JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS.
"What meaneth it that we should weep
More for our joys than for our fears,--
That we should sometimes smile at grief,
And look at pleasure's show through tears?
Alas! but homesick children we,
Who would, but cannot, play the while
We dream of nobler heritage,
Our Father's house, our Father's smile."
At last the end came. The end comes for every earthly friendship. The
sweetest life together of loved ones must have its last walk, its last
talk, its last hand-clasp, when one goes, and the other stays. One of
every two friends must stand by the other's grave, and drop tears all
the hotter because they are shed alone.
The friendship of Jesus with his disciples was very sweet; it was the
sweetest friendship this world ever knew, for never was there any other
heart with such capacity for loving and for kindling love as the heart
of Jesus. But even this holy friendship in its earthly duration was
but for a time. Jesus' hour came at last. To-morrow he was going back
to his Father.
Very tender was the farewell. The place chosen for it was the upper
room--almost certainly in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark.
So full is the narrative of the evangelists that we can follow it
through its minutest details. In the afternoon two of the closest
friends of Jesus came quietly into the city from Bethany to find a
room, and prepare for the Passover. All was done with the utmost
secrecy. No inquiry was made for a room; but a man appeared at a
certain point, bearing a pitcher of water,--a most unusual
occurrence,--and the messengers silently followed him, and thus were
led to the house in which was the guest-chamber which Jesus and his
friends were to use. There the two disciples made the preparations
necessary for the Passover.
Toward the evening Jesus and the other apostles came, and found their
way to the upper room. First there was the Passover feast, observed
after the manner of the Jews. Then followed the institution of the new
memorial--the Lord's Supper. This brought the Master and his disciples
together in very sacred closeness. Judas, the one discordant element
in the communion, had gone out, and all who remained were of one mind
and one heart. Then began the real farewell. Jesus was going away,
and he longed to be remembered. This was a wonderfully human desire.
No one wishes to be forgotten. No thought could be sadder than that
one might not be remembered after he is gone, that in no heart his name
shall be cherished, that nowhere any memento of him shall be preserved.
We all hope to live in the love of our friends long after our faces
have vanished from earth. The deeper and purer our love may have been,
and the closer our friendship, the more do we long to keep our place in
the hearts of those we have loved.
There are many ways in which men seek to keep their memory alive in the
world. Some build their own tomb: few things are more pathetic than
such planning for earthly immortality. Some seek to do deeds which
will live in history. Some embalm their names in books, hoping thus to
perpetuate them. Love's enshrining is the best way.
The institution of the Last Supper showed the craving of the heart of
Jesus to be remembered. "Do not forget me when I am gone," he said.
That he might not be forgotten, he took bread and wine, and, breaking
the one and pouring out the other, he gave them to his friends as
mementos of himself. He associated this farewell meal with the great
acts of his redeeming love. "This bread which I break, let it be the
emblem of my body broken to be bread for the world. This wine which I
empty out, let it be the emblem of my blood which I give for you."
Whatever else the Lord's Supper may mean, it is first of all a
remembrancer; it is the expression of the Master's desire to be
remembered by his friends. It comes down to us--Christ's friends of
to-day--with the same heart-craving. "Remember me; do not forget me;
think of my love for you." Jesus' farewell was thus made wondrously
sacred; its memories have blessed the world ever since by their warmth
and tenderness. No one can ever know the measure of the influence of
that last night in the upper room upon the life of these nineteen
Christian centuries.
The Lord's Supper was not all of the Master's farewell. There were
also words spoken which have been bread and wine, the body and blood of
Jesus, to believers ever since. To the eleven men gathered about that
table these words were inexpressibly precious. One of them, one who
leaned his head upon the Master's breast that night, remembered them in
his old age, and wrote them down, so that we can read them for
ourselves.
It is impossible in a short chapter to study the whole of this
wonderful farewell address; only a few of its great features can be
gathered together. It began with an exhortation, a new
commandment,--"That ye love one another." We cannot understand how
really new this commandment was when given to the Master's friends.
