[ p. 303 ]
ONE day as they were leaving the Temple, one of his disciples said to him:
“Master! Look, what great stones! What huge buildings!”
Jesus answered :
“You see these huge buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.”
It has often been supposed that this was a prophecy of the destruction of the Temple in the great siege a generation later. Therefore it has been welcomed by those who love prophecies, and rejected as a posthumous invention by those who disbelieve in them.
But the specific reference is mistaken. Jesus was not foreseeing, nor was he concerned to foresee, the destruction of Jerusalem by the legionaries of Titus. He was describing the Last Things—that final moment of chaos which should accompany [ p. 304 ] his own advent as Messiah. He was to go to the very verge of death; he was to be taken up and set upon the right hand of God ; there he would remain till the moment came for his advent upon earth, to judge both the quick and the dead and establish the Kingdom of God. At that moment the whole earth would be involved in chaos and tribulation: of which the overthrow of the great Temple was but a single part—the mightiest, because the most symbolic and significant. For the great Temple was to Jesus veritably the House of God on earth.
The faith may be strange to us : that Jesus held it there is little doubt There is equally little doubt that at all times in that period of his life which is known to us he believed in the imminence of the Last Things and the End of the World. John the Baptist had proclaimed it: Jesus had gone out to be baptized by him into that change of heart (for that is the nearest equivalent of the word we translate by “repentance”) which should secure the changed man from the wrath of God. Only when John had been prevented by imprisonment from continuing to proclaim his message had Jesus’ own ministry begun. It was, historically, a [ p. 305 ] continuation of John’s mission. The End of the World was always at hand ; nor was the wrath of God ever far away.
And this is too easily forgotten; it is indeed inevitable that it should be forgotten. The Jesus who is vivid to us is the Jesus of all time—the Man of Love—and we forget the Jesus of his own time. The Jesus who was utterly different from the men of his day is the Jesus who has perennial significance. The expectation of the End of the World is become remote and strange; the process of history has annihilated it from our consciousness. We can scarcely make real to ourselves the certain fact that for Jesus there was no such thing as the process of history. The world in time was for him ever on the brink of the plunge into timelessness.
And at first when we force ourselves, as we must, to make this dominant strain in the consciousness of Jesus real to our imagination ; when in order to come near to him, we try, as we must, to live ourselves for an hour or a day into his expectation of an absolute and universal change—we find a baffling paradox in the man’s love and delight of the life that is. It is hard to hold them together in a single act of comprehension ; yet they must be held [ p. 306 ] together. To lose hold of the one or the other is to be condemned to misunderstanding.
Perhaps we may best approach the paradox in this way. All that is unique in Jesus derives directly from his own power of love ; from this came his knowledge of God as a loving Father, his knowledge of himself as God’s son, his knowledge that the coming Kingdom of God consisted in a fraternity of sons, his knowledge that the way to enter it for any man was to know himself, and to live, as the son of God, and his knowledge that this was possible for every man. A superb equality and a divine privilege were thus the birthright of mankind. In other words Jesus knew the nature of the Kingdom—this was the “mystery of the Kingdom of God” which he proclaimed.
But it was to come suddenly ; it was to come according to the Messianic expectation of his day. The love of God had not abolished the wrath of God. It was simply that those who were turned and were changed would enjoy the love of God. The emphasis had shifted: men could become God’s sons and enter into his Kingdom of Love; but if they refused—the judgment and the wrath of God still awaited them. The Messiah would [ p. 307 ] come, and come quickly, to judge the world, and to condemn those who had not hearkened to the wonderful news of Jesus and become God’s sons.
The crucial change in the soul of Jesus, which came to pass between his baptism by John and his journey to Jerusalem, was his realization that he was to be that Messiah. From the knowledge that he was God’s son he passed inevitably to the knowledge that he was God’s only son; from that knowledge he was bound to pass to the conviction that he was the Son of Man in the sense of the book of Daniel, the anointed Messiah, the Christ, God’s great Deputy and Judge. While he, like his followers, expected another for Messiah, he could live in this human life ; but the moment he knew that he himself was to be Messiah, then he must be changed. He had to become a truly superhuman being, which he knew he was not: only death could work that change.
