[ p. 93 ]
GATHERING CLOUDS
Mk. ii. 2-28 ; Mt. ix. 2-17, xii. 1-8; Lk. v. 17-vi. 5.
The popularity of Jesus was grievous to the rulers. He was the hero of the multitude, but in the eyes of the Pharisees, the guardians of traditional orthodoxy, He was a dangerous innovator; and it shows how deeply they were alarmed that there now appeared at Capernaum a commission of Rabbis reprenting the synagogues of the land and charged with the maintenance of a jealous surveillance of His speech and behaviour. (Cf. Lk. v. 17)
There were several complaints which they had against Him and which they would fain substantiate. One was the blasphemy, as they deemed it, of His personal claim ; and this issue was soon raised. He was teaching in the synagogue, and a huge congregation had assembled. The building was thronged, and a crowd, unable to gain admission, beset the entrance, straining to catch His voice, when four men approached carrying a paralytic on a litter. They were bringing him to the Healer, and they would not be debarred. They were familiar with the interior and, betaking themselves to the rear of the building and ascending the stairway to the flat roof, they prized up the flagstones and lowered the litter in front of the preacher’s dais. It was indeed a reckless proceeding but, evincing a sore need and a resolute faith, it won the Master’s sympathy. He surveyed the helpless sufferer. It was [ p. 94 ] no uncommon case—physical debility from moral excess. The paralytic was a sinner—a penitent sinner, and forgiveness was his chief need. “Courage, My child !” said Jesus ; " your sins are forgiven.”
The inquisitors occupied the front seats, the places of honour; and immediately they started cf Mt whispering excitedly to each other. They had gained the opportunity which they desired. God alone can forgive sins, and Jesus had usurped the divine prerogative. It was blasphemy, and blasphemy was a capital offence. He promptly accepted their challenge. “Which,” He demanded, “is easier—to say ‘ Your sins are forgiven ’ or to say ‘ Rise and walk’ ?” (Cf. Mt. xxiii. 6; Mk. xii, 39; Lk. xi. 43, xx. 46) They made no reply. None was needed ; for it was a principle of the Rabbinical theology that, since sickness was penal, healing was impossible without forgiveness. He turned to the helpless creature. “Rise,” said He, “ take up your couch, and away home.” And His command was obeyed.
Observe the argument. According to His critics healing implied antecedent forgiveness. They had challenged His authority to forgive sins. Absolution was a divine prerogative, and they called Him a blasphemer because He claimed it. And He met them with a miracle which on their own admission attested His claim. It was not merely an affirmation but, ex hypothesi , a demonstration of His deity.
Silenced at the moment, they were the more exasperated and cast about for another charge. Nor had they long to wait. Leaving the synagogue Jesus took His way along the shore of the Lake in the direction of the custom-house which stood at the northern [ p. 95 ] approach to the town. The people trooped after Him, and He discoursed to them as they went. On reaching the custom-house He espied a taxgatherer named Levi sitting at his desk. Any other than Jesus would have passed him with scorn ; for the taxgatherers or, as they were called in Latin, the publicans were outcasts among the Jews. They were the local agents of the imperial government, and their business was the extortion of its oppressive tribute. It was galling to the spirit of a proud race, and no Jew would have discharged the odious office unless he were oblivious alike of patriotism and of religion. Hence in popular esteem the taxgatherers were classed with “the sinners,” “the harlots,” and “the heathen.” (Cf. Mt. xi. 19, xviii. 17, xxi. 31,32) Give men an ill name, and they will generally deserve it; and the taxgatherers were a dissolute and regardless class.
They were social pariahs, and it had surprised the populace and shocked the Pharisees that Jesus had shown a kindly interest in them and their associates. Levi was plainly no stranger to Him. Though an outcast from the synagogue, he had many a time heard Him discoursing in the open, and His Gospel had touched the poor sinner’s heart. Jesus had found opportunities of conversing with him ; and observing his qualities. He had marked him for His service. And now He called him. “Follow Me” He said ; and Levi obeyed with eager alacrity. Like Simon he got a new name. Thenceforth he was no longer Levi but Matthew, which is the Greek Theodore, “Gift of God” ; and he proved no less. In after days, employing his practised pen in a nobler cause, he wrote in Aramaic for his Jewish countrymen that earliest record of the Master’s [ p. 96 ] earthly ministry which was entitled The Oracles of Jesus and which formed the basis of our first Gospel.
