Jesus made one last appeal to the people before
he was crucified. It was dramatic, not because he was a showman, but
because he knew enough about people to know that if you want to reach them, you
will do it not so much by a thought or a word as by a deed, something done,
something they can see; and he also knew that the more deeply the deed is
drenched in something that they are familiar with the deeper the impression
will be. It was a decisive appeal in the sense that it demanded a decision.
People could listen to the Sermon on the Mount, or the Parables, but they could
let it go in one ear and out the other. But when he swept the Temple
clean, something had to be done about that.
It was dramatic, it was decisive, and it was
doomed. And Jesus knew it was because once again he knew people. He
knew them inside out, their strength and their weakness. He knew that it was
hard for people to change their patterns; that they like to run in the old,
familiar well-worn ruts. He knew that the average person did not have a
vivid imagination or any great capacity to see things in the round. So he
made his appeal as dramatically and decisively as he could; doomed though he
knew it was.
This was his last appeal to the people to follow him to accept him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The people said No! His appeal was turned down completely; his rejection was unanimous. A very sobering thought is it not? And it leads us to comment that we human beings have a strange way of rejecting goodness. Not always, thank heaven for that! We didn’t reject Mother Teresa, some people idolized her. But she lived a long way off and didn’t bother us very much, and we could live vicariously on her spiritual energy. So we accepted her, as we do hundreds of others who represent the good life.
Having said this, we must admit that the record of our rejections is a staggering one. Socrates, I suppose, was one of the half dozen or so original thinkers who ever lived and he was rejected as a disturber of the peace! Franz Schubert, who has been called the greatest song writer who ever lived, wrote over six hundred songs before he died at the age of thirty one, and most of them were rejected by the publishers. Abraham Lincoln, towers above every other historical American. The shot that killed him represented the poisoned arrows that came invisibly from the minds of thousands of Americans who rejected him because he was too gracious toward the South. Galileo was rejected for saying that the sun was the centre of the solar system. Columbus was rejected for thinking that the world was round. And Martin Luther King was rejected because he wanted a fair deal for the blacks!
Most of these people were before our time, we may say. Perhaps we are different. I hope so, but I doubt it; and I doubt it because I know myself too well. I know how tempted I am to reject the thing I know is good in favour of the thing that will pay the most immediate returns. I may not reject it outright, but I reject it at least for the time being. I don’t believe you are very different. What is there about us that makes us do this? Why do we reject greatness? Why do we reject beauty and goodness and truth, when it comes to us? Perhaps we can get some clue to the answer if we ask another question: Why was Jesus rejected?
He was rejected first of all because the bulk of
the people didn’t want him. They wanted his cures, but not his criticism.
They wanted him when he was healing the sick, but not when he was staking out
the way toward the Cross; they wanted his help, but not his yoke. To put
it in a nutshell, they wanted Barabbas, and that is what they got.
I wonder if people today are very different. The bulk of them don’t want to be committed to anything; they want to be free to come and go and do as they please, and they do. I do not say this at all cynically, I say it because we are standing under the shadow of the Cross; the bulk of the people today don’t want Christ. They want a “high”. They want a house with two or three cars; they want social security; they want lower taxes and higher wages; they want a quick trip to Paradise for a down payment, the rest in ninety days and that’s just about what they’ve got. One of the reasons therefore why Jesus was rejected is that the majority of the people didn’t want him.
The situation was made infinitely worse by the fact that the religious leaders couldn’t tolerate him and therefore encouraged the masses to reject him. He was a threat to them personally; it’s easy to see that. If his ways were accepted, their ways would be rejected; if he came to power, they would go out of power, and leaders you know, have to look out for themselves whether they are in the government, or in the church! And of course, they couldn’t tolerate him because he stood for things which they seriously believed were a threat to the nation. Rome was their enemy, and their one aim in life was to be free from the Roman occupation and all the injustices that went with it. Jesus said, “You can’t fight the Romans; you can only love them.” They couldn’t run the affairs of state on that basis. Who could?
Another issue between Jesus and the leaders was
the Temple. They said the Temple was the visible expression of God.
Jesus said that it was only a building, and in the end it would come down; just
as the law was only the law and only a means to an end. You he said: are
the visible expressions of God, and it is you that have to be kept clean inside
as well as outside. It is what you are that counts. They couldn’t take
that. It made nonsense of their Temple ritual and it might put the
priests of whom there were hundreds at the time out of a job. So there
was nothing but opposition from the leaders, and this aggravated the antagonism
of the masses.
Wasn’t there anyone who wanted him then?
Nicodemus, we know he responded, and Joseph of Arimathea. There must have
been others. But they kept still; they never said a word. If they
were for him, they never let anyone know it. They might have turned the
tide. And they, unfortunately, represent most of us. We accept him; we
don’t reject him. We love him; at least, we admire him. We hold him
up as an ultimate ideal, but in so many crises, we never say so. This is
a deep-seated habit of ours, this keeping still, when we ought to speak out. We
think the country is going mad for material things but we don’t say so.
We think that political leadership should aim at reconciliation above
everything else, but we seldom say it in public. We think that the Church
should be a place for all people, but when an issue comes up in which the
principal is involved not many of us say what we think.
Remember that Jesus went to the cross because people like you and me who should have been for him, and were for him, didn’t say a word. They held their peace, and the stones cry out against them. So Jesus went on his way to the cross. The bulk of the people didn’t want him; the leaders couldn’t tolerate him, and the few people that did want him kept still. What a familiar story, and what a sad, tragic tale! Let me close with a quote from Thomas Ashe which will be our prayer of commitment.
“Christ, look upon us in this community and keep
our sympathy
and pity fresh and our faces heavenward
lest we grow hard”.
Former officer
Canada and Bermuda
Born in South Africa of missionary officer
parents, John was an officer for four years, serving as a youth officer, and as
a corps officer in four appointments. John Sullivan left the Army as an officer
in ’57, over the issue of the sacraments and the doctrine of Holiness, and is a
recent newcomer to the FSAOF. After he left the SA he attended a Nazarene
University followed by a Methodist University from which he graduated in
English Literature in 1960. He married, and headed for the Fuller Theological
Seminary. He was encouraged by the Founder and President to consider a ministry
back in Canada with a mainline denomination. John contacted a UCC minister
with whom he had contact in his first Corps, shortly after having been
commissioned. At his encouragement he transferred to a United Church
Seminary connected with the University of Toronto. He graduated and was
ordained, and proceeded to Princeton for a post-graduate degree, and then later
to The School of Theology at Claremont, associated with the University of
Southern California, from which he received his doctorate. For the past
fifty years he has been a minister in the UCC, and though retired at age 65,
for the past fifteen years he has been serving a rural congregation.
“I am still known my many in the Canadian SA who
refer to me as “Dr. John.”
We welcome Dr. John as a contributor and look
forward to many insightful and meditative spiritual offerings.
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