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A MISSION IN SOUTHERN GALILEE
Mk. vi. i a. Lk. vii. 36-50. Lk. viii. 1-3, iv. 16 30 ; Mk. vi. ib- 6 a ; Mt. xiii. 53-58. Mk. vi. 6^-13; Mt. ix. 35-x. 1, 5-16, 24-42; Lk. ix. 1-6 (x. 2-12, 16, vi. 40, xii. 2-9, 51-53, xvii. 33). Mt. xi. 1 ; Lk. vii. n-17. Mt. xi. 2-19; Lk. vii. 18-35 (xvi. 16). Mk. vi. 21-29 ; Mt- mv. 6-12.
Amid the commotion which those three miracles, especially the resuscitation of the Ruler’s child, would inevitably excite, it was impossible for our Lord to prosecute His ministry at Capernaum ; and He left it on a mission which He had long contemplated. It was nearly two years since He had left His early home at Nazareth to meet with John the Baptist at Bethabara, and He had never returned thither. His message would hardly have found acceptance there at the outset of His ministry ; for was it not proverbial that “a prophet has no honour among his own people” ? and had He not painful evidence thereof in the incredulity of His “brethren” regarding His Messianic claims ? Hence He had hitherto avoided Nazareth and the adjacent country. But now that He had established His fame at Capernaum and had, moreover, in that memorable circuit of last year, proclaimed His message in northern Galilee, was it not time that He should visit Nazareth and its environs ?
The road thither lay along the Lakeside as far as Magdala, whence it struck inland ; and there surely was the scene of a memorable incident which the other [ p. 155 ] Evangelists omit and St. Luke records con amore yet with a local and personal reticence very intelligible in the light of the subsequent narrative. Magdala had an evil reputation. It was a wealthy town, and it was stricken with the plague which wealth too often brings. It was in Palestine what Corinth was in Greece, and “a Magdalene”—the calumnious epithet wherewith the Talmud brands the Blessed Virgin— meant “an harlot.”
It was probably on Friday evening that our Lord arrived at Magdala, and He would stay there over the Sabbath and attend the synagogue. His fame had preceded Him, especially the story of His raising Jair’s child from the dead. It had reached the ears of a Pharisee in the town named Simon ; and, rigid Pharisee though he was, he could not but bestow some recognition on the Teacher who had so marvellously succoured his colleague at Capernaum. Sabbath was the day which among the Jews was C t. Lk. specially devoted to the friendly rites of X1V * x hospitality, and he invited Jesus to a banquet in his house.
It was kindly enough meant, yet it was ungraciously done. The custom was that when a guest arrived a servant should receive him with a basin and a towel, and, taking off his sandals, lave his dusty feet; then the host greeted him with a kiss of welcome ; and afterwards, as he reclined at table, cool, fragrant ointment was poured on his head. Simon’s other guests would be accorded those common courtesies, but they were withheld from Jesus. It was deemed sufficient honour for Him that He was admitted to the Pharisee’s house and board.
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At the moment He ignored the indignity; but He observed it, and presently it received a merited rebuke. As He entered, a woman had stolen in after Him. There was no mistaking what sort she was ; for she was unveiled and her hair hung loose, and this was the badge of an harlot. What did she there in that holy company ? She had been told of the Friend of sinners and what He had done elsewhere for the like of her; she may have heard Him preaching in Capernaum ; perhaps she had heard Him in the synagogue that very day. And His grace had won her poor heart. Fain to meet with Him, she followed Him to the Pharisee’s house with a gift in her hand. It was “a vase of myrrh ” ; and according to the satirist Lucian this was common as an harlot’s douceur. The price of her shame was all that she had, and she would make it an offering to the Lord. The company was at table, reclining on couches set slantwise round it; and she timidly approached the Lord’s couch, meaning to pour the ointment on His head, but her courage failed her and, pausing at the outer end of the couch, she stooped over His neglected feet. Her hot tears rained down upon them, and she gently wiped them with her loose tresses, and fondly kissed them and poured the ointment over them.
