'And certain women, which had been healed of evil
spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out
of whom went seven devils, 3. And Joanna the wife of
Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others,
which ministered unto Him of their substance.'
--LUKE viii. 2,3.
The Evangelist Luke has preserved for us several incidents in our
Lord's life in which women play a prominent part. It would not, I
think, be difficult to bring that fact into connection with the main
characteristics of his Gospel, but at all events it is worth
observing that we owe to him those details, and the fact that the
service of these grateful women was permanent during the whole of
our Lord's wandering life after His leaving Galilee. An incidental
reference to the fact is found in Matthew's account of the
Crucifixion, but had it not been for Luke we should not have known
the names of two or three of them, nor should we have known how
constantly they adhered to Him. As to the women of the little group,
we know very little about them. Mary of Magdala has had a very hard
fate. The Scripture record of her is very sweet and beautiful.
Delivered by Christ from that mysterious demoniacal possession, she
cleaves to Him, like a true woman, with all her heart. She is one of
the little group whose strong love, casting out all fear, nerved
them to stand by the Cross when all the men except the gentle
Apostle of love, as he is called, were cowering in corners, afraid
of their lives, and she was one of the same group who would fain
have prolonged their ministry beyond His death, and who brought the
sweet spices with them in order to anoint Him, and it was she who
came to the risen Lord with the rapturous exclamation, 'Rabboni, my
Master.' By strange misunderstanding of the Gospel story, she has
been identified with the woman who was a sinner in the previous
chapter in this book, and her fair fame has been blackened and her
very name taken as a designation of the class to which there is no
reason whatever to believe she belonged. Demoniacal possession was
neither physical infirmity nor moral evil, however much it may have
simulated sometimes the one or the other.
Then as to Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, old Church
tradition tells us that she was the consort of the nobleman whose
son Christ healed at Capernaum. It does not seem very likely that
Herod's steward would have been living in Capernaum, and the
narrative before us rather seems to show that she herself was the
recipient of healing from His hands. However that may be, Herod's
court was not exactly the place to look for Christian disciples, was
it? But you know they of Caesar's household surrounded with their
love the Apostle whom Nero murdered, and it is by no means an
uncommon experience that the servants' hall knows and loves the
Christ that the lord in the saloon does not care about.
And then as for Susanna, is it not a sweet fate to be known to all
the world for ever more by one line only, which tells of her service
to her Master?
So I will try to take out of these little incidents in our text some
plain lessons about this matter of Christian service and ministry to
Christ, with which it seems to be so full. It will apply to
missionary work and all other sorts of work, and perhaps will take
us down to the bottom of it all, and show us the foundation on which
it should all rest.
Let me ask you for a moment to look with me first of all at the
centre figure, as being an illustration of--what shall I say? may I
venture to use a rough word and say the pauper Christ?--as the great
Pattern and Motive for us, of the love that becomes poor. We very
often cover the life of our Lord with so much imaginative reverence
that we sometimes lose the hard angles of the facts of it. Now, I
want you to realise it, and you may put it into as modern English as
you like, for it will help the vividness of the conception, which is
a simple, prosaic fact, that Jesus Christ was, in the broadest
meaning of the word, a pauper; not indeed with the sodden poverty
that you can see in our slums, but still in a very real sense of the
word. He had not a thing that He could call His own, and when He
came to the end of His life there was nothing for His executioners
to gamble for except His one possession, the seamless robe. He is
hungry, and there is a fig-tree by the roadside, and He comes,
expecting to get His breakfast off that. He is tired, and He borrows
a fishing-boat to lie down and sleep in. He is thirsty, and He asks
a woman of questionable character to give Him a draught of water. He
wants to preach a sermon about the bounds of ecclesiastical and
civil society, and He says, 'Bring Me a penny.' He has to be
indebted to others for the beast of burden on which He made His
modest entry into Jerusalem, for the winding sheet that wrapped Him,
for the spices that would embalm Him, for the grave in which He lay.
