ANNAS

ANNAS

In a short time the criminal was taken to the house which Annas shared with his son-in-law, the High Priest Caiaphas. (John 18:13) Although the night was now well advanced, and although the assembly had been warned the day before, that Caiaphas hoped to capture the blasphemer early in the morning, many of the Jews were still in bed and the prosecution could not begin at once. In order that the common people might not have time to rise in rebellion, nor Pilate to take thought, the leaders were in haste to finish the affair that very morning. Some of the guards who returned from the Mount of Olives were sent to awake the more important Scribes and Elders, and in the meantime old Annas, who had not slept all that night, set himself on his own account to question this false Prophet.

Annas, son of Seth, had been for seven years High Priest, and though deposed in the year 14 under Tiberius, he was still the real primate of the Jewish Church. A Sadducee, head of one of the most aggressive and wealthy families of the ecclesiastical patriarchate, he was still, through his son-in-law, leader of his caste. Five of his sons were afterwards High Priests, and one of them, also called Annas, caused James, the brother of the Lord, to be stoned to death.

Jesus was led before him. It was the first time that the wood-worker of Nazareth found Himself face to face with the religious head of His people, with His greatest enemy. Up to that time He had met only the subalterns in the Temple, the common soldiers, the Scribes and Pharisees; now He was before the head, and He was no longer the accuser but the accused. This was the first questioning of that day. In the space of a few hours, four authorities examined Him; two rulers from the Temple, Annas and Caiaphas; and two tem­poral rulers, Antipas and Pilate.

The first question Annas put to Jesus was to ask Him who His disciples were. The old political priest who like all the other Sadducees gave no credence to the foolish stories about the coming of a Messiah, wished to know first of all who were the followers of the new Prophet, and from what rank of society He had picked them up, so that he might determine how far the seditious ulcer had progressed. But Jesus looked at Him without answering. How could that dove-huckster have thought that Jesus could betray those who had betrayed Him?

Then Annas asked about His doctrine. Jesus answered that it was not for Him to explain: "I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. Why askest thou me? Ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said." (John 18:20-21)

This was the truth. Jesus was not esoteric. Even if He sometimes said to His Disciples words that He did not repeat in the open places of the city, He exhorted them to cry out on the housetops what He told them in the house. But Annas must have made a wry face at an answer which pre-supposed an honest trial, for one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, "Answerest thou the high priest so?" (Vs. 22)

This blow from the quick-tempered attendant was the be­ginning of the insults which were henceforth rained upon Christ up to the cross. But He who had been struck, with His cheek reddened by the loudmouth fool, turned towards the man who had struck Him, "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?" (Vs. 23)

The rogue, abashed by such calm, found no answer. Annas began to see that this Galilean was no common adventurer, and he was all the more eager to get Him out of the way. Seeing, however, that he was not succeeding in extracting any­thing from Him, he sent Him bound to Caiaphas, the High Priest, so that the fiction of a legal prosecution might begin at once. (Vs. 24)

THE HOUR OF DARKNESS

THE HOUR OF DARKNESS

 

It was the rabble who swarmed around the Temple, paid by the Sanhedrin; carelessly made over for the time being into warriors; sweepers, and door-keepers, the lower parasites of the sanctuary, who had taken up swords in place of brooms and keys. There were many of them, a great multitude, so the Evangelists say, although they knew they were going out against only twelve men, who had only two swords. It is not credible that there were Roman soldiers among them and cer­tainly not "a captain," as John says, an officer over a thousand men. Caiaphas wished to make Christ a prisoner before he presented Him to the procurator, and the few forces at his disposition (the last vestiges of David's army) with the addi­tion of some clients and relatives were enough to carry out the far-from-dangerous capture.

This haphazard mob had come with torches and lanterns al­most as if out for an evening celebration. The pallid faces of the disciples, the livid face of Judas seemed to flicker in the red lights. Christ offered His face, stained with blood but more luminous than the lights, to Judas' kiss. "Friend, wherefore art thou come? Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" (Luke 22:48) He knew what Judas came to do, and He knew that this kiss was the first of His tortures and the most un­endurable. This kiss was the signal for the guards who did not know the delinquent by sight. "Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is He: take Him and lead Him away safely," (Mark 14:44) the merchant of blood had told the rough crowd who followed him as they came along the road. But that kiss was at once the first and the most horrible sullying of those lips which had pronounced the most heavenly words ever spoken here in the inferno of our earth. The spitting, the buffeting, the blows of the Jewish rabble and of the Roman soldiers, and the sponge dipped in vinegar, were to be less intolerable than that kiss, the kiss of a mouth which had called Him friend and Master, which had drunk from His cup, which had eaten from His dish..

As soon as the sign was given the boldest came up to their enemy.

"Whom seek ye?"

"Jesus of Nazareth."

