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07 - Jesus of History by Terrot R. Glover · Jesus of History

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Speaker 1: Chapter six of The Jesus of History by T. R. Glover.
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Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter six,
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Speaker 1: Jesus and Man. When on his last journey Jesus came
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Speaker 1: in sight of Jerusalem, Luke tells us that he wept.
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Speaker 1: There is an obvious explanation of this, in the extreme
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Speaker 1: tension under which he was living. Everything turned upon the
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Speaker 1: next few days, and everything would be decided at Jerusalem.
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Speaker 1: But while he must have felt this, it cannot have
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Speaker 1: been the cause of his weeping. Nor should we look
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Speaker 1: fritt altogether in the appeal which a great city makes
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Speaker 1: to emotion, dull would he be of soul? Who could
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Speaker 1: pass by a sight so touching in its majesty. Yet
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Speaker 1: it was not the architecture that so deeply moved Jesus.
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Speaker 1: The temple, which was full in view, was comparatively new
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Speaker 1: and foreign. There is little suggestion in the Gospels that
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Speaker 1: art meant anything to him. Perhaps it meant little to
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Speaker 1: the writers. As for the temple, he found it a
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Speaker 1: den of thieves, and he prophesied that it would be demolished,
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Speaker 1: and all of its splendid buildings, its goodly stones and
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Speaker 1: votive offerings, which so much impressed his disciples. Not one
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Speaker 1: stone would be left upon another stone. But the traditions
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Speaker 1: of Jerusalem wakened thoughts in him of the story of
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Speaker 1: his people. Thoughts were a tragic color. Jerusalem was the
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Speaker 1: place where prophets were killed, the scene and center at
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Speaker 1: once of Israel's deepest emotions, highest hopes, and most awful failures.
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Speaker 1: Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, he had said in sad, as he
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Speaker 1: thought of Israel's holy city, which killers the prophets, had
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Speaker 1: stonest them that are sent unto thee. How often would
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Speaker 1: I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth
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Speaker 1: gather her brood under her wings, And ye would not.
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Speaker 1: And now he is in sight of Jerusalem. The city
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Speaker 1: and the temple suddenly meet his view as he reaches
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Speaker 1: the height, and he is deeply moved. Any reflective mind
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Speaker 1: might well have been stirred by the thought of the
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Speaker 1: masses of men gathered there. Nothing is so futile as
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Speaker 1: an arithmetical numbering of people, For after a certain point,
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Speaker 1: figures paralyze the imagination, and after that they tell the
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Speaker 1: mind little or nothing. But here was actually assembled the
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Speaker 1: Jewish people, coming in swarms from all over the world,
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Speaker 1: for the feast, knew as Judaism had its most pious.
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Speaker 1: Here was the pilgrim's center, with all it meant of
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Speaker 1: aspiration and blindness, of simple folly and gross sin. The
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Speaker 1: sight of the city, the doomed city, as he foresaw,
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Speaker 1: the thought of his people, their zeal for God, and
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Speaker 1: their alienation from God. It all comes over him at once,
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Speaker 1: and with a sudden rush of feeling. He apostrophis as Jerusalem.
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Speaker 1: If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this
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Speaker 1: thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but
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Speaker 1: now they are hid from thine eyes, Thou knewest not
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Speaker 1: the time of thy visitation. It is quite plain from
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Speaker 1: the Gospels that crowds had always an appeal for Jesus.
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Speaker 1: At times he avoided them, but when they came about him,
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Speaker 1: they claimed him and possessed him. Over and over again
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Speaker 1: we read of his pity for them. He saw a
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Speaker 1: great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, of
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Speaker 1: his thought for their weariness and hunger, his reflection that
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Speaker 1: they might faint by the way on their long homewer journeys,
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Speaker 1: and his solicitude about their food. Whatever modern criticism makes
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Speaker 1: of the story of his feeding multitudes, it remains that
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Speaker 1: he was markedly sensitive to the idea of hunger. Gyrus
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Speaker 1: is reminded that his little girl will be the better
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Speaker 1: for food. The richer urged to make feasts for the poor,
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Speaker 1: the maimed, and the blind. The owner of the vineyard,
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Speaker 1: in the parable pays a day's wage for an hour's work,
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Speaker 1: when an hour was all the chance that the unemployed
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Speaker 1: laborer could find. No sanctity could condone for the devouring
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Speaker 1: of widow's houses. The great hungry multitudes haunt his mind.
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Speaker 1: The story of the rich young Ruler shows this. Here
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Speaker 1: was a man of birth and whose face and whose
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Speaker 1: speech told of a good heart and conscience, a man
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Speaker 1: of charm of the impulsive type that appealed to Jesus.
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Speaker 1: Jesus looked on him. We read the words. Recall Plato's
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Speaker 1: picture of Socrates looking at the jailer, how he looked
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Speaker 1: up at him in his peculiar way, like a bull.
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Speaker 1: The old man's prominent eyes were fixed on the fellow,
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Speaker 1: glaring through the brows above them, And socrates friends saw
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Speaker 1: them and remembered them when they thought of the scene
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Speaker 1: as Jesus's eyes rested steadily on this young man. The
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Speaker 1: disciples saw in them an expression they knew Jesus looking
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Speaker 1: on him, loved him. Their talk was of eternal life,
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Speaker 1: and no doubt. To his surprise, Jesus asked the youth,
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Speaker 1: if he had kept the commandments, how did he stand
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Speaker 1: as regarded murder, theft, adultery, the stead. He gaze followed
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Speaker 1: the youth's impetuous answer, and then gave the recommendation to
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Speaker 1: sell all that he had and give to the poor,
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Speaker 1: and come follow me. At this we read in a
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Speaker 1: fragment of the Gospel according to the Hebrews preserved by origin.
