Quiet Talks on John's Gospel Part 14

But dear faithful John never faltered. We must always love him for that.

How humiliating for us if not even one had stood that test. And how their after-contact with John must have affected the others. John pulled the others back and up. And how their faith so sorely chastened and tested came to its fine seasoned strength afterwards.

These very events of the early days now come back with new meaning to them. Jesus' words at the temple cleansing, and the kingly entry into Jerusalem, s.h.i.+ne now in a new light and give new strength to their faith.[64] But John himself brings us back to this again in that long talk of the betrayal night. So we leave it now. But blue is a good colour for the eyes. It reveals great beauty in the bit of tapestry-pattern John is weaving for us to trace these true blue threadings.

But there's more here, much more, that adds greatly to the pattern.

There are faithful disciples _and precious intimate friends.h.i.+ps_ outside the circle of these future leaders. Take only a moment for these as we push on.

There's that night visitor of the early Jerusalem days. Aristocrat, ruler, scholar, with all the supercautiousness that these qualities always grain in, Nicodemus actually left the inner circle of temple-rulers who were as sore to the touch as a boil over John's drastic cleansing, and comes for a personal interview. His utter sincerity is shown in the temper of his remarks and questions, and shown yet more in the openness of Jesus' spirit in talking with him. For this is a trait in Jesus' dealings,--openness when He finds an opening door.

It _must_ be so, then and now. He can open up only where there is an opening up to Him. Openness warms and loosens. The reverse chills and locks up.[65]

It is in another just such situation but far more acute, that this man speaks out for Jesus in an official meeting of these same rulers.

Timidly? have you thought, cautiously? Yet he spoke out when no one else did, though others there believed in Jesus. A really rare courage it was that told of a growing faith.[66] And the personal devotion side of his faith, evidence again of the real thing, stands out to our eyes as we see him bring the unusual gift of very costly ointments for the precious body of his personal friend.[67] It's a winsome story, this of Nicodemus. May there be many a modern duplicate of it.

In utter social contrast stands the next bit of this sort following so hard that the contrast strikes you at once. It's a half-breed Samaritan this time, and a woman, and an openly bad life. The Samaritans were hated by Jew and Gentile alike as belonging to neither, ground between the two opposing social national millstones. Womanhood was debased and held down in the way all too familiar always and everywhere. And a moral outcast ranks lowest in influence.

But true love discerns the possible lily in the black slime bulb at the pond's bottom and woos it into blossoming flower, till its purity and beauty greet our delighted eyes. Under the simple tact of love's true touch, out of such surroundings grows a faith, through the successive stages of gossipy curiosity, cynical remark, interest, eagerness, guilty self-consciousness that would avoid any such personal conversation, out and out comes a faith that means a changed life, and then earnest bringing of others till the whole village acclaims Jesus a Saviour, _the_ Saviour.

And the very t.i.tle they apply to Jesus reveals as by a flash-light the chief personal meaning the interview had for this outcast woman. In one way her faith meant more than Nicodemus', for it meant a radical change of outer life with her. And many a one stops short of that, though the real thing never does, and can't.[68]

Then the circle widens yet more, geographically. Jew, Samaritan, it is a _Roman_ this time, one of the conquering nation under whose iron heel the nation writhes restlessly. He is of gentle birth and high official position. It is his sense of acute personal need that draws him to Jesus. The child of his love is slipping from his clinging but helpless grasp.

There's the loose sort of hearsay groping faith that turns to Jesus in desperation. Things can't be worse, and possibly there might be help.

There's the very different faith that looks Jesus in the face and hears the simple word of a.s.surance so quietly spoken. He actually heard the word spoken about _his_ dying darling, "_thy son liveth_."

Then there is that wondrous new sort of faith whose sharper hooks of steel enter and take hold of your very being as you actually _experience_ the power of Jesus in a way wholly new to you. As it came to his keenly awakened mind that the favourable turn had come at the very moment Jesus uttered those quiet words, and then as he looked into the changed face of his recovering child, he became a changed man. The faith in Jesus was a part of his being. The two could never be put asunder. So the Roman world brought its grateful tribute of acceptance to this great wooing brooding Lover. The wooing had won again.

And now there's another extreme social turnabout in the circle that feels the power of Jesus' wooing. We turned from Jerusalem aristocrat to Samaritan outcast; now it's from gentle Roman official to a beggaring pauper. It is at the Tabernacles' visit. Jesus, quietly masterfully pa.s.sing out from the thick of the crowd that would stone Him, noticed a blind ragged beggar by the roadway. One of those speculative questions that are always pus.h.i.+ng in, and that never help any one is asked: "Who's to blame here?"