"I am he." (John 18:5) He had scarcely said "I am he" when the curs fell backward, either at the sound of His tranquil voice or at the light of those divine eyes. But even at such a moment Jesus took thought for His friends. "I have told you that I am He, if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way." (Vs. 8)

At the moment, profiting by the confusion of the guards, Simon, coming suddenly to himself from his sleep and from his panic, laid his hand to a sword and cut off the ear of Malchus, a servant of Caiaphas. Peter on that night was full of contradictory impulses; after the supper he had sworn that no matter what happened he would never leave Jesus; then in the garden he fell asleep and could not keep himself awake; after that, tardily he set himself up as a militant defender; and a little later he was to deny that he had ever known his Master. Simon's untimely and futile action was at once re­pudiated by Christ: "Put up thy sword into the sheath, for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword. The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" (John 18:11) And He offered His hands to the nearest rogues who made all haste to tie them with the rope which they had brought. While they were busy tying Him, the prisoner accused them of cow­ardice. "Are ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and staves to take me? When I was daily with you in the temple ye stretched forth no hands against me: but this is your hour and the power of darkness." (Matt. 26:55)

He is the Light of the world, and the powers of darkness seek to extinguish it; but they can obscure it only for a short time, as on a July noon when the sun is suddenly covered by a dark storm-cloud but an hour afterwards shines out again, higher and more majestic than ever. The guards, eager to return triumphantly and to receive their fees, did not trouble to answer; they dragged Him by the rope towards the road to Jerusalem as butchers drag the ox to the slaughter-house. Then, confesses Matthew, ". . . all the disciples forsook him, and fled." (Matt. 26:56) Their Master forbade them to defend Him; instead of blasting His enemies the Messiah offered His hands to be bound; the Savior was powerless to save Himself. What could they do but disappear so that they might not also be brought before those powers which yesterday they had boasted of overthrowing, but which now, in the flickering of the lan­terns and the swords, seemed suddenly very formidable to their distracted minds? And only two followed the infamous procession, and they from a safe distance. We shall see them later in the court-yard of Caiaphas' house.

All this bustle awakened a young man who had been sleep­ing in the house in the grove of olives. Inquisitive like all young men, he did not take the time to dress, but wrapping a sheet about him, stepped out to see what was happening. The guards thought him a disciple who had not had time to escape, and laid hands on him, but the young man, casting off the sheet, left it in their hands and fled from them naked.

No one has ever known the identity of this mysterious man awakened from his sleep, who appeared suddenly in the night, and as suddenly disappeared. Perhaps he was the youthful Mark, the only one of the Evangelists who tells this story. If it were Mark, it is possible that on that night the involuntary witness of the beginning of the Passion first conceived the impulse to become, as Mark did, its first historian.

BLOOD AND SWEAT

BLOOD AND SWEAT
 

 

And when He had prayed, He turned back to find the Dis­ciples, who were perhaps waiting for Him to return. But the three had gone to sleep. Crouching on the ground, wrapped as best they could in their cloaks, Peter, James and John, the faithful, the specially chosen, had allowed themselves to be overcome with sleep. (Matt. 26:40) The obscure apprehensions, the repeated agitations of those last few days, the oppressive melancholy of the Supper, accompanied by words so grave, by presenti­ments so sad, had plunged them into that prostration which is more like apathy than sleep. The voice of the Master—who of us has the spiritual acuteness to realize that the accent of that voice in the sinister black silence is speaking also to our own hearts now—called them: "What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak." (Matt. 26:41) Did they hear these words in their sleep? Did they answer, shamefaced, putting their hands to their confused eyes which could not bear even the dim light of the night? What could they answer, startled, only half awake, to the Sleepless One who was to sleep no more?

Jesus went away again, more heavy-hearted than ever. Was the temptation against which He had put them on guard in them alone or also in Him? Was it the temptation to escape? To deny Himself as others were to deny Him? To oppose violence to violence? To pay with the lives of others for His own life, or to beg once more with a more despairing supplication that the peril might be averted from His head?

Jesus was once more alone, more alone than ever, in a solitude complete as infinite desolation. Until that hour He might have thought that there, close at hand, His loved friends were keeping vigil with Him. Now they had reached the limit of their endurance and had deserted Him spiritually before deserting Him bodily. The Alpha and the Omega knew the end as well as the beginning. He knew His men better than they themselves.

They had left Him alone; they were not men enough to grant Him the last favor which He asked, they who had re­ceived so many. In return for His blood, and His soul, for all His promises, for all His love, He had asked one thing only, that they should not fall asleep. And this small favor had not been granted Him. And yet He was suffering and struggling at that moment for the sake of those who slept: He who gave all was to receive nothing. During that night of refusals His every prayer was denied; both His Father and His fellow-men refused Him.

