[ p. 283 ]
THE cleansing of the Temple was a bold act: but, though Jesus had done it as his Father’s Son, it was not more than the people expected of a prophet. And to prove that the people were on his side we need not the express word of Mark that all the common people were astonished and thrilled at his teaching: without the open enthusiasm of the people he could not have accomplished his cleansing of the Temple. Those vested interests would not have retired at the command of a prophet, even though the prophet were Jesus of Nazareth. They gave way to a man on whose words the people hung.
The chief-priests and the Pharisees, the members of the great Sanhedrin, were quickly aware of this threat to their authority and to the priestly revenues. On the next day when Jesus was walking and teaching in the precincts, some of them came to him and asked : “By what authority do you [ p. 284 ] do these things? Who gave you the authority to do them?”
Jesus, surrounded by his eager listeners, replied :
“I will ask you a single question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John was it from heaven or from men? Answer me!”
At first it seems a masterly evasion. But indeed Jesus’ question went straight to the heart of the matter. John’s baptism had been crucial in his life : with his baptism had come that knowledge of God and his own relation to God, by which all his subsequent acts had been determined. From his baptism a straight road led to the place where he now stood, in the central shrine of Judaism, doing battle with the champions of the Law in their own citadel. John’s baptism may mean little enough to us to-day : as we see it, it was only the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace which Jesus would have conquered without it. But it meant, and it must have meant, much to Jesus: to him the inward event and the outward occasion were inseparably one. And the early Christians did well and truly in making baptism [ p. 285 ] the primary sacrament of the Christian Church, though Jesus himself baptized no one. By baptism, as by ho other sacrament, a man is fitly dedicated to the following of the man Jesus.
On John’s baptism, as the outward sign of the inward elevation, Jesus felt that his authority did truly rest Was it divine or human, from God or from men? For John’s baptism of Jews was new in the history of Judaism. It was the creation of the prophet who had believed in the imminence of the Wrath to Come—a mark set upon those who verily repented of their sins and thus escaped the justice of God. Jesus knew well that neither the priestly aristocracy of the Sadducees nor the Pharisees, the fervid worshipers of the Law, could admit the divine appointment of John or his sacrament. For both of them, the means of purification was sacrifice and the place of purification the Temple where they stood. But there were the people, crowded about Jesus, listening to his teaching: they believed that John was veritably a prophet ordained by God and Jesus his true successor.
Jesus’ claim, implicit in his question, was simply this : that he was indeed a prophet, upon whom the [ p. 286 ] mantle of John had fallen at his baptism. And this was the only claim to an outward and visible authority that he could make. The rest, the very substance, of his authority was inwardly derived it shone in what he said and did and was. Had he tried to prove it to men blind, by conviction and interest, to these things, what words could he have used save that he was sent by God? Directly to claim God for the source of his authority before the Sadducees and Pharisees would have been madness. He claimed no more than to have been consecrated to his mission by the baptism of John.
“Was it from heaven or from men? ” They could not say “Yes”; they dared not say “No.” They replied that they could not say: they did not know.
Jesus answered: “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
At no moment in his career does the swift and subtle, yet strangely simple, genius of Jesus appear so evidently as in his conflicts with his great and’ learned adversaries. The gesture of his mind, become the perfect instrument of his spirit, has the beauty of finality. His words are become so familiar to us from childhood that it is hard for our [ p. 287 ] adult intelligence to stand away from them and see that they might have been other than they were. They have acquired, through the ages, the simplicity of predestination.
Yet, if we can surprise ourselves into unf amiliarity, and hear them as though they were uttered for the first time to-day, one quality shines out from them above all others. These are not the words of a visionary or a dreamer; they are the words of a man who lived completely in this world of men—and lived in it the more completely because his spirit breathed another air. The fundamental detachment he had conquered gave him a more certain command of the mundane reality, as though he saw it distinctly and fully from a mountain-top. He reckons his adversary and his situation in an instant, lets fly his arrow, soft and swift as a smile; and the victory is his. This carpenter of Galilee was the Man of men.
