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

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Speaker 1: Chapter eight of The Jesus of History by T. R. Glover.
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Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter eight,
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Speaker 1: The choice of the Cross. By what they said, I
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Speaker 1: perceived that he had been a great warrior, and had
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Speaker 1: fought with and slain him that had the power of death,
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Speaker 1: but not without a great danger to himself, which made
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Speaker 1: me love him the more. Pilgrim's Progress, Part one. The
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Speaker 1: subject before us is one of the greatest difficulty. Why
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Speaker 1: Jesus chose the cross has exercised the thought of the
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Speaker 1: Christian world ever since he did so. He told his
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Speaker 1: disciples beforehand of what lay before him, of what he
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Speaker 1: was choosing, but it was long before they realized that
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Speaker 1: he meant any such thing. The Cross was to them
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Speaker 1: a strange idea, and for a long time they did
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Speaker 1: not seriously face the matter. Once the Cross was an
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Speaker 1: accomplished fact, Christians could not and did not wish to
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Speaker 1: avoid thinking out what had meant so much to their Master.
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Speaker 1: But it has mostly been with a sense of facing
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Speaker 1: a mystery that in some measure eluded them, with a
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Speaker 1: feeling that there is more beyond, something always to be attained.
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Speaker 1: Hereafter a very significant passage in Saint Mark gives us
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Speaker 1: a glimpse of a moment on Jesus's last journey to Jerusalem.
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Speaker 1: It is a sentence which one could hardly imagine being
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Speaker 1: included in the Gospel if it did not represent an
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Speaker 1: actual memory and a memory of significance. It runs something
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Speaker 1: like this. And they were in the way going up
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Speaker 1: to Jerusalem, and Jesus was moving on before them, and
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Speaker 1: they began to wonder. And as they followed, they began
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Speaker 1: to be afraid. He is moving to Jerusalem with a purpose.
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Speaker 1: They do not understand it. He is wrapped in thought.
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Speaker 1: And as happens when a man's mind is working strongly,
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Speaker 1: his pace quickens, and they find themselves at a distance
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Speaker 1: behind him. And then something comes over them, a sense
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Speaker 1: that there is something in the situation which they do
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Speaker 1: not understand, a strangeness in the mind. They realize, in fact,
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Speaker 1: that they are not as near Jesus as they had supposed,
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Speaker 1: And as they follow the wonder deepened into fear. Anyone
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Speaker 1: who will really try to grapple with this problem of
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Speaker 1: the Cross will find very soon the same thing. The
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Speaker 1: first thing that we need to learn if our criticism
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Speaker 1: of Jesus is to be sound is that we are
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Speaker 1: not at all so near Him as we have imagined.
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Speaker 1: He eludes us, goes far out beyond what we grasp
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Speaker 1: or conceive. And I think the education of the Christian
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Speaker 1: man or woman begins anew when we realize how little
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Speaker 1: we know about Jesus. The discovery of our ignorance is
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Speaker 1: the beginning of our knowledge. Plato long ago said that
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Speaker 1: wonder is the mother of philosophy, and he was right.
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Speaker 1: John Dunne, the English poet, went father and said, all
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Speaker 1: divinity is love or wonder. When a man then begins
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Speaker 1: to wonder about Jesus Christ in earnest Jesus comes to
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Speaker 1: be for him a new figure. Historical criticism has done
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Speaker 1: this for us. It has brought us to such a
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Speaker 1: point that the story of these earliest disciples repeats itself
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Speaker 1: more closely in the experience of their followers of these
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Speaker 1: days than in any century since the first. We begin
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Speaker 1: along with them on the friendly, critical human plane, and
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Speaker 1: with them we follow him into experiences and realizations that
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Speaker 1: we never expected. It may be summed up in the
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Speaker 1: film familiar words of the English hymn, O Happy Band
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Speaker 1: of Pilgrims. If onward ye will tread with Jesus as
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Speaker 1: your fellow, to Jesus as your head. These men begin
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Speaker 1: with him more or lesson a footing of equality, or
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Speaker 1: at least the inequality is very lightly marked. Afterwards it
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Speaker 1: is emphasized, and they realize it with wonder, and with fear,
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Speaker 1: and at last with joy and gratitude. We may begin
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Speaker 1: by trying steadily to bring our minds to some keener
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Speaker 1: sense of what it was that he chose to say
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Speaker 1: in the familiar words that he chose. The cross may,
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Speaker 1: through the very familiarity of the language, lead us away
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Speaker 1: from what we have to discover. We have as we
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Speaker 1: agreed to ask ourselves what was his experience? What then
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Speaker 1: did his choice involve? It meant, of course, physical pain.
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Speaker 1: There are natures to whom this is a little account,
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Speaker 1: but the sensitive and sentient type, as we often observe,
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Speaker 1: dreads pain. He with open eyes chose physical pain heightened
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Speaker 1: to torture, not escaping any of the suffering which anticipation gives,
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Speaker 1: that physical horror of death, that instinctive fear of annihilation
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Speaker 1: which nature suggests of itself. He took the course of
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Speaker 1: action that would most severely test his disciples. One at
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Speaker 1: least revolted. And we have to ask what it meant
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Speaker 1: to Jesus to live with Judas, to watch his face,
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Speaker 1: to recognize his influence in the little group, yes, and
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Speaker 1: to try and win him again, and to be repelled.
