Kitabı oku: «Religious Studies, Sketches and Poems», sayfa 12

XXII
GOING UP TO JERUSALEM

Palm Sunday

Nothing in ancient or modern tragedy is so sublime and touching as the simple account given by the Evangelists of the last week of our Lord's earthly life.

The church has since his ascension so devoutly looked upon him as God that we are in danger of losing the pathos and the power which come from a consideration of his humanity. The Apostle tells us that, in order that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest, he was made in all respects like unto his brethren. He was a Jew. His national and patriotic feeling was intense. To him the sacred nation, the temple service, with all its hymns and prayers and ancient poetic recollections, were more dear than to any other man of his nation. The nation was his own, his peculiar, chosen people; he was their head and flower, for whom the whole gorgeous ritual had been appointed, for whom the nation had been for centuries waiting. Apart from his general tenderness and love for humanity was this special love of country and countrymen. Then there was the love of his very own – the little church of tried, true, tested friends who had devoted themselves to him; and, still within that, his family circle, for whom his love was strong as a father's, tender and thoughtful as a mother's. And yet Jesus went through life bearing in his bosom the bitter thought that his nation would reject him and instigate one of his own friends to betray him, and that all seeming success and glory was to end in a cruel and shameful death. He foresaw how every heart that loved him would be overwhelmed and crushed with a misery beyond all human precedent.

It is affecting to read in the Evangelists how often and how earnestly Jesus tried to make his disciples realize what was coming. "Let this saying sink down into your ears," he would say: "the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men;" and then would recount, item by item, the overthrow, the agonies, the insults, the torture, that were to be the end of his loving and gentle mission. At various times and in various forms he took them aside and repeated this prophecy. And it is said that they "understood not his word;" that "they were astonished;" that they "feared to ask him;" that they "questioned one with another what this should mean." It seems probable that, warmed with the flush of present and increasing prosperity and popularity, witnessing his victorious miracles, they had thrown this dark prophecy by, as something inexplicable and never literally to be accomplished. What it could mean they knew not, but that it could have a literal fulfillment they seem none of them to have even dreamed. Perhaps they were like many of us, in our religion, in the habit of looking only on the bright, hopeful, and easily comprehensible side of things, and letting all that is dark and mysterious slide from the mind.

Up to the very week before his crucifixion the power and popularity of Jesus seemed constantly increasing. His miracles were more open, more impressive, more effective. The raising of Lazarus from the dead had set the final crown on the glorious work. It would appear that Lazarus was a member of a well-known, influential family, moving in the higher circles of Jerusalem. It was a miracle wrought in the very heart and centre of knowledge and influence, and it raised the fame of the new prophet to the summit of glory. It is an affecting comment on the worth of popular favor that the very flood-tide of the fame and glory of Jesus was just five days before he was crucified. On Monday – the day now celebrated in the Christian Church as Palm Sunday – he entered Jerusalem in triumph, with palms waving, and garlands thrown at his feet, and the multitudes going before and after, shouting Hosanna to the Son of David; and on Friday of the same week the whole multitude shouted, "Away with him! Crucify him! Release unto us Barabbas! His blood be upon us and upon our children!" and he was led through those same streets to Calvary. On these six days before the death of Jesus the historians have expended a wealth of detail, so that the record of what is said and done is more than that of all the other portions of that short life.

There are many touches of singular tenderness conveyed in very brief words. Speaking of his final journey from Galilee to Judæa, says one: "When the time came that he should be received up he set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem." Another narrates that when he was going up to Jerusalem he walked before his disciples, and as they followed him they were afraid. Evidently he was wrapped in an electric cloud of emotion; he was swept along by a mighty influence – tides of feeling deeper than they could comprehend were rolling in his soul, and there was that atmosphere of silence and mystery about him by which the inward power of great souls casts an outward sphere of awe about them. Still, as they walked behind, they had their political dreams of a coming reign of power and splendor, when the Judæan nation should rule the world, and they, as nearest to the Master, should administer the government of the nation – for it is said, by the way they "disputed who should be the greatest."

