The First Communion

Let me recall your mind to the course observed by that sympathetic wave which Christ stirred on the bosom of humanity. It rose in the breast of a single individual — the Man Christ Jesus. It passed from Him to a little band of disciples which I have called the first league of pity. With that league of pity it kept moving outwards — from a narrow into a wider sea. It broke at first upon the shore of family life; gradually the scope of its action grew more ample. At last we have seen it inaugurate a movement which carried the league of pity beyond sight of the original land. To drop all figure, the first independent mission of the league was a step quite in advance of home. When Jesus sent His

disciples forth alone He sent them Jdeyond

Galilee. True, their district was still a circumscribed one, because their sympathy was still circumscribed. Yet it was larger than any hitherto assigned to them. They were instructed to pass out of merely local associations. The bread of life which had been transmitted from the hands of Jesus to His disciples was to be transferred from the hands of the disciples to the multitude. In other words, the multitude themselves were to be made partakers of that revelation which had hitherto been imparted to the disciples alone.

Now, let me remind you of the process by which the previous stages had been inaugurated. We have seen how in the case of Jesus the initial stage of active sympathy was preceded by an act of receiving; the immediate preparation for His ministry was the weariness at the well. We have seen how in the case of the disciples the activity was also preceded by an act of receiving; the immediate preparation for their mission was the storm on the Sea of Galilee. In both cases the passive experience of want was made the prelude to the active service of man. We are now to see a repetition of the process in the ‘third stage. Jesus has gathered a band of His disciples; the disciples have gathered a band of ‘heir disciples — a company who, while they remained outside, were called the multitude. This multitude is itself to be made a converting force in the world. To become such a force it must be stimulated by world-sympathy. How shall it reach that sympathy? What shall be its moment of transition? This shall be like the two foregoing stages — a moment of need. The multitude must, like Jesus, like the disciples, begin by receiving. It must before all things be wakened into a sense of its own privation. It must be set in front of its mirror, must see itself in the place of humanity. As Jesus passed into His mission from the well of Sychar, as the disciples passed into their mission from the Sea of Galilee, so the multitude is to pass into its mission from the Desert of Bethsaida. Sychar, Gennesaret, Bethsaida — fre well, the sea, the wilderness — these are the three stages in the development of the primitive gospel.

The beautiful feature about the third stage, as of all the others, is that it comes quite naturally. It seems to be the product of a series of accidents. The disciples have returned from their first missionary journey. Their success has evidently been great; none the less are they weary and jaded. It will be found that the collapse which follows the excitement of success is quite equal to the collapse which follows the experience of failure. The eye of Jesus sees the signs of physical fatigue. With His all-round compassion, He does not wish the inner man to make ravages on the outer man; ‘Come ye yourselves, He says, ‘into a desert place and rest a while.’ It is a very beautiful feature in the Portrait of Jesus. It is one where His humanity shines out with undivided charm. The interests of the mission are for a moment in abeyance, and secular love reigns supreme. I do not think the significance of this has been fully appreciated. Jesus wants for an hour .o tempt His followers from His own public service. He subordinates the evangelical to the personal. He bids the gospel chariot stop for the sake of those who drive it. He asks a suspension of the cause dearest to His heart. There are times in which the wheels of the world’s progress have been thus suspended. At such times we speak of the failure of Providence. Has it ever occurred to any other portrait painter than those who have painted Jesus to make the seeming failure a part of the glory? These gospel delineators have not been afraid to express upon the canvas the idea that public success may be arrested for the sake of a private and individual interest of the heart. Stimulated by the Master’s loving solicitude, the disciples follow Him into the wilderness of Bethsaida. But public interest refuses to give way to private feeling. A vast multitude are now surrounding them, partly drawn by the presence of Jesus, and partly by the success of the first mission. This crowd pursues the steps of the little band. It follows them into their retreat; it breaks the hour of their solitude. Jesus had not calculated on the interruption, had not desired it. He had contemplated a breathing-space, a rest by the way. But the moment the interruption came, it was accepted as the will of the Father — that was the method of Jesus, always, everywhere What was He to do with this crowd? Here, by the stream of events, were gathered together the three forces of the future kingdom — the Master, the disciples, and the multitude. Why had they met in the desert? Must they not have been gathered by the hand of the Father? If so, had they not been drawn together for the purpose of fellowship? Had not the time come for an interchange of sympathy? Was not this the place, was not this the hour in which to seek the basis for a first communion? Why not make this desert the first vocal spot, the scene for the welding together of classes, the locality where man should meet with man? Was there to be found in the precincts of this wilderness anything that could furnish a ground for the brotherhood of human souls?

At first sight it would seem as if there were not. The disciples were in a high state of exaltation; they had been lifted farther from the earth; they had left the multitude spzrztually miles behind. How could that multitude reach up to them? They had no hand that could stretch so high. Their thoughts were still mundane, their hopes still secular, their aims still material. The desert represented this sense of separation on the part of the disciples, What was to be the bond of fellowship between this ungainly rabble and a little band of human souls soaring into regions of transcendent glory? They had come to enjoy their hour of special communion — that hour with which a stranger intermeddleth not. How could they admit such rough feet into the garden? Was it possible that in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the sympathies of that worldly crowd should rise into union with the denizens of the hill?