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Speaker 1: The rich man began to scratch his head, and it
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Speaker 1: did not please him. And the Lord said to him,
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Speaker 1: how sayest thou the law I have kept, and the
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Speaker 1: prophets for it is written in the law. Thou shalt
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Speaker 1: love thy neighbor as thyself. And behold, many who are
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Speaker 1: thy brethren, sons of Abraham, are clad in filth and
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Speaker 1: dying of hunger. And thy house is full of many
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Speaker 1: good things, and nothing at all goes out from it
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Speaker 1: to them. And he turned and said to Simon, his disciple,
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Speaker 1: who was sitting beside him. Simon son of John. It
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Speaker 1: is easier for a camel to go through a needle's
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Speaker 1: eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom
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Speaker 1: of heaven. We need not altogether reject this variant of
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Speaker 1: the story, but it was more than the physical needs
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Speaker 1: of the multitude that appeal to Jesus. Man's unhappiness, as
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Speaker 1: I construe, says teufelstroc in Saturristatus, comes of his greatness.
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Speaker 1: It is because there is an infinite in him, which
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Speaker 1: with all his cunning he cannot quite bury. Under the
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Speaker 1: finite will the whole finance ministers and upholsters and confectioners
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Speaker 1: of modern Europe undertake in joint stock company to make
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Speaker 1: one's shoe black happy. We read in a passage which
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Speaker 1: it is true, is large symbolic that one of Jesus's
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Speaker 1: quotations from the Old Testament was that man shall not
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Speaker 1: live by bread alone. Hunger is a real thing, horribly real,
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Speaker 1: but it is comparatively easy to deal with, and man
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Speaker 1: has deeper needs. The shoe black, according to Teufelsdruck, wants
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Speaker 1: God's infinite universe altogether to himself. In the simpler words
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Speaker 1: of Jesus, he is never happy till he says, I
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Speaker 1: will arise and go to my father. This craving for
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Speaker 1: the father, the men of Jesus's day tried to fill
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Speaker 1: with the law, and when the law failed to satisfy it,
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Speaker 1: they had nothing further to suggest except their fixed idea
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Speaker 1: that God heareth not sinners. They despaired of the great
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Speaker 1: masses and left them alone. They did not realize, as
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Speaker 1: Jesus did, that the Father also craves for his children.
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Speaker 1: When Jesus saw the simpler folk thus forsaken, the picture
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Speaker 1: rose in his mind of sheep worried by dogs or
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Speaker 1: wolves till they fell worn out, sheep without a shepherd.
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Speaker 1: Every one remembers the shepherd of the parable, who sought
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Speaker 1: the one lost sheep until he found it, and how
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Speaker 1: he brought it home on his shoulders. But there is
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Speaker 1: another parable, we might almost say, of ninety nine lost sheep,
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Speaker 1: a parable not developed, but implied in the passage of Matthew.
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Speaker 1: And it is as significant as the other. For our
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Speaker 1: good shepherd has to ask his friends to help him
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Speaker 1: in this case. The appeal that lay in the sheer,
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Speaker 1: misery and helplessness of masses of men was one of
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Speaker 1: the foundations of the Christian Church. The good shepherd by
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Speaker 1: the way is a phrase from the Fourth Gospel, but
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Speaker 1: we think most often of the good shepherders carrying the sheep,
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Speaker 1: and that comes from Luke and is in all likelihood
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Speaker 1: nearer the parable of Jesus. It is worth noticing that
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Speaker 1: Jesus stands alone in refusing to despair of the greater
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Speaker 1: part of mankind. Contempt was, in his eyes the unpardonable sin.
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Speaker 1: How swift and decisive is his anger with those who
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Speaker 1: make others stumble. Parable of the lost sheep reveals what
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Speaker 1: he held to be God's feeling for the hopeless man,
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Speaker 1: And as we have seen, his constant aim is to
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Speaker 1: lead men to think like God. The lost soul matters
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Speaker 1: to God. He sums up his own work in the
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Speaker 1: world in much the same language as he uses about
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Speaker 1: the shepherd in the parable. The Son of Man is
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Speaker 1: come to seek and save that which is lost. The
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Speaker 1: taunt that he was the friend of publicans and sinners
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Speaker 1: really described what he was and wished to be. God
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Speaker 1: was their heavenly Father. The sight then of the masses
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Speaker 1: of his countrymen, like worried sheep, worn scattered, lost and hopeless,
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Speaker 1: waked in him no shade of doubt. On the contrary,
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Speaker 1: it was further proof to him of the soundness of
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Speaker 1: his message. Changing his simile, he told his disciples that
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Speaker 1: the harvest was great, but the laborer is few, and
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Speaker 1: he asked them to pray the Lord of the Harvest
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Speaker 1: to thrust forth laborers into his harvest. The very name
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Speaker 1: Lord of the Harvest implies faith in God's competence and understanding.
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Speaker 1: From the first he seems to have held up before
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Speaker 1: his followers that this wide service was to be their work.
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Speaker 1: Coming after me, he said, and I will make you
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Speaker 1: to become fishers of men, men who should really catch
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Speaker 1: men like all for whom the world has had a meaning. Jesus,
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Speaker 1: as we have seen, accepted the necessary conditions of man's life.
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Speaker 1: Human misery and need were widespread, but God's fatherhood was
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Speaker 1: of compass fully as wide, and Jesus relied upon it.
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Speaker 1: Your heavenly Father knows, he said, and with God all
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Speaker 1: things are possible. The very miseries of the oppressed and
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Speaker 1: hopeless people added ground to his confidence. People who had
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Speaker 1: touched bottom in sound of the human spirit's capacity for misery,
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Speaker 1: were for him the ripe harvest only needing to be gathered.
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Speaker 1: He understood them, and he knew that he had the
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Speaker 1: healing for all their troubles. With full assurance of the
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Speaker 1: truth of his words, he cried, come unto me, all
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Speaker 1: ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will
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Speaker 1: give you rest. He spoke of arrest, which careless familiarity
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Speaker 1: obscures for us. What understanding and sympathy he shows when
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Speaker 1: he adds, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Misery, poverty,
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Speaker 1: and hunger, he had found, taught men to see realities.
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Speaker 1: The hungry, at least were not likely to mistake a
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Speaker 1: stone for bread. They had a ready test for it
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Speaker 1: on which they could rely. Poverty threw open the road
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Speaker 1: to the Kingdom of God. The clearing away of all
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Speaker 1: temporary satisfactions, of all that cloaked the soul's deepest leeds
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Speaker 1: prepared men for real relations with the greatest reality, with God,
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Speaker 1: so that Jesus boldly said, blessed are ye poor, blessed
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Speaker 1: o ye that hunger now, Blessed are e that weep now.