He hears their talk, as a dying mother, who knows that a few hours will leave her children orphans, listens to the contentions of the nursery. He turns to them and makes a last effort to enlighten them – to let them know that not earthly glory and a kingdom are before them, but cruelty, rejection, shame, and death. He recounts the future, circumstantially, and with what deep energy and solemn pathos of voice and manner may be imagined. They make no answer, but shrink back, look one on another, and are afraid to ask more. It would seem, however, that there was one in the band on whom these words made an impression. Judas evidently thought that, if this was to be the end of all, he had been taken in and deceived: a sudden feeling of irritation arises against One who having such evident and splendid miraculous power is about to give up in this way and lose his opportunity and suffer himself to be defeated. Judas is all ready now to make the best terms for himself with the winning party. The others follow in fear and trembling. The strife who shall be greatest subsides into a sort of anxious questioning.

They arrive at a friendly house where they are to spend the Sabbath, the last Sabbath of his earthly life. There was a feast made for him, and we see him surrounded by grateful friends. By the fact that Martha waited on the guests and that Lazarus sat at the table it would appear that this feast was in the house of a relative of that family. It is said to have occurred in the house of "Simon the Leper" – perhaps the leper to whom Jesus said, "I will – be thou clean."

Here Mary, with the abandon which marks her earnest and poetic nature, breaks a costly vase of balm and sheds the perfume on the head of her Lord. It was an action in which she offered up her whole self – her heart and her life – to be spent for him, like that fleeting perfume. Judas expostulates, "To what purpose is this waste?" There is an answering flash from Jesus, like lightning from a summer cloud. The value that our Lord sets upon love is nowhere more energetically expressed. This trembling, sensitive heart has offered itself up wholly to him, and he accepts and defends it. There is a touch of human pathos in the words, "She is anointing me for my burial." Her gift had all the sacredness in his eyes of a death-bed act of tenderness, and he declares, "Wheresoever through the world this gospel shall be preached, there also shall what this woman hath done be told for a memorial of her."

Judas slinks back, sullen and silent. The gulf between him and his Master grows hourly more palpable – as the nature that cannot love and the nature to whom love is all come in close collision. Judas and Christ cannot blend any more than oil and water, and the nearer approach only makes the conflict of nature more evident.

On Monday morning, the day that we now celebrate as Palm Sunday, Jesus enters Jerusalem. We are told that the great city, now full of Jews come up from all parts of the world, was moved about him. We have in the Book of Acts an enumeration of the varieties in the throng that filled Jerusalem at this time: "Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia and in Judæa and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians." When all these strangers heard the shouting, it is said the "whole city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus, the Prophet of Nazareth in Galilee."

And what was He thinking of, as he came thus for the last time to the chosen city? We are told "And when he drew near and beheld the city, he wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes." Then follows the prophetic vision of the destruction of Jerusalem – scenes of horror and despair for which his gentle spirit bled inwardly.

One feature of the picture is touching: the children in the temple crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" The love of Jesus for children is something marked and touching. When he rested from his labors at eventide, it was often, we are told, with a little child in his arms – children were his favorite image for the heavenly life, and he had bid the mothers to bring them to him as emblems of the better world. The children were enthusiastic for him, they broke forth into rapture at his coming as birds in the sunshine, loud and noisily as children will, to the great discomfiture of priests and Scribes. "Master! bid them hush," they said. He turned, indignant – "If these should hold their peace the very stones would cry out." These evidences of love from dear little children were the last flower thrown at the feet of Jesus on his path to death. From that day the way to the cross was darker every hour.

XXIII
THE BARREN FIG-TREE

Monday in Passion Week

During the last week of the life of Jesus we see him under the most awful pressure of emotion; the crisis of a great tragedy, which has been slowly gathering and growing from the beginning of the world, is now drawing on. The nation that he had chosen – that he had borne and carried through all the days of old – was now to consummate her ruin in his rejection. All his words and actions during the last week of his life were under the shadow of that cloud of doom which overhung the city of Jerusalem, the temple, and the people whom he had loved, so earnestly and so long, in vain.

When going up to Jerusalem he walked before his disciples, silent and absorbed; and they dared scarcely speak to him. Amid the triumphant shouts of the people that welcomed him to the city he paused on the verge of Olivet and wept over it. He saw the siege, the famine, the terror of women and helpless children, the misery and despair, the unutterable agonies of the sacking of Jerusalem, which has been a world's wonder; and he broke forth in lamentation. "Oh, that thou hadst known – even thou in this thy day – the things that belong to thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes."

