The Opening of the Second Communion

We are now approaching that scene, or rather, that succession of scenes in the great gallery which I call the second communion. The first communion was the feeding of the multitude in the desert. In the former part of this book I suggested a contrast between these two epochs in the life of Jesus. The first was essentially a secular communion — the giving of physical bread; the second was to be distinctively a spiritual fellowship — a breaking of the bread of life. The first was a descent of Jesus to the multitude; the second was to be a drawing of the multitude up to Jesus. The first was initiated by the want of the crowd. But the second was to have its beginning in a hunger of the soul of Jesus ‘Earnestly have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.’ He remembers the anointing at Bethany. He remembers what strength it brought Him. He remembers how the communion of one human heart had braced Him for His burial. Would not the effect be repeated by the communion of twelve human hearts representative of twelve times twelve thousand? The desire of Jesus was a desire for personal stimulus. I do not think it was the wish to say farewell. I do not think He ever looked upon the Last Supper as a farewell. The consciousness on His part was not that of impending separation. He did not feel that He was bidding His disciples good-bye. He wished to meet them for a very different purpose. He wished, before entering that Gethsemane which death still held for Him, to gaze on the few gems which He had already won for His Father.

I have said that in the great gallery the picture of the second communion is not so much one scene as a succession of scenes. It seems to me to embrace four distinct stages. The first is the Passover — the communion with the Jewish past; it is the Feast prepared in the upper room of Jerusalem. The second is in the middle of that Feast; it is the communion of the Lord’s Supper, where that same upper room becomes transfigured into the guest-chamber in which Christ receives His disciples. The third is in the garden of Gethsemane; it is the sighing of the heart of Jesus for those who are not disciples, His longing to find a place in the soul of the sinner. The fourth is the cross of Calvary; it is the communion with future ages — the sure and unbroken confidence that the death from which He shrank in Gethsemane would become His highest glory, I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.’ We shall see, as we proceed, how these fold into one another.

And first. Almost at that same moment when Judas was betraying Jesus to the Jewish theocracy, Jesus was cherishing for that theocracy a sentiment of friendship. He was preparing to keep the Feast — the national Passover Feast. He had no need to keep it. He professed to have, personally, transcended it. He would have said to all such gatherings, ‘I have meat to eat that ye know not of; my meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work.’ No Passover Feast had * finished the work ’ for the Father. The killing of the Pascal lamb had expiated nothing, atoned for nothing. No priest pretended it had done so, or intended it should do so; it was but a type of what the nation felt was due to God from Man. Jesus had designed to be the anti-type; He had been offering His life in the place of the Passover lamb. To keep the Feast was for Him a work of supererogation. It was like entering a dark room and lighting a candle to peruse a document which could be read in broad daylight. Yet Jesus submitted to go back — back in the order of development. As in the days of His own baptism, He lit the candle when He had the sunlight. He resolved to keep the Feast of His fathers because it was the Feast of His fathers. It is a grand testimony to His dislike of all bereavements! This Feast was a poor, imperfect thing; yet, for His love of the past, He would not let it go. He would raise it as He raised Lazarus. He would revivify it with His own presence. He would give it a new significance which should make it a glory for ever.

And He did. In that upper room where He kept the Passover with His disciples He showed each of them what a Paschal sacrifice should be. They had been quarrelling as to which should have the place nearest Himself. He taught them by a striking symbol that those nearest to Himself were the humblest in soul; He took a towel and girded Himself, and washed their feet. The evangelist pre faces his account of the deed by these words, ‘Knowing that He came from God and went to God.’ And many a preacher reading the words has pointed the moral thus, ‘Look how condescending Jesus was! although He knew He was so far above these poor creatures both in His origin and in His destiny, He yet stooped beneath His conscious position! ‘That is not my reading of the passage, nor my moral from it. Where, think you, lies the connection in the thought of Jesus between washing the disciples’ feet and remembering that He came from God and went to God? Is it not clearly this? — ‘My course has been humility all through — from beginning to end. When I came from God I came down; my mission was to surrender my own will. When I go to God I shall pass to Him through depths lower still — through the valley of the shadow of death. This act of service towards you is to me in keeping with all that is gone before and with all that is to follow.’ The clause is meant to exclude the idea of condescension, to show how thorough was the surrender of the true Paschal Lamb. The lamb of the Passover was offered only once a year; but the surrender of the will of Jesus had been made each morn and even.