Satan also had disappeared into the darkness which is his own kingdom, and Christ was alone, utterly alone, alone as men are alone who raise themselves above other men, who suf­fer in the darkness to bring light to all. Every hero is always the only one awake in a world of sleepers, like the pilot watch­ing over his ship in the solitude of the ocean and of the night, while his companions rest.

Jesus was the most solitary of all these eternally solitary souls. Everything slept about Him. The city slept, its white, shadow-checkered mass sprawling beyond the Kedron; and in all the houses, in all the cities in the world, the blind race of fleeting men were sleeping. The only ones awake at that hour were perhaps some woman waiting for the call of her lover; perhaps a thief in ambush in the dark, his hand on the hilt of his knife; perhaps a philosopher pondering the problem, "Does God exist?"

But the leaders of the Jews and their guards were not asleep that night. Those who should have defended Jesus, who might at least have consoled Him, those who claimed to love Him, who in their way at times did really love Him, were stretched in sleep. But those who hated Him, who wished to kill Him, did not sleep. Caiaphas was not asleep and the only Disciple awake at that moment was Judas.

Until the arrival of Judas His Master was alone with His death-like sadness. That He might feel less alone He began to pray to His Father, and once more those imploring words rushed to His lips. The effort to keep them back, the conflict which convulsed His whole being—because the divinity which was in Him accepted joyfully what it had willed, while the ruddy clay which clothed it shuddered—this human and super­human effort brought to Him at last the victory. He was racked with suffering, but He was triumphant; He was utterly spent, but He had conquered.

The spirit had once more overcome the flesh; but from now on His body was merely a trunk which bled and died. The tension of the terrible struggle had done so great a violence to all that was earthly in Him that the sweat stood out on Him, as though He had achieved an impossible task, had en­dured the unendurable. The sweat poured from all His per­son; but not merely the natural sweat which runs down the face of the man walking in the sun, or working in the fields or raving in fever. The blood which He had promised to shed for men was shed first on the grass of the garden of Geth­semane. Great drops of blood mixed with sweat fell on the earth as a first offering of His conquered flesh. It was the beginning of liberation, almost a relief to that humanity which was the greatest burden of His apology.

Then from His lips wet with tears, wet with sweat, wet with blood, arose a new prayer: "O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. Not my will, but thine, be done." (Luke 22:42)

Gone now was any trace of cowardly shrinking; the will, that is the individual, abdicated in the obedience which alone can assure the freedom of the universal. He is no longer a man, but Man; the Man one with God, "I wish that which Thou wisheth." From that moment His victory over death is assured, because he who gives himself wholly to the Eter­nal cannot die. "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." (Matt. 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24)

He stood up calmed, and turned back towards His Disciples. His sad reproof had been vain; worn out and exhausted, the three were again sleeping. But this time Jesus did not call them. He had found a consolation greater than any which they could give Him—and He kneeled down once more to re­peat to the Father those great words of abnegation, "Not my will, but thine, be done." (Vs. 42)

God was no longer to be asked to be the servant of man, not the Leader although He was. (Vs. 45) Up to that time men had asked Him to satisfy their particular wishes in exchange for canticles and offerings. I wish for prosperity, said the man who prayed, for safety, for strength, for flowering fields, for the ruin of my enemies. But now Christ, the Over-turner, has come to transpose the common prayer, "Not what is pleasing to me, but what is pleasing to Thee. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven." (Matt. 6:10) Blessed­ness can only come as a result of perfect harmony between the sovereign will of the Father and the subordinate will of man, as a result of the convergence and identity of those two wills. What if the will of God give me into the hands of the torturers and fastens me like an evil and malignant beast upon two crossed beams of wood? If I believe in the Father as a Father, I know that He loves me more than I could love my­self, and that He knows more than I could know, therefore He can wish only for what is best for me even if that best to human eyes seems the most dreadful evil; and I wish for what the Father wills. If His foolishness is unimaginably wiser than our wisdom, martyrdom given by Him will be incom­parably better than any earthly pleasures.

What if the Disciples slept? What if all men slept? Christ was no longer alone. He was content to suffer, content to die. He had found His peace under the hammer-stroke of anguish.

Now He can listen almost longingly for the footsteps of Judas.

For a time He hears only the beating of His own heart, so much calmer than at first, now that the horror is nearer. But after some moments, He hears approaching the sound of cautious shuffling, and there among the bushes which border the road red flickering of light appear and disappear in the darkness. They are the servants of the assassins who are fol­lowing Iscariot along the path.

Jesus turns to the Disciples, still asleep, "Behold the hour is come; rise, let us go. Lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand." (Mark 14:42)

The eight other Disciples, sleeping farther away, are already aroused by the noise, but have no time to answer the Master because while He is still speaking the crowd comes up and stops.

ABBA FATHER

ABBA FATHER
 

On the Mount there was a garden, and a place where olives were crushed, which gave it its name, Gethsemane. Jesus and His friends had been spending the nights there, either to avoid the odors and noise of the great city, distasteful to them, country-bred as they were, or because they were afraid of being treacherously captured in the midst of their enemies' houses.

