[ p. 353 ]
THE FINAL APPEAL
Ml xxiii. 1-7, 13-36; Mk. xii. 38-40; Lk. xx. 45-47, xi. 39-54. Jo. xii. 20-50.
Thus ended the long controversy between our Lord and the rulers. Pharisees and Sadducees, they had sought by turns to “ensnare Him in argument” and put Him to confusion before the multitude (Mt. xxii. 15), and they had been ignominiously worsted in each encounter. Last and heaviest of all was the humiliation which had overtaken the Scribes, and they would fain have retired from the scene ; but He was not done with them, and ere they could extricate themselves from the encompassing throng He assailed them with a stern indictment. It was indeed a stern indictment, surely the most terrible ever spoken; yet it was no mere denunciation. Rather was it, as an ancient interpreter justly entitles it, “a commiseration of the Scribes and Pharisees.” Its recurring apostrophe “Alas for you, Scribes and Pharisees, play-actors !” is a cry of compassion ; and we miss its spirit and its purpose unless we catch the accent of pity quivering in its sternest sentences. In truth it is the Saviour’s last appeal to His obdurate enemies, portraying their guilt and presaging its inevitable retribution in the hope that even yet they may repent.
First He addressed His attendant disciples and the thronging crowd. “Beware,” said He, “of the Scribes. They are seated on Moses’ chair : therefore all that they [ p. 354 ] tell you, do it and observe it; but do not after their works.” Surely a stinging censure ! As the official successors of Moses and the custodians of his Law, their office was venerable and their precepts authoritative; but their character shamed their office and their practice belied their precepts. “What seemed to be their honour,” says St. Chrysostom, “He makes their condemnation. For what can be more miserable than a teacher when it saves his disciples to pay no heed to his life ?” Was proof required ? It was there before all eyes. Look at those Rabbis in their flaunting robes (cf. Num. xv. 38-40.). See how long they wear their tassels advertising their ceaseless meditation on the Sacred Law, and how broad their phylacteries, those strips of parchment inscribed with holy texts on their foreheads and left arms (Ex. xiii. 3-16; Dt. vi. 5-9, xi. 13-21). Think how they claim the places of honour at feasts and the front seats in the synagogues and reverential salutations. They wear the guise of sanctity, but it is all a hollow pretence, mere play-acting.
“Alas for you. Scribes and Pharisees, play-actors !” He cried, turning to those abashed dignitaries and casting in their teeth a succession of indignant charges. “You shut the Kingdom of Heaven in men’s faces.” They had blocked its approaches with their dead traditions ; they had choked the living fountain of the Word with the rubbish of their inventions, and every one who would have cleared it away they persecuted as an heretic. “You do not enter yourselves, nor those who are entering do you suffer to enter.”
Yet they were zealous proselytisers. It was a triumph for them when they won converts from [ p. 355 ] heathenism, especially wealthy converts who enriched them with their offerings. But it was no triumph foi the Kingdom of Heaven. For their converts abjured their heathenism only to learn worse villainy. “Alas for you. Scribes and Pharisees, play-actors! You scour sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice the son of Gehenna that you are.” It was a heavy charge, but none too severe ; for the Rabbis were experts in casuistry, rivalling the Jesuits whom Pascal satirises in his Provincial Letters Throughout the ancient world an oath was held in exceeding reverence, and the Jews in those later days had acquired an evil reputation by their cunning evasions of its sacred obligation. It was their Rabbis that taught them the mischievous art. They distinguished between oaths which were binding and oaths which were not binding. If, for example, a Jew swore " by the gold of the Sanctuary,” he brought his money within the consecrated category and it would have been sacrilege for him to deal dishonestly with it; but if he swore merely “by the Sanctuary,” there was no such restraint. Similarly, unless he swore “by the offering upon the altar” and not merely “by the altar,” his oath had no sanctity and he might repudiate his obligation. Or if he swore “by heaven,” that might be construed as meaning merely “the sky,” and so he was not bound unless he swore “by the Throne of God.” So convenient a religion attracted knaves, and it is no wonder that proselytes had an ill name with decent Jews, who stigmatised them as “a scab on Israel.” They brought shame on the race and its faith. A Jew’s oath was everywhere distrusted. “You deny it,” says the Latin epigrammatist, “and [ p. 356 ] swear by Thundering Jupiter. I don’t believe you: swear, circumcised, per Anchialum”—meaning the Hebrew oath 'im hai 'elohim, “as God liveth.”
