[ p. 110 ]
HE first effect of Jesus’ appearance was extraordinary. Such crowds followed him that he could no longer enter openly into a city. “There were many coming and going, and he had no leisure so much as to eat.” When he was teaching on the shores of the lake, there followed him a multitude “from Galilee and Judea, and from Jerusalem, and from Idumea and beyond Jordan, and about Tyre and Sidon; and he spake to his disciples that a little boat should wait on him because of the crowd, lest they should throng him.” On one occasion we hear of his teaching from such a boat, and he may have done so often. When he undertook to secure a little rest on the other side of the lake, “the people saw them going, and many knew them, and they ran together from all the cities and outwent them.” Such vivid little pictures tell us more than any amount of labored description.
Much of the popular enthusiasm, naturally, was due to other causes than reasoned acceptance, and in too many cases it was the healer and not the teacher who attracted. But the teaching had its effect. “They were filled with amazement at it, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.” [1] So when [ p. 111 ] Jesus asked his disciples what was the popular opinion of him, he was told that men thought he was John the Baptist risen again, or else Elijah, or perhaps one of the great prophets. Such verdicts show that Jesus’ fame as a healer by no means wholly obscured his moral appeal.
How deeply this appeal reached, however, is another question. Jesus was cutting across the accepted moral and religious theories of the day. Intelligent acceptance of his doctrine meant a breach with an allbut-universal tradition, with accustomed practices, and often with the accepted social life. So violent a wrench is too much to expect of most men. They may be attracted by a preacher’s eloquence, they may feel dimly the strivings of a conscience he has awakened, but they are very slow to disown their past. Many men, too— perhaps the great majority—fail to perceive the implications of much that they admire; they seize on superficial phrases and are satisfied to go no further.
One class of Jesus’ hearers, however, saw the implications of his teaching with perfect clarity: the professional theologians called the Scribes. [2] These men had been working for generations on the interpretation of the Law; they had gradually built up a long series of traditional interpretations which to them were infallible; a right interpretation of God’s law was itself God’s law, and they were sure that their own interpretations were correct. Anyone, therefore, who rebelled against their conclusions they regarded as an enemy of God. Now the interpretation which Jesus taught struck at the very root of the scribal traditions; indeed, [ p. 112 ] Jesus went so far as to denounce these traditions and their defenders explicitly and by name. So to the Scribes Jesus was nothing less than an ally of Satan.
The long history of theology abounds in dreary controversies which the modern man can read only with distaste. Often he cannot for the life of him see what it was all about, or what earthly difference either alternative would make. Jesus’ controversies with the Scribes were of a wholly different type. When they attacked him for his indifference to the rigidity of their Sabbath law, more was involved than divergent explanations of obscure language in the Old Testament. This controversy concerned vitally the nature of God: Is God a being who prefers ceremonial respect for the Sabbath to the health of His children? The Scribes did not shrink from answering, “Yes”; Jesus was outraged at such callousness.
It is worth while to run rapidly through the list of the principal controversies, for each of them throws light on Jesus’ teaching about the Father. To the scandal of the’Scribes, Jesus not only mingled freely with publicans [3] and “sinners,” [4] but even shared in their meals. The Scribes held that God had lost all [ p. 113 ] interest in those who had lost all interest in Him; Jesus replied—unanswerably—that it is the sick who need a physician; the greater the human need, the greater God’s response.
The Judaism of the Old Testament, despite all its ceremonial restrictions, was never an ascetic religion, and its law required fasting only once a year, on the Day of Atonement. The Scribes, however, had developed the doctrine that fasting is in itself a meritorious act, assisting toward the remission of sin and therefore to be practiced frequently. The more devout fasted every Monday and Thursday, while John the Baptist imposed an even stricter rule on his followers. Jesus, to everyone’s amazement, disregarded the custom altogether [5] and taught his disciples to disregard it as well. Confidence in the Father’s love and care had made the mournful practice of fasting hopelessly incongruous. Jesus caustically asked the objectors; “Is it sensible to expect a marriage party to fast while the banquet is going on?” Indeed, under such circumstances, fasting would be worse than incongruous; it would be positively hurtful. It would be like patching unshrunken cloth on an old garment; the first rainstorm would work havoc with such a combination. [6] It would be like putting fermenting new wine into old, weak skins; an explosion would be inevitable.