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Speaker 1: But he had no idea that they were always to weep.
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Speaker 1: If it was his to care for men's hunger, it
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Speaker 1: was not likely that he would have no comfort for
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Speaker 1: their tears. Ye shall find rest unto your souls, they
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Speaker 1: shall be comforted. It was in large part upon the
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Speaker 1: happiness which he was going to bring to the poor
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Speaker 1: that Jesus based his claim to be heard. There is
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Speaker 1: little reasonable ground for doubt that he healed diseases. Of course,
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Speaker 1: we cannot definitely plout upon any individual case reported. The
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Speaker 1: diagnosis might be too hasty, and the trouble other than
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Speaker 1: was posed. But it is well known that such healings
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Speaker 1: do occur, and that they occurred in Jesus's ministry we
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Speaker 1: can well believe so. When he was challenged as to
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Speaker 1: his credentials, he pointed to misery relieved and the culmination
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Speaker 1: of everything. The crowning feature of his work he found
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Speaker 1: in his good News for the Poor. The phrase he
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Speaker 1: borrowed from Isaiah, but he made it his own. The
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Speaker 1: splendid promises in Isaiah for the poor, the broken hearted, captives,
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Speaker 1: blind and bruised appealed to him. Time has laid its
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Speaker 1: hand upon his word and dulled its freshness. Gospel and
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Speaker 1: evangelical are no longer words of sheer happiness, like jesus
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Speaker 1: good news. They are technical terms used in handbooks and
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Speaker 1: in controversy. While for Jesus the good news for the
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Speaker 1: poor was a new word of delight and inspiration. The
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Speaker 1: center in all the thoughts of Jesus, as we have
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Speaker 1: to remind ourselves again and again, is God. If, as D. D. S.
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Speaker 1: Keirnes puts it, Jesus Christ is the great believer in man.
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Speaker 1: It is if we are reading him a writer at all,
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Speaker 1: because God believes in man. Let us remind ourselves often
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Speaker 1: of that thou hast made us for thyself, said Augustine
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Speaker 1: in the famous sentence of which we are apt to
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Speaker 1: emphasize the latter half. And our heart knows no rest
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Speaker 1: till it rests in thee. Jesus would have us emphasize
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Speaker 1: the former clause as well, and believe it. The keynote
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Speaker 1: of his whole story is God's love. The Father is
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Speaker 1: a real father. Strange that one should have to write
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Speaker 1: the small left to get the meaning. All that Jesus
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Speaker 1: has taught us of God we must bring to bear
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Speaker 1: on man, For it is hard to believe in man?
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Speaker 1: What is man? That thou shouldst magnify him, and that
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Speaker 1: thou should set thine heart upon him? Quotes the author
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Speaker 1: of job in a great ironical passage, the elements and
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Speaker 1: the stars come over us as they came over George
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Speaker 1: Fox and the fail of Beaver. What is man? Can
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Speaker 1: one out of fifteen hundred millions of human beings living
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Speaker 1: on the one planet matter to God? When there are
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Speaker 1: so many plants and stars and there have been so
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Speaker 1: many generations? Can he matter? It all depends on how
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Speaker 1: we conceive of God. Here it is essential to give
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Speaker 1: all the meaning to the term God that Jesus gave
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Speaker 1: to it. To believe in God? Has Jesus believed in God?
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Speaker 1: If we are to understand the fullness of Jesus's good news?
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Speaker 1: It all depends on God, on whether Jesus was right
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Speaker 1: about God, and after all, on Jesus himself. A thing
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Speaker 1: of price is man, wrote Synaseus about four ten BC.
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Speaker 1: Because for him Christ died. The two things go together,
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Speaker 1: Jesus is death and Jesus' theocentric thought of man. It
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Speaker 1: is a familiar criticism of idealists and other young hearts
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Speaker 1: that it is easy to idealize what one does not know.
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Speaker 1: Omnaig notum pro magnifico is the old epigram of Tacitus
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Speaker 1: it is not every believer in man, nor every friend
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Speaker 1: of man, who knows men as Jesus did, like Burns
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Speaker 1: and Carlyle and others who have interpreted man to us
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Speaker 1: to some purpose. He grew up in the home of
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Speaker 1: laboring people. He was a working man, himself a carpenter.
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Speaker 1: He must have learnt his carpentry exactly as every boy
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Speaker 1: learns it, by hammering his fingers instead of the nail,
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Speaker 1: showing his own skin instead of the wood, and not
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Speaker 1: doing it again. He knew what it was to have
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Speaker 1: an aching back and sweat on the face, how hard
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Speaker 1: money is to earn, and how quickly it goes. He
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Speaker 1: makes it clear that money is a temptation to men
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Speaker 1: and a great danger, But he never joins the moralists
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Speaker 1: and cranks in denouncing it. He always talks sense, if
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Speaker 1: the expression is not too lowly to apply to him.
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Speaker 1: He sees what can be done with money, what a
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Speaker 1: tool it can be in a wise man's hands, how
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Speaker 1: he can make friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness,
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Speaker 1: for example, by giving unexpectedly generous wages to men who
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Speaker 1: missed their chances, by feeding Lazarus at the gate, and
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Speaker 1: perhaps by having his sores properly attended to that he
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Speaker 1: understood how pitifully the loss of a coin may affect
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Speaker 1: a household of working people. One of his most beautiful
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Speaker 1: parables bears witness with work, he had no quarrel. He
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Speaker 1: draws many of his parables from labor, and he implies
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Speaker 1: throughout that it is the natural and right thing for
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Speaker 1: man to be wholly. In his sense, a man need
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Speaker 1: not leave his work. Clement of Alexandria, in his famous
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Speaker 1: saying about the plowmen continuing to plow and knowing God
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Speaker 1: as he plows, and the sea faring man sticking to
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Speaker 1: his ship and calling on the heavenly pilot as he sails,
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Speaker 1: is in the vein of Jesus. There were those whom
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Speaker 1: he called to leave all, to distribute their wealth and
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Speaker 1: to follow him. But he chose them. It was not
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Speaker 1: his one command for all men. But as we shall
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Speaker 1: shortly see, it is implied by his judgments of men
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Speaker 1: that he believed in work, and he liked men who
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Speaker 1: put their backs into it. Their backs, eyes and their
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Speaker 1: brains too. Pain a constant problem of man, and perhaps
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Speaker 1: more of woman, of unmarried women. More especially, he never
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Speaker 1: discussed as modern people discuss it. He never made light
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Speaker 1: of pain any more than of poverty. He understood physical
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Speaker 1: as well as moral distress. Nor did he, like some
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Speaker 1: of his contemporaries and some modern people, exaggerate the place
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Speaker 1: of pain in human experience. He shared pain, He sympathized
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Speaker 1: with suffering, and his understanding of pain, and above all,
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Speaker 1: his choice of pain taught men to reconsider it and
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Speaker 1: to understand it, and altered the attitude of the world
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Speaker 1: towards it. His tenderness for the suffering of others taught
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Speaker 1: mankind and new sympathy and the nose of comeon. The
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Speaker 1: Hospital for the sick was one of the first Christian
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Speaker 1: institutions to rise when persecution stopped and Christians could build
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Speaker 1: and mind. And the Lane came to him in the temple,
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Speaker 1: and he heals them, says Matthew in a memorable phrase.
