Characteristics of the Jerusalem Ministry
We are now called to contemplate the Picture of Jesus from another position. Standing in the great gallery, we are conscious that the hand of the artist has somewhere imparted a fresh touch to the Portrait. Before inquiring into the nature of the touch, let us mark where it has been imparted. It is at the point of the Jerusalem ministry. Jesus at Jerusalem had entered, so to speak, upon a new diocese. I would add that it was also a final diocese. I do not say He never went back to Galilee again; He did go back. I do not say He never preached in Galilee again; He did preach. But He went back and preached just as a minister who has changed his parish may go back to officiate at a service in his former church. Wherever for the future Jesus may be geographically — whether in Galilee or in Peraea or at Bethany, He is still in the Jerusalem ministry, and all His utterances are to be interpreted as the reflections and the echoes of that ministry. I shall therefore, in illustrating the new attitude He assumes to man, have no scruple whatever in binding together the words He uttered in different localities.
There are some changes of diocese that inevitably involve a change of teaching. I do not allude to the differences in intellectual culture; I am speaking of moral distinctions. The besetting sin of one district is often quite different from the besetting sin of another. Whenever a preacher experiences this, he has to change his front. It occurred in the transition of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem. Galilee and Jerusalem had opposite moral dangers. Galilee was in danger of being too broad; Jerusalem was in peril of becoming too narrow. Galilee was nearer to heathen vicinities, and had caught more of the Gentile atmosphere; Jerusalem was enclosed in the heart of the land, and received only the traditions of the past. Galilee was apt to be corrupted by secular influences; Jerusalem was in danger of suppressing the instincts of common humanity. Now, this I take to be the explanation of a very remarkable fact. When Jesus transferred Himself from the diocese of Galilee to the diocese of Jerusalem His teaching became vastly more catholic. The distinctive note of the Jerusalem ministry is just its catholicity; it breaks over the national borders in a flood of universal blessing. Why so? Was not the air of Galilee more free, more favourable to cosmopolitan preaching? Why, then, is the gospel in Galilee so much less cosmopolitan? Why is it there and not in Jerusalem that we get the restrictions about the way of the Gentiles and the villages of the Samaritans? It is because the peril of a community lies where its facility lies. We put the drag on, going down hill — where there is a previous tendency to accelerate movement. Jesus put a restraint on Galilee and sought to lift the restraint from Jerusalem. The one had an element of overrecklessness, the other an element of over-caution. Either element might become a danger; either might develop a barrier to the progress of Man.
I am prepared to show that the Jerusalem ministry of Jesus, by which I mean all the future ministry of Jesus wherever transacted, was professedly a Messianic ministry to the united world. I say ‘professedly, It was always so implicitly — in the thought of Jesus. But at Jerusalem it was for the first time openly avowed. This was the sting of the Jerusalem ministry. Read the eighth chapter of St. John. For a long time I did not understand that chapter. It puzzled me with its seeming irrelevance. I heard Jesus reiterating that He had come from above, that His origin was higher than that of His auditors, that He had proceeded from the Father, got His message from the Father, been sent by the Father. I heard the audience reply that they were quite satisfied with their own origin, that they were Abraham’s seed, that they wanted no help from any other parentage, that they had derived from their present parentage all the freedom they ever desired to possess. I heard these two voices, and I asked myself, what does it all mean? I could not see the point at issue. I could not see, either why Jesus should at Jerusalem have been so eager to emphasise His separate origin, or why the men of Jerusalem should have been so eager to rebut it. It was a mystery to me, an enigma.