With His characteristic intense practicality Jesus quietly pushes the speculative question aside with a broken sentence, a sentence broken by His action as He begins helping the man. In effect He says, "Neither this man nor his parents are immediately to blame; the thing goes farther back. But"--and He reaches down and begins to make the soft clay with His spittle--"_the_ thing is to see the power of G.o.d at work to help." And the touch is given and the testing command to wash, and then eyes that see for the first time.

But the one thing that concerns us now in this great ninth chapter is the faith that was so warmly wooed up out of nothing to a thing of courageous action and personal devotion to Jesus. It is fairly fascinating to watch the man move from birth-blind hopelessness through clay-anointed surprise and wonder and Siloam-walking expectancy on to water-was.h.i.+ng eyesight.

It is yet more fascinating to see his spirit move up in the language he uses, from "the _man_ called Jesus," and the cautious but blunt "I don't know about His being a sinner, but I know I can _see_," on to the bolder "clearly not a sinner but a man in reverent touch with G.o.d Himself."

Then the yet bolder, "a man _from G.o.d_," brings the break with the dreaded authorities which branded him before all as an outcast and as a d.a.m.ned soul. And then the earnest reverent cry "Who is He, Lord, that I may believe?" reveals the yearning purpose of his own heart. And then the great climax comes in the heart cry, "Lord, I believe, I believe Thee to be the very Son of G.o.d."

And the outcast of the rulers casts in his lot with Jesus and begins at once living the eternal quality of life which goes on endlessly. What a day for him from hopeless blindness of body and heart to eyesight that can see Jesus' face and know Him as his Saviour and Lord! Growth of faith clearly is not limited to the counting of hours. It waits only on one's walking out fully into all the light that comes, no matter where it may lead your steps.

The Bethany Height of Faith.

The Bethany story is one of the tenderest of all. It touches the heights. It's a hilltop story, both in its setting amidst the Bethany blue hills where it grew up, and in the height of faith it records. It has personal friends.h.i.+p and love of Jesus and implicit trust in Him as its starting point. And from this it reaches up to levels unknown before. Faith touches high water here. It rises to flood, a flood that sweeps mightily through the valleys of doubt and questionings all around about.

At the beginning there is faith in Jesus of the tender, personal sort.

At the close there's faith that He will actually meet the need of your life and circ.u.mstance _without limit_. The highest faith is this: connecting Jesus' power and love with the actual need of your life.

Abraham believed G.o.d with full sincerity that covenant-making night under the dark sky. But he didn't connect his faith in G.o.d with his need and danger among the Philistines.[69] Peter believed in Jesus fully but his faith and his action failed to connect when the sore test came that Gethsemane night.

The Bethany pitch of faith makes connections. It ties our G.o.d and our need and our action into one knot. This is the pith of this whole story.

Jesus' one effort in His tactful patient wooing is to get Martha up to the point of ordering that stone aside. He got her faith into touch with the gravestone of her sore need. Her faith and her action connected.

That told her expectancy. Creeds are best understood when they're acted.

Moving the stone was her confession of faith. _Not_ that Jesus was the Son of G.o.d. That was settled long before.

No: it meant this--that the Son of G.o.d was now actually going to _act as Son of G.o.d_ to meet her need. Under His touch her dead brother was going to live. The deadness that broke her heart would give way under Jesus'

touch. The Bethany faith doesn't believe that G.o.d _can_ do what you need, merely. It believes that He _will_ do it And so the stone's taken away that He _may_ do it. G.o.d has our active consent. Are we up on the Bethany level? Has G.o.d our active consent to do all He would? Is our faith being lived, acted out?

And the feast of grateful tribute that followed has an exquisite added touch. The faith that lets G.o.d into one's life to meet its needs gets clearer eyesight. Acted faith affects the spirit vision. There is a spirit sensitiveness that recognizes G.o.d and discerns how things will turn out.

Notice Jesus' words about Mary's act of anointing. There is a singularly significant phrase in it. "Let her _keep it_ against (or in view of) the day of My burying." "Keep it" is the striking phrase. What does that mean? We speak of _keeping_ a day, as Christmas, meaning to hallow the memories for which it stands. "Keep it" here seems to mean that. Let her keep a memorial. Yet it would be a memorial _in advance_ of the event remembered and hallowed.

It seems to suggest that Mary thus discerned the outcome for Jesus of the coming crisis, and more, its great significance. The disciples expected Jesus' power to overcome all opposition. She alone sensed what was coming, His death and its tremendous spirit-meaning. And it is possible that the raising of her brother helped her to sense ahead another raising. For there is no mention of her at the tomb, as would otherwise have been most natural.