All this took place at the beginning of the meal; the phrase in our version, ’ supper being ended,’ is a very improbable reading. Gradually, as the evening advanced, the meal acquired a fresh meaning. The associations of the past seemed to fade from it. Moment by moment it lost its national character; it be came a banquet for the hour. Its interest began to centre in a single life. One form took precedence of all history, one figure towered over all time; it was that of the Man of Galilee! There was no change in the environment. It was the same room, the same furniture, the same provision for the Feast. Yet to the eye of these disciples it seemed as if the Passover had passed away, and as if they were sitting at a new Feast — the Feast of the Lord Jesus!

By-and-by Judas quits the party. He had probably in the course of conversation learned the purpose of Jesus to spend that evening in the Garden of Gethsemane; at all events he knows the fact, and he goes to reveal it. And then it would seem as if an incubus were lifted from the soul of Jesus. He, too, feels as if all things were made new. From the fragments of that Passover supper He inaugurates another feast — a feast which He boldly affirms will be observed periodically to the end of the world, and which through all the

VOL. II. P centuries will be the sign of union with His name. With striking originality He declares that it is to stand for ages in memory of Him self, nay, in memory of that in Him which had seemed most like disaster and defeat — His sacrifice of expiation. As a symbol of that sacrifice, He breaks a piece of bread and pours wine into a cup; ‘This bread, He cries, ‘is my body which is being broken for you; this cup is my blood which is being shed for you.’

You will observe how I have emphasised the present tense — ’ being broken, * being shed.’ That is the sense of the original. It is often explained by saying that the vividness to Jesus of the image of coming death made it already to Him a present reality. That is not my view — that is not the view of this book. To my mind, Jesus speaks in the present because His expiation was in the present. He was not waiting for death, to begin His work. Nay, previous to Gethsemane, death was the only thing which was dark to Him, the only drop of the cup which was mysterious in His sight, and which, if possible, He would fain have had remitted. The mystery of death to Jesus was not in the cloud overhanging the future life — He had no such cloud j it lay in a cloud which overhung His own work for His Father, and which seemed to endanger it. His work for His Father had been going on since morning. From dawn to dark He had been surrendering Himself to His Father, yielding up flesh and blood by a sacrifice of the will. From dawn to dark He had been giving His life to God, seeking to atone for a world’s lovelessness. From the moment He took the servant’s form He had begun to shed His blood, to pour out His life in the work of His Father. The Lord’s Supper was to the men who first partook of it associated mainly with the broken life of Jesus. It got a wider significance by-and-by. Within a few years a Paul could say, ‘As often as you eat this bread you show the Lord’s death’ But by that time Gethsemane was past. The clouds had rolled away from the Garden, and the final act of the tragedy had appeared — as the brightest of all the flowers. As yet, we have not entered the Garden. We are still before the gate. We must not expect at the entrance the light which is only at the end. Jesus gave to His disciples the bread and the cup He had already taken — no less, no more. He looked forward to the future for a fuller communion, ‘I shall drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.’