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Speaker 1: He learnt by the things that he suffered that Judas
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Speaker 1: would betray him, But the hour and place and method
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Speaker 1: were not so evident, And when they were at last revealed,
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Speaker 1: what did it mean to be kissed by Judas? Do
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Speaker 1: we feel what he felt in the so called trials?
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Speaker 1: Or was he dull and numbed by the catastrophe? How
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Speaker 1: did he bear the beating of triumphant hatred upon a
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Speaker 1: forsaken spirit? How did the horrible cry crucify him, crucify him,
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Speaker 1: break on his ears, on his mind? When the Lord
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Speaker 1: turned and looked upon Peter? What did it mean? How
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Speaker 1: did he know that Peter was there? And what led
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Speaker 1: him to turn at that moment? Was there in the passion?
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Speaker 1: No element of uneasiness? Again about the eleven on whom
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Speaker 1: he had concentrated his hopes and his influence, the eleven
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Speaker 1: of whom it is recorded that they all forsook him
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Speaker 1: and fled. No hint of dread that his work might
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Speaker 1: indeed be undone. What pain dos that have involved? What
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Speaker 1: is the value of the agony in the garden of
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Speaker 1: the c e ELOI Lama Sabaktani. When we have answered
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Speaker 1: each for himself these questions and others like them that
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Speaker 1: will suggest themselves answered them by the most earnest efforts
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Speaker 1: of which our natures are capable, and remembered at the end,
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Speaker 1: how far our natures fall short of his, and told
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Speaker 1: ourselves that our answers are insufficient. Then let us recall
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Speaker 1: once more that he chose all this. He chose the
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Speaker 1: cross and all that it meant. Our next step should
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Speaker 1: be to study anew his own references, to what he
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Speaker 1: intends by it, to what he expects to be its
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Speaker 1: results and outcome. First of all, then he clearly means
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Speaker 1: that the Kingdom of Heaven is something different from anything
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Speaker 1: that man has yet seen. The Kingdom of Heaven is
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Speaker 1: I understand the Hebrew way of saying the Kingdom of
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Speaker 1: God very much as meant today speak of providence. To
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Speaker 1: avoid undue familiarity with the term God, so the Jews
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Speaker 1: would say Heaven. There were many who used the phrase
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Speaker 1: in one or other form, but it is always bad
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Speaker 1: criticism to give to the words of genius the value
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Speaker 1: or the connotation they would have in the lips of
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Speaker 1: ordinary people. To a great mind, words are charged with
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Speaker 1: the fullness of meaning that little people do not reach.
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Speaker 1: The attempt has been made to recapture more of his
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Speaker 1: thoughts by learning the value given to some of the
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Speaker 1: terms he uses as they appear in the literature of
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Speaker 1: the day, And of course it has been helpful. But
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Speaker 1: we have to remember always that the terms as used
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Speaker 1: by him come with a new volume of significance derived
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Speaker 1: from his whole personality. Everything turns on the connotation which
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Speaker 1: he gives to the term God. That is central and pivotal.
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Speaker 1: What this new Kingdom of God is or will be,
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Speaker 1: he does not attempt fully to explain or analyze. In
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Speaker 1: the parables, the treasure finder and the pearl merchant achieve
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Speaker 1: a great enrichment of life, so much they know at once.
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Speaker 1: But what do they do with it? How do they
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Speaker 1: look at it? What does it mean to them? He
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Speaker 1: does not tell us. We only see that they are
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Speaker 1: moving on a new plane, seeing life from a new angle,
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Speaker 1: living in a fuller sense. What the new life means
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Speaker 1: in its fullness we know only when we gain the
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Speaker 1: deeper knowledge of God. He suggests that this new knowledge
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Speaker 1: comes to a man from God himself. Flesh and blood
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Speaker 1: do not reveal it, andto you it is given. He says,
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Speaker 1: on another occasion, to know the mystery of the Kingdom
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Speaker 1: of Heaven. And he adds that there are those who
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Speaker 1: see and do not see. They are outside it. They
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Speaker 1: have not the alphabet we might say that will open
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Speaker 1: the book. He makes it clear at every point in
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Speaker 1: the story of the Kingdom of God that there is
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Speaker 1: more beyond, and he means it. It is to be
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Speaker 1: a new beginning, an initiation leading on to what we
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Speaker 1: shall see but do not yet guess. Though he gives
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Speaker 1: us hints, we shall not easily fathom the depth of
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Speaker 1: his idea of the new Life. But along with it
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Speaker 1: we have to study the width and boldness of his purpose.
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Speaker 1: This new life is not for a few the elect.
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Speaker 1: In our careless phrase, he looks to a universal scope
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Speaker 1: for what he is doing. It will reach far outside
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Speaker 1: the bounds of Judaism. They shall come from the east
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Speaker 1: and from the west, and from the north and the south,
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Speaker 1: and shall sit down in the Kingdom of God. Wheresoever
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Speaker 1: this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world. He says,
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Speaker 1: my words shall not pass away. All time and all
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Speaker 1: existence come under his survey and are included in his plan.
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Speaker 1: The range is enormous, and this was a Galilean peasant.
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Speaker 1: As we gradually realize what he has in mind, must
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Speaker 1: we not feel that we have not grasped anything like
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Speaker 1: the full grandeur of his thought. He makes it plain
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Speaker 1: in the second place that it will be a matter
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Speaker 1: for followers, for workers, for men who will watch and
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Speaker 1: wait and dare men with the same abandonment as himself.