Simon was shocked. To his Pharisaic mind there was pollution in the creature’s touch ; and surely, he thought, had Jesus known her character, He would never have tolerated her caresses. Certainly He was no prophet or He would have recognised what sort of woman she was. Our Lord saw the look of horror on his face and knew what he was thinking. “Simon,” said He, “I have something to say to you.” “Say [ p. 157 ] it. Teacher,” was the curt reply; and Jesus told of a creditor who had two debtors. One of them owed him £25 and the other £2, 10s., and as neither could pay, he freely forgave them both. “Now which of them will love him the more ?” “I suppose,” answered Simon frigidly, resenting what seemed to him mere trifling, “the one whom he forgave the more.” “Precisely,” said Jesus, and pointed the moral. “You see this woman ? I came into your house: you gave Me no water for My feet, but she wetted My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hairs. No kiss did you give Me, but since I came in she has never ceased fondly kissing My feet. You did not anoint My head with oil, but she anointed My feet with myrrh. And for this reason, I tell you, her sins, her many sins, are forgiven—because she loved much. But one who is forgiven little loves little.”
Here is at once the Lord’s self-vindication and His condemnation of Simon. It was neither because He was ignorant of her character nor because He had no abhorrence of sin that He had accepted the woman’s caresses, but because it was penitence and gratitude that had brought her to His feet. She so loved Him because she had seen His grace ; and since love is supremely precious in God’s sight, she was nearer to God than the proud Pharisee who had never discovered “the plague of his own heart.”
“Your sins are forgiven” said He to the penitent crouching at His feet. It was blasphemy in the judgment of Pharisees that He should thus arrogate the divine prerogative of absolution, and a murmur ran round the table. He paid no heed, but dismissed [ p. 158 ] the woman with a gracious assurance: “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”
Who was this woman ? In his kindly charity, since he would not blazon the shameful past of one whom the Lord raised to honour, the Evangelist has concealed her name; but surely he knew it, and in after days it was firmly believed, at all events in the Latin Church (Lk. xiii. 2), that she was none other than Mary the Magdalene whom he presently introduces as a devoted disciple, and moreover that Mary the Magdalene was identical with Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus and Martha. And this is more than an idle fancy. It is indubitably attested by the Evangelists, who, while tenderly solicitous for the honour of the dear home at Bethany, have yet, for the glory of the Saviour’s grace, taken care that the truth should be clearly revealed to reverent and studious eyes. Consider the evidence.
There is no manner of doubt that Mary the Magdalene had been a sinful woman. Her designation proclaims it. And in introducing her immediately after his story of the sinful woman in the Pharisee’s house, St. Luke styles her “Mary the Magdalene, as she was called, from whom seven demons had gone out.” (Cf. Mt. xii. 45; Lk. xi. 26) Immorality was, in ancient parlance, an unclean spirit, and sevenfold possession signified utter abandonment.
Mary the Magdalene, then, had been an harlot; but what reason is there for identifying her with the sinful woman in Simon’s house and with Mary of Bethany ? In his story of the raising of Lazarus St. John introduces him as the brother of Mary and her sister [ p. 159 ] Martha, and then explains that the former was “the Mary who anointed the Lord with myrrh and wiped His feet with her hair.” St. Augustine takes this as a reference to the memorable incident recorded by St. Luke (Jo. xi. 2) and thus as an express identification of Mary of Bethany with the sinful woman in the Pharisee’s house. And probably he is right; yet it may be that the Evangelist was referring not to that previous anointing but rather to the subsequent anointing at Bethany a few weeks later (Jo. xii. 1-11; cf. Mt. xxvi. 6-13; Mk. xiv. 3-9). And thus the identification of Mary of Bethany with the sinful woman would remain so far precarious; but in his story of the anointing at Bethany St. John has put it beyond question. It would have been nothing remarkable had Mary, eager to bear a part in doing honour to the Master, come into the banquet-room and anointed His head with her precious ointment; but it was very remarkable that she came in with her hair unbound after the fashion of an harlot, and that she did not anoint His head but poured her myrrh over His feet and wiped them with her hair. And what is the explanation ? It is surely this—that her act was no customary tribute of honour but a grateful reminiscence of her first meeting with the Saviour on that memorable day at Magdala when, a poor outcast, she knelt at His blessed feet in the Pharisee’s house.