The members of the great Sanhedrin “were afraid of him.” They might well be: he was invulnerable. “They sought how they might destroy him.” There was nothing else that they could do : they could only vanquish his body. His spirit had vanquished theirs, and vanquished it forever. For [ p. 288 ] these replies of his could never be forgotten : they had in them a mastery which was indelible from the memory of even the simplest mind. Against such a man the great ones could compass but one thing—his bodily death : thereby they were to set the seal upon his victory. Yet even that was not easy for them to compass. He had done no wrong, spoken no blasphemy. He knew his adversaries and their powers: what they could do and what they could not do. He made no claim that they could seize upon. Until he chose, they were impotent against him: he was the master of his destiny.
He turned to the members of the Sanhedrin, and said:
“What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He went to the first and said : ‘ My son, go and work in the vineyard to-day.’ He answered, ‘I will go, sir,’ and did not go. The man went to his second son and said the same. He answered, ‘I will not’ ; but afterwards he repented and went Which of the two did his father’s will?”
They answered : “The second.”
Jesus said:
“Verily I tell you that the tax-gatherers and har [ p. 289 ] lots will go before you into the Kingdom of God. For John came to you to declare the road to righteousness, and you would not believe him. But the tax-gatherers and the harlots believed him. But you, when you saw that, did not repent afterwards and believe him.”
So Jesus drove home the significance of John the Baptist. For himself, as the last and greatest figure in the succession of Jewish prophets, it was tremendous. Not merely had the divine inheritance passed more fully to him through John’s baptism; but his own destiny as Messiah depended upon the recognition of John as a prophet and more than a prophet—as Elijah which was for to come. In the mind of Jesus himself, who had recognized him, first as a prophet when he sought his baptism, and then, as his own solitary and sublime destiny began to take shape in his soul, as more than a prophet, John’s position legitimized his own. As he had grown since John baptized him, so John had also grown, until at last, at the moment he himself became Messiah, John became Elijah. An imprisoned and beheaded Elijah, for a suffering and crucified Messiah—it was well.
But this thought was for himself and his nearer [ p. 290 ] disciples alone. He was content to vindicate John as a prophet as he stood now before the people and the members of the Sanhedrin. For the rest he would speak in parables. Out of his question concerning the sons in the vineyard sprang to his need the vision of a greater vineyard. He said :
A man planted a vineyard, and set a ditch round it, and digged a wine-press and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went to live abroad. At the appointed time he sent a servant to the husbandmen, that he might receive his due of the fruits of the vineyard. They took the servant and thrashed him and sent him away empty. Again he sent another servant to them. Him they beat on the head and dishonored. He sent another. Him they killed : and many others—some they beat, and some they killed. He had but one remaining a son whom he loved. At the last he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will have regard to my son.’ But those husbandmen said to themselves : ‘This is the heir. Come let us kill him,’ and they threw his body out of the vineyard.
“What will the lord of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy those husbandmen and give the vineyard to others.”
[ p. 291 ]
The Disputes in the Temple After a pause he said : "Have you never read this in the Scriptures?
“The stone which the builders rejected is become the head stone of the corner:
“This is the Lord’s doing: and it is a wonder in our eyes.
“Therefore I say to you : The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you and shall be given to the heathen who bear the fruits of the Kingdom.”
And he added, mysteriously :
“Whoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken in pieces ; and on whomsoever it shall fall—it shall grind him to powder.”
Mysteriously, because his words had no immediate connection with the previous thought, or with the meaning he had given his quotation from the 1 1 8th Psalm. The rejected stone had been not himself, but the heathen who should inherit the Kingdom. But the words have the ring of authenticity. And for Jesus now the rejection of the Kingdom and of himself who would have led the way thither were indeed the same: he was the Kingdom, now that he was Messiah-to-be. He who had been the son seeking brothers to enter the Kingdom with him, having found none, had become [ p. 292 ] the ineffable Judge who should establish it with power. Those mysterious words were the murmur of his secret knowlege.
