JESUS' UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS.
"Friend, my feet bleed.
Open thy door to me and comfort me."
I will not open; trouble me no more.
Go on thy way footsore;
I will not rise and open unto thee.
"Then it is nothing to thee? Open, see
Who stands to plead with thee.
Open, lest I should pass thee by, and thou
One day entreat my face
And howl for grace,
And I be deaf as thou art now.
Open to me."
CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
There is a great deal of unrequited love in this world. There are
hearts that love with all the strength of purest and holiest affection,
whose love seems to meet no requital. There is much unrequited
mother-love and father-love. Parents live for their children. In
helpless infancy they begin to pour out their affection on them. They
toil for them, suffer for them, deny themselves to provide comforts for
them, bear their burdens, watch beside them when they are sick, pray
for them, and teach them. Parent-love is likest God's love of all
earthly affections. It is one of the things in humanity which at its
best seems to have come from the Fall almost unimpaired. Much
parent-love is worthily honored and fittingly requited. Few things in
this world are more beautiful than the devotion of children to parents
which one sees in some homes. But not always is there such return.
Too often is this almost divine love unrequited.
Much philanthropic love also is unrequited. There are men who spend
all their life in doing good, and then meet no return. Men have served
their country with loyalty and disinterestedness, and have received no
reward--perhaps have been left to suffering, and have died in poverty,
neglected and forgotten; too often have lain in prison, or been put to
death, or exiled by the country which was indebted to their patriotism
and loyal service for much of its glory and greatness. Many hearts
break because of men's ingratitude.
Jesus was the world's greatest benefactor. No other man ever loved the
race, or could have loved it, as he did. He was the divine messenger
who came to save the world. His whole life was a revealing of love.
It was the love of God too,--a love of infinite depth and strength and
tenderness, and not any merely human love, however rich and faithful it
might be, that was manifested in Jesus Christ. Yet much of his
wonderful love was unrequited. "He was in the world, and the world was
made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his
own received him not." A few individuals recognized him and accepted
his love; but the great masses of the people paid him no heed, saw no
beauty in him, rejected the blessings he bore and proffered to all, and
let his love waste itself in unavailing yearnings and beseechings.
Then one cruel day they nailed him on a cross, thinking to quench the
affection of his mighty heart.
There are many illustrations of the unrequiting of the holy friendship
of Jesus. The treatment he received at Nazareth was one instance. He
had been brought up among the people. They had seen his beautiful life
during the thirty years he had lived in the village. They had known
him as a child when he played in their streets. They had known him as
a youth and young man in his noble strength. They had known him as a
carpenter when day after day he wrought among them in humble toil.
It is interesting to think of the sinless life of Jesus all these
years. There was no halo about his head but the shining of manly
character. There were no miracles wrought by his hands but the
miracles of duty, faithful service, and gentle kindness. Yet we cannot
doubt that his life in Nazareth was one of rare grace and beauty,
marked by perfect unselfishness and great helpfulness.
By and by he went away from Nazareth to begin his public ministry as
the Messiah. From that time the people saw him no more. The carpenter
shop was closed, and the tools lay unused on the bench. The familiar
form appeared no more on the streets. A year or more passed, and one
day he came back to visit his old neighbors. He stayed a little while,
and on the Sabbath was at the village church as had been his wont when
his home was at Nazareth. When the opportunity was given him, he
unrolled the Book of Isaiah, and read the passage which tells of the
anointing of the Messiah, and gives the wonderful outline of his
ministry. When he had finished the reading, he told the people that
this prophecy was now fulfilled in their ears. That is, he said that
he was the Messiah whose anointing and work the prophet had foretold.
For a time the people listened spellbound to his gracious words, and
then they began to grow angry, that he whom they knew as the carpenter
of their village should make such an astounding claim. They rose up in
wrath, thrust him out of the synagogue, and would have hurled him over
the precipice had he not eluded them and gone on his way.
He had come to them in love, bearing rich blessings; but they drove him
away with the blessings. He had come to heal their sick, to cure their
blind and lame, to cleanse their lepers, to comfort their sorrowing
ones; but he had to go away and leave these works of mercy unwrought,
while the sufferers continued to bear their burdens. His friendship
for his old neighbors was unrequited.
Another instance of unrequited friendship in the life of Jesus was in
the case of the rich young man who came to him. He had many excellent
traits of character, and was also an earnest seeker after the truth.