So the chain of predestination is complete. Jesus’ love created him first God’s son, then God’s only son, then Messiah-to-be. The creation necessarily accomplished itself within the forms of the belief which he shared with his aation. What he was was greater, far greater than the forms of his [ p. 308 ] belief ; but without the forms of his belief he could never have become what he did become.
His mind was filled to overflowing with the thought of his destiny. That was not to be spoken of publicly in the Temple. The secret was known to his chosen alone, and to them it was a mystery, as it must needs have been. How could the living man they loved, who stood before them and spoke to them, be, how could he become the transcendental and ineffable figure of Messiah? Jesus himself could not have told them. He would die, and yet he would not die. Even he could know no more.
He sat on the Mount of Olives looking out over the great city. His disciples were with him. He thought of his strange destiny, and said: .
Jerusalem, Jerusalem! that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent to her, how often have I longed to gather thy children together, as a bird gathers her chicks under her wings ; but ye would not. Behold your house is left desolate. For I say to you, you shall not see me henceforward until you shall say :
“ ‘Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!’”
[ p. 309 ]
Not till he returned from God’s right hand in the unearthly glory of Messiah should Jerusalem see him again.
His teaching in the Temple was over ; the time of his sacrifice was at hand. On the Mount of Olives, looking down upon the city which had refused him, he spoke to the disciples of the time between his departure and his coming again.
His veritable words must be sought rather in his parables of the Coming than in the long chapter concerning signs of the End in the Gospel of Mark, where fragments of Jesus’ authentic speech have become inextricably entangled with the expression of the hopes and fears of the early Church.
In the parables the stress falls almost wholly upon the suddenness of his coming. He will come like a thief in the night, like a master home from abroad, like a bridegroom returned from a marriage feast. From the parables it seems clear that in Jesus’ own expectation there would be no sign of the Coming, and that the long list of signs in the eschatological chapter of Mark is, for that reason alone, apocryphal, Jesus was no lover of signs, save those alone which were eternally present— [ p. 310 ] the signs of the times. And we may be fairly sure that the parable of the fig tree—“When its branches are soft and put out leaves, you know that summer is near. So you, when you see these things happen, know that He is near, at your door” had no real reference to the context of visible catastrophe into which it has been inserted. The signs of his coming could only be spiritually discerned.
He had spoken of the advent of the Messiah openly in the Temple, though with no hint of the secret that the Messiah would be himself. And to them also he had spoken only of signs which are no signs :
When you see a cloud rise in the west, you say, ‘There is a shower coming,’ and so it is.
When you feel the south wind blow, you say, ‘It will be hot,’ and so it is.
“Hypocrites, you know how to decipher the look of earth and sky, how is it you cannot decipher the meaning of this era?”
The Coming would be sudden, and there would be no sign. The great catastrophe, the passing away of heaven and earth, the downfall of the Temple—these were not signs of the end, but the end itself. When his disciples asked him privately [ p. 311 ] when these things should be, Jesus told them frankly that he did not know.
“The day and the hour of these things no one knows—not the angels in heaven, nor the Son—but only the Father.”
That sentence is visibly authentic: neither the early nor the later Church invented such a stumbling-block to Christology. And it is congruous with all we know of Jesus that he should have freely acknowledged his ignorance. He knew only that he would come with power and glory to be the Judge of men. Earth and heaven alike would be no more. The timeless and transcendental order would have begun.
The parables of the Coming have but one purport: the disciples must be ready for the day. They must be prepared for the suddenness of the Advent, and for the Judgment. In the parable of the Ten Virgins it is the suddenness that is insisted on.
“Then shall the Kingdom of Heaven be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps, but took no oil as well; the wise took oil [ p. 312 ] in their bottles as well as their lamps. But the bridegroom was late in coming, and they all grew sleepy and slept At midnight there was a shout : ‘The bridegroom is coming! Come forth to meet him!’ Then all those virgins awoke and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise: ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered: ‘No, or there will not be enough for both of us. Go to the market and buy oil for yourselves.’