This attitude of Jesus had further important implications. [ p. 114 ] Religions may, generally speaking, be divided into two types, the world-affirming and the world-rejecting. The one type regards this world as providing an opportunity for the active service of God, and consequently emphasizes tire positive achievement of good. The other type thinks of the earth as “vile,” “a desert drear,” full of traps and pitfalls for the unwary, and lays its emphasis on the avoidance of evil. This latter type results in the dour harshness that we associate with the word “Puritan”; it fears pleasure, lest pleasure should offer opportunity for sin; it hedges life with meticulous and often artificial prohibitions. [7] To Jesus, on the other hand, this earth was God’s creation, and at creation God had pronounced it “good.” Whatever harm man’s sin has wrought has not abolished- this goodness, and the pleasure that comes through using this world without abusing it is a pleasure given by God.
Just as traditional portraits of Jesus have erred in their sentimentality and lack of manliness, so they have erred through a one-sided insistence on Jesus’ griefs and sorrows. We rightly find in the Cross the supreme moment of Jesus’ life, but the Jesus of the preaching and teaching days was vigorously and cheerfully alive. This world is an opportunity for living: “I am come that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”
We may, of course, overstress this truth, and rob religion of wholesome disciplinary power. Most of [ p. 115 ] us are unable to live always on the plane to which Jesus’ presence in his lifetime raised his disciples. When the Gospels assert that these disciples did not fast while Jesus was with them, they are careful to add: “But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.” We need the stimulus that comes from abstinence in some form or other; without it our religion may degenerate into sentimentalism. Yet, when Jesus spoke of those who had left house or brethren or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for his sake, he promised these followers not only eternal life in the world to come; he promised them, “now, in the present age,” a hundredfold satisfaction for everything they had surrendered.
To return to the conflicts with the Scribes. Their fear of ritual defilement caused them to require elaborate ceremonial purifications for all sorts of occasions, especially before meals. [8] Jesus treated the whole practice as absurd: “That which enters into a man cannot defile him.” Moreover, in its practical effects the practice could become worse than absurd, for when religious energy is absorbed in microscopic detail, grave sins may slip by unnoticed. The Scribes washed their hands with minute precision—and then they ruled that if an angry son should say to his father, “My property [ p. 116 ] is consecrated [9] against you,” such a son must let his father starve rather than break his vow. [10] Such men were truly those who strained out gnats and swallowed camels!
The culmination of the controversies was reached in the Sabbath disputes. [11] Here, above all, the two attitudes were utterly irreconcilable. The Sabbath, probably more than any other one thing, separated the Jews from the Gentiles, and the Scribes had spent untold labor in making the separation continually sharper. The rules, as we read them, are incredible. If a man wished to pass a gift to a beggar through an open window, it was a sin if he put the gift in the beggar’s hand, but not if the beggar lifted the gift from the man’s hand. Cooked food might be put on a stove heated by straw, but not on a stove heated by poppy seed. A male camel might wear a bridle on the Sabbath, but not a female camel, [12] and so on, until imagination reels—and all supposedly as declaring God’s revealed will! Jesus abolished this labyrinth of casuistry with one sentence: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”; God is no pedantic taskmaster. To Jesus’ arguments there was no reply.
To make matters worse, his cures were undeniable and were winning him popular support; he even carried his disdain of the scribal tradition to the point of healing [ p. 117 ] on the sacred Sabbath. There was grave danger that he might alienate the people from the Scribes; an unthinkable calamity. The obvious retort was abuse, and abuse was used without restraint. Sometimes it was merely stupid, as abuse often is. The Baptist was austere, and they labeled him “insane.” Jesus was not austere, and they labeled him “drunkard and glutton.” At such inconsistency Jesus was amused rather than angry; he compared his critics to petulant children, unwilling in their play either to dance as at a marriage or to mourn as at a funeral. This goaded the Scribes to desperation, and they declared roundly that his cures were the work of the devil. When men have reached such a state, argument is useless. Jesus, indeed, pointed out the absurdity of the charge, [13] but he knew his words could have no effect. He warned the Scribes that they had perverted their moral sense; they had lost the power to distinguish between good and evil. To speak of forgiveness for such a sin would be meaningless, for the power to repent had been lost. Such a sin could be forgiven neither here nor hereafter. The Scribes replied with the last refuge of helpless malice by demanding his death.
