CHRIST’S MINISTRY. ACT III
“By the light of burning martyr-fires Christ’s bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back.”
LOWELL.
WE have now reached the critical point, the third act in the world’s
greatest drama. All chance of the speedy triumph of the kingdom of God,
humanly speaking, in this lake country of Galilee—the battle-field
chosen by Himself, where His mightiest works had been done and His
mightiest words spoken—the district from which His chosen companions
came, and in which clamorous crowds had been ready to declare Him
king—is now over. The conviction that this is so, that He is a baffled
leader, in hourly danger of His life, has forced itself on Christ.
Before entering that battle-field, face to face with the tempter in the
wilderness, He had deliberately rejected all aid from the powers and
kingdoms of this world, and now, for the moment, the powers of this
world have proved too strong for Him.
The rulers of that people—Pharisee, Sadducee, and Herodian, scribe and
lawyer—were now marshalled against Him in one compact phalanx,
throughout all the coasts of Galilee, as well as in Judæa.
His disciples, rough, most of them peasants, full of patriotism but with
small power of insight or self-control, were melting away from a leader
who, while He refused them active service under a patriot chief at open
war with Cæsar and his legions, bewildered them by assuming titles and
talking to them in language which they could not understand. They were
longing for one who would rally them against the Roman oppressor, and
give them a chance at any rate of winning their own land again, purged
of the heathen and free from tribute. Such an one would be worth
following to the death. But what could they make of this “Son of man,”
who would prove His title to that name by giving His body and pouring
out His blood for the life of man—of this “Son of God,” who spoke of
redeeming mankind and exalting mankind to God’s right hand, instead of
exalting the Jew to the head of mankind?
In the face of such a state of things, to remain in Capernaum or the
neighbouring towns and villages, would have been to court death, there,
and at once. The truly courageous man, you may remind me, is not turned
from his path by the fear of death, which is the supreme test and
touchstone of his courage. True;—nor was Christ so turned, even for a
moment.
Whatever may have been His hopes in the earlier part of His career, by
this time He had no longer a thought that mankind could be redeemed
without His own perfect and absolute sacrifice and humiliation. The cup
would indeed have to be drunk to the dregs, but not here, nor now. This
must be done at Jerusalem, the centre of the national life and the seat
of the Roman Government. It must be done during the Passover, the
national commemoration of sacrifice and deliverance. And so He
withdraws, with a handful of disciples, and even they still wayward,
half-hearted, doubting, from the constant stress of a battle which has
turned against Him. From this time He keeps away from the great centres
of population, except when, on two occasions—at the Feast of Tabernacles
and the Feast of the Dedication—He flashes for a day on Jerusalem, and
then disappears again into some haunt of outlaws, or of wild beasts.
This portion of His life comprises something less than the last twelve
months: from the summer of the second year of His ministry till the eve
of the last Passover, at Easter, in the third year.
In glancing at the main facts of this period, as we have done in the
former ones, we have to note chiefly His intercourse with the twelve
apostles, and His preparation of them for the end of His own career and
the beginning of theirs; His conduct at Jerusalem during those two
autumnal and winter feasts; and the occasions when He again comes into
collision with the rulers and Pharisees, both at these feasts and in the
intervals between them.
The keynote of it, in spite of certain short and beautiful interludes,
appears to me to be a sense of loneliness and oppression, caused by the
feeling that He has work to do, and words to speak, which those for whom
they are to be done and spoken, and whom they are, first of all men, to
bless, will either misunderstand or abhor. Here is all the visible
result of His labour, and of His travail, and the enemy is gathering
strength every day.