He was a pauper in a deeper sense of the word than His Apostle when
he said, 'Having nothing, and yet possessing all things, as poor,
and yet making many rich.' For let us remember that the great
mystery of the Gospel system--the blending together in one act and
in one Person all the extremes of lowliness and of the loftiness
which go deep down into the very profundities of the Gospel, is all
here dramatised, as it were, and drawn into a picturesque form on
the very surface; and the same blending together of poverty and
absolute love, which in its loftiest form is the union in one Person
of Godhead and of manhood, is here for us in this fact, that all the
dark cloud of poverty, if I may so say, is shot through with strange
gleams of light like sunshine caught and tangled in some cold, wet
fog, so that whenever you get some definite and strange mark of
Christ's poverty, you get lying beside it some definite and strange
mark of His absoluteness and His worth. For instance, take the
illustration I have already referred to--He borrows a fishing-boat
and lies down, weary, to sleep on the wooden pillow at the end of
it; aye, but He rises and He says, 'Peace, be still,' and the waves
fall. He borrows the upper room, and with a stranger's wine and
another man's bread He founds the covenant and the sacrament of His
new kingdom. He borrows a grave; aye, but He comes out of it, the
Lord both of the dead and of the living. And so we have to say,
'Consider the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though He was
rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty
might become rich.'
The noblest life that was ever lived upon earth-I hope you and I
think it is a great deal more than that, but we all think it is that
at any rate--the noblest life that was ever lived upon earth was the
life of a poor man. Remember that pure desires, holy aspirations,
noble purposes, and a life peopled with all the refinement and
charities that belong to the spirit, and that is ever conscious of
the closest presence of God and of the innate union with Him, is
possible under such conditions, and so remember that the pauper
Christ is, at the least, the perfect Man.
But then what I more immediately intended was to ask you to take
that central figure with this external fact of His poverty, of the
depth of His true inanition, the emptying of Himself for our sakes,
as being the great motive, and Oh! thank God that with all humility,
we may venture to say, the great Pattern to which you and I have to
conform. There is the reason why we say, 'I love to speak His name,'
there is the true measure of the devotion of the consecration and
the self-surrender which He requires. Christ gave all for us even to
the uttermost circumference of external possession, and standing in
the midst of those for whose sakes He became poor, He turns to them
with a modest appeal when He says, 'Minister unto Me, for I have
made Myself to need your ministrations for the sake of your
redemption.' So much, then, for the first point which I would desire
to urge upon you from this incident before us.
Now, in the next place, and pursuing substantially the same course
of thought, let me suggest to you to look at the love--the love here
that stoops to be served.
It is a familiar observation and a perfectly true one that we have no
record of our Lord's ever having used miraculous power for the supply
of His own wants, and the reason for that, I suppose, is to be found
not only in that principle of economy and parsimony of miraculous
energy, so that the supernatural in His life was ever pared down to
the narrowest possible limits, and inosculated immediately with the
natural, but it is also to be found in this--let me put it into very
plain words--that Christ liked to be helped and served by the people
that He loved, and that Christ knew that they liked it as well as He.
It delighted Him, and He was quite sure that it delighted them. You
fathers and mothers know what it is when one of your little children
comes, and seeing you engaged about some occupation says, 'Let me
help you.' The little hand perhaps does not contribute much to the
furtherance of your occupation. It may be rather an encumbrance than
otherwise, but is not there a gladness in saying 'Yes, here, take
this and do this little thing for me'? And do not we all know how
maimed and imperfect that love is which only gives, and how maimed
and imperfect that love is which only receives, so that there must
be an assumption of both attitudes in all true commerce of affection,
and that same beautiful flashing backwards and forwards from the two
poles which makes the sweetness of our earthly love find its highest
example there in the heavens. There are the two mirrors facing each
other, and they reverberate rays from one polished surface to another,
and so Christ loves and gives, and Christ loves and takes, and His
servants love and give, and His servants love and take. Sometimes we
are accustomed to speak of it as the highest sign of our Lord's true,
deep conviction that He has given so much to us. It seems to me we may
well pause and hesitate whether the mightiness and the wonderfulness
of His love to us are shown more in that He gives everything to us,
or in that He takes so much from us. It is much to say, 'The Son of
man came not to be ministered unto but to minister'; I do not know
but that it is more to say that the Son of man let this record be
written: 'Certain women also which ministered to Him of their
substance.' At all events there it stands and for us. What although
we have to come and say, 'All that I bring is Thine'; what then?