We are distinctly told that Jesus loved him. Thus he belongs with
Martha and Mary and Lazarus, of whom the same was said. But here,
again, the love was unrequited. The young man was deeply interested in
Jesus, and wanted to go with him; but he could not pay the price, and
turned and went away.
It is interesting to think what might have been the result if he had
chosen Christ and gone with him. He might have occupied an important
place in the early church, and his name might have lived through all
future generations. But he loved his money too much to give it up for
Christ, and rejected the way of the cross marked out for him. He
refused the friendship of Jesus, and thus threw away all that was best
in life. In shutting love out of his heart, he shut himself out from
love.
Of all the examples of unrequited friendship in the story of Jesus,
that of Judas is the saddest. We do not know the beginning of the
story of his discipleship, when Judas first came to Jesus, or who
brought him. But he must have been a follower some time before he was
chosen to be an apostle. Jesus thought over the names of those who had
left all to be with him. Then after a night of prayer he chose twelve
of these to be his special messengers and witnesses. He loved them
all, and took them into very close relations.
Think what a privilege it was for these men to live with Jesus. They
heard all his words. They saw every phase of his life. Some friends
it is better not to know too intimately. They are not as good in
private as they are in public. Their life does not bear too close
inspection. We discover in them dispositions, habits, ways, tempers,
feelings, motives, which dim the lustre we see in them at greater
distance. Intimacy weakens the friendship. But, on the other hand,
there are those who, the more we see of their private life, the more we
love them. Close association reveals loveliness of character, fineness
of spirit, richness of heart, sweetness of disposition--habits,
feelings, tempers, noble self-denials, which add to the attractiveness
of the life and the charm of our friend's personality. We may be sure
that intimacy with Jesus only made him appear all the more winning and
beautiful to his friends. Judas lived in the warmth of this wondrous
love, under the influence of this gracious personality, month after
month. He witnessed the pure and holy life of Jesus in all its
manifold phases, heard his words, and saw his works. Doubtless, too,
in his individual relation with the Master, he received many marks of
affection and personal friendship.
A careful reading of the Gospels shows that Judas was frequently warned
of the very sin which in the end wrought his ruin. Continually Jesus
spoke of the danger of covetousness. In the Sermon on the Mount he
exhorted his disciples to lay up their treasure, not upon earth, but in
heaven, and said that no one could serve God and mammon. It was just
this that Judas was trying to do. In more than one parable the danger
of riches was emphasized. Can we doubt that in all these reiterations
and warnings on the one subject, Judas was in the Master's mind? He
was trying in the faithfulness of loyal friendship to save him from the
sin which was imperilling his very life.
But Judas resisted all the mighty love of Christ. It made no
impression upon him; he was unaffected by it. In his heart there grew
on meanwhile, unchecked, unhindered, his terrible greed for money.
First it made him a thief. The money given to Jesus by his friends to
provide for his wants, or to use for the poor, Judas, who was the
treasurer, began at length to purloin for himself. This was the first
step. The next was the selling of his Master for thirty pieces of
silver. This was a more fearful fruit of his nourished greed than the
purloining was. It is bad enough to steal. It is a base form of
stealing which robs a church treasury as Judas did. But to take money
as the price of betraying a friend--could any sin be baser? Could any
crime be blacker than that? To take money as the price of betraying a
friend in whose confidence one has lived for years, at whose table one
has eaten day after day, in the blessing of whose friendship one has
rested for months and years--are there words black enough to paint the
infamy of such a deed?
All the participators in the crime of that Good Friday wear a peculiar
brand of infamy as they are portrayed on the pages of history; but
among them all, the most despicable, the one whose name bears the
deepest infamy, is Judas, an apostle turned traitor, for a few
miserable coins betraying his best friend into the hands of malignant
foes.
This is the outcome of the friendship of Jesus for Judas; this was the
fruit of those years of affection, cherishing, patient teaching. Think
what Judas might have been. He was chosen and called to be an apostle.
There was no reason in the heart of Jesus why Judas might not have been
true and worthy. Sin is not God's plan for any life. Treachery and
infamy were not in God's purpose for Judas. Jesus would not have
chosen him for one of the Twelve if it had not been possible for him to
be a good and true man. Judas fell because he had never altogether
surrendered himself to Christ. He tried to serve God and mammon; but
both could not stay in his heart, and instead of driving out mammon,
mammon drove out Christ.