This becomes clear, I think, at once, when, in the first days after His
quitting the lake shores, He asks His disciples the question, “Whom do
the world, and whom do ye, say that I am?” He is answered by Peter in
the well-known burst of enthusiasm, that, though the people only look on
Him as a prophet, such as Elijah or Jeremiah, His own chosen followers
see in Him “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
It is this particular moment which He selects for telling them
distinctly, that Christ will _not_ triumph as they regard triumphing,
that He will fall into the power of His enemies, and be humbled and
slain by them. At once the proof comes of how little even the best of
His own most intimate friends had caught the spirit of His teaching or
of His kingdom. The announcement of His humiliation and death, which
none but the most truthful and courageous of men would have made at such
a moment, leaves them almost as much bewildered as the crowds in the
lake cities had been a few days before.
Their hearts are faithful and simple, and upon them, as Peter has
testified, the truth has flashed once for all, that there can be no
other Saviour of men than this Man with whom they are living. Still, by
what means and to what end the salvation shall come, they are scarcely
less ignorant than the people who had been in vain seeking from Him a
sign such as they desired. His own elect “understood not His saying, and
it was hid from them, that they perceived it not.” Rather, indeed, they
go straight from that teaching to dispute amongst themselves who of them
shall be the greatest in that kingdom which they understand so little.
And so their Master has to begin again at the beginning of His teaching,
and, placing a little child amongst them, to declare that not of such
men as they deem themselves, but of such as this child, is the kingdom
of heaven.
The episode of the Transfiguration follows; and immediately after it, as
though purposely to warn even the three chosen friends who had been
present against new delusions, He repeats again the teaching as to His
death and humiliation. And He reiterates it whenever any exhibition of
power or wisdom seems likely to encourage the frame of mind in the
twelve generally which had lately brought the great rebuke on Peter. How
slowly it did its work, even with the foremost disciples, there are but
too many proofs.
Amongst His kinsfolk and the people generally, His mission, thanks to
the cabals of the rulers and elders, had come by this time to be looked
upon with deep distrust and impatience. “How long dost Thou make us to
doubt? Go up to this coming feast, and there prove your title before
those who know how to judge in such matters,” is the querulous cry of
the former as the Feast of Tabernacles approaches. He does not go up
publicly with the caravan, which would have been at this time needlessly
to incur danger, but, when the feast is half over, suddenly appears in
the Temple. There He again openly affronts the rulers by justifying His
former acts, and teaching and proclaiming, that He who has sent Him is
true, and is their God.
It is evidently on account of this new proof of daring that the people
now again begin to rally round Him. “Behold, He speaketh boldly. Do our
rulers know that this is Christ?” is the talk which fills the air, and
induces the scribes and Pharisees, for the first time, to attempt His
arrest by their officers.
The officers return without Him, and their masters are, for the moment,
powerless before the simple word of Him who, as their own servants
testify, “speaks as never man spake.” But if they cannot arrest and
execute, they may entangle Him further, and prepare for their day, which
is surely and swiftly coming. So they bring to Him the woman taken in
adultery, and draw from Him the discourse in which He tells them that
the truth will make them free—the truth which He has come to tell them,
but which they will not hear, because they are of their father the
devil. He ends with asserting His claim to the name which every Jew held
sacred, “before Abraham was, I am.” The narrative of the 7th and 8th
chapters of St. John, which record these scenes at the Feast of
Tabernacles, has, I believe, done more to make men courageous and truly
manly, than all the stirring accounts of bold deeds which ever were
written elsewhere.
The report of what had happened at the Feast of Tabernacles seems to
have rekindled for a moment the fitful zeal of the people of Galilee.
Christ does not, however, avail Himself of this reaction until the time
comes for another return to Jerusalem to the Feast of Dedication, when,
probably in the month of November, or early in December, He returns once
more to Capernaum, to prepare for His last journey. The Pharisees,
impotent themselves for the moment, now hurry to warn Him that Herod is
seeking to kill Him; but He passes on His way with perfect indifference.
The crowds seem, as of old, inclined to gather round Him again. He
selects seventy from amongst them, and sends them on to prepare His
route, following Himself, and, this time, it being His last pilgrimage,
with the multitude.