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Speaker 1: I have heard it suggested that it was irregular for
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Speaker 1: them to come into the temple courts, but they gravitated
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Speaker 1: naturally to Jesus. The mystic is never quite a leisure
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Speaker 1: for other people's feelings and sufferings. He is essentially an individualist.
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Speaker 1: He must have his own intercourse with God and other
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Speaker 1: people's affairs are apt to be an interruption, an impertinence.
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Speaker 1: I have not been thinking of the community. I have
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Speaker 1: been thinking of Christ, said Bengori to me, who was
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Speaker 1: wavering between the brow of samaj and Christianity. The blessed
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Speaker 1: Angela of Foligno was rather glad to be relieved of
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Speaker 1: her husband and children who died and left her leisure
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Speaker 1: to enjoy the love of God. All this is quite
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Speaker 1: unlike the real spirit of the historical Jesus himself took
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Speaker 1: our infirmses and bear our sickness, was a phrase of
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Speaker 1: Isaiah that came instinctively to the minds of his followers. Perhaps,
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Speaker 1: when we begin to understand what is meant by the incarnation,
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Speaker 1: we may find that omnipotence has a great deal more
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Speaker 1: to do than we have supposed. With natural sympathy and
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Speaker 1: the genius for entering into the sorrows and sufferings of
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Speaker 1: other people. One side of the work of Jesus must
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Speaker 1: never be forgotten. His attitude to woman has altered her
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Speaker 1: position in the world. No one can study society in
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Speaker 1: classical antiquity or in non Christian lands with any intimacy
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Speaker 1: and not realize this widowhood in Hinduism, marriage among Muslems,
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Speaker 1: they are proverbs for the misery of women. Even the
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Speaker 1: Jews still praise blessed art thou, o, Lord, our God,
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Speaker 1: King of the universe, who hast not made me a woman?
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Speaker 1: The Jewish woman has to be grateful to God because
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Speaker 1: he hath made me according to his will, a thanksgiving
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Speaker 1: with a different note, as the modern jewess Amy Levy
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Speaker 1: emphasized in her brilliant novel where her heroine, very like herself,
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Speaker 1: corrected her prayer book to make it more explicit. Cursed
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Speaker 1: art thou, o, Lord, our God, who hast made me
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Speaker 1: a woman? Paul must have known these Jewish prayers, for
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Speaker 1: he emphasized that in Christ there is neither male nor female.
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Speaker 1: Paul had his views the familiar old ways of Tarsus
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Speaker 1: inspired them as to women's dress and deportment, especially the veil,
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Speaker 1: But he struck the real Christian note here and laid
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Speaker 1: stress on the fact of what Jesus had done and
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Speaker 1: is doing for women. There is no reference made by
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Speaker 1: Jesus to a woman that is not respectful and sympathetic.
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Speaker 1: He never warns men against women. Even the most degraded
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Speaker 1: women find in him an amazing sympathy, for he has
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Speaker 1: the secret of being pure and kind. At the same time,
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Speaker 1: his purity has not to be protected, it is itself
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Speaker 1: a purifying force. He draws some of his most delightful
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Speaker 1: parables from women's work, as we have seen. It is
24:16
Speaker 1: recorded how when he spoke of the coming disaster of Jerusalem,
24:20
Speaker 1: he paused to pity poor pregnant women and mothers with
24:24
Speaker 1: little babies in those bad times. Critics have remarked on
24:28
Speaker 1: the place of women in Luke's gospel, and some have
24:31
Speaker 1: played with fancies as to the feminine sources. Whence he
24:34
Speaker 1: drew his knowledge? Did the women who ministered to Jesus Joanna,
24:39
Speaker 1: for instance, the wife choose her tell him these illuminative
24:42
Speaker 1: stories of the Master? In any case, Jesus's new attitude
24:47
Speaker 1: to women is in the record, and it has so
24:50
Speaker 1: reshaped the thought of mankind and made it so hard
24:53
Speaker 1: to imagine anything else that we do not readily grasp
24:57
Speaker 1: what a revolution he made here, as always, by referring
25:01
Speaker 1: men's thoughts back to the standard of God's thoughts and
25:04
Speaker 1: supporting what he taught by what he was, Mark has
25:10
Speaker 1: given us one of our most familiar pictures of Jesus
25:13
Speaker 1: sitting with a little child on his knee and in
25:15
Speaker 1: the crook of his arm. The Greek participle which gives
25:19
Speaker 1: this in mark is worth remembering. It is vivid enough
25:23
Speaker 1: mothers brought their children to him that he should put
25:26
Speaker 1: his hands on them and pray. Matthew says that children
25:30
Speaker 1: took part in the triumphal entry, and Jesus, clear as
25:33
Speaker 1: he was, how little the hosannas of the grown people meant,
25:37
Speaker 1: seems to have enjoyed the children's part in the strange scene.
25:41
Speaker 1: Classical literature and Christian literature of those ages offer no
25:46
Speaker 1: parallel to his interest in children. The beautiful words suffer
25:51
Speaker 1: little children to come unto me are his, and they
25:55
Speaker 1: are characteristic of him. And he speaks of God's interest
25:59
Speaker 1: in children, once more a reference of everything to God
26:02
Speaker 1: to get it in its true perspective. How Jesus likes
26:06
Speaker 1: children for their simplicity, their intuition, their teachableness. We say,
26:13
Speaker 1: but was it not, perhaps for far simpler and more
26:16
Speaker 1: natural reasons, just because they were children and little and delightful.