At last by a single corner there entered a stream of sunlight. One little verse illuminated the whole chapter, and I beheld in a flash the mystery made manifest. The words that lighted me were these: ‘I speak to The World those things which I have heard of Him that sent me.’ In that sentence I saw it all. I saw why Jesus had taken this and no other moment to insist that He was not ultimately descended from Abraham. The man who came from Abraham could only have a mission for the Jewish nation. But the life which came from the Father must have a message for all nations. If he came from the Father he might well say ‘I speak to The World’ The man who has claimed the blood of a heredity extending behind the birth of every nation has claimed far more than a stupendous height; he has claimed an enormous breadth; and it is the breadth and not the height that first startles the men of Jerusalem. A son of Abraham, however great he might be, had their own blood in his veins; a Son of God, even though He passed through Abraham, had also blood foreign to theirs. To be the son of Abraham was to be their Messiah; to be the Son of God was to be the Messiah of all men. It was not merely to be the Messiah for all men; this every Jew would admit his Messiah to have been, for the benefits of the Christ were to be universal benefits. But if the Christ had the blood of all nations in Him, where was the significance of the Jew! Could he claim any longer a unique position! Could he aspire any longer even to be the distributor of God’s favours to the world! Had not the world in that case an equal right to these favours! He was not entitled any more to say to the beggar ‘Come up into my chariot.’ The chariot was the beggar’s as much as his; it was to go the round of common humanity and take up every man according to his need. Such a gospel might be for the glory of God, but it was certainly not for the glory of Jerusalem. Such was the thought that wakened the metropolitan opposition to Jesus. * Before Abraham was, I am, seems politically a very harmless statement. It was, in truth, a statement which, if admitted, was the death-blow to Judaism. Once concede that Abraham got his life from Jesus instead of Jesus getting His life from Abraham, and you have reduced Israel from being the possible metropolis of the world to being but one of the many mansions in the house of the Father. Abraham could in that case be still a branch of the tree; but so would Caesar, so would Socrates. Judea, as such, would have no Messiah; she would have only her share in the World’s Messiah.
Now, this is the doctrine which, in my opinion, Jesus had long held in His heart, and which from this time onward He expressed openly.
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From the moment He contemplated the shadow of death, even while He shrank from that shadow, He had seen Himself in a universal relation to humanity. From the moment He contemplated resurrection He had ceased to look back to Bethlehem. From the moment He stood on the summit of Mount Hermon He had begun to view the exodus as a present reality — to regard as within measurable distance the day when the followers of His banner should claim all nations as their brethren in arms. And now, from the outset of this Jerusalem campaign the war-cry never wavers; it is a battle-call to the united earth. It is a war-cry wrung out by present pain, a cry for liberation. The narrow atmosphere was stifling to Jesus; it caused His sympathies to beat against the cage, and struggle to be free. Nowhere is He so broad in expression as in this Jerusalem ministry. From no spot do His spoken sympathies radiate so widely as from the sphere that would limit them. It is now I hear Him cry, ‘Other sheep I have that are not of this fold.’
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It is now I hear Him speak a kind word for heathen Tyre and Sidon, remembering, doubtless, some kindness shown to Him in His wanderings there. It is now I hear Him tell an imaginary story of an orthodox Levite and a heretical Samaritan, and boldly turn the balance in favour of the latter. Was this, too, a memory of kindness? Yes — of the thirst assuaged at the well. I know there was a later reminiscence less grateful than that — the remembrance of the shut gates. But in the soul of Jesus the memory of a kindness long past outweighs the memory of an kindness freshly given; and He judges Samaria by her morning light — the sparkling of the well.
But in expounding this phase of the mind of Jesus I cannot stop here. I am bound to go much further, for the simple reason that He went further. I have said He expressed at this stage a universal sympathy; but He expressed more than that. Jew and Gentile were, to His mind, equal in origin; but, to His mind, they were not equal in advantages. .Strange as it may seem, the Gentile had, in ii2 CHARACTERISTICS OF
His view, greater facility for becoming a follower of the new faith. He had so for the very reason that he had gone more astray. Every note of this ministry strikes that chord. The Gentile’s claim is not that he is specially fallen. It is not that one sheep — the Gentile, is lost and ought to be sought for, that one piece of money is lost and ought to be searched for, that one brother has become a prodigal and ought to be prayed for. When Jesus speaks of the ninety-nine safe sheep and of the elder brother who never went wrong, He is describing the Jew at the Jew’s own rate of valuation. In the view of Jesus the sheep were all lost, the coins all lost, the brothers both lost; the only difference was that one sheep, one coin, one brother, was lost in a farther field. And what Jesus really means is that the one lost in the farther field was the most worth seeking — the one which presented the greatest facilities for being found, the one which, when found, was ripest for restoration to the old environment.