He bravely began his new career with a public confession. He made a banquet in his house, and invited to it not only Jesus and His followers but a large company of taxgatherers and sinners, his former associates. It was the fashion that the door of a banquet-hall should stand open, admitting strangers to witness the festivity (Cf. Lk. vii. 36, 37); [1] and the Scribes in. their inquisitorial zeal entered after Him and saw Him take His couch at table in the place of honour next the host. In their judgment it was a grave impropriety that He should mingle in friendly intercourse with so disreputable a company; and they construed it as an evidence of His own moral obliquity. Smarting from their discomfiture in the synagogue, they durst not challenge Him directly, but they indignantly accosted the disciples. “He is eating and drinking,” they cried, “with the taxgatherers and sinners ! ”
He overheard their angry remonstrance, and He interposed. Long ago the philosopher Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynic school, had been reproached for associating with evil men, and his answer was : “The physicians take to do with the sick, but they have not the fever. It is absurd to weed out tares from the wheat and the ineffectives in war, yet suffer evil men in the state.” And here Jesus repeats the old maxim. “It is not the strong,” said He, “that have need of a physician but the ailing.” It was an answer to the insinuation that He could not be a holy man, or [ p. 97 ] He would not have kept such company; but it was more. “Go,” He cried, “and learn what this means : ‘is mercy that I desire and not sacrifice.’” That, according to the Scriptures which they professed to revere and which it was their business to interpret, was God’s way (Hos. vi. 6); and it was the way of Jesus. Holiness with Him was not ceremonial observance but compassion for the sinful. In befriending sinners and winning them back to God He was fulfilling His Messianic mission. “For I did not come to call righteous men but sinners.”
Again He had silenced His critics; but they soon returned to the charge. Their complaint now was His attitude toward the ceremonial law, and, warned by their previous- discomfitures, they proceeded cunningly. There was at Capernaum a number of the Baptist’s disciples, devout Jews who valued the ancient usages, especially that of fasting which the Pharisees practised so ostentatiously and which John had inculcated in his penitential discipline. They wondered at the Lord’s disregard of those sacred ordinances, and probably it was this that restrained them from owning Him as their Master. Here the Scribes recognised their opportunity. They interviewed the Baptist’s disciples and told them of the scene in Levi’s house. The story troubled those earnest and simple-hearted men, and presently they waited upon Jesus. “Why,” they asked, " do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not ?”
He answered by quoting a saying of their master at JEnon shortly before his arrest. It had vexed his disciples that his fame was being eclipsed by the growing popularity of Jesus (Cf. Jo. iii. 29,30); and he had told them that they should rather rejoice. For Jesus was [ p. 98 ] the Messiah, the Heavenly Bridegroom; and as for himself he was merely the groomsman whose office it was in those days to superintend the bridal feast and present the bridegroom to the bride, rejoicing in his joy. “Would you,” asked Jesus, “have the bridal company mourn ? Should they not rather, like your master, share the Bridegroom’s joy ?” And then, thinking of the tragic end which the hostility of the rulers was even then foreshadowing, He added that there would come a time when His disciples should mourn.