This suggests to us what a battlefield the human heart sometimes is--a
Waterloo where destinies are settled. God or mammon--which? That is
the question every soul must answer. How goes the battle in your soul?
Who is winning on your field--Christ or money? Christ or pleasure?
Christ or sin? Christ or self? Judas lost the battle; the Devil won.
A picture in Brussels represents Judas wandering about the night after
the betrayal. By chance he comes upon the workmen who have been
preparing the cross for Jesus. A fire burning close by throws its
weird light on the faces of the men who are now sleeping. The face of
Judas is somewhat in the shade; but one sees on it remorse and agony,
as the traitor's eyes fall upon the cross and the tools which have been
used in making it,--the cross to which his treason had doomed his
friend. But though suffering in the torments of a guilty conscience,
he still tightly clutches his money-bag as he hurries on into the
night. The picture tells the story of the fruit of Judas's sin,--the
money-bag, with eighteen dollars and sixty cents in it, and even that
soon to be cast away in the madness of despair.
Unrequited friendship! Yes; and in shutting out that blessed
friendship, Judas shut out hope. Longfellow puts into his mouth the
despairing words:--
"Lost, lost, forever lost! I have betrayed
The innocent blood ...
* * *
Too late! too late! I shall not see him more
Among the living. That sweet, patient face
Will nevermore rebuke me, nor those lips
Repeat the words, 'One of you shall betray me.'"
The great lesson from all this is the peril of rejecting the friendship
of Jesus Christ. In his friendship is the only way to salvation, the
only way of obtaining eternal life. He calls men to come to him, to
follow him, to be his friends; and thus alone can they come unto God,
and be received into his family.
There is something appalling in the revealing which this truth
teaches,--the power each soul possesses of shutting out all the love of
God, of resisting the infinite blessing of the friendship of Christ.
It is possible for us to be near to Christ through all our life, with
his grace flowing about us like an ocean, and yet to have a heart that
remains unblessed by divine love. We may make God's love in vain,
wasted, as sunshine is wasted that falls upon desert sands, so far as
we are concerned. The love that we do not requite with love, that does
not get into our heart to warm, soften, and enrich it, and to mellow
and bless our life, is love poured out in vain. It is made in vain by
our unbelief. We may make even the dying of Jesus for us in vain,--a
waste of precious life, so far as we are concerned. It is in vain for
us that Jesus died if we do not let his love into our heart.
Ofttimes the unrequiting of human love makes the heart bitter. When
holy friendship has been despised, rejected, and cast away, when one
has loved, suffered, and sacrificed in vain, receiving only ingratitude
and wrong in return for love's most sacred gifts freely lavished, the
danger is that the heart may lose its sweetness, and grow cold, hard,
and misanthropic. But not thus was the heart of Jesus affected by the
unrequiting of his love and friendship. One Judas in the life of most
men would have ended the whole career of generous kindness, drying up
the fountains of affection, thus robbing those who would come after of
the wealth of tenderness which ought to have been theirs. But through
all the unrequiting and resisting of its love, the heart of Jesus still
remained gentle as a mother's, rich in its power to love, and sweet in
its spirit.
This is one of the great problems of true living,--how to keep the
heart warm, gentle, compassionate, kind, full of affection's best and
truest helpfulness, even amid life's hardest experiences. We cannot
live and not at some time suffer wrong. We will meet injustice,
however justly we ourselves may live. We will find a return of
ingratitude many a time when we have done our best for others. Favors
rendered are too easily forgotten by many people. There are few of us
who do not remember helping others in time of great need and distress,
only to lose their friendship in the end, perhaps, as a consequence of
our serving them in their need. Sometimes the only return for costly
kindness is cruel unkindness.
It is easy to allow such unrequiting, such ill treatment of love, to
embitter the fountain of the heart's affection; but this would be to
miss the true end of living, which is to get good and not evil to
ourselves from every experience through which we pass. No ingratitude,
injustice, or unworthiness in those to whom we try to do good, should
ever be allowed to turn love's sweetness into bitterness in us. Like
fresh-water springs beside the sea, over which the brackish tide flows,
but which when the bitter waters have receded are found sweet as ever,
so should our hearts remain amid all experiences of love's unrequiting,
ever sweet, thoughtful, unselfish, and generous.