Does a father like less to get a gift from his boy because he gave
him the shilling to buy it? And is there anything that diminishes
the true sweetness of our giving to Christ, and as we may believe
the true sweetness to Him of receiving it from us, because we have
to herald all our offerings, all our love, aspirations, desires,
trust, conformity, practical service, substantial help, with the
old acknowledgment, 'All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have
we given Thee.'
Now, dear friends, all these principles which I have thus
imperfectly touched upon as to the necessity of the blending of the
two sides in all true commerce of love, the giving and bestowing the
expression of the one affection in both hearts, all bears very
directly upon the more special work of Christian men in spreading
the name of Christ among those who do not know it. You get the same
economy of power there that I was speaking about. The supernatural
is finished when the divine life is cast into the world. 'I am come
to fling fire upon the earth,' said He, 'and oh, that it were
already kindled!' _There_ is the supernatural; after that you
have to deal with the thing according to the ordinary laws of human
history and the ordinary conditions of man's society. God trusts the
spread of His word to His people; there will not be one moment's
duration of the barely, nakedly supernatural beyond the absolute
necessity. Christ comes; after that you and I have to see to it, and
then you say, 'Collections, collections, collections, it is always
collections. This society and that society and the other society,
there is no end of the appeals that are made. Charity sermons--men
using the highest motives of the Gospel for no purpose but to get a
shilling or two out of people's pockets. I am tired of it.' Very
well; all I have to say is, first of all, 'Ye have not resisted unto
blood'; some people have had to pay a great deal more for their
Gospel than you have. And another thing, a man that had lost a great
deal more for his Master than ever you or I will have to do, said,
'Unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace
given, that I should preach amongst the heathen the unsearchable
riches of Christ.' Ah! a generous, chivalrous spirit, a spirit
touched to fine issues by the fine touch of the Lord's love, will
feel that it is no burden; or if it be a burden, it is only a burden
as a golden crown heavy with jewels may be a burden on brows that
are ennobled by its pressure. This grace is given, and He has
crowned us with the honour that we may serve Him and do something
for Him.
Dear brethren! of all the gracious words that our Master has spoken
to us, I know not that there is one more gracious than when He said,
'Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature'; and
of all the tender legacies that He has left His Church, though there
be included amongst these His own peace and His own Spirit, I know
not that there is any more tender or a greater sign of His love
towards us and His confidence in us than when departing to the far
country to receive a kingdom and to return, He gave authority to His
servants, and to every man his work.'
And so, in the next place, let me ask you to look for a moment at
the complement to this love that stoops to serve and delights to
serve--the ministry or service of our love. Let me point to two
things.
It seems to me that the simple narrative we have before us goes very
deep into the heart of this matter. It gives us two things--the
foundation of the service and the sphere of the service.
First there is the foundation--'Certain women which had been healed
of evil spirits and infirmities.' Ah, there you come to it! The
consciousness of redemption is the one master touch that evokes the
gratitude which aches to breathe itself in service. There is no
service except it be the expression of love. That is the one great
Christian principle; and the other is that there is no love that
does not rest on the consciousness of redemption; and from these
two--that all service and obedience are the utterance and eloquence
of love, and that all love has its root in the sense of redemption--you
may elaborate all the distinct characteristics and peculiarities
of Christian ethics, whereby duty becomes gladness. 'I will,' and 'I
ought' overlap and cover each other like two of Euclid's triangles;
and whatsoever He commands that I spring to do; and so though the
burden be heavy, considered in regard to its requirements, and
though the yoke do often press, considered _per se_, yet
because the cords that fasten the yoke to our neck are the cords of
love, I can say, 'My burden is light.' One of the old psalms puts it
thus; 'O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds;
and because Thou hast loosed, therefore O hear me; speak, Lord, for
Thy servant heareth.'
So much then for the foundation--now for the sphere. 'Ah,' you say,
'there is no parallel there, at any rate. These women served Him
with personal ministration of their substance.' Well, I think there
is a parallel notwithstanding. If I had time I should like to dwell
upon the side thoughts connected with that sphere of service, and
remind you how very prosaic were their common domestic duties,
looking after the comfort of Christ and the travel-stained Twelve
who were with Him--let us put it into plain English--cooking their
dinners for them, and how that became a religious act. Take the
lesson out of it, you women in your households, and you men in your
counting-houses and behind your counters, and you students at your
dictionaries and lexicons. The commonest things done for the Master
flash up into worship, or as good old George Herbert puts it--
'A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy cause,
Makes that and th' action fine.'
