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BACK IN GALILEE
Mt. xvii. 22-xviii. 9, 15-35 ; Mk. ix. 30-50; Lk. ix. 43b-50, xvii. 1-4. Lk, x. 1, 13-15 ; Mt. xi. 20-24. Lk- x ii* 13-34 (xvi. 13); Mt. vi 19-34. Lk. xiii. 1-17.
Now that those Galileans had tracked Him thither, Caesarea Philippi was no longer a peaceful retreat, and He took His way back to Capernaum. He still had much to say to the Twelve, especially in regard to His approaching Passion ; and, stealing away with them from Caesarea, He discoursed as they journeyed on that solemn theme, reiterating the announcement which He had already made and adding to it the tragic circumstance of His betrayal: “The Son of Man will soon be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and on the third day He will be raised.” He did not tell them that it was one of themselves that would betray Him ; but He knew. Already He had perceived what was in the heart of Judas, the Man of Kerioth ; and already nigh six months ago, in that bitter hour when so many of His followers had forsaken Him after His sacramental discourse in the synagogue of Capernaum, He had intimated that there was one of them who had sold himself to the Devil (Jo. vi. 64,71). If they remembered this, it would add tenfold horror to His present announcement; and it is no marvel that they received it with pained silence, afraid to question Him.
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They talked, however, among themselves. Each would protest his loyalty to the Master ; and presently in the course of the long journey of nearly thirty miles they fell to disputing of their rival merits and their several titles to honour in His Kingdom. He marked their suppressed excitement and guessed how they were employed ; but He said nothing at the moment. By and by they reached Capernaum, and hardly had they entered the town when Peter was accosted and detained. What was the occasion ? Every Jew had to make an annual contribution of half a shekel toward the maintenance of the Temple at Jerusalem. It fell due on the fifteenth of the month Adar (March) ; and since Jesus and the Twelve had quitted Capernaum ere that date, their contributions were still outstanding. The collectors had observed their arrival and, hesitating to challenge the revered Master, they beckoned Peter aside and asked him : “Does your Teacher pay the half-shekel ? “Yes,” he replied, and hurried home in no small perturbation, since the law was that delinquents were liable to distraint, and the expense of their long absence had exhausted the scanty resources of his Master and himself.
It amused Jesus when he appeared with consternation on his face. He had surmised what was ado when the collectors intervened, and He needed no explanation. “What think you, Simon ? ” said He, taking the first word. “The kings of the earth— from whom do they take tribute ? From their own sons or from other people’s ? ” “From other people’s ”
answered Peter. “Then,” said He, “their sons are exempt.” He meant that since the Temple was His [ p. 223 ] Father’s House, the earthly habitation of the King of Glory, He was not chargeable with its maintenance. He was its Lord, and it existed for His honour (cf. Jo. ii. 16). But His claim would have been mis- l6 understood. It would have been construed as impiety and, ever eschewing needless offence, He would pay the tax. “Go,” said He, “to the sea and cast a hook, and the first fish that rises, up with it and open its mouth, and you will find a shekel. Take that, and give it to them for Me and yourself.”
It was a piece of that playful humour which our Lord, so grave with others, indulged in His familiar intercourse with the Twelve. Stories abounded in those days of lucky finds in the maws of fishes. St. Augustine tells one of a poor man at Hippo who had lost his cloak and prayed for a new one. On his way home by the seaside he espied a large fish stranded in a shoal, and, capturing it, he took it to a fishmonger and not only got a price for it but, when it was opened, found a goid ring in its maw. Our Lord was thinking of such common tales. What difficulty was there? Peter was a fisherman, and there were fish in the Lake and a market for them. “Away and let down your line, and see if there be not a shekel in the mouth of the first fish you catch.” It was a gentle sarcasm, nor was Peter so dull as to miss its meaning.
Peter would put out that night to the fishing, but it was still day, and until nightfall Jesus communed with the Twelve. The scene was Peter’s house, which was the Lord’s abode at Capernaum ; and He began Llis discourse by inquiring what it was that they had been debating so hotly that morning on the road. They hung their heads, ashamed to tell Him that they [ p. 224 ] had been disputing which of them would be greatest in His Kingdom. Without more ado He taught them a much needed lesson. A child, surely Peter’s, was in the room and, beckoning the little lad to His side and encircling him with His kind arm, “Verily I tell you,” said He, “unless you turn and become as children, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” There is no ambition in a child, no selfish striving, but only a clinging trustfulness and loving obedience; and what a human father finds in his children, the Heavenly Father requires in His. To trust our Father and simply do His will with loving hearts, seeking to please Him and leaving the future at His disposal— this is peace and the way to spiritual greatness.