The world had never before known such love as Jesus brought into its
wintry atmosphere. He had lived out the divine love among men; now his
friends were to continue that love. "As I have loved you, that ye also
love one another." Very imperfectly have the friends of the Master
learned that love; yet wherever the gospel has gone, a wave of
tenderness has rolled.
Next was spoken a word of comfort whose music has been singing through
the world ever since. "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in
God, believe also in me." Unless it be the Twenty-Third Psalm, no
other passage in all the Bible has had such a ministry of comfort as
the first words of the fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel. They
told the sorrowing disciples that their Master would not forget them,
that his work for them would not be broken off by his death, that he
was only going away to prepare a place for them, and would come again
to receive them unto himself, so that where he should be they might be
also. He assured them, too, that while he was going away, something
better than his bodily presence would be given them instead,--another
Comforter would come, so that they should not be left orphans.
Part of the Master's farewell words were answers to questions which his
friends asked him,--a series of conversations with one and another.
These men had their difficulties; and they brought these to Jesus, and
he explained them. First, Peter had a question. Jesus had spoken of
going away. Peter asked him, "Lord, whither goest thou?" Jesus told
him that where he was going he could not follow him then, but he should
follow him by and by. Peter was recklessly bold, and he would not have
it said that there was any place he could not follow his Master. He
declared that he would even lay down his life for his sake. "Wilt thou
lay down thy life for my sake?" answered the Master. "Wilt thou,
indeed?" Then he foretold Peter's sad, humiliating fall--that, instead
of laying down his life for his Lord.
After the words had been spoken about the Father's house and the coming
again of Jesus for his friends, Thomas had a question. Jesus had said,
"Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." Thomas was slow in his
perceptions, and was given to questioning. He would take nothing for
granted. He would not believe until he could understand. "Lord, we
know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?" We are glad
Thomas asked such a question, for it brought a wonderful answer. Jesus
himself is the way and the truth and the life. That is, to know Christ
is to know all that we need to know about heaven and the way there; to
have Christ as Saviour, Friend, and Lord, is to be led by him through
the darkest way--home. Not only is he the door or gate which opens
into the way, but he is the way. He is the guide in the way; he has
gone over it himself; everywhere we find his footprints. More than
that; he is the very way itself, and the very truth about the way, and
the life which inspires us in the way. To be his friend is enough; we
need ask neither whither he has gone, nor the road; we need only abide
in him.
"Thank God, thank God, the Man is found,
Sure-footed, knowing well the ground.
He knows the road, for this the way
He travelled once, as on this day.
He is our Messenger beside,
He is our Door and Path and Guide."
Then Philip had a question. He had heard the Master's reply to Thomas.
Philip was slow and dull, loyal-hearted, a man of practical
common-sense, but without imagination, unable to understand anything
spiritual, anything but bare, cold, material facts. The words of Jesus
about knowing and seeing the Father caught his ear. That was just what
he wanted,--to see the Father. So in his dulness he said, "Lord, show
us the Father, and it sufficeth us." He was thinking of a
theophany,--a glorious vision of God. Jesus was wondrously patient
with the dulness of his disciples; but this word pained him, for it
showed how little Philip had learned after all his three years of
discipleship. "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou
not known me?" Then Jesus told him that he had been showing him the
Father, the very thing Philip craved, all the while.
Jesus went on with his gracious words for a little while, and was
speaking of manifesting himself to his disciples, when he was
interrupted by another question. This time it was Judas who spoke.
"Not Iscariot," St. John is careful to say, for the name of Iscariot
was now blotted with the blotch of treason. He had gone out into the
night, and was of the disciple family no more. Judas could not
understand in what special and exclusive manner Jesus would manifest
himself to his own. Perhaps he expected some setting apart of Christ's
followers like that which had fenced off Israel from the other nations.
But Jesus swept away his disciple's thought of any narrow
manifestation. There was only one condition--love. To every one who
loved him and obeyed his words he would reveal himself. The
manifesting would not be any theophany, as in the ancient Shekinah, but
the spiritual in-dwelling of God.