All his discourses of this last week are shaded with the sad coloring and prophetic vision of coming doom, of a crime hastening to fulfillment that should bring a long-delayed weight of wrath and vengeance.

His parables now turn on this theme. One day they tell of a husbandman intrusting a vineyard to the care of faithless servants; he sends messengers to overlook them; they beat one and stone another, till finally he sends his only and beloved son, and then they say, "Let us kill him;" and they catch him and cast him out of the vineyard and slay him. "What," he asks, "shall the Lord of the vineyard do to these husbandmen?" Again, he speaks of a feast to which all are generously invited, and all neglect or reject the invitation, and not only reject but insult and despise and ill-treat the messengers who bear the invitation; and tells how the insulted King sends the invitation to others, and decrees, "None of these men shall taste of my supper." He tells of a wedding feast, and of foolish virgins who slumber with unfilled lamps till the door of welcome is shut. He tells of a king, who, having intrusted talents to his servants, comes again to reckon, and takes away the talent of the unfaithful one and casts him to outer darkness.

All these themes speak of the approaching rejection of the nation on whom God has heaped so many favors for many years. The thought of their doom seems to press down the heart of the Redeemer.

The twenty-third chapter of Matthew contains Christ's last sermon in the temple – his final words of leave-taking of his people; and a most dreadful passage it is. It is awful, it is pathetic, to compare those fearful words with his first benignant announcement at Nazareth. Nothing in human language can be conceived more terrible than these last denunciations of the rejected Lord and Lover of the chosen race. He exposes with scathing severity the hypocrisy, the greed, the cruelty of the leaders of the nation; he denounces them as the true descendants of those who of old killed God's prophets and stoned his messengers, and ends by rising into the very majesty of the Godhead in declaring their final doom: —

"Fill ye up the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents! Ye generation of vipers! How can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them ye shall scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city. That upon you might come all the righteous blood shed upon earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias,⁵ the son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you all these shall come upon this generation!

"O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets and stonest those that are sent unto thee – how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings – and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate, for I say that ye shall see me no more henceforth till ye say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."

This was Christ's last farewell – his valedictory to those whom he had loved and labored for, and who would not come to him that he might give them life.

To all these awful words was added the language of an awful symbol. In one of his parables our Lord had spoken of the Jewish nation under the figure of a tree which, though carefully tended year by year, bore no fruit. At last the word goes forth, "Cut it down!" But the keeper of the vineyard intercedes and prays that it may have a longer space of cultured care, and so be brought to fruit-bearing. This last week of our Lord's life he sets forth the solemn close of that parable by one of those symbolic acts common among the old prophets and well understood by the Jews.

Approaching a fair and promising tree on his way into the city, he seeks fruit thereon, but finds it barren. There is a pause, and then a voice of deep sadness says, "No fruit grow on thee henceforth and forever!" and immediately the fig-tree withered away.

It was an outward symbol of that doomed city whose day of mercy was past. The awfulness of these last words and of this last significant sign is increased by the tenderness of Him who gave them forth. It is the Fountain of Pity, the All-Loving One, that uttered the doom – a doom made certain and inevitable not by God's will but by man's perversity.

The lesson that we have to learn is the reality and awfulness of sin, the reality of that persistence in wickedness that can make even the love of Jesus vain for our salvation. For what hope, what help, what salvation can there be for those who cannot be reached by His love? If they have seen and hated both him and his Father – what remains?

XXIV
CAIAPHAS

Tuesday in Passion Week

The thought may arise to many minds, if Jesus was so lovely, so attractive, and so beloved, how could it have been possible that he should be put to so cruel a death in the very midst of a people whom he loved and for whom he labored?

The sacred record shows us why. It was this very attractiveness, this very power over men's hearts, that was the cause and reason of the conspiracy against Jesus. We have a brief and very dramatic account of the meeting of the Sanhedrim in which the death of Christ was finally resolved upon, and we find that very popularity urged as a reason why he cannot be permitted to live. In John xi. 47, we are told that after the raising of Lazarus the chief priests and Pharisees gathered a council and said, "What do we? this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone all men will believe on him, and the Romans will come and take away our place and nation."