26:23
Speaker 1: We forget his little brothers and sisters, or we eliminate
26:26
Speaker 1: them for theological purposes. Jesus lays quite an unexpected emphasis
26:33
Speaker 1: on sheer tenderness, on kindness to neighbor and stranger, the
26:38
Speaker 1: instinctive humanity that helps men, if it be only by
26:41
Speaker 1: the swift offer of a cup of cold water. The
26:44
Speaker 1: good Samaritan came as a surprise to some of his hearers.
26:48
Speaker 1: It is our religion, said a Hindu to a missionary,
26:51
Speaker 1: to explain why he and other Hindus did not help
26:54
Speaker 1: to rescue a fainting man for the railway tracks, nor
26:58
Speaker 1: even of for water to restore him when the misery
27:00
Speaker 1: had haught him on to the platform when aided. Not
27:04
Speaker 1: so the religion of Jesus bear ye one another's burdens,
27:09
Speaker 1: and so fulfill the law of Christ, wrote Paul, pursue hospitality,
27:15
Speaker 1: and as we shall see in a later chapter, the
27:17
Speaker 1: last judgment itself turns on whether a man has kindly
27:20
Speaker 1: instincts or not. Matthew quotes to describe Jesus his own
27:25
Speaker 1: tenderness the impressive phrase of Isaiah, a bruised reed, shall
27:31
Speaker 1: he not break if it is urged that such things
27:36
Speaker 1: are natural to man? Do not even the publicans do
27:38
Speaker 1: the same. Jesus carries the matter a long way further,
27:43
Speaker 1: whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile go with him. Twain,
27:48
Speaker 1: the man who would use such compulsion would be the
27:50
Speaker 1: alien soldier, the hireling of Herod or of Rome, and
27:54
Speaker 1: who would wish to cart him in his goods even
27:57
Speaker 1: one mile go two miles, said Jesus. Or if the
28:03
Speaker 1: Syriac translation preserves the right reading, go to extra Why well,
28:10
Speaker 1: the soldier is a man, after all, and by such
28:13
Speaker 1: unsolicited kindness you may make a friend, even of a
28:16
Speaker 1: government official, not always an easy thing to do. At
28:19
Speaker 1: any rate, you can help him, God helps him be.
28:24
Speaker 1: He therefore perfect, even as your Father, which is in Heaven,
28:28
Speaker 1: is perfect. Ordinary kindness and tenderness could hardly be urged
28:34
Speaker 1: beyond that point. And yet Jesus goes further still. He
28:38
Speaker 1: would have us pray for those that, despitefully use us,
28:42
Speaker 1: and in no pharisaic way, but with the same instinctive
28:45
Speaker 1: love and friendliness that he always used himself. Father, forgive them,
28:51
Speaker 1: for they know not what they do. There are religions
28:55
Speaker 1: which inculcate the tolerance of wrong, aiming at equanimity of
28:59
Speaker 1: mind or a position of merit, But Jesus implies on
29:03
Speaker 1: the contrary that in all this also the Christian denies himself,
29:09
Speaker 1: does not seek even in this way to save his
29:11
Speaker 1: own soul, but forgets all about it in the service
29:14
Speaker 1: of others, though he finds by and bye with a start,
29:17
Speaker 1: that he has saved it far more effectually than he
29:20
Speaker 1: could have expected. The emphasis falls in our duty of
29:24
Speaker 1: kindness and tenderness to all men and women, because we
29:30
Speaker 1: and they are alike God's children. With his emphasis on tenderness,
29:37
Speaker 1: we may group his teaching on forgiveness. He makes the
29:40
Speaker 1: forgiving spirit an antecedent of prayer when he stands praying
29:46
Speaker 1: forgive if he have aught against any that your Father also,
29:50
Speaker 1: which is in heaven, may forgive you your trespasses. If
29:53
Speaker 1: thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there remembrance
29:57
Speaker 1: thy brother hath aught against thee, Leave there thy gift
30:00
Speaker 1: before the altar, and go thy way. First be reconciled
30:04
Speaker 1: to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
30:09
Speaker 1: The parable of the King and his debtor, painfully true
30:12
Speaker 1: to human nature, brings out the whole matter of our
30:15
Speaker 1: forgiveness of one another into the light. We have shown
30:19
Speaker 1: it from God's outlook. The teaching as ever is theocentric
30:26
Speaker 1: to Peter, Jesus says that a man should be prepared
30:29
Speaker 1: to forgive his brother to seventy times seven, if anybody
30:32
Speaker 1: can keep count so far. He sees how quarrels into
30:37
Speaker 1: life and alienate a man from God. Hence comes the
30:41
Speaker 1: famous saying, resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee
30:46
Speaker 1: on thy right cheek, turn to him the other. Also,
30:50
Speaker 1: he would have men even avoid criticism of one another.
30:54
Speaker 1: Epigrams are seductive, and there is a fascination in the
30:57
Speaker 1: dissection of character. But there is always a danger that
31:01
Speaker 1: a clever characterization, a witty label, may conclude the matter,
31:07
Speaker 1: that a possible friendship may be lost through the very
31:10
Speaker 1: ingenuity with which the man has been labeled, who might
31:13
Speaker 1: have been a friend? It is not a small matter
31:17
Speaker 1: in Jesus's eyes. He puts his view very strongly, and
31:21
Speaker 1: as we must always remember, he bases himself on fact.
31:26
Speaker 1: We may lose a great deal more than we think
31:28
Speaker 1: by letting our labels stand between us and his words,
31:33
Speaker 1: by our habit of calling the paradoxes and letting them
31:36
Speaker 1: go at that it is worth while to look at
31:41
Speaker 1: the type of character that he admires. Modern painters have
31:44
Speaker 1: often pictured Jesus as something of a dreamer, a long haired, sleepy,
31:49
Speaker 1: abstract kind of person. What a contrast we find in
31:53
Speaker 1: the energy of the real Jesus, in the straight and
31:57
Speaker 1: powerful language which he uses to men, in the sweep
32:00
Speaker 1: and range of his mind, in the profundity of his insight,
32:05
Speaker 1: the drive and compulsiveness of his thinking, in the venturesome
32:09
Speaker 1: of his actions. How many of the parables turn on energy.
