CAPERNAUM - JESUS HOME
Jesus taught His Galileans on the threshold of their
shabby little white houses, on the small shady open places of their cities or
the shore of the lake, leaning against a beached boat, His feet on the stones,
towards evening when the sun sank red in the west, summoning men to rest.
Many listened to Him and followed Him because, says Luke:
"His word was with authority."
(Luke 4:32) The words were not wholly new, but the man was new, and new was the
warmth of His voice, and the good done by that voice, overflowing from His
heart and going straight to the hearts of others. The accent of those words was
new, and new the sense that they took in that mouth, lighted by His look.
Here was no prophet of the mountains shouting in waste
places, far from men, solitary, distant, forcing others to come to him if they
wished to hear him. Here was a prophet living like a man among other men, a
friend of all, friendly to the unfriended, an easy-going and companionable
comrade, searching out His brothers where they work in the houses, in the busy
streets, eating their bread and drinking wine at their tables, lending a hand
with the fisherman's nets, with a good word for every man, for the sad, for the
sick, for the beggar.
The simple-hearted, like animals and children, know instinctively
who loves them, they believe him, are happy when he comes (their very faces
suddenly transfigured) and are sad when he goes. Sometimes they cannot bring
themselves to leave him and follow him to the death.
Jesus spent His time with them walking from one region to
another, or talking, seated among His friends. Always dear to Him was the sunny
shore of the lake, along the curve of quiet clear water scarcely ruffled by the
wind from the desert, dotted with a few boats silently tacking back and forth.
The western coast of the lake was His real Kingdom; there He found His first
listeners, His first converts, His first disciples.
If He returned to Nazareth, He stayed there but a short
time. He was to go back later, accompanied by the Twelve and preceded by the renown
of His miracles, and they were to treat Him as all the cities of the
world,—even the most renowned for comfort, Athens and Florence, have treated
those of their citizens who made them great above others. After ridiculing Him
(they had seen Him as a child, it is out of the question that He can have
become a great prophet) they tried to cast Him down from the precipice.
In no city did He make a long stay. Jesus was a wanderer,
such a man as is called a vagabond by the pot-bellied and inactive citizen
rooted to his threshold. His life is an eternal journey. Before that other Jew
who was condemned to immortality by one
condemned to death, He is the true wandering Jew. He was born on a journey.
Still a baby at the breast, He was carried along the sun-parched road to Egypt;
from Egypt He came back to the waters and greenness of Galilee. From Nazareth
He often went to Jerusalem for the Passover. The voice of John called Him to
the Jordan: an inner voice drove Him out into the desert; and after the forty days
of hunger and the Temptation, He began His restless vagabond life from city to
city, from village to village, from mountain to mountain, across Palestine.
Most often we find Him in Galilee, in Capernaum, Chorazin, in Cana, in Magdala,
in Tiberius, but often He crosses Samaria to sit down near the well of Sychar.
We find Him from time to time in the Tetrarchy of Philip at Bethsaida, at
Gadara, at Caesarea, also at Gerasa in the Perea of Herod Antipas. In Judah He
often stops at Bethany, a few miles away from Jerusalem, or at Jericho, but He
did not shrink from journeying outside the limits of the old kingdom and from
going down among the Gentiles. We find Him in Phoenicia, in the regions of Tyre
and Sidon, and in Syria, if the transfiguration took place on the summit of Mt.
Hermon. After the resurrection He appears in Emmaus, on the banks of His lake
of Tiberius and finally at Bethany near Lazarus' house, where He leaves His
friends forever.
He is the traveler without rest, the wanderer with no
home, the wayfarer for love's sake, the voluntary exile in His own country; He
says Himself that He has not a stone on which to lay His head, and it is true
that He has no bed where He may lie down at night, nor a room that He can call
His own. His real home is the road which takes Him along with His first friends
in search of new friends. His bed is the furrow in a field, the bench of a
boat, the shadow of an olive tree. Sometimes He sleeps in the houses of those
who love Him, but only for short periods.
In the early
days we find Him most often at Capernaum, His journeys began there and ended
there. Matthew calls it "His
city." (Matt. 9:1) Situated on the caravan route which from Damascus
crosses Ituraea and goes towards the sea, Capernaum had become little by little
a commercial center of
some importance. Artisans, bargainers, brokers, and shopkeepers had come there to
stay. Men of finance—as flies swarm on rotten pears—had come there; publicans,
excise men and other fiscal tools. The little settlement, half-rustic, half a
fishing village, had become a mixed and composite city where the society of the
times—even to soldiers and prostitutes—was fully represented. And yet
Capernaum, lying along the lake, freshened by the air from the near-by hills
and by the breeze from the water, was not a prey to stagnation and decay like
the Syrian cities and Jerusalem. There were still peasants who went out to
their fields every day, and fishermen who every day went forth to their boats.
Good, poor, simple, warm-hearted people who talked of other matters than money
and gear. Among them a man
could draw his breath freely.
On the Sabbath Jesus went to the Synagogue. Everybody had
the right to enter there, to read aloud and also to expound what had been read.
It was a plain house, a bare room where people went with their friends and
brothers to reason together and dream of God.
Jesus stood up, had someone give Him one of the scrolls
of the Scriptures (more often the Prophets than the Law) and recited in a
tranquil voice two, three, four or more verses. Then He commenced to speak with
a bold and forceful eloquence which put the Pharisees to confusion, touched
sinners, and won the poor, and enchanted women.
Suddenly the old text was transfigured, became
transparent, belonged to their own times; it seemed a new truth, a discovery
they had made, a discourse heard for the first time; the words withered by
antiquity, dried up by repetition, took on life and color; a new sun gilded
them one by one, syllable by syllable; fresh words coined at that moment,
shining before their eyes like an unexpected revelation.
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