After these questions of his disciples had all been answered, Jesus
continued his farewell words. He left several bequests to his friends,
distributing among them his possessions. We are apt to ask what he had
to leave. He had no houses or lands, no gold or silver. While he was
on his cross the soldiers divided his clothes among themselves. Yet
there are real possessions besides money and estates. One may have won
the honor of a noble name, and may bequeath this to his family when he
goes away. One may have acquired power which he may transmit. It
seemed that night in the upper room as if Jesus had neither name nor
power to leave to his friends. To-morrow he was going to a cross, and
that would be the end of everything of hope or beauty in his life.
Yet he quietly made his bequests, fully conscious that he had great
possessions, which would bless the world infinitely more than if he had
left any earthly treasure. One of these bequests was his peace.
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you." It was his own
peace; if it had not been his own he could not have bequeathed it to
his friends. A man cannot give to others what he has not himself. It
was his own because he had won it. Peace is not merely ease, the
absence of strife and struggle; it is something which lives in the
midst of the fiercest strife and the sorest struggle. Jesus knew not
the world's peace,--ease and quiet; but he had learned a secret of
heart-quietness which the world at its worst could not disturb. This
peace he left to his disciples, and it made them richer than if he had
given them all the world's wealth.
Another of his possessions which he bequeathed was his joy. We think
of Jesus as the Man of sorrows, and we ask what joy he had to give. It
seemed a strange time, too, for him to be speaking of his joy; for in
another hour he was in the midst of the Gethsemane anguish, and
to-morrow he was on his cross. Yet in the upper room he had in his
heart a most blessed joy. Even in the terrible hours that came
afterwards, that joy was not quenched; for we are told that for the joy
set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame. This joy
also he bequeathed to his friends. "These things have I spoken unto
you, that my joy may be in you." We remember, too, that they really
received this legacy. The world wondered at the strange secret of joy
those men had when they went out into the world. They sang songs in
the darkest night. Their faces shone as with a holy inner light in the
deepest sorrow. Christ's joy was fulfilled in them.
He also put within the reach of his friends, as he was about to leave
them, the whole of his own inheritance as the only begotten Son of God.
He gave into their hands the key of heaven. He told them they should
have power to do the works which they had seen him do, and even greater
works than these. He told them that whatsoever they should ask the
Father in his name the Father would give to them. The whole power of
his name should thus be theirs, and they might use it as they would.
Nothing they might ask should be refused to them; all the heavenly
kingdom was thrown open to them.
These are mere suggestions of the farewell gifts which Jesus left to
his friends when he went away,--his peace, his joy, the key to all the
treasures of his kingdom. He had blessed them in wonderful ways during
his life; but the best and richest things of his love were kept to the
last, and given only after he was gone. Indeed, the best things were
given through his death, and could be given in no other way. Other men
live to do good; they hasten to finish their work before their sun
sets. God's plan for them is something they must do before death comes
to write "Finis" at the end of their days. But the plan of God for
Jesus centred in his death. It was the blessings that would come
through his dying that were set forth in the elements used in the Last
Supper,--the body broken, the blood shed. The great gifts to his
friends, of which he spoke in his farewell words, would come through
his dying. He must be lifted up in order to draw all men to him. He
must shed his blood in order that remission of sins might be offered.
It was expedient for him to go away in order that the Comforter might
come. His peace and his joy were bequests which could be given only
when he had died as the world's Redeemer. His name would have power to
open heaven's treasures only when the atonement had been made, and the
Intercessor was at God's right hand in heaven.
There was one other act in this farewell of Jesus. After he had ended
his gracious words, he lifted up his eyes in prayer to his Father. The
pleading is full of deep and tender affection. It is like that of a
mother about to go away from earth, and who is commending her children
to the care of the heavenly Father, when she must leave them without
mother-love and mother-shelter among unknown and dangerous enemies.
