The Joy of Jesus

We have now reached the widest field in which Jesus has yet stood. Remember what His course has been. It has been a progress from above to below. He has been struggling down into union with humanity. He has begun on the heights. Standing where we now do — in the wilderness of Bethsaida — let us cast back our eye to that other wilderness which beheld the dawn. Between the two deserts there is the length of a universe. In the wilderness of temptation Jesus was alone so far as man was concerned; in the wilderness of Bethsaida He was the centre of a multitude. In the wilderness of temptation He was assailed by questions regarding the sufernatural; in the wilderness of Bethsaida He

was met solely by the question of dread, In a72 the wilderness of temptation His attention was riveted on the prospect of a Divine Empire; in the wilderness of Bethsaida He considered only the needs of a human soul. His course from the one desert to the other was a descent into the heart of humanity, and it was not precipitous but gradual. We have marked the stages of its progress. We have seen the life of Jesus moving at first alone — unaccompanied by any guild of sympathy. We have seen the formation of a league of pity consisting at first of raw, undisciplined youths, as ignorant of this world as of the world to come. We have seen Jesus proceed to discipline this band, or, which is the same thing, to make them disciples. We have seen Him in that course of discipline follow the natural order of the development of human sympathy — proceed from the rare to the common, from the abnormal to the universal. He has step by step been leading the mind of the disciple from the home circle into a wider circle, from sympathy

with a few into sympathy with the multitude. ral

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But in this desert of Bethsaida the Master has taken a step beyond even that; He has sought to make the multitude sthemselves disciples. For remember, that is the real significance of the first communion. It zs a communion. It is not merely a giving of bread; it is a passing of bread. Every man in this feast who is ministered unto becomes himself a minister. It is not the simple reception of a gift; it is the reception of a sift with the view to communicate it. This is a new departure in the gospel of Jesus. The multitude have become themselves a ministry. Jesus Himself is impressed with the step in advance. He reveals in His own person an experience new to His disciples; ‘At that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit.’ I understand the words to mean, ‘ This is one of the rare occasions on which Jesus showed exuberant joy.’ I do not think the conclusion to be conveyed is that His natural temper was melancholic. I think Jesus was by nature joyous. I cannot hear His notes of exclamation on the lily of the field and the bird of the air without feeling that He was open to impressions of gladness from the natural world. But the world with which Jesus had to deal was not the natural world; it was the sphere of the human. What He missed in the human was just the presence of joy. Nature made Him glad; man made Him grave. He felt what a difference there was between the multitude of the lilies and the multitude of human souls, He felt that the former grew spontaneously, that the growth of the latter was impeded. He felt that what impeded the growth of the latter was the absence of joy, the presence of care, the vision of a cloud.

Jesus, then, was made sad by man’s sadness. This shows that joy was in the zature of Jesus. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has a curious expression, ‘Consider Him who endured this contradiction of sinners against Himself? Does it not imply that he regarded the sorrows of Jesus as thrust upon Him from the outside, as foreign to His original nature? We speak of the ‘Man of sorrows. Yet I think the deepest note in the soul of Jesus was not sorrow but joy. There is a ring of optimism about Him which no cloud can wholly repress, which brings a voice of comfort even to His darkest hour. It was this underlying capacity for joy that really accounted for the exuberance of this moment of gladness. Jesus looked upon the joy of the human multitude. For the first time in His experience they seemed to have caught the spontaneity of the lily of the field. At the sight of their return to naturalness Jesus Himself bounded back to His original spirit, to His native air of brightness. His actual] experiences of gladness may have been fewer than His experiences of pain; but this is only to say that He was for years out of His element. The pain came from His environment; the joy was all His own.

But let us consider more deeply this present burst of joy. Is it not based on a strange eround? ‘At that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes; even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.’ For a spirit like that of Jesus one would think this no subject of congratulation. Why thank the Father for limiting a benefit, nay, for limiting the only benefit which in the eye of Jesus was worth possessing? He was joyous over the gladness of the poor; but why congratulate Himself that the poor are to get a revelation which shall be concealed from the rich? To rejoice at the opening of a door was well; but if the opening of one door caused another door to shut, ought not this to have been a damping of His joy? What real good could after all be reaped by the elevation of one class through the suppression of another? It is quite possible that the care thrown upon me may lift you into spontaneity; but in that case it will to the spectator be a mixed gratification. If the multitude are made happy by the impoverishment of the rich, if the gospel is revealed to babes in order that the wise and prudent may be excluded from heaven, then has the kingdom of Christ simply substituted one caste for another, and there is no adequate ground for the joy of Jesus,