It was not possible; Jesus felt it, the disciples felt it. But all at once, out of the sphere of seeming accident, there came the revelation of another, a more excellent, way The disciples suddenly made it appear that though the multitude were not in need of them, they were in need of the multitude. They made it appear that the thing wanted was not a chain to reach up but a chain to reach down. They showed by the display of a defect in their nature that the ladder required on this occasion was not one set up on the earth to reach the heavens, but one whose summit should be first fixed in heaven and which should then stretch down to touch the earth.

I have said that the door to this other mode of communion was opened by the revelation of a defect in the disciples. They betrayed a weakness in secular sympathy — in sympathy with the multitude as a multitude. I have no doubt they were eager for the Messianic welfare of the crowd. I doubt not they desired them to be among the number of God’s elect, among those who should rend the air with the cry, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ That was misstonary sympathy; and I give them credit for it. But that was not Auman sympathy. It was not sympathy with the field outside the mission field. It was nota recognition of the fact that there is such a thing as earthly joy and that the absence of earthly joy is pain. There is as much narrowness in the inability to contract as in the inability toexpand. It is not enough that a follower of Jesus should have universal Jove. I may have universal love and be without universal sympathy. I may wish with all my heart that the outside world should come to think as I think; this is universal Jove. And yet, all the time, between me and that outside world, there may be not one thought in common; I may depreciate its causes of joy, I may sneer at its grounds of pain. At the very moment when my benevolence for it is at its zenith, at the very instant when I am most eager for its future, I may be utterly divorced in sympathy from the interests of its passing day.

So was it with the members of the league of pity. They were panting to get rid of the crowd on any pretext. ‘Send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages and buy food.’ It was surely an unnecessary kindness! The multitude were the best judges of their own hunger and the means of assuaging it; they could go away when they liked. We miss the whole point of the narrative if we imagine there was any danger of starvation. There were villages near, and the multitude knew it quite as well as the disciples. I gather from Matthew ix. 36 that the ground of Christ’s compassion was not that they were in want of a cup, but that they were in want of a ministrant hand. The smallest part of a deed of charity is the gift; the main part is the giving. The complaint of the prodigal in Christ’s parable is that ‘no man gave unto him.’ That has ever been the complaint of the masses. They have been able to get bread in the villages, but they have desiderated a helping hand from the upper ranks of their fellow-men. This helping hand is the real communion. Not the bread but the distribution of the bread is the thing desiderated. What the multitude in the desert wanted was a touch from above — not simply a touch from heaven but a touch from earth. They sought the sound of a woice that was still — the voice of brotherhood from the higher level. It was this that brought them into the desert — the hope to be in some sense, however small, the recipients of something from the Master’s hand.

I think the defect of the disciples was that they did not see this want of the multitude. It did not seem to them that the new evangel could have anything to do with the struggles of common life; its power to them lay in proclaiming a higher than the natural bread. It never occurred to them that to toil with success for the natural bread man needs something more than the natural — more, at least, than the material. They had not realised the fact that what helps the son of toil to win his material bread is the voice of his brother man — the voice of human sympathy, of friendly interest, of encouraging approbation. Zhey had not realised it, but Jesus had. He felt that His disciples had not yet appreciated the downward sweep of His gospel. They nad appreciated its power to lead men to yeaven, but not its

power to bring men ne’rer to earth — -not the effect upon the earth which such a power would produce. Jesus resolved that the disciples should learn this, that the multitude should learn this. He instituted on this spot the first communion; He based it on an earthly ground — a secular ground. The Last Supper was to be inaugurated on the fact of heaven’s love for earth; the First was instituted on the basis of earth’s need for heaven. The ladder was stretched from above to below, not from below to above. From the hand of the Master the secular bread descended to the nearest disciple; from the nearest disciple it passed to the whole league of pity; from the league of pity it was transmitted to the nearest of the multitude; from him it passed to his brother; from his brother it was handed to the next in nearness — until from the hill to the plain there reverberated the joy of one gift from a common hand.

THOU, who loadest me with benefits, help me to pass them round. My brother is down among the multitude and he wants communion with me. He wants the communion more than the bread. He can get bread in the villages as the result of daily toil; but that is not communion bread; it is not accompanied by the touch of a human hand. Teach me, as Thy disciples were taught, that my brother wazts for this touch. Teach me that the greatest want of man is sympathy with his fellow-man. Enable me to remember that when I receive a precious thing from another I am more glad for the giving than for the gift. Let me put myself in the place of the multitude. Let me remember that the human heart is, deep down, always the same. Let me cease to impute to the multitude the mere sordid desire for gain. Let me learn that to them as to me the bread of life is sweetest when it comes from a brother’s love. When I shall receive this lesson I shall no more deem that the presence of the crowd dims my communion with Thee.