And while they were going away to buy, the bridegroom came, and the virgins who were ready entered with him, and the door was shut. Afterwards the other virgins came and cried: ‘Lord, Lord ! Open to us and let us in.’ But he answered :
‘Verily, I say to you: I do not know you.’
“Watch, therefore, for you know not the day or the hour,”
There are traces of other versions of this parable in Luke, but the variations are of no consequence : perhaps it was told, certainly it was remembered, in more forms than one.
Jesus spoke of himself not only as a bridegroom suddenly coming to bid the marriage feast begin, but as the master of a house who goes abroad leaving [ p. 313 ] the charge of his house and the care of his possessions among his servants.
As when a man goes away and leaves his house and gives his servants authority, to each one his work, and bids the doorkeeper watch. Watch, therefore. For you do not know when the master of the house is coming—late, or at midnight, or at daybreak, or in the morning. Lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.
“Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Verily, I tell you, he will put on an apron and make them recline at table and come forward to wait on them. Whether he comes in the second or third watch of the night and finds them thus alert, blessed are they.”
But the servant’s duty is not merely to watch for the return of his master, but faithfully to administer his master’s possessions while he is away.
“Where is the trusty and thoughtful steward whom the master will set over his establishment to give out supplies at due time? Blessed is that servant if his master finds him so doing when he arrives. I tell you plainly he will set him over all his property.”
Possibly this version of Luke’s is a mixture of [ p. 314 ] the previous parable and the parable of the Talents : but the confusion, if confusion it is, is unimportant; and Luke has probably preserved an authentic saying of Jesus.
The servant who knew his lord and master’s orders and did not prepare for them, will receive many lashes :
Whereas he who was ignorant and did what deserves beating will receive few lashes.
“He who has much given him will have much required of him : and he who has much intrusted to him will’ have all the more demanded of him.”
There were evidently three main parables of the Coming: one of the sudden coming of the bridegroom, another, of the sudden return of the master to his house left in charge of his servants, and a third, of the nature of his judgment upon his servants for what they had done with his property in his absenceIn the Gospels these fade into one another. Only the first and third have a quite definite form in the parables of the Ten Virgins and the Talents.
Luke states that the parable of the Talents was spoken “as he was nearing Jerusalem, and as his disciples imagined that the Kingdom of God [ p. 315 ] would immediately appear.” And to that place it has been given. But obviously it would be fantastic to try to establish any precise chronological order in Jesus’ teaching after the recognition at Caesarea. Nobody knows how long Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem lasted ; nobody knows who is right—Luke, in putting the parable of the Talents as spoken on the way to Jerusalem with a particular purpose which it suits scarcely so well as some of his earlier parables, or Matthew, in placing it as spoken in Jerusalem. Yet Luke is certainly right in placing the parable of the Talents some time before the parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Between the utterance of those two parables, Jesus’ conception of the judgment he would pass, as Messiah, upon the world had changed. When he spoke the parable of the Sheep and the Goats he had ceased to think in terms of his disciples, or of his servants, or of a nascent community. he was leaving behind. Yet such are the thoughts behind his parables of the Coming. He leaves behind a band of followers t he is not certain of them, but on the whole he trusts them. They do not understand his teaching, yet they will be loyal to that in it which they do understand. They will suffer grievously [ p. 316 ] for their loyalty, but perhaps they have learned enough of the nature of God the Father to endure steadfastly until the coming of the unknown day when Jesus will return as Messiah.
So Jesus sought to animate his disciples with a courage not unworthy of his own, that they might endure through the interspace of tribulation before the unknown day of his coming as Messiah. He would come, he believed, in a little while : his disciples would not have long to wait. They must be faithful to his teaching, loyal servants of the master of the house whom the enemy had called Beelzebub. The persecution that had been his portion would be theirs also. The bitterness of realization is in his words :
You think I came here to bring peace. No, I tell you—dissension.