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Speaker 1: He calls for men to come after him, to come
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Speaker 1: behind him. He emphasizes that they must think out the
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Speaker 1: terms on which he enlists them. He does not disguise
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Speaker 1: the drawbacks of his service. He calls his followers, and
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Speaker 1: a very personal and individual call. It is he calls
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Speaker 1: a man from the lake shore, from the nets, from
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Speaker 1: the custom house. In the third place, he clearly announces
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Speaker 1: an intention to achieve something in itself of import by
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Speaker 1: his death. There are those who would have us believe
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Speaker 1: that his mind was obsessed with the fixed idea of
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Speaker 1: his own speedy return on the clouds, and that he
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Speaker 1: hurried on to death to precipitate this and the new
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Speaker 1: age it was to bring. References to such a coming
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Speaker 1: are indeed found in the Gospels as we have them,
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Speaker 1: but we are bound to ask whence they come, and
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Speaker 1: to inquire how far they represent exactly what he said,
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Speaker 1: and then, if he is correctly reported, to make sure
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Speaker 1: that we know exactly what he means. Those who hold
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Speaker 1: this view failed to relate to the texts they emphasize
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Speaker 1: with others of a deeper significance, and they ignore the
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Speaker 1: grandeur and penetration and depth of the man whom they
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Speaker 1: make out to be such a dreamer. He never suggests
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Speaker 1: himself that his death is to force the hand of God.
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Speaker 1: He himself is to be the doer and achiever of something.
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Speaker 1: We have been apt to think of him as a
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Speaker 1: great teacher, a teacher of charm and insight, or as
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Speaker 1: the great example of idealism, who saw life steadily and
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Speaker 1: saw it all. He lived some hold, the rounded and
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Speaker 1: well poised life, the rhythmic life. No, that was Sophocles.
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Speaker 1: He is greater. Here is one who penetrates far deeper
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Speaker 1: into things. His treatment of the psychology of sin itself
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Speaker 1: shows how much more than an example was needed here
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Speaker 1: as in all the other chapters. But here above all
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Speaker 1: we have to remember the clearness of his insight. His
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Speaker 1: swiftness of penetration is instinct for fact and reality. He
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Speaker 1: means to do to achieve something. It is no martyr's
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Speaker 1: death that he incurs. His death is a step to
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Speaker 1: a purpose. I have a baptism to be baptized with,
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Speaker 1: he says. The Son of Man, he said, is come
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Speaker 1: to seek and save that which is lost. In discussing
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Speaker 1: in the previous chapter what he meant by the term lost,
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Speaker 1: our conclusion was that for Jesus, sin was far more awful,
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Speaker 1: far more serious than we commonly realize. We saw also
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Speaker 1: that so profound and true a psychology of sin must
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Speaker 1: imply a view of redemption, at least, is profound, a
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Speaker 1: promise of a force more than equal to the power
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Speaker 1: of sin, that violence of habit of which sent Augustine speaks.
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Speaker 1: If the Son of Man is to save the lost,
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Speaker 1: and if the lost are in danger so real, it
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Speaker 1: follows that he must think of a thoroughly effective salvation,
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Speaker 1: and that its achievement will be no light or easy task.
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Speaker 1: To give one's life as a ransom for many says
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Speaker 1: a modern teacher is of no EVAs. If the ransom
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Speaker 1: is insufficient, what then, and how much does he mean
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Speaker 1: by to save? And how does he propose to do it?
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Speaker 1: When the soul of man or woman has gone wrong
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Speaker 1: in any of the ways discussed by Jesus, in hardness
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Speaker 1: or anger, in impurity, in the refusal to treat God
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Speaker 1: and his facts seriously, when the consequences that Jesus recognized
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Speaker 1: have followed, what can be done to bring that soul
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Speaker 1: back into effective relation with the God whom it is
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Speaker 1: discarded and abandoned. That is the problem Jesus had to face,
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Speaker 1: and most of us have not thought enough about it.
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Speaker 1: First of all, how far does Jesus understand salvation to
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Speaker 1: take a man? The ancient creed of the Church includes
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Speaker 1: the article of belief in the forgiveness of sins. There
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Speaker 1: are those who likely assume that this means means chiefly
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Speaker 1: or solely, the remission of punishment for evil acts. This
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Speaker 1: raises problems enough of itself. The whole doctrine of Kalma,
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Speaker 1: vital to Buddhism and Hinduism, is if I understand it,
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Speaker 1: to write a strong and clear warning to us that
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Speaker 1: the remission of punishment is no easy matter. Not only
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Speaker 1: Eastern thinkers, but Western also insists that there is no
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Speaker 1: avoidance of the consequences of action. Luther himself, using a
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Speaker 1: phrase half borrowed from a Latin poet, says that forgivenesses
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Speaker 1: are not worthy of God's aid. Know does deo vindice dignus,
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Speaker 1: but in any case escape from the consequences of sin.