Then the members of the great Sanhedrin went away. Their plan had been to expose and discredit Jesus before the people who heard him gladly; it had failed, and they instead had been discomfited. When they had gone, Jesus spoke another parable:
A man prepared a great banquet, and invited many. When the time of the banquet was come he sent his servant to say to the invited guests, ‘Come now, for all is ready.’ And they all began with one accord to excuse themselves. The first said to the servant: ‘I have bought some land, and I must go out and inspect it. Pray let me be excused.’ Another said: ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, t and I am going to try them. Pray let me be excused.’ Another said: ‘I have married a wife: therefore I cannot come.’ And the servant came to the lord and told him this. Then the master of the house was angry, and said to his servant: ‘Go out quickly into the squares and alleys of the city, and bring in hither the poor, the beggars, the blind and the lame.’
[ p. 293 ]
And the servant said: What you commanded is done, my lord, and there is still room.’
“And the lord said to the servant: ‘Go out into the roads and hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be full to overflowing. For I tell you that none of those men who were invited shall taste of my feast.’ ”
That is Luke’s version of the parable ; he more closely represents the original than does Matthew, whose version is a mixture of two or even three different parables. Jesus was concerned at this moment with the rejection of his message and of the Kingdom by the leaders of Jewry : the common people and the heathen would be the chosen guests of the Lord. He could speak with knowledge, for he as Messiah would choose them.
But the members of the Sanhedrin had not given up their hope of entangling him in argument. On another day they tried to force out of him a declaration of hostility to the Rom^n power. They had failed to elicit from him a blasphemy on which they themselves might condemn him, with popular approval; now they sought to make him declare himself a revolutionary and bring him under a Roman condemnation. They said to him :
[ p. 294 ]
“Master, we know that you are true, and have no respect of persons. For you do not regard men’s outward : but you teach the way of God in truth. Is it right to pay tribute to Caesar or not? Shall we give or not give?”
He answered :
“Why do you tempt me? Bring me a shilling that I may see it.”
They brought it.
He said :
“Whose is this image and this inscription?”
They said: “Cesar’s.”
He said:
“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Then they brought before him a woman taken in the act of adultery, and they said to him :
“Master, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commands us to stone such creatures. But what say you?”
Jesus bent down, and began to write with his finger or the ground. But they stood there and asked again. Then he raised himself up and said to them:
[ p. 295 ]
“Let the sinless one among you cast the first stone at her.”
He bent down again and wrote on the ground.
Then they went away, one by one, beginning with the older men, till Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Then Jesus lifted himself up, and seeing the woman alone, said to her:
“Woman, where are your accusers? Did none of them condemn you?”
“No one, sir.”
“Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and sin no more.”
The story does not belong to the original text of the fourth Gospel. It is a fragment of the primitive tradition, which surely bears its authenticity written upon it.
Then came some of the priestly aristocracy, the Sadducees, men of a different stamp from the Pharisees, the least Jewish of the Jews, with more than a tinge of the religious indifference of the cultivated Hellene, though they held the priestly offices in Jerusalem : enemies of Jesus, no less than the Pharisees, but rather as men whose prestige and revenues were threatened by his actions than [ p. 296 ] as men who, like the Pharisees, held strongly and sternly to another God than his. It is not easy to distinguish their true lineaments at this distance of time; but perhaps we may describe them as the realists among the Jews: their tradition was that of a ruling caste and they held aloof from the developments of the later Pharisaic religion—true traditionalists, they disregarded that later “tradition” which the Pharisee had created and which Jesus denounced : they denied the vague beliefs in the resurrection of the body and the existence of angels and daemons to which the Pharisees, representative in this of the common piety of the race, had come. The Sadducees rejected such beliefs, finding for them no authority in the Pentateuch, by which alone they held; they were remote indeed from the transcendent Messianic expectation in which the fervid aspiration of the Jewish people now found its comfort Their home was in Jerusalem; they had little contact with the people at large ; and Jesus himself, as the Gospel narratives show, had little contact with them. Jewish piety was represented by the Pharisees alone: his constant conflict with them was inevitable. But the Sadducees were as foreign to him as a Cardinal [ p. 297 ] of Rome might be to a village prophet. Except that Jesus was, and was not, a village prophet.
Some Sadducees came and said to him:
“Master, Moses commanded us that if a man’s brother die and leave a wife but no child, the man should take his brother’s wife and raise up seed to his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife and died and left no seed. And the second took her and died, leaving no seed. Likewise the third. And the seven of them left no seed. Last of all the woman herself died. In the resurrection, when they rise from the dead, whose wife shall she be? For she was wife to the seven of them.”