Certainly Mary of Bethany was that sinful woman. And as certainly she was Mary the Magdalene; else where was she at the tragic close ? As Mary of Bethany she never appears in the narrative of the Passion. Was she sitting quietly in her home just over the crest of Olivet while they were nailing her dear Lord [ p. 160 ] to the Cross ? Nay, she was with Him then ; for she was Mary the Magdalene, and Mary the Magdalene followed Him to Calvary, stood beside the Cross, and helped to take down His mangled body and lay it in Joseph’s sepulchre—the last to leave Him and the first to greet Him on the Resurrection-morning.
The Lord had not come to Magdala alone. He was accompanied not only by the Twelve but by a band of womenfolk who had experienced His grace and had devoted themselves to the service of Him and His Kingdom. One of these was Joanna, the wife of Chuzas, the steward of the Tetrarch Herod Antipas, probably, as we have seen, that “nobleman” (cf. Jo. iv. 46-54). whose child He had healed at the beginning of His Galilean ministry ; and another was Susanna, of whom nothing is recorded save that, like Joanna and the rest, she was a debtor to His mercy. They were all ladies of means ; and here lay their opportunity. The Master possessed nothing, and the Twelve had left their worldly all to follow Him ; and those women attended the mission to supply their necessities. They would aid also in other ways ; and here at the outset they rendered a gracious service by receiving the Magdalene into their company and removing her from the scene of her shame.
From Magdala they travelled on to Nazareth, a distance of nigh twenty miles. There the Lord was none too graciously received. The Nazarenes, as we have seen, had an ill repute in the land, and they were jealous of their townsman’s fame Who was He to have attained such greatness ? Like His father before Him, He had been a carpenter among them, and His mother Mary and His brothers and sisters [ p. 161 ] were their neighbours. And why had He settled at Capernaum ? Why had He not rather remained at Nazareth and wrought His miracles there ?
Thus sneeringly and reproachfully was He greeted. The Sabbath came round, and He attended the synagogue and was invited to preach. The lesson from the Prophets for that day was a passage from the Book of Isaiah, and according to custom He took His text thence : “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor : He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the broken at liberty, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Is. lxi. 1,2, lvi. 6) He read the gracious words and His gracious accents arrested His audience. Every eye was fixed upon Him as He laid aside the sacred roll and according to the Jewish custom sat down to discourse. “To-day,” He began, “has this scripture been fulfilled in your ears.” It was a gracious text, and it was a gracious sermon; and His hearers felt its charm. Yet no sooner was it ended than they were mastered by their miserable j ealousy. He marked their glances and whisperings and, knowing well what was in their minds, He answered their grievance.
It was a kindly, half-playful answer, designed to disarm their prejudice. Their grievance, He admits, was quite natural. “ No doubt you will be quoting to Me the proverb ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ You have been hearing of My miracles at Capernaum, and you would like Me to work similar miracles here. But is there not another proverb which says that ‘no prophet is acceptable in his own country’ ?” It was a gentle rebuke. There can be no miracle where there [ p. 162 ] is no faith, and it was their unbelief that had banished Him from their midst. When people turn away a blessing from their doors, it passes to others (Cf. i Ki. xviii. 8-24) are willing to receive it. So it had happened long ago when Elijah left idolatrous Israel and carried his blessing to a poor widow at Zarephath in the land of Zidon (Cf.2 Ki. v.), and again when, though there were lepers in Israel, it was Naaman the Syrian that Elisha healed.