“And when He was at the place, He said to His disciples, lit ye here while I go and pray yonder." (Luke 22:40)

But He was so heavy-hearted that He dreaded being alone. He took with Him the three whom He loved the best, Simon Peter, James and John. And when they had gone a little way from the others, He began to be sorrowful and very heavy. "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death; tarry ye here, and watch with me." (Matt. 26:38)

If they answered Him no one knows what they said. But we know that they did not comfort Him with the words which come from the heart when it shares the suffering of a loved one, for He withdrew Himself from them alone, and went further on, to pray. He fell on the ground on His face and prayed, saying, "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." (Mark 14:36)

He was alone now, alone in the night, alone in the midst of men, alone before God, and He could show His weakness without shame. After all, he was a Man, too, a man of flesh and blood, a living, breathing man, who knew that His de­struction was at hand, that His body would be destroyed, that His flesh would be pierced, that His blood would be poured out on the ground.

But yet He was One with God the Father as well as the Spirit, brooding over the great need of man. He was revealing the very heart of God. (John 5:7; 1 John 5:7)

This was the second temptation. After the defeat of Satan in the desert, the Evangelist says: "he departed from him for a season." (Luke 4:13) He had left Him till this moment. Now He was in a new desert, terribly alone in the darkness, more alone than in the desert where the wild beasts served Him. Cloaked and learned wild beasts were at hand now, but only to tear Him to pieces. In that terrible nocturnal desert, Satan returned to tempt his enemy; at first he had promised Christ, kingdoms, victories, and prodigies, he had tried to draw Him by the bait of power. Now, on the contrary, he counted on His weakness. At the beginning of His life, Christ burning with confident love had not fallen into his trap, but Christ near His end, abandoned by those nearest to Him, encompassed by His enemies, might be conquered by fear, even though He had risen above greed. The prayer to the Father was at the instigation of Satan, was a beginning of cowardice. Jesus knew He must die, that His death was necessary, that He had come to give life by His death, to confirm by His death that greater life which He announced. He had made no effort to avoid death, He had been willing to die for His friends, for all men, for those who did not know Him, for those who hated Him, for those not yet born. He had predicted His death to His friends, had already given them the rewards of His death, the bread of His body, the blood of His soul; and He had no right to ask the Father that the cup might pass from His lips or that His death might be delayed. He had written His words on the dust of the public place, and the wind had quickly obliterated them: He had written them on the hearts of a few men, but He knew how easily eradicated are words written on the hearts of men without the Spirit burning them there. If His truth were to remain forever on the earth so that no one could ever forget it He must write it with His blood. Only with the blood in our veins can truth be written permanently on the pages of earth so that it will not fade under men's footsteps or under the rainfall of centuries. The Cross is the careful and necessary consequence of the Sermon on the Mount. He who brings love is given over to hatred, and He can only conquer hatred by accepting condemnation. Everything must be paid for, the good at a higher price than evil; and the greatest good, which is love, must be paid for by the greatest evil in men's power, assassination.

But all that faith and revelation tell us of His divinity rises up against the idea that He can ever have been subjected to temptation. If the torture and the end of His body had really terrified Him, was there not yet time to save Himself? For many days He had known that they were trying to take Him captive, and even on that night there were ways of escaping the pack of hounds ready to fall upon Him. He would have been safe if, either alone or with His most faithful friends, He had taken the road back to the Jordan, or thence by hidden paths have passed across Perea into the Tetrarchy of Philip, where He had already taken refuge to escape the ill will of Antipas. The Jewish police were so few and primitive that they could scarcely have found Him. The fact that He did not do this, did not flee, shows that He did not try to escape death and the horrors that were to accompany it. From the point of view of our coarse human logic His death was a suicide--a divine voluntary suicide by the hand of others, not unlike that of the heroes of antiquity who fell upon the sword of a friend or a slave. What sort of a life would He have had after such a flight? To grow old obscurely, the fearful mas­ter of a hidden sect, to die at the last, worn out, the death-rattle in His throat like any other man! Better, infinitely better to finish the sowing of the Gospel on the Cross and to water it with His blood. (1 John 5:8) God's Washboard-Cleansing in Scripture is twofold: (1) of a sinner from the guilt of sin - the blood (hyssop) aspect; and (2) of a saint from the defilement of sin - the water (wash) aspect. Under grace the sinner is purged by blood when he believes (Mat 26:28; Heb 1:3; 9:12; 10:14). He had spoken out His truths and now, that those truths should be everlastingly remembered He needed to link with them the horror of His unforgettable death. Perhaps this blood, like a stinging drink, would arouse His disciples forever.