And now, again, in the first days of this progress, the most trusted of
the apostles show how little, even yet, they understand their Lord, or
their own work. When they see their Master once more at the head of a
throng of followers, the old spirit comes back on them as strongly as
ever, and they are anxious to call down fire from Heaven to consume
those who will not receive Him. His rebuke and warning, yet again, pass
by them, and get no hold on them.
Rather, the incidents of the journey impress them more and more with the
belief that, at last, the kingdom is coming with power. At length, at
some point in the progress, they are amazed, and as they follow are
afraid. Once more Christ takes them aside, and endeavours to dispel
their dreams, repeating to them, in painful detail, what will happen to
Himself at Jerusalem at the end of this journey: that He will be
betrayed, delivered to the Gentiles, mocked, scourged, spat upon,
crucified. In spite of this warning, and while it is yet ringing in
their ears, we find James and John asking for the places of honour in
the kingdom of their own imaginations!
At the feast he is met by the Pharisees and scribes in a somewhat
different temper from that which they had shown at the end of His last
visit. For He is once again at the head of a vast and eager multitude.
They know that some, even of their own number, are inclined to believe
in Him. They appeal to Him, passionately, to say who He is. He replies
by referring to His former teaching about His Father, whom they claimed
as their God, adding, “I and my Father are one.”
Such a reply He well knew could only have one result. He was alone; and
in the ears of those who surrounded Him He was speaking blasphemy, which
could only be expiated by instant death. Yet He neither hesitates nor
temporises, but, when they seize stones to inflict the penalty, meets
them with a bearing so calm and manly, that they can no more cast the
first stone at Him than they could three months before at the woman
taken in adultery.
He leaves Jerusalem once more after the feast, going across Jordan with
His apostles to the country where John came preaching and baptizing, and
remains there preaching to those who come to Him until the news of
Lazarus’s death takes Him for a few days to Bethany. After the raising
of His friend He returns to Peræa again, and leaves it only when the
great caravan is passing by on its way to the Passover, in the early
spring. He joins the caravan with His disciples, passing with it through
Jericho, the city of priests, and selecting there the publican Zacchæus
as His host,—a last lesson, by example, of the kind of material which
will be used in building up His kingdom.
On the first day of the feast He rides into Jerusalem in apparent
triumph, the city mob joining the pilgrim mob in greeting Him with loud
Hosannas. Once more He cleanses the Temple, and rouses the covetousness
of the money-changers into active alliance with the bigotry of the
priests, and the wild anger and jealousy of the rulers, to sweep this
terrible Galilean revolutionist from the face of the earth, before He
shall ruin them all.
For two days He continues to meet them in the Temple and public resorts
of the city, shaming, confuting, and denouncing them; and widening hour
by hour that breach which was already gaping wide between the nation and
city and their true Lord and King. The last scene in the Temple,
recorded in John, brings the long struggle to a close.
The more carefully you study this long wrestle with the blind leaders of
a doomed nation, which has now come to an end, the more you will
recognise the perfect truthfulness, and therefore the perfect courage,
which marks Christ’s conduct of it. From beginning to end there is no
word or act which can mislead friend or foe. The strife, though for life
and death, has left no trace or stain on His manhood. Fresh from the
last and final conflict in the Temple court, He can pause on the side of
Olivet to weep over the city, the sight of which can still wring from
Him the pathetic yearnings of a soul purified from all taint of
bitterness.
It is this most tender and sensitive of the sons of men—with fibres
answering to every touch and breath of human sympathy or human hate—who
has borne with absolutely unshaken steadfastness the distrust and anger
of kinsfolk, the ingratitude of converts, the blindness of disciples,
the fitful and purblind worship, and hatred, and fear, of the nation of
the Jews. So far, we can estimate to some extent the burthen and the
strain, and realise the strength and beauty, of the spirit which could
bear it all. Beyond and behind lie depths into which we can but glance.
For in those last hours of His life on earth the question was to be
decided whether we men have in deed and in truth a brotherhood, in a Son
of Man, the head of humanity, who has united mankind to their Father,
and can enable them to know Him.
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