There is the case stated plainly, and we see that these men talked then just as men in our days talk. Do they ever resolve on an act of oppression or cruelty, calling it by its right name? Never. It is a "sacrifice" to some virtue; and the virtue in this case was patriotism.

Here is the Jewish nation, a proud and once powerful people, crushed and writhing under the heel of the conquering Romans. They are burning with hatred of their oppressors and with a desire of revenge, longing for the Messiah that shall lead them to conquest and make their nation the head of the world.

And now, here comes this Jesus and professes to be the long-promised leader; and what does he teach? Love and forgiveness of enemies; patient endurance of oppression and wrong; and supreme devotion to the pure inner life of the soul. If Roman tax-gatherers distrain upon their property and force them to carry it from place to place, they are to meet it only by free good will, that is, willingness to go two miles when one is asked. If the extortionate officer seizes their coat, they are to show only a kindliness that is willing to give even more than that.

They are to love their bitterest enemies, pity and pray for them, and continue in unbroken kindness, even as God's sunshine falls in unmoved benignity on the just and the unjust!

It must have inflamed these haughty, ambitious leaders to fury to see all their brilliant visions of war and conquest and national independence melting away in a mist of what seemed to them the mere impossible sentimentalism of love. And yet this illusion gains ground daily; Christ is received in triumph at Jerusalem, and the rulers say to each other, "Perceive ye how we prevail nothing? behold the whole world is gone out after him."

Now, in the Jewish Sanhedrim Christ had friends and followers. We are told of Joseph of Arimathea, who would not consent to the deeds of the council. We are told of Nicodemus, who before now had spoken boldly in the council, demanding justice and a fair hearing for Jesus. We may well believe that so extreme a course as was now proposed met at first strong opposition. There seems to have been some warm discussion. We may imagine what it was: that Jesus was a just and noble man, a prophet, a man all of whose deeds and words had been pure and beneficent, was doubtless earnestly urged. The advocates, it is true, were not men who had left all to follow him, or enrolled themselves openly as his disciples, but yet they could not consent to so monstrous an injustice as this. That the discussion produced strong feeling is evident from the excited manner in which Caiaphas sums up: "Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is better that one man should die than that the whole nation should perish." That was the case as he viewed it, and he talked precisely as men in our days have often talked when consenting to an injustice or oppression: Say what you will of this Jesus; I will not dispute you. Admit, if you please, his virtues and good works; still, he is a wrong-headed man, that will be the ruin of our nation. Either he must perish or the nation be destroyed.

And so, on the altar of patriotism this murder was laid as a sacrifice. And it was this same burning, impatient national spirit of independence that slew Christ which afterwards provoked the Roman government beyond endurance, and brought upon Jerusalem wrath to the uttermost.

The very children and grandchildren of Caiaphas died in untold miseries in that day of wrath and doom. The decision to reject Christ was the decision which destroyed Jerusalem with a destruction more awful than any other recorded in history.

We are apt to consider the actors in this great tragedy as sinners above all others. But every day and every hour in our times just such deeds are being reënacted.

There were all sorts of sinners in that tragedy: Caiaphas, who sacrificed one whom he knew to be a noble and good man to political ambition; Pilate, who consented to an acknowledged wrong from dread of personal inconvenience; Judas, who made the best of his time in selling out a falling cause to the newcomers; Peter, the impetuous friend suddenly frightened into denial; the twelve, forsaking and fleeing in a moment of weakness; the multitude of careless spectators, those tide-waiters who turn as the flood turns, who shouted for Jesus yesterday because others were shouting, and turn against him to-day because he is unpopular. All these were there. On the other hand, there were the faithful company of true-hearted women that went with Jesus weeping on his way to the cross; that beloved disciple and the Mother that stood by him to the last; all these, both friends and foes, represent classes of people who still live and still act their part in this our day.

 
"For, when under fierce oppression,
Goodness suffers like transgression,
Christ again is crucified;
But if love be there true-hearted,
By no pain or terror parted,
Mary stands the cross beside!"