That Pharisaic protest voiced by the Baptist’s disciples raised a large question—the relation between the old order and the new ; and on this Jesus proceeded to discourse. He would say much, but only a few graphic and memorable sentences are recorded. He dealt with a spirit always prevalent in periods of transition when “the old order changeth, yielding place to new”— the spirit of conservatism which clings to the past and would fain perpetuate its outworn customs. This was the spirit which possessed those disciples of the Baptist who would have carried the institution of fasting into the glad Kingdom of Heaven, and which afterwards embittered the Judaists against St. Paul when he proclaimed the passing of the ancient ritual. It is a fatal spirit, and He displayed its mischievousness by likening it first to stitching a patch of fresh cloth on a worn garment: when the patch shrinks, it tears the old stuff, and the rent is worse than ever ; and again to put ting new wine into old wine-skins : when the wine ferments, it bursts the unsupple leather, and wine and skins both perish. The world is ever changing, and “the thoughts of men are widen’d with the process of the suns” ; and obstinate conservatism precipitates [ p. 99 ] revolution. It may put a temporary arrest on progress; but the stream is merely dammed back, and presently it bursts the barrier and rushes on its way, a devastating flood. Nevertheless there is a soul of goodness in the spirit of conservatism; for the old order is always endeared to loyal hearts by hallowed associations and tender memories. And this generous instinct Jesus approved. “No one,” He added, quoting from the Book of Ecclesiasticus (ix. 10), the most beautiful of the uncanonical Jewish Scriptures, “after drinking old wine desires new ; for he says ‘The old is kindly.’” True wisdom lies in at once loving the old and welcoming the new, retaining whatever in the past was good and carrying it forward into the ampler future.
There was no institution which the Pharisees magnified more than the Sabbath, the Day of Rest. According to its original design it was a gracious and beneficent institution, securing for man and beast a respite from toil and for man a season of heavenly communion ; but they had turned it into a grievous oppression by elaborating the prohibition of work and imposing a multitude of petty and vexatious restrictions. For a while our Lord’s practice gave them no offence, since He was punctual in attendance at the synagogue and His employments were all religious (cf.Ex. xx. 8-11); but now at length they find Him guilty of a contravention of their Sabbatarian regulations.
Time had quickly sped, and the first year of His Galilean ministry was nearing its close. The harvest was fast ripening in the fields on the Plain of Gennesaret, and since it was ready for the sickle at the beginning of April, it would now be the month of March. The Jewish law, ever solicitous of popular rights, [ p. 100 ] required that there should always be a right-of-way through sown lands, and one Sabbath Day Jesus and His disciples were passing through the cornfields. Perhaps they were returning home from worship in the synagogue. At all events they had been long abroad and the disciples were hungry, and, availing themselves of a legal privilege, they plucked ripe ears as they passed and rubbed out the grain between the palms of their hands.(Cf. Dt. xxiii. 24,25)
The watchful Scribes were dogging His steps, and here they perceived an opportunity. Reaping on the Sabbath was forbidden, and on the Rabbinical interpretation the term included the plucking of an ear; threshing also was forbidden, and it was threshing to rub out the grain. Here was a double violation of the Sabbath law, and violation of the Sabbath law was a capital offence. “See,” they cried, what they are doing !—a thing which is not allowable.”
He met them with contemptuous sarcasm. Scribes though they were, it was little they knew of the Scripture. “Have you never even read what David did ?” (i Sam. xxi. 1-6) In his flight from the court of Saul he had visited the sanctuary at Nob and for the refreshment of himself and his followers had taken the hallowed bread which “it was not allowable” for any but the priests to eat. That incident established the broad principle that human need is paramount. Nor was direct sanction lacking;(Cf. Num. xxviii. 9-10) for did not the very priests constantly violate the letter of the law by doing the work of the Temple in the preparation of the burnt offering, the meal offering, and the drink offering ? “And I tell you,” says Jesus, “that something greater than the Temple is here.” [ p. 101 ] And what was that ? It was just human need. “Had you recognised what this means, ’ It is mercy that I desire and not sacrifice/ you would not have condemned the guiltless.” Truly human need Hos-vi ’ 6 ’ is paramount, and it is the very raison d’etre of the Sabbath. “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath ; and therefore the Son of Man”—touched as He is with the feeling of man’s infirmity—“is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
A fashion which survived long. Cf. Macaulay’s Hist., chap, xxiii. p. 2802 (Firth’s edn.) : “During the banquet the room was filled with people of fashion, who went to see the grandees eat and drink.” ↩︎