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Speaker 1: When once we look on sin with the eyes of
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Speaker 1: Jesus is of relatively small importance. There are two aspects
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Speaker 1: of the matter far more significant. We have seen how
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Speaker 1: Jesus regards sin as at once the cause and consequence
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Speaker 1: of a degeneration of the moral nature, and as a
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Speaker 1: repudiation of God. Two questions arise. Is it possible to
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Speaker 1: recover lost moral quality and faculty? Is it possible for
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Speaker 1: those incapacitated by sin to regain or to enjoy relation
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Speaker 1: with God? When we think with Jesus of sin first
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Speaker 1: and foremost in connection with God, and take the trouble
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Speaker 1: to try and give his meaning to his words, forgiveness
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Speaker 1: takes on a new meaning. We have to think like God,
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Speaker 1: he says, And perhaps God is in his thoughts neither
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Speaker 1: so legal nor so biological as we are. Perhaps he
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Speaker 1: does not think first of ediths or of biological and
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Speaker 1: psychological laws. God, according to Jesus, thinks first of his child,
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Speaker 1: though of course not a blige of his own commands
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Speaker 1: and laws. Forgiveness, Jesus teaches or suggests, is primarily a
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Speaker 1: question between father and son, and he tries to lead
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Speaker 1: us to believe how ready the father is to settle
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Speaker 1: that question. Once it is settled, we find, in fact
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Speaker 1: father and son setting to work to mend the past.
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Speaker 1: The evil seed has been sown, and the sad crop
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Speaker 1: must be reaped. The man who sowed it has to
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Speaker 1: reap it. That much we see. But Jesus hints to
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Speaker 1: us that God himself loves to come in and help
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Speaker 1: his reconciled son with the reaping. Many hands make light work,
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Speaker 1: especially when they are such hands, and even when the
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Speaker 1: crop is evil in the lives of others. The most
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Speaker 1: horrible outcome of sin, God is still in the field.
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Speaker 1: The prodigal, when he returns, is met with a welcome
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Speaker 1: and is gradually put in possession of what he has lost,
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Speaker 1: the robe, the shoes, the ring, and it all comes
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Speaker 1: from his being at one with his Father again. The
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Speaker 1: son of Man historically has again and again found the lost,
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Speaker 1: the lost gifts, the lost faculties, the lost charms and graces,
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Speaker 1: and given them back to the man whom he had
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Speaker 1: also found and brought home to God. Let us try
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Speaker 1: once more to get our thoughts theocentric, as Jesus is are,
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Speaker 1: and our problems become simpler, or at least fewer. God's
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Speaker 1: generosity and forgiveness, God's love, he emphasizes again and again.
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Speaker 1: Will a man take Jesus at his word and commit
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Speaker 1: himself to God? That is the question. Once he will
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Speaker 1: venture on this step. What pictures Jesus draws us of
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Speaker 1: what happens the son is home again. The bankruptcy, the
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Speaker 1: hideous solitude of life among animals, bestial, dirty and empty,
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Speaker 1: and haunted with memories. All these things are past. When
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Speaker 1: once the Father's arms are around his neck and his
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Speaker 1: kiss on his cheek, he is no more alienated from
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Speaker 1: the life of God, without God, and the world an
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Speaker 1: enemy of God. He was lost and is found, and
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Speaker 1: the Father himself, Jesus says, cries, let us be merry
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Speaker 1: if we hesitate about it. Jesus calls us once more
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Speaker 1: to think like God, and tells us other stories with
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Speaker 1: incredible joy in them, joy in the presence of the
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Speaker 1: angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. We must
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Speaker 1: go back to his central conception of God if we
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Speaker 1: are to realize what he means by salvation sent Augustine
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Speaker 1: brings out the value of these parables by reminding us
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Speaker 1: how much more we care for a thing that has
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Speaker 1: been ours when we have lost it and found it again.
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Speaker 1: The shepherd has a new link with his sheep, lost
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Speaker 1: and found again, a new story of it, a shared experience.
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Speaker 1: It is more his than ever and Jesus implies that
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Speaker 1: when a man is saved, he is God's again, and
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Speaker 1: more God's own than ever before. And God is glad
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Speaker 1: at heart. As for the man, a new power comes
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Speaker 1: into his heart and a new joy, And with God's help,
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Speaker 1: in a new spirit of sunshine, he sets about mending
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Speaker 1: the past in a new spirit and with a new
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Speaker 1: motive for love's sake. Now, if the fruit of the
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Speaker 1: past is to be seen as it constantly is in
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Speaker 1: the lives of others, he throws himself with the more
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Speaker 1: energy into God's work. And when the good Shepherd goes
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Speaker 1: seeking the lost, he goes with him. Christian history bears
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Speaker 1: witness in every year of it to what salvation means
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Speaker 1: in Jesus's sense, punishment, consequences, crippled resources. No, he does
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Speaker 1: not ask to escape them now, all as God pleases.
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Speaker 1: These are not the things that matter. Life is all
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Speaker 1: to be boundless, love and gratitude and trust. And by
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Speaker 1: and by the new man wakes up to find sin
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Speaker 1: taken away. Its consequence is undone, the lost faculties restored,
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Speaker 1: and life a fuller and richer thing than ever it
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Speaker 1: was before. Somehow, so, if he read the gospels right,
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Speaker 1: does Jesus conceive of salvation. To achieve this for men
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Speaker 1: is his purpose, And in order to do it, as
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Speaker 1: we have said before, his first step is to induce
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Speaker 1: men to rethink God. Something must be done to touch
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Speaker 1: the heart and move the will of men effectively, and
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Speaker 1: he must do it with this purpose in mind. Let
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Speaker 1: us weigh our words here and reflect again upon the
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Speaker 1: clearness of his insight into life and character, into moral laws,
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Speaker 1: the laws of human thought and feeling, upon his profound
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Speaker 1: intelligence and grasp of what moves and is real. His
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Speaker 1: knowledge a strong word to use, but we may use
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Speaker 1: it of God. With this purpose in mind, thought out
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Speaker 1: and understood, he deliberately and quietly goes to Jerusalem. He
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Speaker 1: steadfirstly set his face to go to Jerusalem. I must walk,
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Speaker 1: he said, today and tomorrow and the day following, For
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Speaker 1: it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.