His argument, instead of winning them, only enraged them. Though it was written in the Scriptures, it offended their Jewish prejudices to hear of heathen being preferred to Israelites; and they thought it no less than blasphemy that He should liken Himself to those great prophets. The synagogue was in an uproar. They drove Him out of the town to a precipice on the mountain beneath which it nestled, meaning to hurl Him down ; but when they got there, they thought better of it. His dauntless bearing overawed them; perhaps old memories softened them. He turned away, and the crowd fell back before Him and let Him pass.
He would betake Himself with His company into the open country. His treatment at Nazareth had grieved Him, but it awoke no resentment in His breast. It showed how much His Gospel was needed, and His heart went out in compassion to the ignorant people. The time was short, and He would essay a fresh enterprise. He had chosen and ordained the Twelve not merely as His successors but as His fellowworkers, and He had been training them by His teaching and example ; and now, since the need was so great and the time so short, that His Gospel might [ p. 163 ] reach the farther and accomplish the more, He would send them abroad two by two to proclaim the message which He had taught them and work miracles in His name.
Had they the heart for the enterprise ? “The harvest,” said He, “is large, but the workers few. Pray then the Lord of the harvest to cast forth workers to His harvest.” It was a challenge to their faith and devotion. “Whom shall I send ? and who will go for us ?” was His appeal, and surely they would answer like the prophet of old : “Here am I; send me.” He waited for a response; and when none volunteered, He compelled them : He “cast them forth to His harvest.” He had already ordained them, and now He commissions them.
Their field meanwhile was narrow. He was indeed the Saviour of the world, and the time would come when they must carry His Gospel to the ends of the earth; but for the present they were engaged in a mission to southern Galilee, and they must confine themselves within these limits. They must not go away among the Gentiles or even visit a city of Samaria, as they might readily have done, since the Samaritan frontier lay less than ten miles to the south, and the distant prospect of Mount Gerizim would recall to them how the Master had been received at Sychar at the beginning of His ministry. For the present their concern was with those poor “lost sheep of the house of Israel” in southern Galilee.
It was a difficult and perilous enterprise, demanding faith and courage. Poor as they were in worldly wealth, they must expect hardship; and, remembering their experience at Nazareth, they must reckon [ p. 164 ] on hostility. But their message would surely win them friends ; and at the worst they had this to cheer them—that they were only sharing their Master’s lot, and that God was with them—the Father who marked the fall of a sparrow and numbered the very hairs of their heads.
They went their several ways, and the Lord went His. There is no clear record of His ensuing movements and doings, since the Twelve were not with Him to see and hear and tell the story afterwards; but the women were with Him, and St. Luke has preserved one gracious incident which would appeal peculiarly to them and which the Gentile Evangelist, with his characteristic interest in despised womenfolk, may have learned in their circle. Evidently some time had elapsed, since the Lord had won fresh disciples. Accompanied by these and the women and followed by a curious throng, He approached the town of Nain some six miles south-east of Nazareth. The burialplace was situated, where its ruins still remain, eight furlongs from the town on the eastern side, and He encountered a funeral cortege on its way thither. It was a mournful spectacle. The deceased was a young lad, a widow’s only son, and the townsfolk attended in large numbers to testify their sympathy. According to Jewish custom the procession was headed by the female mourners, since it was by woman that death had come into the world ; and conspicuous among them was the weeping mother. Her grief touched the Lord’s heart. “Weep not” He said to her ; and, advancing to the bier, He laid an arresting hand upon it. The bearers stopped. “My lad,” He said, “awake” ; and the lad sat up and, like one [ p. 165 ] suddenly aroused from sleep, exclaimed in surprise till he was silenced by his mother’s embrace. The spectators were awe-stricken. They remembered the like miracle which Elisha had wrought of old at the neighbouring village of Shunem (cf. 2 Ki. iv - 8 -37). “A great prophet,” said one, “has been raised among us.” “God,” said another, “has visited His people.”