On this theme the Master discoursed, and His rebuke went home to His disciples. Thinking to extenuate their offence and represent their ambition as rather zeal in His cause, John interposed and related an incident which had occurred, probably, to himself and James in their prosecution of the recent mission in southern Galilee. They had encountered a disciple who was healing sick folk in the Master’s name, and they had prohibited him because he was not an Apostle and therefore, as they judged, was usurping the apostolic prerogative. “Do not prevent him,” said Jesus ; “for one who is not against us is for us.”
It was a common proverb ; and there was a companion proverb which our Lord quoted on another occasion : “He who is not with Me is against Me.” (Cf. Mt. xii. 30; Lk. xi. 23) Contradictory as they appear, these are but two sides of the truth and neither is complete without the other. The latter maxim had an interesting origin. Some six centuries before the [ p. 225 ] time of our Lord it was enacted by the Athenian legislator Solon that a citizen who stood neutral during an insurrection, taking neither side, should be accounted a rebel and so treated when order was restored. “It seems,” observes Plutarch, “that he would not have us be indifferent and unaffected with the fate of the public, when our own concerns are upon a safe bottom ; nor when we are in health, be insensible to the distempers and griefs of our country. He would have us espouse the better and juster cause, and hazard everything in defence of it, rather than wait in safety to see which side the victory will incline to.” And the principle which holds thus in the civil domain holds equally in the moral and religious. Where a moral issue is involved, neutrality is an immoral attitude. One who witnesses a villainy without protesting against it and at all hazards crying shame upon it, thereby constitutes himself a party to it; and it is simply a confession of pusillanimity and an aggravation of his guilt if he pleads afterwards that, though he held his peace, he disapproved it.
And what of the maxim which our Lord quotes here : “One who is not against us is for us” ? It is a pithy rebuke of partisanship in politics and sectarianism in religion ; and it is the complement of the other proverb and quite as needful for us to lay to heart. It would be well for the State, sweetening the communal life and facilitating the establishment of a better order, were it recognised that, however they may differ regarding the best way of attaining it, good men are all seeking one and the selfsame end—the welfare of their country and their people And how well it would be for Religion ! There have [ p. 226 ] always been and always will be diverse opinions on ecclesiastical administration and doctrinal definition; and no man is an heretic who loves the Lord and seeks His honour.
That unknown disciple was no Apostle, but he was doing the Master’s work. His success was God’s seal upon his ministry, and when John and James frowned upon him, they were condemning what God had approved. They were discouraging one who, less privileged than themselves, loved the Lord no less. And that was a grave offence. If it were a foul wrong to lay a stumbling-block before a blind man (Lev. xix. 14), surely it was more heinous still to put hindrances on the road to Heaven. “Better for you,” says Jesus, employing a familiar proverb, “to be cast into the sea with a millstone round your neck.” In the world’s sight that unknown disciple was a humble personage, “small and despised ” (Ps. cxix. 141); but he had faith and love in his heart, and such are precious in the sight of God and His holy angels, those ministering spirits whom He sends forth to attend the heirs of salvation (Heb. i. 14; Ps.xci. 11.), giving them charge over them to keep them in all their ways. “See,” He cried, “that you do not despise one of these little ones ! For I tell you that their angels in Heaven continually look on the face of My Father in Heaven.”
In thus reproving in the Twelve a spirit all too reminiscent of Pharisaic and priestly arrogance, our Lord in no wise depreciated the authority wherewith He had invested them at Caesarea Philippi for the administration of the community of His believing people or, as He here again styles it (Cf. Mt. xvi. 18,19.), [ p. 227 ] His “Church.” Observe the name. It is in Greek ecclesia ; and this was originally a term of Greek polity, denoting the popular assembly at Athens, the body of representatives “called forth” from the multitude of the citizens to deliberate and determine in their name on questions of common concern. In the Hebrew Scriptures the congregation of Israel, the gathering of the people on high occasions, was designated by two terms—* edah , “assemblage,” and qahal, “convocation” ; and these are accurately though indiscriminately represented in the Greek version of the Septuagint by synagoge and ecclesia. Thus the terms passed into the sacred vocabulary of later Judaism ; and when the Scribes instituted their effective system of religious education, they found a name ready to hand for the “houses of instruction” which they established in every town and village. They called these “synagogues.” By and by, when our Lord required a name for the holy community which He founded, He appropriated the other term ecclesia. It excellently served His purpose, at once proclaiming the kinship of Christianity with the historic faith and distinguishing it from the decadent order of contemporary Judaism. And surely the Scribes were ill advised when they chose “synagogue” rather than “ecclesia,” since the latter is a richer term, signifying not a mere “assembly” but a community divinely “chosen and called.”