Their attitude inevitably affected the attitude of the people as a whole, who were bound to be swayed by the opinions of their traditional leaders. Jesus did not, to be sure, lose all his popularity; we hear of many who were enthusiastic for him to the end. But the Scribes were the center of an opposition that increased swiftly and steadily. Jesus warned his disciples [ p. 118 ] that they, too, must expect hatred and slander. Many cities would be closed to them altogether; men would revile them and persecute them and say all manner of evil against them falsely. The only reply the disciples must make was to preach the truth clearly and courageously, regardless of the antagonism that such preaching might arouse. To Jesus peace was the highest ideal, but not a peace won by any compromise with evil; before the final peace could be attained there must be a time of desperate strife and division. Families might and would be rent asunder; usually the younger generation, more receptive of new ideas, against the older, clinging tenaciously to tradition. [14] It might well seem that the great Peacemaker had in reality brought not peace, but a sword.
John Wesley was once visited by a discouraged young clergyman, who sought his advice. Wesley asked, “Has no one been converted by your preaching?” “I am afraid not, sir,” was the reply. “Have you brought no one to a conviction of sin?” “Not even that, sir, I am afraid.” Wesley was silent for a moment and then inquired, “Have you made no one so angry as to want to break your neck?” The young man answered, indignantly, “Of course not; I have always been tactful.” And Wesley said, “Well, then, my poor young brother, I am afraid you had better give up the ministry.”
There is no more common blunder than to suppose that all men can be won to better living by peaceful [ p. 119 ] discussion, by careful teaching, and by good example. The ablest arguments, the most perfect teaching, and the supreme example the world has ever known were those of Jesus, yet his people as a whole rejected him. That men reject the good only through ignorance is profoundly untrue; it was because the Scribes understood Jesus’ message that they declared him to be possessed by Satan. Most men profess an admiration for righteousness in the abstract, but righteouness is not an abstraction; it is something which, when applied to the individual lives, makes tremendous demands, and often calls for heroic self-sacrifice. Many, therefore, when confronted with the claims of righteousness in their own case, merely grow angry. Well-being, ease, and comfort make an insidious appeal to men, and anything that threatens to interfere with their enjoyments will be met with an antagonism that uses any means, fair or foul, to silence the unwelcome message. Any Christian life, even the quietest, must have its crusading moments, and Christian leadership is a perpetual crusade. The enemies are not only ignorance and stupidity. The fiercest crusade is that against enlightened selfishness, and this crusade may mean merciless warfare.
A scribe, in giving his decision on a point, invariably quoted the opinions of other scribes and then drew his deductions from them. ↩︎
Chiefly the Scribes belonging to the pharisaic party. ↩︎
These publicans, it may be repeated, had—at least in Galilee— nothing to do with Roman service; they were Jews, employed by Jews, to collect Jewish taxes. But all through the ancient world—quite as much in Italy or Greece as in Palestine—no publican was considered honest. ↩︎
i.e., such Jews as had abandoned any attempt to keep the ritual law. They worked on the Sabbath, made no pretense of paying tithes, and ignored ceremonial purity. Among Jews such an attitude was invariably accompanied by laxity in moral matters as well, but it was not this laxity that classed them as “sinners.” ↩︎
Unquestionably, however, he kept the Day of Atonement fast; the breach of this would have so appalled everyone that we should certainly have been told of it. ↩︎
The shrinkage of the patch would tear the old cloth to pieces. ↩︎
Not, of course, implying that this temperament was limited to the Puritans, nor that Puritans were all of them spoil-sports. ↩︎
This practice had nothing to do with hygiene. The tradition expressly stated that clean water was not needed to effect ritual purity; the ritual bathing-places among Jews of the lower class are often unhygienic to an incredible degree. ↩︎
“Corban.” ↩︎
About a century later thi9 heartless rule was changed by the Jews. ↩︎
Four of these disputes are told at length in the first three Gospels and two in St. John. ↩︎
Some of these rules may be later than Jesus’ day, but he knew others quite as futile. ↩︎
Compare page 99. ↩︎
To a very real extent Jesus was supported by a “youth movement.” ↩︎