[ p. 144 ]
SINCE his disciples had returned from their mission, many had come out into the desert place to see him. Doubtless the Twelve had told the handful in each city and village who listened to their message where they might find the Master. Mark tells us of much coming and going, and little leisure for Jesus and his closer followers even to eat.
At last there were thousands gathered there: the five thousand of the miraculous feeding. They did not find it easy to get food in that remote place, and doubtless they were wont to scatter themselves about in the villages for miles around for food: lodging they can hardly have sought when they followed one who had no place to rest his head.
What is the historical truth that lies behind the story of the miraculous feeding it is not easy to discern. It has been suggested that it was a sacramental meal, partaken by those who would enter [ p. 145 ] the Kingdom, as the earnest of the day when they would eat with the Son of Man; and of all possibilities this appears the most likely, for it most closely corresponds with what we can gather of the historical situation at this moment.
For the thousands who were now collected in the desert place about Jesus were not as the thousands who had pressed upon him when he preached on the Capernaum side of the lake. Those had been a curious and motley crowd, chiefly eager for miracles ; these were in some sort or other chosen men. They had listened to the disciples’ preaching of the Kingdom ; and they had gone out to follow a fugitive, a fugitive who would lead them into the Kingdom, it is true, but still a fugitive. Whatever these men were, and whatever they may have understood, of Jesus’ message, they were the elect; they believed.
But in what did they believe? In the coming of the Kingdom. But of what Kingdom? Of the timeless Kingdom or the Kingdom in time? Many earnest minds have striven to return a single and definite answer to that question. But it is not possible. We cannot say of the Messianic expectation of the pious and simple Jew of those days that [ p. 146 ] it was either earthly or heavenly; it was both. As ever in the human mind, the spiritual reality and the material symbol were not distinct They expected both the end of the world and the glorious epiphany of a triumphant earthly king. There was to be a catastrophic change ; if they conceived what should be after the change under material forms, who shall blame them? Did Jesus’ own near disciples do otherwise? Could they do otherwise? Has ever any great body of men at any time done otherwise?
Did Jesus himself do wholly otherwise? He knew otherwise; and because he knew otherwise he had to declare his knowledge; and because he had to declare his knowledge, even to himself, the material symbol played its part. For “we live by manifestations,” and the thought of the Kingdom of God is strictly ineffable. It cannot be expressed, but only experienced and lived. Which of the highest animals before the coming of the first tiny homo sapiens could conceive the human consciousness that was on the brink of birth? To conceive it, he needed to have it. “To him that hath it shall be given.” It was, and is, exactly thus with [ p. 147 ] the thought of the Kingdom of God. That is nothing less than a total change in man’s consciousness. “Except ye be born again ye can in no wise enter the Kingdom of God.” After that birth man would be as different from man as man is from the brute. But that is an inconceivable miracle? No less a miracle has happened many times in the great process of Life. And that very miracle did happen to a man. It happened to Jesus of Nazareth. That alone is why the eyes of the world, blind and seeing, have ever since been fixed upon him.
Jesus had believed that the miracle of rebirth into a new condition of consciousness which had happened to him would happen to all men: the spirit would be instantly poured out upon all flesh as he proclaimed the mystery of the Kingdom of God. Just as one man’s mode of perception becomes an objective reality the moment all men share it, so the Kingdom of God—the condition of consciousness in which Jesus actually lived—would swiftly and suddenly become a reality as the Word of the Kingdom sank into all men’s hearts. But men’s hearts were hard, the soil stony. They could not receive the mystery of the Kingdom of [ p. 148 ] God; they could not thus triumphantly prepare themselves for the coming of the Son of Man. If all men had received the mystery, then the coming of the Son of Man would have been an instant and joyful consummation of the inward change they had achieved. But most men had turned a deaf ear to the wonderful news and refused the mystery ; to them the coming of the Son of Man would be a judgment of wrath.
Jesus had done his utmost to save them. He had taught them, he had besought them, to reach the new consciousness by themselves—to become members of the Kingdom here and now and thus be assured of their happy vindication before the dread Judge who would come to establish the Kingdom with power. Out of all Israel five thousand had hearkened to him. These were with him now. Those who had followed him from the first, those who had obeyed the summons of the Twelve and gone out to him, were all, in some degree, sons of God and members of the Kingdom: if they could not receive, they had not refused the mystery. Now they were waiting for the ineffable moment of the coming of the Son of Man. At that [ p. 149 ] coming the eyes of the others also would be unsealed, but only to comprehend the necessity of their own damnation.
When the five thousand were with him, they and he were waiting momently for the coming of the Kingdom. For him that meant a rebirth of the world of men; what it meant for the five thousand, who can say? Something wonderful, a change, a condition of things when every tear should be wiped from every eye : something prodigious, too, the coming of the Messiah in clouds and great glory. Did it mean that for Jesus, too? It may have done ; it may be that he, too, expected a material symbol of the change. He was not yet become for himself Messiah-to-be, the promised One. Such terrible, wonderful knowledge is not born in a moment. It is first a spark, then a flame, then a fire of certainty. At this moment Jesus also may have been waiting for the glorious epiphany of the Messiah ; but he knew, with a clear and unshakable knowledge, what was the change of which that epiphany would be the sign.
It may be that the feeding of the five thousand was a sacramental meal partaken of by those who [ p. 150 ] had come out to follow Jesus into the Kingdom . and wait the coming of the Messiah. As they had eaten together in this world, so they would eat together as brothers in the world to be—the brotherhood of God’s sons.