But if the cup that Jesus wished to pass from Him was not fear of death, what else could it have been? Betrayal by him whom He had chosen and loved, by the disciple whose hunger He had fed that very evening with His body, whose thirst He had quenched with His soul? Or the denial close at hand of the other disciple in whom after his cry at Caesarea He had the greatest hope? Or the desertion of all the others who would flee like scattered lambs when the wolf sets his fangs into their mother's body? Or was it grief for that greater denial, the refusal of His own people, the Jews, of the people from whom He was born and who now despised Him like one born out of His time, and suppressed Him like a child of shame, and did not know, but one day would, that the blood of Him who came to save them would never be wiped from their foreheads? Perhaps in the darkness of this last vigil He had a glimpse of the fate which would befall His children later on, the bewilderment of the first saints, the dissensions between them, the desertions, the martyrdoms, the massacres, and after the hour of triumph the weakness of those who should have guided the multitude, the irrepressible schisms, the dismemberment of the Church, the wild dreaming of heretical pride, the growth of innumerable sects, the confusion of false prophets, the boldness of rebellious reformers, the slick self-indulgence of those who deny Him in their actions while glorifying Him in word and gesture: the persecutions of Christians by Christians, the neglect of the lukewarm and the arrogant, the dominion of new Pharisees and new Scribes, distorting and betraying His teachings, the misunderstanding of His words, when they fall into the hands of the hair-splitters, evaluators of the immaterial, separators of the inseparable, who, with learned vanity, disembowel and cut to pieces the living things they pretend to bring to life.

The cup that Jesus wished to pass from Him might there­fore have been not at all any wrong done to Him, but wrongs committed by others, those alive then and close to Him, or those not yet born and far-distant. What He was asking from His Father might have been not His own safety from death, but safety from the evils, which, then and later, were to over­whelm those who claim to believe in Him. The origin of His sadness would have been thus not fear for Himself, but love for others.

But no one will ever know the true meaning of the words cried out by the Son to the Father, in the black loneliness of the Olives. A great French Christian called the story of this night the "Mystery of Jesus." The "Mystery of Judas" is the only human mystery in the Gospels; the prayer of Geth­semane is the most inscrutable, divine mystery of the story of Christ. (Matt. 26:36; Mark 14:32)

WINE AND BLOOD

WINE AND BLOOD

As soon as they had eaten the lamb with the bread and the bitter herb, Jesus filled the common cup for the third time and gave it to the Apostle nearest Him, "Drink ye all of It; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many." (Matt. 26:28)

His blood, mixed with sweat, had not yet fallen on the ground, under the olives, and had not yet dropped from the nails upon Golgotha. But His desire to give life with His life, to redeem with His suffering all the sorrows of the world, to transmit at least a part of His substance to His immediate heirs; this desire to give Himself up wholly for those whom He loves is so great that from this moment on, He feels the immolation complete and the gift possible. If bread is the body, blood is in a certain sense the soul. The Lord said to Noah: "But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat." (Gen. 9:4) With blood as visibly representing life, the God of Abraham and of Jacob had established the covenant with His own people. When Moses had received the law, he had sacrificed oxen, took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar: "And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord bath made with you concerning all these words." (Exod. 24:8)

But after a trial of many centuries, God had announced by the voice of the prophets that the Old Covenant was obliterated and abrogated, and that another was henceforth nec­essary. The blood of animals sprinkled upon stubborn heads and upon blaspheming faces had lost its virtue; another Blood, purer and more precious, was needed for the New Covenant, for the Last Covenant of the Father with His perjured children. In many ways He had already tried to lead His first-born to­wards the narrow door of salvation; the rain of fire on Sodom, the washings of the waters of the flood, the Egyptian slavery, hunger in the desert, had terrified them without reforming them.

And now there had come a Liberator at once more divine and more human than the old Captain of Exodus. Moses also saved a people, spoke upon a mountain, and announced a promised land. But Jesus saves not only His people, but all peoples; *writes His laws not upon stone, but upon human hearts which acted as stone; and His promised land is not a country of rich grazing-land and vineyards, with great clusters of grapes, but a King­dom of holiness and eternal joy. (Changes-New meanings and new sights) Moses had killed a man, and Jesus brought the dead to life; Moses changed water into blood and Jesus, after having changed water into wine at the wedding banquet, changed wine into blood, into His own blood, at the melancholy last supper of His marriage with death. Moses died full of years and honors on a solitary mountain top, glorified by his people; and Jesus was to die among the insults of those whom He loved.