Jesus answered :
Are you not astray, because you do not know either the Scriptures or the power of God? For when men rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are married, but are as the angels in heaven.
“But as for the dead, that they rise from the dead, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the place concerning the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ God is not [ p. 298 ] the God of dead men, but of living ones. You are far astray.”
The reply may seem remote from us now, but it is precious. It gives something of the quality of Jesus’ belief in the life to come. The resurrection for him was not the resurrection of the body, as indeed it cannot be for any true religious thinker. The resurrection was for him an ineffable condition in which all bodily limitation was transcended ; it was a condition of being perpetually in the presence of God. Strange, yet inevitable, that on the death of this man should have been built the dogma of the bodily resurrection.
And how bold, how creative, was his interpretation of the words of Exodus ! It sprang, not from the text of Scripture, but from a knowledge of God. “God is not the God of dead men, but of living ones.” That was not a deduction, but an immediate certitude ; as was also his belief in a resurrection. They were derived immediately from his knowledge of God. In his communion with God he touched the condition “when there shall be no more time”: life and death, past, present, and future, were but manifestations of the one Eternal whom he knew as Father. There was no arguing [ p. 299 ] with the Sadducees : they did not know “the power of God.” They built their foolish dialectic on the assumption that the conditions of the world in time obtained in the timeless world of God. “You are far astray,” he said, simply.
One of the scribes a learned Pharisee heard the debate, and was impressed by Jesus’ part in it He came forward and asked him :
“Which is the first commandment of all?”
Jesus said :
“The first commandment is : ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And : Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind and all thy strength.’ The second is this: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
The scribe said :
“Master, you have said truly that He is one and there is none other save Himself. And ‘to love Him with all thy heart and all thy understanding and all thy strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself’ is more than all holocausts and sacrifices.”
[ p. 300 ]
Jesus said : “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”
Then, says Mark, no one dared to question him any more. Instead Jesus himself asked a question. But the men of the Sanhedrin were gone. He said to the people :
Why do the Scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? When David himself, speaking in the Spirit of God, said:
‘The Lord said unto my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool. ’
“David himself calls him Lord. How then can he be his son?”
The words are precious : first, because in them Jesus by his own manifestly authentic saying shatters the legend of his birth in Bethlehem, from the line of David. He was not of David’s house ; nor was he born in Bethlehem. Again they are precious because they reveal the working of his mind as he fitted Scripture to his own secret knowledge of himself as Messiah. He too had probably once believed that the Messiah must be the son of David : now he knew that he was the [ p. 301 ] Messiah, and not the son of David, but the son of God. He put it to them as an abstract question, calmly. The throbbing reference to himself none but his chosen knew. Again, they are precious because through them we gain a glimpse of his expectation of his own destiny. In the words of the 1 1 8th Psalm, from which he quoted concerning the head stone of the corner, “he would not die, but live” : and he would be uplifted to sit on the right hand of God until the world was made ready for his coming in power to establish the Kingdom of God to shatter the world in time in order that God’s timeless world might be.
And finally they are precious because they tell us of the triumph song that was ringing in Jesus’ soul.
This is part of the i loth Psalm :
The Lord said unto my Lord, “Sit thou at my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool.”
Yes, the Lord shall send thee from Zion the sceptre of thy rule; he shall make thee reign in the midst of thine enemies; thou shalt be arrayed in the holy vestments.
On the day thou comest to power, thou art supreme, living and fresh like the dew of the morning.
The Lord hath sworn, and will not change: “Thou shalt be a priest for ever, like Melchizedek of old.”
[ p. 302 ]
And this is part of the iiSth Psalm:
I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.
The Lord hath chastened me grievously; but he hath not left me to die.
Open to me the gates of victory: I will go into them to praise the Lord.
This is the gate of the Lord: which only the righteous shall enter.
I give thanks unto thee, for thou didst answer me, and didst save me.
The stone which the builders rejected is become the head stone of the corner.
This is the Lord’s doing: and it is a wonder in our eyes.
The glorious music of those songs of victory out of defeat echoed in Jesus’ soul as he stood in the midst of his enemies. They had been sung of him, sung for him, centuries ago.