32:14
Speaker 1: The real trouble with men, he seems to say, is
32:17
Speaker 1: again and again sheer slackness. They will not put their
32:21
Speaker 1: minds to the thing before them, whether it be thought
32:24
Speaker 1: or action. Thus, for instance, the parable of the talent
32:29
Speaker 1: turned on energetic thinking and decisive action. These are the
32:32
Speaker 1: things that Jesus admires. In the widow who will have justice,
32:37
Speaker 1: in the virgins who thought ahead and brought extra oil.
32:41
Speaker 1: In the vigorous man who found the treasure and made
32:44
Speaker 1: sure of it. In the friend at midnight who hammered habard,
32:48
Speaker 1: hammard till he got his loaves. In the violence who
32:51
Speaker 1: take the kingdom of heaven by force. In the man
32:54
Speaker 1: who will hack off his hand to enter into life.
32:58
Speaker 1: Even the bad steward. He commends because he definitely put
33:02
Speaker 1: his mind on his situation. As we shall see later on,
33:07
Speaker 1: indecision is one of the things that, in his judgment,
33:10
Speaker 1: will keep a man outside the Kingdom of God, that
33:12
Speaker 1: will make him unfit for it. The matter deserves more
33:16
Speaker 1: study than we commonly give it. You must have a righteousness,
33:20
Speaker 1: he says, which exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees. And
33:24
Speaker 1: the Pharisees were professionals and righteousness. His tests of discipleship
33:30
Speaker 1: illumined the ideal of his character, theocentric thinking, negation of self,
33:36
Speaker 1: the thought out life. He will have his disciples count
33:40
Speaker 1: the cost reckon their forces, calculate quietly the risks before them,
33:46
Speaker 1: right up to the cross, like John Bunyan in Bedford Jail,
33:51
Speaker 1: where he thought things out to the pillory and then
33:54
Speaker 1: to the gallows, so that if it came to the gallows,
33:59
Speaker 1: he should be ready, as he says, to leap off
34:01
Speaker 1: the ladder blindfold into eternity. That is the energy of
34:07
Speaker 1: mind that Jesus asks of men, that he admires in men.
34:13
Speaker 1: On the other side, he is always against the life
34:15
Speaker 1: of drift, the half thought out life. There they were,
34:20
Speaker 1: he says in the days of Noah, eating and drinking, marrying, dreaming,
34:26
Speaker 1: and the floods came and destroyed them. So ran the
34:30
Speaker 1: old familiar story, And says Jesus, it is always true.
34:35
Speaker 1: Men will drift and dream forever, heedless of fact, heedless
34:39
Speaker 1: of God, and then ruin life gone, the soul lost,
34:45
Speaker 1: the son of man come, and you yourselves thrust out.
34:49
Speaker 1: It is quite striking with what a variety of impressive
34:52
Speaker 1: pictures Jesus drives home his lesson. There is the person
34:56
Speaker 1: who everlastingly says and does not do, Who promises to
35:00
Speaker 1: work and does not work, Who receives a new idea
35:03
Speaker 1: with enthusiasm but has not depth enough nature for it
35:07
Speaker 1: to root itself, Who build on sand that mister, anything
35:11
Speaker 1: of Bunnyan's allegory, nor these alone, for Jesus is as
35:16
Speaker 1: plain on the unpunctual, the easy going, the sort that compromises,
35:21
Speaker 1: that tries to serve God and Mammon. All the practical
35:25
Speaker 1: half and half people that take their bills quickly and
35:28
Speaker 1: write fifty, that offer God and Man about half what
35:32
Speaker 1: they owe them of thought and character and action, and
35:36
Speaker 1: bid others do the same, and count themselves men of
35:39
Speaker 1: the world for their acuteness and to do them justice.
35:43
Speaker 1: Jesus commends them. They have taken the exact measure of
35:46
Speaker 1: things in their generation. They mistake lies in their equation
35:50
Speaker 1: of the fugitive the eternal, and it is the final
35:53
Speaker 1: and fatal mistake, according to Jesus, and a very common
35:57
Speaker 1: one forgetfulness of God. In fact, a mistake that comes
36:02
Speaker 1: from not thinking things out. Jesus will have men think
36:07
Speaker 1: everything out to the very end. He never says, come
36:11
Speaker 1: unto me, or ye who are too lazy to think
36:14
Speaker 1: for yourselves. It is energy of mind that he calls for,
36:18
Speaker 1: either with me or against me. He does not recognize
36:22
Speaker 1: neutrals in his war. He that is not against us
36:25
Speaker 1: is for us. He that is not with me is
36:28
Speaker 1: against me. Where does a man's will point him? That
36:34
Speaker 1: is a question. Out of the abundance, the overflow of
36:38
Speaker 1: the heart, the mouth speaketh. What is it that a
36:41
Speaker 1: man wills? Purity or impurity? It is the inner energy
36:47
Speaker 1: that makes a man. What he says and does is
36:49
Speaker 1: an overflow from what is within an overflow. It is
36:53
Speaker 1: true with a reaction. It is what a man chooses
36:57
Speaker 1: and what he wills that Jesus all emphasizes God knoweth
37:02
Speaker 1: your heart very well. Then does a man choose God,
37:07
Speaker 1: that is the vital issue? Does he choose God without reserve?
37:11
Speaker 1: Add in a way that God, knowing his heart, will
37:15
Speaker 1: call a wholehearted choice. Sent Augustine, in a very interesting passage,
37:22
Speaker 1: remarks upon the fact that when the mind commands the body,
37:25
Speaker 1: obedient is instantaneous, but that when it commands itself, it
37:30
Speaker 1: meets with resistance. The mind commands that the mind shull
37:35
Speaker 1: will it is one of the same mind, and it
37:38
Speaker 1: does not obey. He finds the reason. The mind does
37:43
Speaker 1: not absolutely and entirely will the thing, and so it
37:46
Speaker 1: does not absolutely and entirely command it. There is nothing
37:51
Speaker 1: strange after all. In all this, he says, partly to will,
37:54
Speaker 1: partly not to will. But it is a weakness of
37:57
Speaker 1: the mind that it does not arise in its entire
38:00
Speaker 1: uplifted by truth, because it is borne down by habit.