The blood of oxen, the impure blood of earthly animals, involuntary and inferior victims, is no longer sufficient. The New Covenant was established that night with the words of Christ, who under the appearance of wine shed His own blood and His own soul: "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you." (Luke 22:20)

It was shed not merely for the Twelve who were there; they represent in His eyes all of humanity alive at that time and all those to be born thereafter and for those that awaited His coming looking forward in faith to His arrival. The blood which was to be shed the next day, on Golgotha, was real blood, actual, warm blood congealing on the cross in clots which all the tears shed by Christians can never wash away. But the blood of the Last Supper represents a soul which gave itself up to make over into His own likeness, the souls shut up in the bodies of men: which was given to those who asked for it and to those who fled away from it, which had suffered for the sake of those who had received it and for those who had blasphemed it. This baptism of blood which came after the baptism of water by John, after the baptism of tears by the women of Bethany, after the baptism of spitting by the Jews and by the Romans, this baptism of blood, red as the baptism of fire announced by the prophet of fire, and mixed with the tears shed by women over His blood-stained body, this is the greatest sacrament, revealed to His betrayers, by Him who was betrayed.

I have broken bread for you, daily bread for which you pray every day to the Father, as my body will be broken tomorrow, and I offer you now my blood in this wine which I drink for the last time on earth, If you always do this in memory of me, you will feel no hunger, no thirst. There is no food better than wheat-bread, and no drink better than wine, but the bread and wine which I have given you tonight will feed you and quench your thirst for all your lives, by virtue of my sacrifice and of that love which makes me seek for death and which reigns beyond death.

Ulysses advised Achilles to give the Achaians, before they went into battle, "bread and wine that they should have strength and courage." For the Greek the strength of his members came from bread and homicidal courage from wine. Wine was to intoxicate men so that they should destroy each other and bread was to strengthen their arms so that they could battle without weakness. The bread given by Christ does not strengthen the flesh, but the soul, and His wine gives that divine intoxication which is Love, that Love which the Apostle, scandalizing the descendants of Ulysses, was to call in his Epistle to the Corinthians, "the foolishness of God." (1 Cor. 1:25)

Judas also ate that bread and swallowed that wine, partook of that body, in which he had trafficked, drank that blood which he was to help shed, but he had not the courage to confess his shame, to throw himself down weeping at the feet of Him who would have wept with him. Then the only friend remaining to Judas warned him, "Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me." (John 13:21)

The eleven were capable of leaving Him alone in the midst of Caiaphas' guards, but they never could have brought them­selves to sell Him for money, and at this they shuddered. Everyone looked in his neighbor's face, almost dreading to see in his companion the livid look of guilt, and all, one after the other, said, "Lord, is it I?" (Matt. 26:22)

Even Judas, hiding his increasing confusion under the ap­pearance of offended astonishment, was able to force his voice to say, "Lord, is it I?" But Jesus, who the next day would not defend Himself, would not even bring an accusation and only repeated the sad prophecy in more definite words, "He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me." (John 13:26) And while they all still gazed at Him in painful doubt, for the third time He insisted, . . . "The hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table." (Luke 22:21) He added no more, but to follow the old customs up to the last, He filled the cup for the fourth time and gave it to them to drink. And once more the thirteen voices rang out in the old hymn, the "great hallel" which ended the liturgy of the Passover. Jesus repeated the vigorous words of the Psalmist which were like a prophetic funeral oration for Him, pronounced before His death. "The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can man do unto me? . . . They compassed me about like bees: they are quenched as the fire of thorns. . . . I shall not die, but live. . . . The Lord hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death. Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord: . . . The stone which the builders refused is become the head­stone of the corner. . . . Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar." (Psa. 118:6, 12, 17-19, 22, 27)

The victim was ready and the next day the inhabitants of Jerusalem were to see a new altar of wood and iron. But perhaps the Disciples, sleepy and confused, did not under­stand the new meaning both melancholy and triumphant of the old canticles.

When the hymn was ended they left the room and the house, at once. Therefore not the Passover, but a new meal for the Church. As soon as they had emerged from the house Judas disappeared into the night. The remaining eleven silently followed Jesus, who, as was His habit, made His way to the Mount of Olives.

TAKE-EAT

TAKE-EAT

These thirteen men had apparently come together to per­form the old social rite in memory of the liberation of their people from Egyptian slavery – the Passover. They seemed to be thirteen devout men of the people, waiting about a white table redolent of roasted lamb and wine, for the signal to begin an intimate and festal supper.

But this was only in appearance. In reality it was a vigil of leave-taking and separation. Two of these thirteen, He into whom God had entered and he into whom Satan had entered, were to die terrible deaths before the next nightfall. The very next day the others were to be dispersed, like reapers at the first downfall of hail.

But this supper which was the Eucharistic communion of an ending, was also a wonderful beginning. In the midst of these thirteen Jews the observance of the Jewish Passover was about to be transfigured into something incomparably higher and more universal, into something unequaled and ineffable; into the great Christian mystery, the Lord’s Supper, a feast of love. The simple eating of bread was to become actual communion with God. And then symbols of a cleansing til their departure from earth as well the promise of a grand meal when they arrive at their destination after leaving this earth.

