_Monday in Passion Week_
During the last week of the life of Jesus we see him under the most
awful pressure of emotion; the crisis of a great tragedy, which has
been slowly gathering and growing from the beginning of the world,
is now drawing on. The nation that he had chosen--that he had borne
and carried through all the days of old--was now to consummate her
ruin in his rejection. All his words and actions during the last
week of his life were under the shadow of that cloud of doom which
overhung the city of Jerusalem, the temple, and the people whom he
had loved, so earnestly and so long, in vain.
When going up to Jerusalem he walked before his disciples, silent
and absorbed; and they dared scarcely speak to him. Amid the
triumphant shouts of the people that welcomed him to the city he
paused on the verge of Olivet and wept over it. He saw the siege,
the famine, the terror of women and helpless children, the misery
and despair, the unutterable agonies of the sacking of Jerusalem,
which has been a world's wonder; and he broke forth in lamentation.
"Oh, that thou hadst known--even thou in this thy day--the things
that belong to thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes."
All his discourses of this last week are shaded with the sad
coloring and prophetic vision of coming doom, of a crime hastening
to fulfillment that should bring a long-delayed weight of wrath and
vengeance.
His parables now turn on this theme. One day they tell of a
husbandman intrusting a vineyard to the care of faithless servants;
he sends messengers to overlook them; they beat one and stone
another, till finally he sends his only and beloved son, and then
they say, "Let us kill him;" and they catch him and cast him out
of the vineyard and slay him. "What," he asks, "shall the Lord of
the vineyard do to these husbandmen?" Again, he speaks of a feast
to which all are generously invited, and all neglect or reject the
invitation, and not only reject but insult and despise and ill-treat
the messengers who bear the invitation; and tells how the insulted
King sends the invitation to others, and decrees, "None of these
men shall taste of my supper." He tells of a wedding feast, and of
foolish virgins who slumber with unfilled lamps till the door of
welcome is shut. He tells of a king, who, having intrusted talents
to his servants, comes again to reckon, and takes away the talent of
the unfaithful one and casts him to outer darkness.
All these themes speak of the approaching rejection of the nation on
whom God has heaped so many favors for many years. The thought of
their doom seems to press down the heart of the Redeemer.
The twenty-third chapter of Matthew contains Christ's last sermon
in the temple--his final words of leave-taking of his people; and
a most dreadful passage it is. It is awful, it is pathetic, to
compare those fearful words with his first benignant announcement at
Nazareth. Nothing in human language can be conceived more terrible
than these last denunciations of the rejected Lord and Lover of the
chosen race. He exposes with scathing severity the hypocrisy, the
greed, the cruelty of the leaders of the nation; he denounces them
as the true descendants of those who of old killed God's prophets
and stoned his messengers, and ends by rising into the very majesty
of the Godhead in declaring their final doom:--
"Fill ye up the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents! Ye
generation of vipers! How can ye escape the damnation of hell?
Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men and
scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some
of them ye shall scourge in your synagogues and persecute from
city to city. That upon you might come all the righteous blood
shed upon earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood
of Zacharias,[5] the son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the
temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you all these shall come
upon this generation!
"O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets and
stonest those that are sent unto thee--how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen doth gather her
brood under her wings--and ye would not. Behold, your house is
left unto you desolate, for I say that ye shall see me no more
henceforth till ye say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of
the Lord."
[5] See 2 Chronicles xxiv. 20, 21.
"And the spirit of the Lord came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoida
the priest, who stood among the people, and said, Why transgress ye
the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? Because ye
have forsaken the Lord he also hath forsaken you. And they conspired
against him and stoned him with stones in the court of the house of
the Lord."
These two instances, of Abel and Zacharias, cited by our Lord from
the very first and very last of the sacred historic books, seemed
to cover the whole ground of their history. The variation as to the
name of the prophet's father has many theories to account for it,
any one of which is satisfactory.
This was Christ's last farewell--his valedictory to those whom he
had loved and labored for, and who would not come to him that he
might give them life.
To all these awful words was added the language of an awful symbol.
In one of his parables our Lord had spoken of the Jewish nation
under the figure of a tree which, though carefully tended year by
year, bore no fruit. At last the word goes forth, "Cut it down!" But
the keeper of the vineyard intercedes and prays that it may have a
longer space of cultured care, and so be brought to fruit-bearing.
This last week of our Lord's life he sets forth the solemn close
of that parable by one of those symbolic acts common among the old
prophets and well understood by the Jews.
Approaching a fair and promising tree on his way into the city, he
seeks fruit thereon, but finds it barren. There is a pause, and then
a voice of deep sadness says, "No fruit grow on thee henceforth and
forever!" and immediately the fig-tree withered away.
It was an outward symbol of that doomed city whose day of mercy was
past. The awfulness of these last words and of this last significant
sign is increased by the tenderness of Him who gave them forth.
It is the Fountain of Pity, the All-Loving One, that uttered the
doom--a doom made certain and inevitable not by God's will but by
man's perversity.
The lesson that we have to learn is the reality and awfulness of
sin, the reality of that persistence in wickedness that can make
even the love of Jesus vain for our salvation. For what hope, what
help, what salvation can there be for those who cannot be reached by
His love? If they have seen and hated both him and his Father--what
remains?