38:05
Speaker 1: Thus there are two wills, because one of them is
38:09
Speaker 1: not complete. The same thought is to be traced in
38:14
Speaker 1: the teaching of Jesus. It is implied in what he
38:18
Speaker 1: says about prayer. There is a want of faith, a
38:22
Speaker 1: half heartedness about men's prayers. They pray, as Augustine says,
38:27
Speaker 1: he himself did give me chastity and continence. But not now,
38:32
Speaker 1: that is not what Jesus means by prayer the utterance
38:35
Speaker 1: of the half will. Nor is it this sort of
38:38
Speaker 1: surrender to God that Jesus calls for. No, the question
38:43
Speaker 1: is how thoroughly is a man going to put himself
38:46
Speaker 1: into God's hands? Does he mean to be God's up
38:50
Speaker 1: to the cross and beyond? Does he enlist absolutely on
38:54
Speaker 1: God's terms, without a bargain with God? Prepare to accept
38:58
Speaker 1: God's will whatever it is, whether it squares with his
39:01
Speaker 1: liking or not, are his own desires? Finally, out of
39:05
Speaker 1: the reckoning, does he in fact deny negate himself? Jesus
39:13
Speaker 1: calls for disciples with questions so penetrating on his lips.
39:19
Speaker 1: What a demand to make of men? What faith too?
39:22
Speaker 1: In men? It shows that he can ask all this
39:25
Speaker 1: with no hint of diminished seriousness. Jesus is the great
39:31
Speaker 1: believer in men, as we saw in his choice of
39:34
Speaker 1: the twelve to that group of disciples. He trusts the
39:38
Speaker 1: supremeust task men ever had assigned to them. Not many, wise,
39:44
Speaker 1: not many, mighty poor found at Corinth, And it has
39:47
Speaker 1: always been. So is it not still the gist of
39:51
Speaker 1: the Gospel that Jesus believes in The writer and the
39:54
Speaker 1: reader of these lines trusts, then, with the propagation of
39:58
Speaker 1: God's kingdom in commission. Jesus was always at leisure for individuals.
40:04
Speaker 1: This was the natural outcome of his faith in men.
40:08
Speaker 1: What else is the meaning of his readiness to spend
40:10
Speaker 1: himself in giving the utmost spiritual truth, no easy task,
40:15
Speaker 1: as experience shows us, even to a solitary listener. If
40:20
Speaker 1: we accept what he tells us of God, we can
40:23
Speaker 1: believe that the individual is worth all that Jesus did
40:26
Speaker 1: and does for him, but hardly otherwise. His gift of
40:30
Speaker 1: discovering interest in uninteresting people, says Phillips Brooks, was an
40:35
Speaker 1: intellectual habit that he gave to his disciples. We think
40:39
Speaker 1: too much like men. He would have us think like
40:43
Speaker 1: God and think better of odd units and items of
40:46
Speaker 1: humanity than statesmen and statisticians are apt to do. It
40:51
Speaker 1: has been pointed out lately how fierce he is about
40:54
Speaker 1: the man who puts a stumbling block in the way
40:56
Speaker 1: of even a little one better for him that a
40:59
Speaker 1: bills were hanged round his neck, and he were cast
41:02
Speaker 1: into the sea. No mere phrase. For when he draws
41:06
Speaker 1: a picture he sees it. He sees this scene, and
41:11
Speaker 1: better so for him too is his comment. There was,
41:15
Speaker 1: as we may remember, a view current in antiquity, that
41:19
Speaker 1: when a man was drowned, his soul perished with his body.
41:23
Speaker 1: Though I do not know if the Jews held with
41:24
Speaker 1: this opinion, it is not likely that Jesus did what
41:29
Speaker 1: is God's mind, God's conduct towards those people whom men
41:34
Speaker 1: think they can afford to despise. Be he therefore perfect,
41:39
Speaker 1: even as your father in Heaven is perfect? And to
41:43
Speaker 1: whom did he say this? To the most ordinary people?
41:47
Speaker 1: To Peter and James and John, for all sorts of people.
41:51
Speaker 1: He held up this impossible ideal of a perfection like God's?
41:56
Speaker 1: What a faith in man? It implies all things possible
42:00
Speaker 1: to him that believes? Why should not you believe? He says,
42:07
Speaker 1: his faith in the soul's possibilities is boundless, and in
42:11
Speaker 1: mark contrast with what men think of themselves. A man,
42:15
Speaker 1: for instance, will say that he has done his best,
42:18
Speaker 1: but nine times out of ten it means mere fatigue.
42:22
Speaker 1: He is not going to trouble to do any more.
42:24
Speaker 1: How can a man know that he has done his best.
42:28
Speaker 1: The Gospel of Jesus comes, with its message of the
42:31
Speaker 1: grace of God and the power of God to people
42:34
Speaker 1: who are stupid and middle aged, who are absolutely settled
42:38
Speaker 1: in life, who are conscious of their limitations, who know
42:41
Speaker 1: they are living in a rut, and propose to stick
42:44
Speaker 1: to it for the remainder of their days. And Jesus
42:47
Speaker 1: tells them, in effect that he means to give them
42:49
Speaker 1: a new life altogether, that he means to have from
42:52
Speaker 1: them service perfectly incredible to them. No man, he suggests,
42:57
Speaker 1: need be so inured to the stupid deay of middle age,
43:01
Speaker 1: but there may be a miraculous change in him. A
43:04
Speaker 1: great many people need reconversion at forty, however Christian they
43:09
Speaker 1: have been before. This belief of His in the individual
43:13
Speaker 1: man and in the worth of the individual, is the
43:16
Speaker 1: very charter of democracy. The original writings of William Tyndale,
43:21
Speaker 1: who first translated the New Testament from Greek into English,
43:25
Speaker 1: contained the essential ideas of democracy already in fifteen twenty six,
43:30
Speaker 1: the outcome of familiar study of the Gospel, Jesus himself
43:34
Speaker 1: said of Herod, go and tell that fox. Herod was
43:38
Speaker 1: a king, But he was not above criticism, and Christians
43:43
Speaker 1: have not failed at times to make the criticism of
43:46
Speaker 1: the great that truth requires. Jesus had no illusions about men.