The wonderful story was noised abroad. It travelled as far as Judaea and its environs; and it reached the ears of John the Baptist in his dungeon in the Castle of Machaerus, where he had lain a prisoner since his arrest at dinon by Herod Antipas at the beginning of our Lord’s Galilean ministry. His only cheer all that weary space was that his disciples were allowed access to him. His supreme interest was the progress of the Kingdom which he had heralded and the doings of Him whom he had acclaimed at Bethabara as the Promised Saviour ; and his disciples had kept him informed of “the works of the Messiah.” (Cf. Mt. xi - 2) The tidings which reached him from time to time puzzled him. The Lord’s works were indeed gracious and wonderful, yet they were not the sort of works which he expected of the Messiah. What did he expect ? Though he had risen above the secular ideal of his Jewish contemporaries, still his ideal fell far short of the truth. He pictured the Messiah as a stern reformer, axe and winnowing-fan in hand, hewing down iniquities and separating the chaff from the wheat, and at the same time as “the Lamb of God” (Cf. Mt. iii. 10-12) shedding His blood in vicarious sacrifice for the sin of the world. (cf. jo. i. 29,36) And here lay the reason of his perplexity : Jesus was [ p. 166 ] performing neither role. He was no stern reformer, “striving and crying and lifting up His voice in the street,”(Mt. xii. 19) but a gracious teacher, telling of the Heavenly Father and His love and mercy. Nor was He as yet treading the martyr’s path. He had indeed incurred the enmity of the rulers, but He was still the popular hero, followed by enthusiastic and acclaiming crowds. Far other, as John conceived, should be “the works of the Messiah” ; and could it be, he was asking himself, that he had erred in his judgment at Bethabara ?
And so he despatched two of his disciples from Machaerus to interview Jesus and request His decision. They found Him busy with the multitude and propounded their master’s question: “Are you the Coming One ? or are we to look for another ? ” He vouchsafed no immediate reply, but continued His work, healing the sick folk who had thronged about Him. And then He turned to the deputies. “Go,” said He, “and report to John what you have seen and heard—that the blind are recovering sight, the lame are walking, the lepers are being cleansed, the deaf are hearing, the dead are being raised, and the Gospel is being preached to the poor. And blessed is the man who finds nothing to stumble at in Me.”
It was truly a gracious and effective reply. Had He pronounced an authoritative verdict, categorically affirming His Messiahship, John might have accepted it, but his misgivings would have remained. He took a better way. He exemplified His works, and bade John judge of these and determine their significance. Whether they accorded with his expectation or no, were they not indubitably “the works of the [ p. 167 ] Messiah”—such works as only the Messiah could perform ? And surely then it was his expectation that was at fault, and it became him to dismiss his prepossessions and accept the larger and nobler truth.
The multitude had observed the interview with lively interest; and they were disposed to judge the Baptist hardly, imputing his doubt to disheartenment. His long imprisonment, they fancied, had broken his morale ; and the Lord’s seeming severity encouraged their opinion. He knew their thought, and no sooner were the deputies gone than He reproved it and pronounced a generous eulogy on that great soul. Who that had seen John and heard him at Bethabara, so resolute, so dauntless, so austere, could think it possible that he was flinching now, bowing, like the reed in the fable, before the blast or under stress of durance yielding like a supple courtier to the tyrant’s frown ? He was indeed a prophet and, by reason of the part which he had played, the greatest of all the prophets, since he was that messenger promised of old (cf. Mal. v. 5-6), the reincarnate Elijah of Jewish expectation who should herald the Messiah’s advent and prepare His way before Him.