Every word of the wonderful prayer throbs with love, and reveals a
heart of most tender affection. While he had been with his friends,
Jesus had kept them in the shelter of his own divine strength. None of
them had been lost, so faithful had been his guardianship over
them--none but the son of perdition. He, too, had received faithful
care; it had not been the Good Shepherd's fault that he had perished.
He had been lost because he resisted the divine love, and would not
accept the divine will. There must have been a pang of anguish in the
heart of Jesus as he spoke to his Father of the one who had perished.
But the others all were safe. Jesus had guarded them through all the
dangers up to the present moment.
But now he is about to leave them. He knows that they must encounter
great dangers, and will not have him to protect them. The form of his
intercession for them is worthy of note. He does not ask that they
should be taken out of the world. This would have seemed the way of
tenderest love. But it is not the divine way to take us out of the
battle. These friends of Jesus had been trained to be his witnesses,
to represent him when he had gone away. Therefore they must stay in
the world, whatever the dangers might be. The prayer was that they
should be kept from the evil. There is but one evil. They were not to
be kept from persecution, from earthly suffering and loss, from pain or
sorrow: these are not the evils from which men's lives need to be
guarded. The only real evil is sin. Our danger in trouble or
adversity is not that we may suffer, but that we may sin. The pleading
of Jesus was that his friends might not be hurt in their souls, in
their spiritual life, by sin.
If enemies wrong or injure us, the peril is not that they may cause us
to suffer injustice, but that in our suffering we may lose the love out
of our heart, and grow angry, or become bitter. In time of sickness,
trial, or bereavement, that which we should fear is not the illness or
the sorrow, but that we shall not keep sweet, with the peace of God in
our breast. The only thing that can do us real harm is sin. So the
intercession on our behalf ever is, not that we may be kept from things
that are hard, from experiences that are costly or painful, but that we
may be kept pure, gentle, and submissive, with peace and joy in our
heart.
There was a pleading also that the disciples might be led into complete
consecration of spirit, and that they might be prepared to go out for
their Master, to be to the world what he had been to them. This was
not a prayer for a path of roses; rather it was for a cross, the utter
devotion of their lives to God. Before the prayer closed, a final wish
for his friends was expressed,--that when their work on earth was done,
they might be received home; that where he should be they might be
also, to behold his glory.
Surely there never has been on earth another gathering of such
wondrously deep and sacred meaning as that farewell meeting in the
upper room. There the friendship of Jesus and his chosen ones reached
its holiest experience. His deep human love appears in his giving up
the whole of this last evening to this tryst with his own. He knew
what was before him after midnight,--the bitter agony of Gethsemane,
the betrayal, the arrest, the trial, and then the terrible shame and
suffering of tomorrow. But he planned so that there should be these
quiet, uninterrupted hours alone with his friends, before the beginning
of the experiences of his passion. He did it for his own sake; his
heart hungered for communion with his friends; with desire he desired
to eat the Passover, and enjoy these hours with them before he
suffered. We may be sure, too, that he received from the holy
fellowship comfort and strength, which helped him in passing through
the bitter hours that followed. Then, he did it also for the sake of
his disciples. He knew how their hearts would be broken with sorrow
when he was taken from them, and he wished to comfort them and make
them stronger for the way. The memory of those holy hours hung over
them like a star in all the dark night of their sorrow, and was a
benediction to them as long as they lived.
Then, who can tell what blessings have gone out from that farewell into
the whole Church of Christ through all the centuries? It is the holy
of holies of Christian history. The Lord's Supper, instituted that
night, and which has never ceased to be observed as a memorial of the
Master's wonderful love and great sacrifice, has sweetened the world
with its fragrant memories. The words spoken by the Master at the
table have been repeated from lip to heart wherever the story of the
gospel has gone, and have given unspeakable comfort to millions of
hearts. The petitions of the great intercessory prayer have been
rising continually, like holy incense, ever since they were first
uttered, taking into their clasp each new generation of believers.
This farewell has kept the Christian hearts of all the centuries warm
and tender with love toward him who is the unchanging Friend the same
yesterday and to-day and forever.