And now the supper is ended, and they sing a parting hymn. Sometimes after the close of a service we linger and converse for a few minutes in the place of its celebration. So was it here. Between the final song of praise and the going out into the night Jesus speaks those words of comfort which are embodied in the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. This, at least, is my opinion, and the opening words seem to bear it out. Is not this what they say: ‘I have lately been preparing for you an upper room of communion; but now you are compelled to leave it. Such joys on earth are ever fleeting. But let not your heart be troubled! I am about to prepare for you another upper room where you shall be with me again in permanent communion. In my

Father’s house are many rooms — not fleeting, as here, but abiding for ever. I go to furnish one of these for you, that the communion begun here may be perpetuated yonder.’ He adds: * If it were not so, I would have told you. I would have made this a farewell. I would not have asked you to keep a feast in remembrance of me if I did not know that I should be alive. But I shall be alive, nay, I shall manifest my life. My Spirit shall be with you. I shall be invisibly present with you — to guide you into all truth, especially to keep you from all fear. I will send you my peace, which is quite different from the world’s peace. The world can only give its peace by causing the cloud to pass; mine can come in the presence of the cloud.’

Jesus was, indeed, conscious at this moment of a twofold experience — a simultaneous peace and pain. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that He had at the same moment a personal peace and an impersonal pain. It was all right with Himself, all right with that chaplet of flowers which He had already gathered for His Father. He had perfect con-

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fidence in the preservation of those whom the Father had already given Him — and this in the full foresight that for a time they would desert Him. But there was a pain simultaneous with the peace — a pain for those whom the Father had not yet given Him — a pain for that world which hated both Him and His Father. It was a grand thing that for the moment He could subordinate the pain to the peace — that for the sake of comforting others, He could bury for an hour that grief which, though impersonal, was all His own.

Suddenly He cries, ‘Arise, let us go hence! ‘They issue forth from the upper room into the moonlit night. They pass through the streets of Jerusalem. They descend to the valley of Kidron; they rise again by the western slope of the Mount of Olives. They are bound for the Oilpress Garden — Gethsemane’s Garden. Ever and anon they halt by the way, and at each pause Jesus pours Himself forth in words not of gloom but of cheer — those words which have been known as His ‘Farewell Sermon, I should say there is no note so foreign to them as that of farewell. Their refrain is the reverse — ‘Abide in me! Cling to me! Never let me go! ‘There is, indeed, one note of finality, ‘I have glorified Thee on the earth; I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do!’ Jesus feels that the active part of His day is ended, that the night is coming when no man can work. Whatever future service lay before Him could not be active service. There is a deep significance in the words, ‘I have glorified Thee; and now, O Father, glorify me!’ It is as if He had said: * I must henceforth be passive in Thy hand. No more can I work miracles for Thee; Thou must work Thy miracles for me. My time for action is past; my time for bearing is come. Hitherto I have been labouring for Thee; I must now be heavy-laden for Thee. I cannot any longer minister to Thy glory; minister to my need, O my Father! ’

That is to my mind the only note of pain in all the song. I am glad that it is there. It shows me, better than anything else, what the peace of Jesus was; it reveals to me, as nothing else could reveal, the difference of that peace from the peace of the world. It unveils to me the fact that the peace of Jesus is a peace contemporaneous with pain. It tells me that His attitude of mind at this time was a voluntary effort, an unselfish effort. It was a determination to keep His eye on the bright side of the picture in order that the companions of His early ministry might see no shadow of a latent pain.

T ET me walk with Thee, O Lord, on the J — ’ way from that upper room; let me enter into Thine unselfish spirit! If I have a troubled corner in my heart, and those beside me have a troubled corner too, help me to look to the side that is not troubled! Let me cover the dark place in my heart while my sad friends are with me! I can &;/cover it when I reach Gethsemane — when I shall be alone with my grief. But here in the public walk, here in the streets of Jerusalem, here in the meeting with men bearing their own sadness, let me keep mine eye on what I hold of brightness. Let me meet my weeping brother on the sunny side of my way! Let me refuse to look at my Gethsemane until I have led him through his Jerusalem Let me conceal the place of my pain till he has gazed on the spot of my peace! So shall I be Thy disciple; so shall I walk with Thee from the upper room!