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Speaker 1: To Jerusalem, he goes. We may admit that with his
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Speaker 1: view of the psychology of sin, he must have a
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Speaker 1: serious view of redemption. But why should that involve the cross?
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Speaker 1: That is our problem. But while we try to solve it,
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Speaker 1: we must also remember that behind a great choice there
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Speaker 1: are always more reasons than we can analyze. A man
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Speaker 1: makes one of the great choices in life. What has
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Speaker 1: influenced him? Ten to one? If you ask him, he
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Speaker 1: does not know nothing. Else he will say, seemed feasible.
24:17
Speaker 1: The thing was borne in on me. It came to
24:20
Speaker 1: me reasons. He cannot tabulate reasons. The thing, he says,
24:26
Speaker 1: was so clear that I was a long way past reasons.
24:30
Speaker 1: And yet he was right. He had reasons enough. What
24:35
Speaker 1: parent ever analyzed reasons for loving his children or would
24:38
Speaker 1: tabulate them for you? Jesus does not explain his reasons.
24:44
Speaker 1: We find I think that we are apt to have
24:47
Speaker 1: far more reasons for doing what we know is wrong
24:51
Speaker 1: than we have for doing what we know is right.
24:54
Speaker 1: We do not want reasons for doing what is right.
24:56
Speaker 1: We know it is right, and there is an end
24:59
Speaker 1: of it. Once again, Jesus, with his clear eye for
25:04
Speaker 1: the real, sees what he must do. The salvation of
25:08
Speaker 1: the lost means the cross for himself. But why we
25:13
Speaker 1: ask again, we must look a little closer if we
25:16
Speaker 1: are to understand him. We shall not easily understand him
25:20
Speaker 1: in all his thoughts. But part of our education comes
25:24
Speaker 1: from the endeavor to follow him here, to be with him.
25:28
Speaker 1: In the phrase with which we began, first of all,
25:32
Speaker 1: we may put his love of men. He never lost
25:36
Speaker 1: the individual in the mass, never lost sight of the
25:38
Speaker 1: human being who needed God, the teacher who put the
25:43
Speaker 1: law of kindness in the great phrase go with him.
25:45
Speaker 1: Twain was not likely to limit himself in meeting men's needs.
25:50
Speaker 1: He was bound to do more than we should expect
25:53
Speaker 1: when he saw people whom he could help. And it
25:56
Speaker 1: is that spirit of a bounding generosity that shows a
25:59
Speaker 1: man and what to do. Everywhere every day he met
26:04
Speaker 1: the call that quickened thought and shaped purpose. He walked
26:10
Speaker 1: down a street, and the scene of misery, are of
26:12
Speaker 1: sin came upon him with pressure. He could not pass
26:16
Speaker 1: by as we do and fail to note what we
26:19
Speaker 1: do not wish to think of. He knows a pressure
26:22
Speaker 1: upon his spirit for the man, the child, the woman,
26:26
Speaker 1: for the one who sins, the one who suffers, the
26:30
Speaker 1: other who dies. They must be got in touch with God.
26:35
Speaker 1: He sits with his disciples at a meal, the men
26:38
Speaker 1: whom he loved. He watches them, He listens to them,
26:43
Speaker 1: Peter James, John, one after the other becomes a call
26:48
Speaker 1: to him. They need redemption. They need far more than
26:52
Speaker 1: they dream. They need God. That pressure is there night
26:58
Speaker 1: and day. It becomes intercession, and that grows into inspiration.
27:04
Speaker 1: Our prayers suffer. Someone has said, for our want of
27:08
Speaker 1: our identification with the world's sin and misery. He was
27:13
Speaker 1: identified with the world's sin and misery, and they followed
27:15
Speaker 1: him into his prayer. It becomes with him an imperative
27:20
Speaker 1: necessity to affect man's reconciliation with God. All his experience
27:25
Speaker 1: of man, his love of man, call him that way.
27:30
Speaker 1: The second great momentum comes from the love of God
27:33
Speaker 1: and his faith in God. Here again we must emphasize
27:38
Speaker 1: for ourselves his criticism of Peter. You think like a
27:41
Speaker 1: man and not like God. We do not see God
27:45
Speaker 1: as Jesus did. He must make plain to men as
27:49
Speaker 1: it was never made plain before the love of God.
27:53
Speaker 1: He must secure that it is for every man the
27:56
Speaker 1: greatest reality in the world, the one great flaming fact
28:00
Speaker 1: that burns itself living into every man's consciousness. He sees
28:06
Speaker 1: that for this God calls him to the cross, so
28:10
Speaker 1: much so that when he prays in the garden that
28:13
Speaker 1: the cut may pass, his thoughts ranged back to thy will.
28:18
Speaker 1: It is God's will. Even if he does not himself
28:21
Speaker 1: see all involved. Still God knows the reason. God will manage.
28:27
Speaker 1: God wishes it. Have faith in God, he used to say.