And here the Lord shows His Apostles the manner of Christian discipline. “If your brother sin, go, reprove him between you and him alone. (Dt. xix. 15) If he hearken to you, you have gained your brother; but if he do not hearken, take with yourself one or [ p. 228 ] two more, that ‘ at the mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be established.’ And if he refuse to hear them, tell the Ecclesia; and if he refuse to hear the Ecclesia, let him be to you as the heathen and the taxgatherer.” Here, in the first place, He confirms the authority which at Caesarea He had conferred upon His Apostles and all who after them should be ordained to rule the community of the faithful. And, in the second place, He reminds them of its limitation. It was not a personal authority : it belonged to them as representatives of the holy community, and no individual judgment was valid unless corroborated by conference and consent. Where one sits alone in judgment, his verdict may be warped by prejudice or passion; but where several take prayerful counsel, personal bias is eliminated and their common judgment accords with the will of God. “I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about any matter which they pray about, their doing of it will be the doing of My Father in Heaven. For where there are two or three assembled in My name, there am I in their midst.”
Thus should we deal with one who has wronged us, in no wise retaliating but bearing patiently with him and exhausting every device to win him to a better mind. Surely, thought the disciples, there is a limit to forbearance; and Peter interposed with a question. “Lord,” said he, “if one sins against me and after I have forgiven him he just repeats the wrong, how often am I to forgive him ?” The Jewish rule was : “Forgive thrice, and there the duty ceases” ; but Peter knew that the Lord would require more, [ p. 229 ] and he suggested a more generous limit—“As often as seven times ?” “No,” was the answer, “not seven but seventy-seven times.” (Cf. R.V. marg.) The reference here is to that ancient story of primaeval savagery in the Book of Genesis—how Tubal-cain, the first worker with metals, learned the art of fashioning deadly weapons (Gen. iv 24); and his father Lamech, a descendant of Cain, the first murderer, exulted in the advantage which his son’s invention afforded him over his enemies. “If,” he cried, “Cain, with no weapon in his hand, was avenged seven times, I shall now be avenged seventy-seven.” Reverse that reckoning, says our Lord. Even as seventy-sevenfold was the measure of the savage heart’s lust for vengeance, so let it be the measure of your generosity in forgiving. Forgive as largely as once you hated.
Even that, however, was not enough, and He proceeded to better it. We must forgive those who wrong us as freely and fully as God has forgiven us. Forgiveness is the measure of forgivingness. He tells of a king who found his affairs seriously embarrassed and instituted an investigation. It emerged that the blame lay with one of his ministers who, like Joseph in the house of Potiphar, had been entrusted with absolute control and had appropriated no less than ten thousand talents—more than £2,000,000 (Gen. xxxix. 6). It was an enormous, practically an impossible defalcation ; and for this very reason it justly represents our measureless indebtedness to God. The king was indignant and, after the irresponsible manner of an oriental potentate, not only confiscated the rascal’s property but doomed himself and his wife and children to be sold as slaves. The wretch prostrated himself [ p. 230 ] and implored clemency. “Bear with me,” he cried, “and I shall pay you everything.” The king’s heart was touched, and he not merely released him but remitted all his enormous liabilities—again an impossible procedure for a human creditor but all the truer a picture of God’s dealings with His debtors.
Surely it should have been a lesson to the man, binding him not alone to grateful and devoted service of so generous a master but to a like generosity toward his fellows who, in far less degree, were indebted to himself. But what followed ? Hardly had he left the court when he encountered another officer of the royal household who owed him the paltry debt of an hundred denarii —some £3, 10s.; and he took him by the throat and demanded instant payment. “Bear with me, and I shall pay you,” pleaded the man in the very words which he had himself used a little earlier ; but he would not listen and cast the poor soul into prison. The story was carried to the king, and he was shocked and indignant. He summoned the heartless villain before him and, revoking his pardon, sentenced him, after the inhuman fashion of the day, to be tortured on the rack till he disgorged his ill-gotten wealth.