Such quibbles were characteristic of the Rabbis, who were ever scrupulous of the letter and regardless of the spirit. The Law claimed a tenth of all fruits in token of the consecration of one’s entire possessions (Lev. xxvii. 30); and the Rabbis fulfilled the re quirement with punctilious exactitude, tithing their very pot-herbs. But in consecrating these they left their hearts unconsecrated. “Alas for you, Scribes and Pharisees, play-actors ! You tithe your mint and your anise and your cummin, and have let slip the Law’s weightier requirements—judgment and mercy and fidelity. Blind guides !” He cries, hitting them off with a succession of familiar proverbs, “you that strain out the gnat and gulp down the camel. You cleanse the outside of the cup and the platter, while within they are full of rapacity and incontinence.”
“Rapacity and incontinence ”—truly a startling indictment, yet those “holy men ” were guilty on both counts. History tells how in the dark preReformation days, when a peasant died, the greedy priests invaded his poor cot and before the eyes of the weeping widow and orphans bore off their perquisites, the “cors presants ” — his best cow and the coverlet of his bed.
“Quhen that he lyis for til de
Having small baimis twa or thre,
And hes thre ky withoutin mo.
The vicar must have ane of tho.
With the gray cloke that happis the bed
Howbeit that he be purelye cled.”
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And the Rabbis rivalled the mediaeval priests. “The stroke of the Pharisees has touched you” was the consolation administered by one Rabbi to a widow whom another had plundered. “Beware of the Scribes, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretext make long prayers. Full and overflowing judgment will they receive.” And of their incontinence hideous things are recorded. Suffice it to recall the story of Susanna and the Elders. “Alas for you, Scribes and Pharisees, play-actors! You resemble white-washed tombs.” There was ceremonial defilement in contact with the dead, and lest men should touch them inadvertently, Jewish tombs were picked out in white, receiving a fresh coat at the close of the rainy season just before the Passover. “You resemble white-washed tombs, showing fair without but full within of dead men’s bones and every sort of uncleanness.”
On the shoulder of Mount Olivet, visible from the court of the Temple and gleaming in the sunshine as our Lord spoke, stood the Tombs of the Prophets, those monuments which the Jews of later days had reared to the sacred memory of the martyrs of old. He pointed thither. “Alas for you. Scribes and Pharisees, playactors ! You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the sepulchres of the righteous ; and you say: ‘ If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’” It was an idle protestation ; for while they deplored their fathers’ crimes, were they not treating the prophets of their own day even as their fathers had treated the prophets of old ? They were plotting the Lord’s death, and they would persecute His Apostles after Him. “Fill you the measure of [ p. 358 ] your fathers. Serpents! brood of vipers! how are you to escape from the judgment of Gehenna ? It is for this end, look you, that I am sending messengers to you, prophets and wise men and scribes (Cf. Mt. xiii. 52), and some of them you will kill and crucify and some of them scourge in your synagogues and hunt from city to city—that on you may fall every drop of righteous blood ever shed on the earth from the blood of Abel the righteous (Gen. iv. 8) to the blood of Zechariah whom you slew between the Sanctuary and the Altar.” (2 Chr. xxiv. 20-22) There had indeed been man y a martyr since Zechariah, that young priest who in the reign of Joash (836-797 B.C.) had protested against the apostasy of the king and princes and been stoned to death in the court of the House of the Lord; but the story is told toward the close of the second Book of Chronicles, and since that book stands last in the Hebrew Bible, “every drop of blood from Abel to Zechariah” means, in Jewish phrase, every impious crime recorded in Holy Scripture from the first page to the last. “Verily I tell you, all thk will come on this generation.” And so it did. Many of our Lord’s hearers that day in the court of the Temple survived to witness the final tpagedy, the siege of Jerusalem in the year 70, when the famished citizens stealing out in quest of food were captured and crucified about the city walls until, in the shuddering phrase of the Jewish historian, “room was lacking for the crosses and crosses for the bodies.”