That is the thought which dominated this stage of the ministry of Jesus. The question occurs, why? Why should the most erring have been the most promising? Is error a preparation for grace? Are we nearer to the main road the farther we go astray? Does not one feel disposed to echo the words of the elder brother, the Jewish brother in the parable: ‘Have not I lived a life of outward respectability; has not my brother lived a life of shame? How, then, has he so much more joy? I have never done anything so flagrantly bad; yet for me there has been no music or dancing, no ring or robe, no killing of the fatted calf that I might make merry with my friends. / have strayed less far from home, yet he has returned before me.’
I shall answer this complaint by constructing another little parable. Two sheep strayed from one fold. They wandered different distances; one went a single mile, the other three. But the one that went a single mile found its way into a very pleasant garden, and, while it lingered there, the gate was shut; the other, which had wandered farther, remained in the
VOL. II. H free uplands. The result was that the sheep which had strayed three miles got home sooner than that which had wandered only one.
Behold now the interpretation of this parable! The Gentile was farther away from Jesus than the Jew. But the Jew had a barrier to the retracing of his steps which the Gentile had not. The Gentile, however far away, was out in the open. But the Jew had got enclosed in a garden. It was a garden, no doubt, of many beauties, of fine fruits and fair flowers. None the less it was to him a prison; it prevented his steps from returning home. This was to Jesus the bane of Judaism; it was enclosed, imprisoned. No doubt its enclosure was a bit of good soil — far better than the soil where the Gentiles lived. But the Gentiles had no fence to their ground; they could come out when they liked. Not only was the Jew unable to come out; he could not even see out. He had many virtues; but these virtues he believed to be perfection. He saw nothing beyond him, no need for anything beyond him. He had started life with a small ideal — the keeping of certain police regulations. And now he had fulfilled his ideal. He stood above his own stars. He had nothing more to aspire to. Like Alexander, he had conquered his world; unlike Alexander, he wept for no other. Looking round his narrow field of duty, he could say with perfect sincerity, ‘All these commandments have I kept from my youth; what lack I yet! ’
There is no barrier to a pupil like the sense of perfectness. No backwardness in education can for a moment match it. / may have written tolerable verses, and you may never have written one; and yet you may be nearer to the spirit of poetry than I. / may believe my verses to be perfection’^ you may have been deterred from writing by the despair of reaching Tennyson; you may have beat upon your breast and cried ‘Unclean, unclean! ‘In that case it is you, and not I, that have gone down to the world justified. You have been farther away than I from the gate of gold; but your eye has been upon the gate.
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7 have been all along closer to the gate; but I have been ever looking, not in front, but behind. My view has been the retrospect, and it has made me self-complacent; yours has been the prospect, and it has brought you despair. Yet the despair has been gold; the complacency has been only brass. You have come from a farther distance, but you have reached sooner home.
QHOW me the golden gate, O Lord — the perfection which I have yet to gain! It is not my sense of virtue that brings me nearer Thee; it is the sense that virtue is wanting. I often go to compare my candle with the waxtaper of my brother, and come back rejoicing; I feel as if I were bearing a light of perfect brightness. Lead me and my candle into the sunshine, O Lord! Instead of measuring that candle by my brother’s taper, let me poise it against the noonday sun — the sun of righteousness! My laughter will be turned into weeping; my light will become invisible. Glorious weeping! happy tears! Who would not have the rays of his self-righteousness revealed! Reveal mine, Thou true Light! Burn up my self-complacency with Thy judgment fire! Strike me dumb before the whiteness of Thy purity! Extinguish my torch in Thy glory! Expose my faded colours in the sunlight of Thy love! My depression will be the tears of the rainbow — the shadow of the house of my Father. I may need to abandon Jerusalem; but I shall be bound for Paradise.