28:32
Speaker 1: This faith which he has in God, is one of
28:35
Speaker 1: the things that take him to the cross. In the
28:40
Speaker 1: third place, we must not forget his sense of his
28:44
Speaker 1: own peculiar relation to God. If it is safe to
28:48
Speaker 1: round Mark's chronological date here. He does not speak of
28:51
Speaker 1: this until Peter has called him the Messiah. He accepts
28:56
Speaker 1: the title. He also uses the description the Son of Man,
29:01
Speaker 1: with its suggestions from the past. He forgives sins, He
29:05
Speaker 1: speaks throughout the Gospels as one apart, as one distinct
29:09
Speaker 1: from us closely as he is identified with us. And
29:14
Speaker 1: all this from a son of fact, who is not insane,
29:18
Speaker 1: who is not a quack, whose eyes are wide open
29:21
Speaker 1: for the real, whose instinct for the ultimate truth is
29:25
Speaker 1: so keen, who lives face to face with God. What
29:29
Speaker 1: does it mean? This? For one thing, that most of
29:33
Speaker 1: us have not given attention enough to this matter. I
29:37
Speaker 1: have confided myself in these chapters to the Synoptic Gospels,
29:41
Speaker 1: with only two or three references to the Fourth Gospel.
29:44
Speaker 1: And on the evidence of the Synoptic Gospels taken by themselves,
29:48
Speaker 1: it is clear that he means a great deal more
29:51
Speaker 1: than we have cared to examine. He is the great
29:54
Speaker 1: interpreter of God, and it is borne in upon him
29:58
Speaker 1: that only by the Cross can he interpret God, make
30:02
Speaker 1: God real to us, and bring us to the very
30:04
Speaker 1: heart of God. That is his purpose. The Cross is
30:11
Speaker 1: the outcome of his deepest mind, of his prayer life.
30:16
Speaker 1: It is more like him than anything else he ever did.
30:20
Speaker 1: It has in it more of him, whoever he was,
30:24
Speaker 1: whoever he is, whatever our christology, one fact stands out.
30:30
Speaker 1: It was his love of men and women, and his
30:33
Speaker 1: faith in God that took him there. Was he justified?
30:40
Speaker 1: Was he right? Or was it a delusion? First of all,
30:46
Speaker 1: let us go back to a historic event. The resurrection is,
30:50
Speaker 1: to a historian not very clear in its details. But
30:55
Speaker 1: is it the detail or the central fact that matters?
31:00
Speaker 1: Take away the resurrection, however, it happened, whatever it was,
31:04
Speaker 1: and the history of the Church is unintelligible. We live
31:09
Speaker 1: in a rational world, a world that is where, however
31:14
Speaker 1: much remains as yet unexplained, everything has a promise of
31:17
Speaker 1: being lucid. Everything has reason in it. Great results have
31:23
Speaker 1: great causes. We have to find, somewhere or ever, between
31:27
Speaker 1: the crucifixion and the first preaching of the Disciples in Jerusalem,
31:31
Speaker 1: something that entirely changed the character of that group of men.
31:37
Speaker 1: Something happened so tremendous and so vital that it changed
31:42
Speaker 1: not only the character of the movement in the men,
31:44
Speaker 1: but with them the whole history of the world. The
31:49
Speaker 1: evidence for the Resurrection is not so much what we
31:51
Speaker 1: read in the Gospels as what we find in the
31:54
Speaker 1: rest of the New Testament, the new life of the Disciples.
31:59
Speaker 1: They are a new group when it came to the cross,
32:03
Speaker 1: his cross, they ran away. A few weeks later we
32:07
Speaker 1: find them rejoicing to be beaten, imprisoned, and put to death.
32:12
Speaker 1: What has happened, what we have to explain, is a
32:16
Speaker 1: new life, a new life of prayer and joy and power,
32:20
Speaker 1: a new indifference to physical death, in a new relation
32:23
Speaker 1: to God. That is one outcome of the Cross and
32:27
Speaker 1: of what followed, And as historians we have to explain it.
32:32
Speaker 1: We have also to explain how the disciples came to
32:35
Speaker 1: conceive of another Galilean, a carpenter whom they might have
32:40
Speaker 1: seen sawing and sweating in his shop, with whom they
32:44
Speaker 1: tramped the roads of Palestine, whom they saw done to
32:47
Speaker 1: death in ignomity and derision, sitting at the right hand
32:50
Speaker 1: of God, taken by itself. We might call such a
32:55
Speaker 1: belief mere folly, but too much goes with it for
32:59
Speaker 1: so easy an export relation. The Cross was not the end,
33:03
Speaker 1: as mister Neville Talbot has recently pointed out in his
33:07
Speaker 1: book The Mind of the Disciples. If the story stopped
33:10
Speaker 1: with the Cross, God remains unexplained, and the story ends
33:14
Speaker 1: in unrelieved tragedy. But it does not end in tragedy.
33:19
Speaker 1: It ends if you can use the word as yet
33:22
Speaker 1: enjoy and faith in victory, and these how should we
33:27
Speaker 1: have seen them but for the cross. They are bowed up.
33:30
Speaker 1: With his choice of the cross and his triumph over
33:33
Speaker 1: it all, death is not what it was the last
33:36
Speaker 1: line of all, as Horace says, life and immortality have
33:42
Speaker 1: been brought to light. The lab of God taketh away
33:46
Speaker 1: the sin of the world. So we read at the
33:48
Speaker 1: beginning of the Fourth Gospel, and the historical critic may
33:52
Speaker 1: tell us that he does not think that John the
33:54
Speaker 1: Baptist said it. Nonetheless, it is a wonderful summary of
33:59
Speaker 1: what Jesus has done, especially wonderful if we think of
34:03
Speaker 1: it being written fifty or sixty years after the crucifixion. Four.