The long day was wearing late as those solemn words fell on the ears of the Scribes and the awestricken multitude. It was the Lord’s last public discourse, and He was weary and sad. Eventide was approaching, [ p. 359 ] and it was time for Him to leave the city with the Twelve and seek their retreat on Mount Olivet; but first it was necessary that they should procure food for their supper in Gethsemane, and Philip the purveyor with his friend Andrew went on this errand into the city, leaving the Master to rest in the Temple-court. As he went about his business, he was accosted by several strangers. They were Greeks or, as the word signified, Gentiles; and what were they doing in Jerusalem ? They had come up, says the Evangelist, to worship at the Feast; and, as we have already seen, it was nothing unusual at chat period for Gentiles to participate in Jewish worship. It was a period of religious disintegration in the pagan world. The ancient mythology was the jest not merely of philosophers but of all intelligent men ; and the gods whom it had created, while still officially recognised, had no votaries save the credulous and superstitious multitude. And for this very reason it was, like every period of intellectual emancipation, a period of profound disquietude. “Thou hast made us for Thyself,” says St. Augustine, “and our heart is restless until it find rest in Thee” ; and earnest souls in their hunger for God turned hither and thither for satisfaction. The mystic faiths of the East cast their spell on the western world, and it is no marvel that many seekers after God were attracted by the faith of Israel. In its lofty monotheism and its pure ethic they found somewhat of the satisfaction which they craved, but its ceremonial was distasteful to them. And thus, though they would not embrace it outright and confess themselves proselytes by submitting to the rite of circumcision, they joined in the worship of the synagogues and frequently [ p. 360 ] attended the great Feasts in the Temple, exhibiting an exemplary devotion and sometimes a lavish liberality.
Such were the good Centurion of Capernaum, that other Centurion, Cornelius of Caesarea, and the Ethiopian Chamberlain. Neither Jews nor proselytes, they were distinguished as “fearers” or “worshippers of God” ; and under this designation they figure largely in the Book of Acts. (Lk. vii. 2-10; Ac. x, viii. 26-40.; Cf. x. 2, 22, xiii. 16, 26, 50, xvii. 4,17.)
Those Greeks who accosted Philip were “Godfearers/’ and like the Ethiopian Chamberlain they had come to Jerusalem to worship at the Feast. At home in their own country they had heard the fame of our Lord; and what they had heard of His teaching and His doings had stirred within them the thought that they might learn from Him the secret of that peace which they had in some measure found in the Jewish Faith. Perhaps it was the hope of meeting with Him that had brought them to the Feast. Since they did not travel with the Jewish pilgrims or mingle on their arrival with the Jewish throng, they had to make inquiry for Him. Philip was pointed out to them as one of His disciples, and so they accosted him. “Sir,” said they, “we wish to see Jesus.” He turned to his companion and told him of the request, and they conducted the strangers to the Temple-court and presented them to the Master.
Weary though He was and vexed by the dulness of the Jewish people and the hostility of their rulers, He gladly received them. Their coming was indeed opportune. A moment ago it had seemed as though His ministry were closing in failure, and when those Gentiles appeared before Him eager to hear the message [ p. 361 ] which Jerusalem had scorned, He recognised in them the forerunners of that great multitude from every nation and people who would yet believe in His name (Jo. x. 16), those other sheep that would hear His voice and be gathered into His fold. He bade them welcome and sat communing with them, listening to their questions and presenting to them the truths of His evangel. There is no detailed record of His discourse, since it was a novel and unexpected incident, taking the disciples by surprise; but. the Evangelist has noted his recollection of it. It is not a report but a bare outline, and in indication hereof he has not. incorporated it with the narrative but, as a modern author would have made it a footnote (xii. 44-50), so he has appended it at the close. One thing, however, he vividly remembered—the tone and bearing of the Master. “Jesus,” he has written, “cried and said”—a frequent phrase of his, expressive, as he employed it, of strong emotion. And what were the truths which the Lord thus proclaimed? His divine mission and His oneness with God ; the illumination which His message brings to the soul that believes it; the responsibility which the hearing of it entails; the loss of rejecting it and the eternal bliss of receiving it.
His appeal awoke in those earnest souls a response which filled His heart with exultant gladness. It was a triumph in the hour of seeming failure and a foretaste and pledge of a larger triumph still. “The hour has come,” said He to His attendant disciples, “for the Son of Man to be glorified.” It was not the glory which they, with their Jewish ideal of an earthly throne, were dreaming of. What awaited Him was a cruel and shameful death, but this, little as they [ p. 362 ] knew it at the moment, was the pathway to glory. For is it not from the dying of the seed that the rich harvest springs ? Is it not by the sacrifice of his life that the hero wins immortal honour and the triumph of his cause ? That was the pathway which the Lord must tread and which His disciples must tread after Him.