The Lord had returned to Capernaum but not to stay. His ministry there was ended, and His thoughts were now turning to Jerusalem and the death appointed for Him there. Henceforth He would devote Himself to the Holy City and address to her rulers and people a last appeal. It was now late in the month of August, 28 A.D., and it was time that He should betake Himself to this the closing task of His earthly ministry ; and His purpose was to travel slowly southward, [ p. 231 ] preaching as He went. It would be His last progress through the land, and He desired that His appeals by the way should prevail. And what did He do ? He chose seventy of His disciples and sent them two by two in advance to the various places along the route which He meant to visit, that they might prepare the people’s hearts to receive His message.
Since their mission would occupy some time, He lingered a while after their departure ; but He did not remain at Capernaum. His work there was done, and He would fain revisit the inland of Galilee where He had so often preached during those two eventful years. So He quitted the city, and on attaining the western uplands whither He had been wont to retire when He would be alone with God, He paused and, looking back, surveyed the scene which He was leaving for ever—the lovely Plain of Gennesaret, the blue Lake, and the soft hills beyond, and northward the towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida Julias. There He had lavished His love and grace, yet how meagre the response which He had won ! how bitter the enmity of the rulers! how worthless the plaudits of the multitude, so enthusiastic over His miracles, so blind to His spiritual purposes ! His heart overflowed, and a lamentation broke from His lips : “Alas for you, Chorazin ! alas for you, Bethsaida ! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they had long ago repented in sackcloth and ashes. I tell you it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the Day of Judgment than for you (Isa. xiv. 13,15). And you, Capernaum—will you be ‘ exalted to Heaven ’ ? You will be 1 brought down to Hades.’ For if the mighty works which were done [ p. 232 ] in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. I tell you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom at the Day of Judgment than for you.”
He went His way, and presently we find Him discoursing in some village. Hardly had He ceased when a voice from the crowd greeted Him. It was no response to His message nor yet a sufferer’s cry for help. It was a request for His intervention in a graceless dispute. Two brothers had quarrelled over their dead father’s property, and one of them, rightly or wrongly thinking himself aggrieved, appealed to the Master. “Teacher,” said he, “bid my brother apportion the inheritance with me.”
It was a sordid business, and the request jarred upon Jesus, engaged as He was with higher concerns. “Man,” He replied, “who appointed Me judge or apportioner over you ?” and turning to the crowd, He addressed a warning to them. “See,” He cried, “and guard yourselves from every sort of grasping greed; for it is not so that when one has enough and to spare, his life is derived from his possessions.” Then He enforced the lesson by a parable. He told them of a farmer who tilled his land so well that he found his barns too small for his overflowing harvest. “What shall I do ?” said he, and thought it over. “This I shall do” was his resolution :”1 shall pull down my barns and build bigger.” Then he pictured the golden future. A few more teeming harvests, and he would be a rich man with all that heart could wish. “I will say to my soul, ‘ Soul, you have many goods in store for many years : take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.'” That speech betrayed him. No [ p. 233 ] wickedness is laid to his charge. His wealth was honourably won by honest industry and shrewd enterprise, not by sweating his workers or cornering wheat, nevertheless he had made a ruinous blunder (Cf. Pro. xi. 26). Engrossed in his crops, his cattle, and his marketing, he had bestowed never a thought upon those higher and infinitely more momentous concerns— death, judgment, eternity. He had left these out of his reckoning and neglected his spiritual nature till now it was atrophied and he could conceive nothing better for his immortal soul than “eating and drinking and making merry.” In the very moment of his secure complacency he had a rude awakening. He had filled the cup of his pleasures, and just as he was raising it to his lips, it was dashed from his hand. “God said to him, ‘ Fool! this night your soul is required of you. And the things which you have provided—who will have them ? ’” This was the outcome of his striving and planning and hoarding— a lost soul and a disputed inheritance !
Afterwards, according to His wont when He was alone with the Twelve, He enlarged upon the parable and read them a lesson which they would have need to remember amid the privations of their apostolic ministry in days to come. He had called them to “leave all and follow Him.” It was not for them to lay up treasures on earth. Their treasure was in Heaven—a better treasure, secure from decay and plunder ; and if their hearts were there and their eyes turned thither, they would be well content and never fret about their worldly estate or be afraid of the morrow. Fretting is faithless. If they were heathen, it would be natural for them to be troubled about food [ p. 234 ] and raiment; but believing in God, they should trust His fatherly care. He feeds the wild birds and clothes the wild flowers with more than royal beauty ; and will He let His children lack ? And fretting is foolish too, embittering the present with apprehensions which are seldom realised.