For the Jews, Easter is only the feast in memory of their flight from Egypt. They never forgot their victorious escape from their slavery, accompanied by so many prodigies, so manifestly under God's protection, although they were to bear on their necks the yokes of other captivities, and to undergo the shame of other deportations. Exodus prescribed an annual festivity which took the name of the Passover; Pasch, the paschal feast. It was a sort of banquet intended to bring to mind the hastily prepared food of the fugitives. A lamb or a goat should be roasted over the fire, that is, cooked in the simplest and quickest way; bread without leaven, because there was no time to let yeast rise. And they were to eat of it with their loins girded, their staves in their hands, eating in haste, like people about to set out upon a journey. But this meal differed. The violations of the law which Christ would have been guilty had He eaten the Passover – time argue against it. The Passover is never called a supper. It is always called a feast. The penalty of death was inflicted on those who ate early. (Num. 9:10-13) No one was to leave the house until the morning; but all left the upper room before midnight. (Exod. 12:22) This was to be observed as on the night in Egypt. (Exod. 12:25) The Passover was eaten with shoes on and standing. But not so this supper. (Exod. 12:11) Must be kept in Jerusalem, not outside. (Deut. 16:5-8) The failure on the part of the apostles to explain away any apparent incriminations of the Lord if He had actually eaten the Passover out of its proper time and manner is missing. Silence certainly makes it appear that this last supper was in no sense regarded by them as the Passover Feast.

  The bitter herbs were the poor wild grasses snatched up as they went along by the fugitives, to dull the hunger of their interminable wanderings. The red sauce, where the bread was dipped, was in memory of the bricks which the Jewish slaves were obliged to bake for the Pharaohs. The wine was something added: the joy of escape, the hope of the land of promise, the exaltation of thanksgiving to the Eternal.

Jesus changed nothing in the order of this ancient feast. After the prayer He had them pass from hand to hand the cup of wine, calling on God's name. Then He gave the bitter herbs to each one and filled a second time the cup which was to be passed around the table for each to sip.

What taste did that wine have in the mouth of the traitor, when Jesus in that deep silence pronounced those words of longing and hope which were not for Judas, but only for those who could ascend to the eternal banquet of the Father: Take this and divide it among yourselves, "but I say unto you I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." (Matt. 26:29).

A sad farewell; but nevertheless the confirming of a solemn promise. Perhaps they felt only the promise, and perhaps there flashed before their poor men's eyes a vision of the great Heavenly feast. They did not believe that they would have a long time to mourn: after that other vintage-time, after the fruit of the vine had fermented, and the sweet wine had been poured into the flasks, the Master would return, as He had promised, to summon them to the great wedding of Heaven and Earth, to the everlasting banquet. The marriage supper of the Lamb and His bride. They must have thought, "We are men growing old, elderly men, more than mature, within sight of old age; if the Bridegroom tarries too long He will not find us among the living, and those who have believed Him will be mocked at."

Comforted by the certainty of an early and glorious reunion, they chanted together, as the custom was, the Psalm of the first Thanksgiving, a chant of praise to the Father from Him who served Him. "Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters. —He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dung-hill; that he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people." (Psa. 114:7-8; 113:7)

These old words, colored at that moment with a new mean­ing, were sung with a joyful conviction of their truth. They, too, the Disciples, were poor men and they would be raised out of the dust of poverty by the intercession of the Son of God: they too were poor men and He would soon raise them out of the misery of their beggary, to make them mas­ters of inconsumable wealth.

Then Jesus, who saw how insufficiently they understood, took the loaves, blessed them, broke them and, as He gave them each a piece, set the dreadful truth before their eyes. "Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me." (Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; 1 Cor. 11:24)

So He was not to return as quickly as they thought! After His brief stay during the Resurrection, His second coming was to be delayed, so long that it might be possible to forget Him and His death.

"This do in remembrance of Me." The breaking of bread at the common table among those who await Him shall be the sig­nal of a new brotherhood. Every time that you break bread, I will not only be present among you, but by that means you will be intimately united with me. Because, as this bread is broken in my hands, my body will be broken by my enemies. As this bread eaten tonight will be your food until tomorrow, my body which I will offer in death to all men shall satisfy the hunger of those who believe in me, until the day when the great granaries of the Kingdom shall be open to all, when you shall be angels in the presence of your Father whom you shall have found again. I will leave you therefore not merely a memory; I will be present with a mystic but real presence in every particle of bread consecrated to me and this bread shall be a living necessary food for souls, and my promise to be with you shall be fulfilled till time shall be no more.