But then beyond that, is there any personal ministration to do? If
any of you have ever been in St. Mark's Convent at Florence, I dare
say you will remember that in the Guest Chamber the saintly genius
of Fra Angelico has painted, as an appropriate frontispiece, the two
pilgrims on the road to Emmaus, praying the unknown man to come in
and partake of their hospitality; and he has draped them in the
habit of his order, and he has put Christ as the Representative of
all the poor and wearied and wayworn travellers that might enter in
there and receive hospitality, which is but the lesson, 'Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have
done it unto Me.'
And there is another thing, dear friends. Do we not minister to Him
best when we do the thing that is nearest His heart and help Him
most in the purpose of His life and in His death? What would you
think of a would-be helper of some great reformer who said: 'I will
give you all sorts of material support; but I have not a grain of
sympathy with the cause to which you have devoted your life. I think
it is madness and nonsense: I will feed you and house you and make
you comfortable, but I do not care one rush for the object for which
you are to be housed and fed and made comfortable.' Jesus Christ let
these poor women help Him that He might live to bear the Cross; He
lets you and me help Him for that for which on the Cross He died;
'This honour have all the saints'; The foundation of our service is
the consciousness of redemption; its sphere is ministering to Him in
that which is nearest His heart.
And then, brethren, there is another thing that does not so
immediately belong to the incident before us, but which suggests
itself to me in connection with it. We have tried to show the motive
and the pattern, the foundation and the sphere, of the service: let
me add a last thought--the remembrance and the record of it.
How strange that is, that just as a beam of light coming into a room
would enable us to see all the motes dancing up and down that lay in
its path, so the beam from Christ's life shoots athwart the society
of His age, and all those little insignificant people come for a
moment into the full lustre of the light. Years before and years
afterward they lived, and we do not know anything about them; but
for an instant they crossed the illuminated track and there they
blazed. How strange Pharisees, officials, and bookmen of all sorts
would have felt if anybody had said to them: 'Do you see that
handful of travel-stained Galileans there, those poor women you have
just passed by the way? Well, do you know that these three women's
names will never perish as long as the world lasts?' So we may learn
the eternity of work done for Him. Ah, a great deal of it may be
forgotten and unrecorded! How many deeds of faithful love and noble
devotion are all compressed into those words, 'which ministered unto
Him'! It is the old story of how life shrinks, and shrinks, and
shrinks in the record. How many acres of green forest ferns in the
long ago time went to make up a seam of coal as thick as a sixpence?
But still there is the record, compressed indeed, but existent.
And how many names may drop out and not be associated with the work
which they did? Do you not think that these anonymous 'many others
which ministered' were just as dear to Jesus Christ as Mary and
Joanna and Susannah? A great many people helped Him whose deeds are
related in the Gospel, but whose names are not recorded. But what
does it matter about that? With many 'others of my fellow-labourers
also,' says St. Paul; 'whose names'--well, I have forgotten them;
but that is of little consequence; they 'are in the Lamb's book of
life.' And so the work is eternal, and will last on in our blessed
consciousness and in His remembrance who will never forget any of
it, and we shall self-enfold the large results, even if the rays of
dying fame may fade.
And there is one other thought on this matter of the eternity of the
work on which I would just touch for an instant.
How strange it must be to these women now! If, as I suppose, you and
I believe, they are living with Christ, they will look up to Him and
think, 'Ah! we remember when we used to find your food and prepare
for your household comforts, and there Thou art on the throne! How
strange and how great our earthly service seems to us now!' So it
will be to us all when we get up yonder. We shall have to say,
'Lord, when saw I Thee?' He will put a meaning into our work and a
majesty into it that we know nothing about at present. So, brethren,
account the name of His slaves your highest honour, and the task
that love gives you your greatest joy. When we have in our poor love
poorly ministered unto Him who in His great love greatly died for
us, then, at the last, the wonderful word will be fulfilled: 'Verily
I say unto you, He shall gird Himself and make them to sit down to
meat and will come forth and serve them.'