“Troubles that never come make most grey hair ;
And backs are bent by loads they never bear.”
The golden secret lies in seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, doing each day’s duty and trusting Him for the morrow.
One day distressful tidings arrived from Jerusalem. Nowhere was the passion for liberty so strong or hatred of the Roman tyranny so keen as in Galilee, and nowhere did the Messianic Hope, the expectation of a Coming Deliverer, enkindle more frequent insurrection. Hence the Galileans were in ill odour with the masterful Procurator Pontius Pilate, and he had now added another to the long catalogue of his severities. A company of Galileans visiting the Holy City had incurred his suspicion, and his officers had fallen upon them in the Temple-court and massacred them, in the grim language of the Evangelist, “mingling their blood with their sacrifices.” Several of them, belonging to the neighbourhood where the Lord was now engaged, had escaped and returned home with a report of the atrocity. It horrified the community, all the more that it was a Jewish belief that calamity evinced divine displeasure and the sufferer’s guilt (Job iv. 7). “Who,” it was written, “ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off ?” This was the vexing thought of the people when they heard [ p. 235 ] the tidings, and they recalled another disaster which had befallen at Jerusalem recently, when a tower by the Pool of Siloam collapsed and crushed eighteen persons to death.
There was indeed a moral in the disaster, but it was not the moral which they were disposed to draw. You are fancying,” said Jesus, “that these Galileans were found sinners beyond all the Galileans because this has befallen them ? No, I tell you ; no, but unless you repent, you will all perish likewise.” What did He mean ? It was their rebelliousness, inspired by their conception of the Messiah as a national deliverer and their expectation of His immediate advent, that had provoked the massacre of those Galileans ; and their fate was a premonition of the doom which must inevitably overtake the whole nation if it persisted in its turbulence. Rome would surely lose patience and quench the ever smouldering sedition in blood. So indeed it came to pass some forty years later when Jerusalem was overthrown by Titus and the Jewish people scattered over the face of the earth. It was their secular dream of a Messianic King and a Messianic Kingdom that ruined them ; and meanwhile the hope of averting disaster lay in their recognition of the true Messiah and their submission to His gracious and peaceful dominion.
It was now their day of grace, but it was swiftly passing, and by a parable He warned them of the doom which would surely befall them unless they repented betimes. He told of a husbandman who had a fig tree growing not by the wayside but in the rich soil of his vineyard. Set there, it should have been fruitful, but for three successive years it remained barren. He lost [ p. 236 ] patience. Cut it down,” said he to his vinedresser. “Why should it keep the ground idle ?” “Sir,” pleaded the vinedresser, “let it be for this year too, until I dig about it and manure it on the chance of its bearing fruit. Else you will cut it down.” It was a picture of the Jewish people, so highly favoured, so obdurately irresponsive. Would they, in these thendays of final probation, repent and be saved ?
Again, one Sabbath Day He was teaching in a village synagogue. In the congregation there was a woman who for eighteen years had been crippled, apparently by rheumatism, and He took pity on her. “My woman, said He, laying His hands on her, “you are unloosed from your infirmity.” It gladdened the worshippers when they saw their poor neighbour no longer crooked and helpless, but the Ruler of the Synagogue was displeased. The miracle was a violation of the Rabbinical law which, as we have seen, enjoined that only where life was in danger was it permissible to apply remedies on the Sabbath “Are there not,” said he to the applauding congregation, “six days when you should work ? On them therefore come and be healed and not on the Sabbath Day.” His colleagues signified approval, and Jesus turned indignantly upon them. “You hypocrites!” He cried, “you play-actors! Does not each of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from its stall and lead it away to watering ?” It was an appeal to the instinct of humanity, all the more effective in view of the Rabbis’ casuistical manipulation of their Sabbath law in the case alleged. To carry water to a beast in its stall would have been Sabbathbreaking ; but since the beast must be watered, it was permissible to untether it and lead it out to the water [ p. 237 ] and let it drink of its own accord. Where a beast, valuable as property, was concerned, they could thus evade the regulation ; “and should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom,” says our Lord, deftly employing their theory of sickness as an argument against them, “Satan has bound, look you, for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath Day ?”