purpose is a further opening
of a downward door and that door is quickly used by the evil one.
And Judas rises abruptly with jaw set and eye tense, and goes out into
the blackest night the clouds ever shut in. So the first tremendous part
of the evening's drama is now done. The wooing of Judas has been intense
and tender clean up to the last moment, _and_ resisted. Now that chapter
is done. Another corner is passed. The extremes have--parted. One man
has gone out. Eleven stay in, and in staying come closer.
Believe--Love--Obey.
The atmosphere clears now. That black cloud shifts. The pressure is
relieved. The air changes. Breathing is easier. Jesus did His best to
keep Judas in by trying to have him turn something--some one--out. But
the something that held the some one is kept within, so the man goes
out. That inside air was getting a bit thick for Judas. Love's tender
pleading unyielded to makes breathing difficult.
Again Jesus begins talking in the cleared air. The hour had full come.
The character of the Son of Man would now be revealed,[111] and in being
revealed God's character would also be understood, and God Himself would
show what _He_ thought of Jesus by His personal recognition and
acknowledgment of Him, and He would do it at once. The clock is striking
the hour. Now He was going away. They would not understand.[112]
Then Jesus strikes the great key-note of their future conduct as He
goes on. _The_ thing is this: _love one another_. This is the badge He
gives them to wear. It will always identify them as His very own. Peter
picks up the one bit he understands, and is told that he cannot yet
follow in the tremendous experience lying just ahead for Jesus, but some
day he can, and will. And then to Peter's blundering self-confidence
comes a plain tender reminder of his weakness.[113] So that wondrous
fourteenth chapter that Christendom loves begins back in the thirteenth.