“After this there will be five at issue in one house, three divided against two, and two against three father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
Jesus had once believed that he had come to bring not only peace, but gladness—the wonderful [ p. 317 ] news. He had learned the lesson that every great man after him who has sought to bring new birth to the souls of men has learned : that nothing more surely provokes the hatred of the world than the knowledge that he is steering by a star they cannot see.
Do not think I came to bring peace to the earth ; I came not to bring peace, but a sword.
I have come to set fire to the earth—and if only it were kindled already, what more do I desire?
“I have a baptism to undergo. How can I endure till it be accomplished?” The terrible tension of Jesus’ spirit during the last days in Jerusalem is in those words. He spoke, as he had spoken to the sons of Zebedee, of the baptism he was awaiting. It was not a vague metaphor. What he had imagined was indeed a second baptism : as he had been born again in Jordan into the knowledge that he was God’s son, so now he was to be reborn yet again into Messiah. But the days of waiting were terrible. The supreme effort of will, by which he not only compelled himself to his destiny, but daily faced, with outward calm, his enemies in the Temple, with perfect clarity of vision turning aside their attempts to [ p. 318 ] entangle him on other issues than the one he had chosen, made supreme demands upon him. When he had escaped from the public eye and was alone with his disciples, his words betrayed the throbbing fever of his strained impatience for the end. Long he must have talked with his disciples, seeking to nerve them to the ordeal, in vain.
Long before his capture in the Garden he was convinced that they would abandon him. It did not matter. As his destiny had been conceived, so it must be endured, alone. Only those would stand by him who understood him, and there were none. And so his mind passed away from the thought of a faithful band who would continue to proclaim the good news, work with their talents, spread the Kingdom, while he was gone. It was no use asking for such things from men, even from men who loved him. How could they teach, how could they suffer for, how could they enter, a Kingdom of God they did not understand? He had made the gate too narrow : he must fling it wide as the wide world itself. He said :
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he shall sit on his throne of glory. And all the nations shall be [ p. 319 ] gathered before him : and he shall divide them as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats ; and he shall put the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left.
Then the King shall say to those on his right hand : ‘Come, you blessed of my Father, and inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food ; I was thirsty and you gave me drink ; I was a stranger and you took me in ; naked, and you clothed me ; I was sick, and you nursed me ; I was in prison and you visited me.’
“Then shall the just answer and say:
‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? When did we see you a stranger and take you in? Or naked and clothed you? Or in prison and visited you?’
Then the King shall answer and say :
‘Verily, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of these the least of my brothers, you did it to me,’
Then he shall say to those on his left :
'Away from me into the everlasting fire that is prepared for the Devil and his angels.
“ ‘For I was hungry and you gave me no food ; [ p. 320 ] I was thirsty and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger and you took me not in; naked and you clothed me not; sick and in prison and you looked not after me.’
Then they also shall answer and say:
‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or naked or in prison and did not minister to you?’
Then he shall answer and say :
‘Verily, I say to you : inasmuch as you did it not to one of these least, you did it not to me.’
“And they shall depart into eternal punishment ; but the just to eternal life.”
Such was the last of Jesus’ parables; fitly, the last, for it is the greatest of all. Into its lovely simplicity he gathered all his knowledge : what he had been, what he had become, and what he was to be. He had been the great lover of mankind, he had become the Son of God, he was to be the Messiah and Judge. And all these things, in this last parable, are blent into one. He is the great Judge ; but he judges men by the love they have shown, not to himself, not to his chosen, but to any man. For all men were his brothers. By their love and by their love alone would this Judge judge mankind. One forgotten act of love should save a man’s soul [ p. 321 ] alive; one cup of cold water given in love to a beggar on the highway should bring a man into the Kingdom and make him the brother of God’s only son.
In that sublime parable all the paradox of Jesus’ destiny is dissolved away. In it he was true to all that he had been and had become ; in those words we hear the voice -of the Man of men on the brink of his sacrifice true words. For, whatever we may believe, whatever we may know, if our souls are alive at all, we are judged by Jesus of Nazareth. One act of love, and we live ; and the loveless ones are damned everlastingly. The gentlest, the sternest, the most inexorable judgment ever to be passed on man : for it is indorsed by the secret soul of man.