Her simple love-lit faith could _see_, and could see _beyond_ to the final outcome. This is the story of the Bethany faith, faith at flood.

This highest simplest truest faith, that had come in answer to Jesus'

patient persistent wooing for it, opens the way for the greatest use of His power on record.

There's one story more in this true-blue faith list. It is the story of the Greeks. At first it seems not to belong in here. There is no mention made of the faith of these men nor of their acceptance of Jesus. But the more you think into it the more it seems that here is its true place, and that this is why John brings it in, not simply to show how the outside world was reaching for Jesus, but to show the inner spirit of these men towards Jesus.

Whether the term _Greeks_ is used in the looser sense for the Greek-speaking Jews,[70] or for non-Jewish foreigners, or, as I think most likely, in the meaning of men of Grecian blood, residents of Greece, the significance is practically the same, it was the outer world coming to Jesus. These had come a long journey to do homage to the true G.o.d at Jerusalem. Their presence reveals their spirit.

They were eye and ear-witnesses of the stirring events of those last days in Jerusalem. The stupendous story of the raising of the man out in the Bethany suburb was the talk of the city. And then there was that intense scene of the kingly entry into the city amid the acclaiming mult.i.tudes. They knew of the official opposition, and the public proclamation against Jesus. They breathed the Jerusalem air. That put them in touch with the whole situation.

Now notice keenly they seek a personal interview with Jesus. This is the practical outcome of the situation _to them_. It reminds one of that other man, under similar conditions though less intense, at an earlier stage, cautiously seeking a night interview. Their desire tells not curiosity but earnestness, and the very earnestness reveals both purpose and att.i.tude towards Jesus.

And this is made the plainer by the very words they use as they seek out the likeliest man of the Master's inner circle to secure the coveted interview. They say, "Sir, _we would see Jesus_." The whole story of conviction, of earnestness, of decision, is in that tremendous little word "would." It was their will, their deliberate choice, to come into personal relations with this Man of whom they were hearing so much.

And it seems like a direct allusion to that tremendous word, and an answer to it, when Jesus, in effect, in meaning, says, "if any man _would_ follow Me." Both the coming under such circ.u.mstances, and the form of the request, seem to tell the att.i.tude of these men towards Jesus and their personal purpose regarding Him. It would be altogether likely that they accompany Philip as he seeks out Andrew. It would be the natural thing. And so they are with Philip and Andrew as they come to tell Jesus.

Then this would be the setting of these memorable intense words that Jesus now utters.[71] He senses at once the request and the earnest purpose of these men seeking Him out. It is for them especially that these words are spoken. And if, as some thoughtful scholars think, Jesus spake here, not in His native Aramaic, but in the Greek tongue, it gives colouring to the supposition. The intense earnestness of His words, and the revealing of the intense struggle within His spirit as He breathes out the simple prayer,--all this is a tacit recognition of the spirit of these Greeks.

The parallel is striking with the Nicodemus interview where no direct mention is made of the faith that later events showed was unquestionably there. It seems like another of those silences of John that are so full of meaning.[72] And the silence seems, as with Nicodemus, to mean the acquiescence of the inquirers in the message they hear.

This then would seem to be the reply to the request. They have indeed seen Jesus. And they accept it and Him, as most likely they linger through the Pa.s.sover-days at hand and then turn their faces homeward.

And so the warm wooing has drawn out this warm response from the cultured Greek world.

So we trace the blue thread in John's tapestry picture, the true faith that is drawn out from nothing to little and more and much and most, under the warmth of the brooded wooing of this great Lover.

The Ugly Thread in the Weaving.

Now for that ugly dark thread, the opposition to, the rejection of, the Lover's wooing. But we'll not linger here. We've been seeing so much of this thread as we traced the other and studied the whole. Ugly things stand out by reason of their very ugliness. This stands out in gloomy disturbing contrast with all the rest. A brief quick tracing will fully answer our present purpose. And then we can hasten on to the dominating figure in the pattern.

The opposition begins with silent rejection, moves by steady stages, growing ever intenser clear up to the murderous end. The sending of the committee to the Jordan to examine John and report on him was an official recognition of his power. The questions asked raise the possibility clearly being discussed of John being the promised prophet, or Elijah, or even the Christ Himself, and this is an expression of the national expectancy. The utter silence with which John's witness to Jesus is met is most striking.[73] Its significance is spoken of by both Jesus and John.[74]

The intensity of the resentment over the cleansing of the temple-area can be almost felt rising up out of the very page, in the critical questions and cynical comment of the Jews. One can easily see all the bitterness of their hate tracking its slimy footprints out of that cleansed courtyard.[75]