Here suddenly He falters. The horror of the impending ordeal rose before Him, and the question presented itself whether it were indeed inevitable. Was there not an easier way ? Once, at the Feast of TaberCf. jo. vii. nacles when He was reasoning with the rulers 33 35 ’ there in the Temple-court, He had warned them that the time was short and He would soon leave them ; and they had supposed that He meant to forsake the obdurate Jews and betake Himself to the Gentiles. And now, in view of the responsiveness of those Greeks, the idea recurs to Him. He was the Saviour of the world and not of Israel alone, and why should He stay in Jerusalem and suffer that cruel death when the myriads of heathendom were hungering for God and would surely welcome His message ? “Now is My soul troubled, and what am I to say ? Father/’ He cried, “save Me from this hour ! But immediately He dismissed the thought. It was His Father s will that He should die, according to the Scriptures, a sacrifice for the sin of the world. All His days He had been treading the pathway to the Cross, and He would not now turn aside and seek a smoother road. Hitherto He had sought only His Father’s will, and He would seek it to the last. “Nay, it was for this that I came to this hour. Father, glorify Thy name.”
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Thus once more by resignation to His Father’s will He conquered His human weakness and addressed Himself to the completion of His appointed task* It was truly a momentous decision, involving the world’s destiny; and what wonder that, even as at His Baptism in the Jordan as He entered on His mission, so now at its close the silence was broken by a voice from Heaven ? (Mt. iii. 17; Mk. i. 11; Lk. iii. 22) “Father,” He had prayed, “glorify Thy name” ; and the answer came: “I have glorified it and again will I glorify it.” It was no mere voice within ; for the people who thronged about Him heard it and wondered at it. The more remote could not distinguish the words and took it for thunder; but those who were near heard it plainly and took it for the voice of a ministering angel. But He knew Whose voice it was and wherefore He had spoken. It was more than a cheering assurance of His Father’s approval. Had that been all, no articulate voice would have been needed: a voice within would have sufficed. “It is not,” said He, “for My sake that this voice has come but for yours.” It was not merely, like the voice by the Jordan at the beginning of His ministry, an attestation of His Messiahship but a proclamation of the triumph which He would presently achieve by His sacrificial death. That was the supreme crisis of human history—God’s arraignment of the power of evil, His dethronement of its long tyranny, and His enthronement of redeeming grace. “Now is this world’s assize; now shall the prince of this world be cast out; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” Thus by the seeming tragedy of His [ p. 364 ] lifting up on the Cross would the Son of Man be glorified.
Even for the disciples it was as yet a dark saying, and it perplexed the multitude. It seemed to them as though He were speaking in a double character. On the one hand, He claimed to be the Messiah, “the Son of God,” and His claim had in their judgment been signally attested first by His triumphant controversies with the rulers and then by the heavenly voice. But now He styles Himself “the Son of Man,” and speaks not merely of the Son of Man being “glorified” but of His being “lifted up from the earth.” It was this latter phrase that puzzled them. They had understood that by “the Son of Man” He meant Himself, and had He spoken merely of the Son of Man being “glorified,” they would have felt no difficulty; but what could He mean by “the Son of Man being lifted up” ? The phrase plainly signified His removal; and was written in that psalm which He had quoted in their hearing a little ago and is in other scriptures that “the Messiah remains forever” ? (Ps. cx. 4; cf. Ps. lxxxix 36; Is. ix. 7; Dan. vii. 14) We have heard from the Law,” they exclaimed in bewilderment, “that the Messiah remains for ever ; and how say you that ‘ the Son of Man must be lifted up ’ ? Who is this Son of Man ?”
He did not stay to resolve their perplexity. The shadows of evening were fading, and it was time for Him to seek His retreat on Olivet; and soon His meaning would be discovered by the progress of events. A little while longer the light is among you. Walk while you have the light, that the darkness may not overtake you. While you have the light, believe [ p. 365 ] in the light, that you may become sons of light.” Therewith He “went away and was hidden from them.” They watched Him retreating with the Twelve amid the gathering gloom, and it was the last they saw of Him till they saw Him lifted on the Cross.