34:09
Speaker 1: As we survey the centuries, we find that the lab
34:12
Speaker 1: of God has taken away the sin of the world
34:15
Speaker 1: to a degree that no one can imagine who has
34:18
Speaker 1: not studied the agent world. Those who know the heathen
34:22
Speaker 1: world intimately will know best the difference that he has made.
34:27
Speaker 1: All this new life, this new joy, this new victory
34:31
Speaker 1: over death and sin, is attached to the living and
34:34
Speaker 1: victorious Son of God. The task of Paul and the
34:39
Speaker 1: others is as doctor Cairns says, rethinking everything in the
34:44
Speaker 1: terms of the resurrection. It is the new factor in
34:47
Speaker 1: the problem of God, so to speak, the new factor
34:51
Speaker 1: which alters everything that relates to God. That is saying
34:56
Speaker 1: a great deal. But when we look at Christian history,
34:59
Speaker 1: is it saying too much? But still our first question
35:04
Speaker 1: is un answered. Why should it have been the cross?
35:09
Speaker 1: One thinker of our day has suggested that, after all,
35:13
Speaker 1: suffering is a language intelligible to the very simplest, while
35:16
Speaker 1: its meaning is not exhausted by the deepest. The problem
35:21
Speaker 1: of pain is always with us, and he chose pain.
35:26
Speaker 1: He never said that pain is a good thing. He
35:29
Speaker 1: cured it, but he chose it. The ancient world stumbled
35:36
Speaker 1: on that very thing. God and a godlike man. Their
35:40
Speaker 1: philosophers said, are not susceptible to pain, to suffering. That
35:46
Speaker 1: was an axiom. Very little challenged that if Jesus suffered,
35:50
Speaker 1: he was not God. If he was God, he did
35:53
Speaker 1: not suffer. The Church denied that, just as the Church
35:58
Speaker 1: today rejects another hasty antipy, this is about pain that
36:01
Speaker 1: comes from New England. He chose pain, and he knew
36:07
Speaker 1: what he was chosing. Then let us be in no
36:10
Speaker 1: hurry about refusing it, but let us look into it.
36:14
Speaker 1: He chose it. That is the greatest fact known to
36:19
Speaker 1: us about pain. Again, the death of Christ reveals sin
36:24
Speaker 1: in its real significance, in its true perspective, outside the
36:29
Speaker 1: realm of accident, and among the deepest things of God.
36:34
Speaker 1: Men count themselves very decent people, so thought the priests
36:37
Speaker 1: and the Pharisees, and they were. There is nothing about
36:42
Speaker 1: them that one cannot find in most religious communities and
36:45
Speaker 1: in all governing classes. The sense of the value of themselves,
36:51
Speaker 1: their preoccupations and their judgments, a strong feeling of the
36:55
Speaker 1: importance of the work they have to do, along with
36:58
Speaker 1: a certain reluctance to face strange facts, and some indifference
37:03
Speaker 1: as to what happens to other people if the accepted
37:06
Speaker 1: theory of the cause of the state require them to suffer.
37:10
Speaker 1: There is nothing about Pilate and Herod, and the Pharisees
37:14
Speaker 1: and the priests that is very different from ourselves. But
37:20
Speaker 1: how it looks in front of the cross. We begin
37:23
Speaker 1: to see how it looks at the sight of God,
37:26
Speaker 1: and that alters everything. It upsets all our standards and
37:32
Speaker 1: teaches us a use of criticism. You think like man
37:37
Speaker 1: and not like God, said Jesus. The Cross reveals God
37:41
Speaker 1: most sympathetically. We see God in the light of the
37:45
Speaker 1: fullest and profoundest and tenderest revelation that the world has
37:50
Speaker 1: had by God, My God. Why hast thou forsaken me?
37:55
Speaker 1: That is the cry of Jesus on the Cross. I
37:59
Speaker 1: have sometimes thought there was never an utterance that reveals
38:03
Speaker 1: more amazingly the difference between feeling and fact. That was
38:08
Speaker 1: how he felt, worn out, betrayed, spat upon, rejected. We
38:16
Speaker 1: feel that God was more there than ever, As has
38:19
Speaker 1: been said, if it is not God, it is nothing. God,
38:24
Speaker 1: says Paul, was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.
38:29
Speaker 1: He chose the cross, and in choosing it, Christians have
38:33
Speaker 1: always felt he revealed God, and that is the center
38:38
Speaker 1: of the great act of redemption. But there is a
38:43
Speaker 1: condition antecedent to understanding the cross. We have as we
38:48
Speaker 1: agreed to ask ourselves, what is the experience which led
38:52
Speaker 1: him to think as he did? In the simpler language
38:55
Speaker 1: of the Gospels, quite plain and easy to understand. The
38:59
Speaker 1: call to follow comes first, the call to deeper association
39:03
Speaker 1: with Jesus Christ in his love for man, do not
39:07
Speaker 1: our consciences tell us that if we really loved people
39:10
Speaker 1: as Jesus does, if we understood them as sympathetically and
39:13
Speaker 1: cared as much for them, the cross would be far
39:17
Speaker 1: more intelligible to us. But if in plain fact we
39:21
Speaker 1: do not see why we should bear the cross for others,
39:24
Speaker 1: why we should deny it? Obliterate self from this scale
39:27
Speaker 1: for the salvation of men? How I ask to people
39:30
Speaker 1: of such a mind? Should Jesus be intelligible? It is
39:35
Speaker 1: not to be expected. In no other sphere would one
39:39
Speaker 1: dream of it. When a man avows that he does
39:42
Speaker 1: not care for art or poetry, who would wish to
39:45
Speaker 1: show him poem or picture? How should a person who
39:50
Speaker 1: does not care for men understand the cross? Deeper association
39:55
Speaker 1: then with Jesus, in his love for men, in his agony,
39:59
Speaker 1: in his trust in God, That is the key to all.