This was the Baptist’s unique distinction—that as the Messiah’s herald he had inaugurated the Kingdom of Heaven. The era of the Law and the Prophets had lasted to his day, and he had ushered in the era of the Gospel. And here his limitation appeared. He had carried into the new era the spirit of the old—that spirit of violence which animated the Jewish people in those days and which found expression in their secular ideal of the Messiah as a victorious king and of His Kingdom as the ancient kingdom of David [ p. 168 ] restored in more than its ancient glory, and still more strongly in the revolutionary propaganda of the desperate Zealots. It animated even the Lord’s disciples, who like their contemporaries were looking for the restoration of the kingdom of Israel and fretting, with ever increasing impatience, at His procrastination, as they deemed it, in laying aside His disguise and manifesting Himself to the world in His proper majesty. John had encouraged this ideal by his announcement of the Messiah as an indignant reformer, axe in hand : and his preaching had stimulated the spirit of violence. “Ever since his days the Kingdom of Heaven has been being stormed and stormers plundering it.”
The Lord’s pronouncement was ill received. The multitude were indeed pleased by His eulogy of the Baptist who had so stirred their souls in the great days of his ministry at Bethabara and iEnon ; but the inquisitorial Scribes resented it, remembering their old quarrel with the stern prophet. And even the multitude had a grievance against him for the austerity of his requirements, and they were offended, moreover, by the Lord’s condemnation of their Messianic ideal. They fell to disputing, and He answered them with kindly raillery. Were they not an unreasonable generation ? There was no pleasing them. John had come among them, an austere ascetic, requiring repentance and fasting, and they had pronounced him mad—possessed by a spirit of melancholy. Then He came, the kindly Son of Man, not only sympathising with their sorrows but sharing their joys, an happy guest at their weddings and their banquets ; and His geniality offended them : they called Him “glutton” [ p. 169 ] and “winebibber,” “friend of taxgatherers and sinners/’ Truly they were an unreasonable generation. They were like children playing in the marketplace and quarrelling over their games. One company wished to play at a wedding, and another would rather play at a funeral. “We piped to you,” cried the one set, “and you did not dance.” “We lamented,” cried the other, “and you did not beat your breasts.”
It would be pleasant to think that the Baptist received the Lord’s answer to his appeal, but it is doubtful. For just then, perhaps ere his messengers reached Machcerus, his brave life was cruelly ended. Herodias, with a woman’s vindictiveness, thirsted for the blood of the fearless prophet who had denounced her shameful union with Herod Antipas ; but so impressed was the Tetrarch by his character that he had hitherto resisted her importunities. Now at length she gained her end by a crafty trick. Antipas was celebrating his birthday with a state-banquet in his magnificent castle of Machaerus, and she laid a plot with her daughter by Philip, her deserted husband. The girl’s name, as the Jewish historian mentions, was Salome ; and in the course of the festivity she entered the banquet-hall in the guise of a danseuse . Her performance delighted the company, and the maudlin host, who, though but a petty vassal of imperial Rome, aped regal dignity, pledged himself in the style of an oriental potentate to grant C f. Esth. her whatever boon she might name. She v - 6 hastened out to consult her mother, and then returned and made her demand. “I desire,” said she, “that you forthwith give me on a trencher the head of John the Baptist.”
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The atrocious request sobered Antipas, and he would fain have refused. But he durst not, since an oath was inviolable; and he dispatched an officer of his bodyguard on the grim errand. Presently the trencher arrived with its ghastly burden, and the girl bore it off to her expectant mother, who, it is reported, in emulation of the fiendish revenge which Fulvia had wreaked on dead Cicero, pierced with a bodkin the silent tongue which had reproved her iniquity.
The Baptist’s disciples obtained their master’s mutilated corpse and gave it reverent burial. Tradition says that they conveyed it to Sebaste, the ancient city of Samaria; and this is indeed probable, since Sebaste was near iEnon, the scene of his later ministry, and it was fitter that his mortal remains should rest in the unhallowed soil of Samaria than in the unkindly territory of the tyrant. Sebaste was not far from the southern frontier of Galilee, and after performing their mournful office they sought the Lord and told Him the tragic story. He would then have little heart to continue His mission, and in any case it was nearing its appointed close. Capernaum was the rendezvous where the scattered Apostles would reassemble, and thither He now betook Himself.