In the meantime, this evening, eat this unleavened bread, this bread made by the hand of man, made of water and grain, these loaves which have felt the heat of the oven and which my hands, not yet cold in death, have divided amongst you—and which my love has changed into my flesh so that it may be your everlasting food. It is sweet to the heart of a friend to see his friends eating bread at His table, bread born of the earth, bread which was green blades with flowering lilies among them, and then the ripe ear bending down the tall stalk with its golden weight. You know how many efforts, how much anxiety, how much trouble, are contained in a piece of bread; how the great oxen cultivated the earth, how the countrymen threw great handfuls of the grain into the fallow land in winter, how the first blade softly penetrated the damp darkness of the earth, how the reapers all day long cut down the ripened stalks, and then the sheaves were bound, and carried to the threshing floor and beaten so that the ears let fall the grain. The workers must wait for a little wind, neither too gentle nor too violent, to winnow out the good grain from the chaff. Then they grind it, sift out the bran from it, make a dough with warm water, and heat the oven with dry grass or twigs. All this must be done with love and patience before the father may break a piece with his children, the friend with his friends, and the host with strangers. Planters, sowers, reapers, winnowers, millers and bakers sweat in the heat of the sun, in the heat of the oven, before the golden wheat can be transformed into well-baked golden bread for our table.

Truly it is sweet to eat good wholesome bread with friends: the soft white crumb, covered with the crisp crust. So many times with me you have begged bread in poor men's houses; and all your lives you are to beg it in my name: you will have the moldy hard crusts which dogs refuse, the dry bits left at the bottom of the dish, the crusts gnawed by children and old people which they have let fall upon the hearth. But you know want, and nights of fasting and the pale face of poverty. But you, are strong; you have the powerful jaws of those who eat hard bread. You will not lose courage, if no place is made for you at the tables of the well-to-do.

But verily it is infinitely sweeter for Him who loves you to transform the bread which comes from the hard earth and from hard labor into the Body which will be eternally offered for you, into the Body which every day will come down from Heaven as the visible means of grace.

Remember the prayer which I taught you: "Give us this day our daily bread—" (Matt. 6:11) For today and for always your bread is this bread, my Body. He shall never know hunger who shall eat my Body, which every morning throughout end­less centuries shall be changed into endless morsels of transub­stantiated bread. But whosoever shall refuse it, shall be hungry for all eternity.

THE WASHING OF THE FEET

THE WASHING OF THE FEET

 

Now that He was on the point of being snatched from those whom He loved, He wished to give them a supreme proof of this love. From the time they had begun to share His life, He had always loved them, all of them, even Judas: He always loved them with a love surpassing all other affections, a love so bountiful that their narrow hearts could not always con­tain it; but now about to leave them, knowing that He was to be with them again only when transfigured after death, all His hitherto unexpressed affection overflowed in a great wave of tender sadness. (John 13:1)

Before beginning the supper where He was the head of the family, He wished to be kinder than a Father, humbler than a servant. He was their King, and He would humble Himself to the service performed by slaves: He was their Master and He would put Himself below the level of His disciples; He was the Son of God and He would accept a position despised of men: He was the first and He would kneel before His inferiors as if He had been the last. So many times, to rebuke their pride and jealousy, He had told them that the Master must lovingly serve his servants that the Son of Man was come to serve, that the first must be last. (Matt. 23:10) But His words had not yet been assimilated by those souls, since even up to the last, they continued to quarrel for priority and prece­dence, leadership. Just as they do today in the church.

For raw, untrained minds, action has more meaning than words. Jesus prepared Himself to repeat, with the symbolic aspect of a humiliating service, one of His most important in­structions. John tells us, "He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded." (John 13:4-5)

Only a mother or a slave would have done what Jesus did that evening. The mother would have done it for her little children, but for no one else: the slave for his masters, but for no others. (Matt. 23:37) The mother would have served joyfully because of her love, the slave would have been resigned through obedi­ence. But the Twelve were neither Christ's children nor His masters. Son of Man and of God, His love was above that of all earthly mothers,—King of a kingdom existing in the future, but more legitimate than all existing monarchies, He was the unrecognized Master of all masters.

And yet He was willing to wash and wipe those twenty-four callous and sweaty feet, in order to engrave on those unwilling hearts, still swollen with vanity, the truth which His lips had so long vainly pronounced; "And whosoever shall exalt him­self shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." (Matt. 23:12)

So after He had washed their feet and taken His garments and was set down again He said unto them, "Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither is he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." (John 13:12-17)

Jesus had not only given them a memory of complete humil­ity, but an example of perfect love. "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you." (John 13:34; 15:13-14)

But this action, with its deep meaning hidden under the appearance of menial service, signifies purification as well as love. "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all." (John 13:10) Before they can serve they needed to be washed, even Judas in his shameful deed he was commanded to perform.

The eleven, although not of lofty character, had some right to this cleansing service from Jesus. For many months those feet had trodden the dusty, muddy, filthy roads of Judea to follow Him who brought life; and after His death, year by year, they were to tread longer and harder roads in countries the very names of which they then did not know; and foreign clay would dirty the sandaled feet of those who were to go as pilgrims and strangers to repeat the call of the Crucified One.