40:04
Speaker 1: As we agreed at the very beginning, we have to
40:07
Speaker 1: know him before we can understand him. It all depends,
40:13
Speaker 1: in the long run, on one thing, and that we
40:15
Speaker 1: find in the verse with which we started. And as
40:18
Speaker 1: they followed, they began to be afraid, but they followed.
40:24
Speaker 1: We can understand their fear. It comes to a man
40:28
Speaker 1: this way. If Jesus crucified means anything like what the
40:33
Speaker 1: Church has said and has believed, If God is in
40:37
Speaker 1: that man of Nazareth, reconciling the world to himself, if
40:42
Speaker 1: there is real meaning in the incarnation at all, if
40:46
Speaker 1: this language represents fact, then he may say I am
40:50
Speaker 1: wholly at a loss about everything else. A man builds
40:53
Speaker 1: up a world of thought for himself. We all do
40:57
Speaker 1: a scheme of things, And to a man with a
41:00
Speaker 1: thought out view of the world, it may come with
41:03
Speaker 1: an enormous shock to realize this incredible idea, this incredible
41:07
Speaker 1: truth of God in Christ. Those who have dwelt most
41:12
Speaker 1: on it and value it most may be most apt
41:16
Speaker 1: to understand what I mean by calling it incredible. Think
41:20
Speaker 1: of it. It takes your breath away. If that is true,
41:25
Speaker 1: does not the whole plan of my life fall to pieces,
41:28
Speaker 1: my whole scheme of things for the world, my whole
41:31
Speaker 1: body of intellectual conceptions. And the man to whom this
41:35
Speaker 1: happens may well say he is afraid. He is afraid
41:40
Speaker 1: because it is so strange, Because when you realize it,
41:45
Speaker 1: it takes you into a new world. You cannot grasp it.
41:50
Speaker 1: A man whose instinct is for truth may hesitate, will
41:53
Speaker 1: hesitate about a conception like this, Is it possible? He
41:58
Speaker 1: will ask himself that I am deluded, And another thought
42:03
Speaker 1: rises up again and again, where will it take me?
42:07
Speaker 1: We can understand a man being afraid in that way.
42:11
Speaker 1: I do not think we have much right not to
42:13
Speaker 1: be afraid. If it is the incarnation of God, what
42:17
Speaker 1: right do we have not to be afraid? Then? Of
42:20
Speaker 1: course a man will say that to follow Christ involves
42:24
Speaker 1: too much in the way of sacrifice. He is afraid
42:27
Speaker 1: on lower grounds, afraid of his family, afraid for his career.
42:32
Speaker 1: He hesitates. To that man, the thing will be unintelligible.
42:38
Speaker 1: The experience of said Augustine, revealed in his confessions, is illuminative. Here.
42:45
Speaker 1: He had intellectual difficulties in his approach to the Christian position,
42:48
Speaker 1: but the rate of progress became materially quicker when he
42:52
Speaker 1: realized that the moral difficulties came first, that a practical
42:56
Speaker 1: step had to be taken. So with us to decide
43:01
Speaker 1: the issue, how far are we prepared to go with Jesus?
43:07
Speaker 1: Have we realized the experience behind his thoughts? The rule
43:11
Speaker 1: which we lay down at the beginning holds. How far
43:15
Speaker 1: are we prepared to go in sharing that experience that
43:19
Speaker 1: will measure our right to understand him? Once again, in
43:23
Speaker 1: the plainest language, are we prepared to follow? As the
43:27
Speaker 1: disciples followed, afraid as they were? Where is he going?
43:34
Speaker 1: Where is he taking them? They wonder, They do not know.
43:39
Speaker 1: They are uneasy. But when all is said, the figure
43:44
Speaker 1: on the road ahead of them, waiting for them now
43:46
Speaker 1: and looking around, is the Jesus who loves them and
43:50
Speaker 1: whom they love. And one can imagine the feeling rising
43:56
Speaker 1: in the mind of one and another of them. I
43:59
Speaker 1: don't know where he is going or where he is
44:02
Speaker 1: taking us, but I must be with him. There we
44:06
Speaker 1: reach again what the whole story began with. He chose
44:10
Speaker 1: twelve that they might be with him to understand him.
44:15
Speaker 1: We two must be with him. What takes men there?
44:20
Speaker 1: After all? It is, in the familiar phrase, the love
44:24
Speaker 1: of Jesus. If one loves the leader, it is easier
44:28
Speaker 1: to follow him. But whether you understand him or whether
44:32
Speaker 1: you don't, if you love him, you are glad that
44:35
Speaker 1: he chose the cross, and you are glad that you
44:38
Speaker 1: are one of his people. End of Chapter eight