But to read thus is utterly to mzsread. The joy of Jesus was actually occasioned by the opposite feeling. Where to Him lay the hope involved in the conversion of the multitude? Was it that a class which until now was despised had succeeded in supplanting the class which had towered above it? No; it was that a class had been illuminated which possessed an element common to ad, classes. The multitude cannot understand what the wise and prudent understand; but the wise and prudent can all grasp what the multitude understand. If you reveal a truth to the rational inquirer you reveal it to the comparatively few; but if you reveal it to babes you tell it to all. We are not all profound reasoners, but we all possess an element of childhood. There is not a man in this world who does not keep in his heart a survival of the child. We are not like the butterfly that leaves its former self behind when it begins to soar. We carry that self along with us on our upward flight. Nay, I doubt if our flight itself is not winged by the spirit of our childhood. No memories survive like childhood’s memories; no hopes are so tenacious; no faiths are so permanent. There are times in which intellectual belief seems wrecked on the rocks of science and when on every side reason looks for land in vain. Yet faith abides, and abides through the survival of childhood. The associations of the old home, the memories of the family altar, the words at a mother’s knee, the reminiscences of a Sabbath School, the echoes of voices that were once lifted in praise and are now unheard among men — all these bind us to the shore. The instinct of the child within us outweighs the reason of our riper years.

In the light of this fact let us now read again this remarkable outburst of the joy of Jesus; we shall see that it can only read in one way. Why does He address the Father as ‘ Lord of heaven and earth’? Is it to round a phrase of invocation? Jesus never does that; He employs no idle word, He calls the Father ‘Lord of heaven and earth’ because He is thinking of the Father’s universality. And why at this time is He thinking of the universality? It is because in His own ministry the Father has just given a proof of it. He has called to the service of the kingdom the men of low degree. He has called them by an appeal to the child-nature which is their only nature. That call is a voice to all mankind, for all men have the nature of the child. If it had spoken even to the eye or to the ear it would not have been universal; physical beauty requires a sense; cultured music demands a framing. But the life of childhood is in every man — rustic and philosopher, peasant and peer. Time cannot outgrow it; experience cannot drown it; sorrows cannot starve it; arguments cannot kill it. It remains steadfast amid the varied, changeless amid the mutable — the same yesterday and to-day and for ever.

If I were allowed to paraphrase this exuberant utterance of Jesus, I should put it thus: ‘Lord of the wide spaces, Thou hast been worthy of Thy wideness. Thou hast revealed Thyself through a glass that belongs to all men. Thou hast not appealed to a rare gift. Thou hast not spoken to the man of genius 7# his genius. Thou hast spoken to him and to all others through a chink which has been left open in the wall of every heart — the instinct of the child. Thou hast addressed a universal faculty; therefore it becomes possible for all men to hear,’

The joy of Jesus, then, came from the prospering of His cause. But let us not forget that there was in it an element deeper than even that. It was the fact that the prospering of His cause was a compensation to the Father. This I take to be the meaning of the seemingly irrelevant words which follow: ‘ All things are delivered unto me of my Father.’ I understand Jesus to say: ‘I have undertaken this mission for the sake of the Father, I began it with the view of making up to Him for what the world had failed to give Him. It is for this I have sought to yield myself to His will; it is for this I have sought to bring others to His will. I should like to make amends to Him for the long neglect He has suffered in the past. Therefore it is that I rejoice to-day over this first communion, this first meeting with the hands of the multitude. It is a step of restitution to the Father — a short step, a feeble step, but still a step in the right way.’ That is what Jesus meant, and it is deeply significant. It tells us that in the mind of Jesus the idea of atonement is the dominant idea. The satisfaction of the Father is with Him a perpetually present aim. It is not merely something which He hopes to achieve by one isolated act in the future. It is something which He would accomplish by gradation — which He would mature by life and crown by death, Every step in the achieving of that purpose is to Him a step of gladness; every retardation of that purpose is to Him the heavy foot of care. The ultimate source of the joy of Jesus is the sense that joy is passing through the heart of His Father.

NTER, then, my soul, into the joy of thy Lord, It is a vicarious joy — the joy for another; but it is not on that account foreign to thee. Bethink thee, how few of a man’s desires in this world are for himself alone! When he strives for honours, he has friends whom he wants to make glad. When he strives for wealth, he has, in fact or in prospect, those whom he fain would nourish. Jesus asks from thee nothing that is unhuman when He bids thee enter into His joy. He asks thee to put thyself sympathetically in the place of the Father, to say, ‘ Will not this gladden His heart?’ — to rejoice with the thought of Hzs joy. That is the joy of thy Lord; enter within its gates. Put thyself into sympathy with the aims of the all-Father. When thou seest a deed of kindness, say ‘ How glad the Father will bel’ When thou hearest of a life redeemed, say ‘ How glad the Father will bel’ When the calendar of crime is lessened, say ‘How glad the Father will bel’ When a mission field is ripe for harvest, say ‘How glad the Father will bel’ So shall thy heart beat responsive to the Heart of the universe; so shalt thou enter into the joy of thy Lord.