43:53
Speaker 1: He sees the weak spots, He recognizes the whited sepulcher.
43:58
Speaker 1: He is astonished at the un belief of men and women.
44:02
Speaker 1: He does not understand why they cannot think, but he
44:05
Speaker 1: notes how they see and yet do not see, hear
44:09
Speaker 1: and do not understand. He is impressed by their falsity
44:13
Speaker 1: even in religion. He knows perfectly well the evil of
44:17
Speaker 1: which the human heart is capable. A man who steadily
44:22
Speaker 1: looks towards being crucified by the people he is trying
44:25
Speaker 1: to help is hardly one of the absent minded enthusiasts
44:28
Speaker 1: miscalled idealists. There never was, we feel, one who so
44:33
Speaker 1: thoroughly looked through his friends, who loved them so much,
44:37
Speaker 1: and yet without a shade of illusion. This brings us
44:41
Speaker 1: to the subject of the next chapter. In the meantime,
44:46
Speaker 1: let us recall what he makes of the wasted life.
44:51
Speaker 1: In thinking of the case, said Celi, they had forgotten
44:54
Speaker 1: the woman, a common occurrence with those who deal in cases.
45:00
Speaker 1: It was once severely said of the head of a college,
45:02
Speaker 1: that if he would not leave off caring for his
45:05
Speaker 1: student souls and care for them, he would do better.
45:10
Speaker 1: Jesus does not forget the man in caring for his soul.
45:14
Speaker 1: He likes him. He is the friend of publicans and sinners.
45:19
Speaker 1: He eats and drinks with them. Let us remember again
45:23
Speaker 1: that these were taunts and were meant to sting. They
45:27
Speaker 1: were not conventional phrases. See how he can enter into
45:31
Speaker 1: the life of a poor creature. There is the wretched
45:34
Speaker 1: little publican, Zachius, a squalid little figure of a man
45:38
Speaker 1: whom people despised. He was used to contempt. It was
45:42
Speaker 1: the portion of the tax collector enlisted in Roman service
45:45
Speaker 1: against his own people. Jesus comes and sees him up
45:50
Speaker 1: in the tree. He instantly realizes what is happening and
45:54
Speaker 1: invites himself to the house of Zacchius as a guest.
45:58
Speaker 1: Something passes between them with outspoken word. The little man
46:03
Speaker 1: slides down the tree, not a proceeding that makes for dignity,
46:07
Speaker 1: And then, with all his inches, he stands up before
46:11
Speaker 1: the whole town that knew him so well, in a
46:14
Speaker 1: new moral grandeur that adds cubics to his stature. Half
46:19
Speaker 1: my goods, he says, I will give to the poor.
46:22
Speaker 1: If I have taken anything from any man by false accusation,
46:26
Speaker 1: he shall have it back fourfold. That man belonged to
46:31
Speaker 1: the despised classes. Jesus came into his life. The man
46:36
Speaker 1: became a new man, a pioneer of Christian generosity. Again,
46:43
Speaker 1: there is the woman with the alabaster box, the mere
46:46
Speaker 1: possession of which stampedeth what she was. It was simply
46:50
Speaker 1: a case of the wasted life. I have long wondered
46:54
Speaker 1: if she meant to give him only some of the ointments,
46:57
Speaker 1: a little of it would have been a great gift.
46:59
Speaker 1: But perhaps the lid of the box jammed, and she
47:02
Speaker 1: realized in a moment that it was to be all
47:04
Speaker 1: or nothing. She drew off her sandal and smashed the
47:08
Speaker 1: box to pieces. However, she broke it, and whatever her reasons,
47:13
Speaker 1: marks words mean that it was thoroughly and finally shivered.
47:18
Speaker 1: Something had happened which made this woman the pioneer of
47:22
Speaker 1: the Christian habit of giving all for Jesus. The disciples
47:26
Speaker 1: said they had done so, but they were looking for
47:28
Speaker 1: thrones in exchange. She was not The thief on the
47:33
Speaker 1: cross himself becomes a pioneer for mankind in the Christian
47:36
Speaker 1: way of prayer. Jesus remember me, he says, How is
47:41
Speaker 1: it that Jesus comes into the wasted life and makes
47:44
Speaker 1: it new? One loving heart sets another on fire? With
47:53
Speaker 1: all his wide outlook on mankind his great purpose to
47:57
Speaker 1: capture all men. Jesus is remarkable for his omission to
48:02
Speaker 1: devise machinery or organization for the accomplishment of his ends.
48:07
Speaker 1: The tears are left to grow with the wheat, as
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Speaker 1: if Jesus trusted the wheat a good deal more than
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Speaker 1: we do alive. As he is to the evil in
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Speaker 1: human nature, he never tries to scare men from it,
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Speaker 1: and he seems to have been very little afraid of it.
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Speaker 1: He believed in the power of good, because, after all,
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Speaker 1: God is lord of the harvest. He invents no special methods.
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Speaker 1: A loving heart will hit the method needed in the
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Speaker 1: particular case. The Holy Spirit will teach this as well
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Speaker 1: as other things. How far he even organized his church,
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Speaker 1: or left it to organize itself if it so wished,
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Speaker 1: Students may discuss would he have trusted even the best
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Speaker 1: organized church as such? Does not what we mean by
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Speaker 1: the incarnation imply putting everything in the long run, on
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Speaker 1: the inner individual, quickened into new life by a new
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Speaker 1: relationship with God and taught a new love of men
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Speaker 1: by Jesus himself. The heart of friendship and the heart
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Speaker 1: of the incarnation are, in essence the same thing, giving
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Speaker 1: oneself in frankness and love to him who will accept,
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Speaker 1: and by them winning him who refuses. Has not this
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Speaker 1: been the secret of the spread of the Gospel. The
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Speaker 1: simplicity of the whole thing and the power of it
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Speaker 1: grow upon us as we study them. But after all,
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Speaker 1: as Tertullian has said, simplicity and power are the constant
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Speaker 1: marks of God's work. Simplicity and method power in effect.
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Speaker 1: End of Chapter six eight