POOR PEOPLE
Nobody in Capernaum could remember having heard such a Rabbi. The
Sabbaths when Jesus spoke, the Synagogue was full, the crowd overflowed out on
the street, everybody was there who could come. The gardener comes, who for
that day had left his spade, and no longer turned his water wheel to irrigate
the green rows of his garden, and the smith, the good country smith, black with
smoke and dust every day, but on the Sabbath washed, neatly dressed, his face
still a little dusky, although scrubbed and rinsed in many waters like his
hands, with his beard combed and anointed with cheap ointment (but still
perfumed like a rich man's beard), the smith all whose days are spent before
the fire, sweaty and dirty except this day which is the Sabbath, when he comes
to the Synagogue to hear the ancient word of the Ancient of Days, the God of
his fathers. He comes devoutly, but he comes too because his family, his
friends, his neighbors come there, and he finds them all together, and he comes
also because the day is long (all that long holiday without any work, without
any hammer in his hand, without the pincers) and in Capernaum there is nothing
to do on Sabbaths except go to the Synagogue. The mason comes, he who has
worked on this little house of the Synagogue and made it small because the
Elders—good, God-fearing people, but inclined to be stingy—did not wish to
spend too much. The mason still feels his arms a little numb and lame from his
six days' labor, no longer keeps track of the stones which he has laid in
courses and the trowels full of mortar which he has thrown between the stones
during the week.
The
mason puts on his new clothes today and sits down on the ground, he who on all
other days stands upright, active, watchful so that the work may go well and
the employer be satisfied; the good mason too has come to the house which seems
to him partly his own.
The
fishermen have come too, the young and the old, both of them with faces tanned
by the sun and with eyes half-shut from the constant glare of sunlight
reflected by the water.
(The
old man is handsomer because of the contrast of his white hair and white beard
with his weather-beaten and wrinkled face.) The fishermen have turned over
their boats on the sand, have left them tied to a stake, have spread the nets
on the roof and have come to the Synagogue, although they are not used to being
within walls and perhaps continue to hear a confused murmur of water lapping
about the bow.
The peasants
of the neighboring countryside are here too, prosperous farmers who have put on
a tunic as good as anybody's, who are satisfied with the harvest almost ready
for the sickle. They do not mean to forget God who brings the grain to a head
and makes the grape-vine to blossom. There are shepherds come in to town that
morning, shepherds and goat-herds with the smell of their flocks still on them,
shepherds who live all the week in the mountain-pastures without seeing a
soul, without exchanging a word, alone with their quiet animals peacefully
grazing on the new grass.
The smaller
property owners, the small business men, the gentry of Capernaum, all have
come. They are men of weight and piety. They stand in the front row, serious,
their eyes cast down, satisfied with the business of the last few days and
satisfied with their conscience because they have observed the law without
failing and are not contaminated. The line of their well-clad backs can be
seen, bowed backs but broad and masterful, employers' backs, backs of people in
harmony with the world, and with God, backs full of authority and of religion.
There are also transient foreigners, merchants going towards Syria or returning
to Tiberius. They have come from condescension or from habit, perhaps to try to
pick up a customer, and they stare into everybody's face with the arrogance
which money gives to poverty-stricken souls.
At the back of the room (for the Synagogue is only a long white-washed
room a little larger than a school, than an inn, than a kitchen) the poor of
the countryside are huddled together like dogs near a door, like those who
always stand in fear of being sent away. The poorest of all, those who live by
odd jobs, by ungracious charity and also—oh, poverty!—by some discreet theft,
the ragged, the vermin-ridden, the timid, the wretched; old widows whose
children are far away, young orphans not yet able to earn a living, hump-backed
old men with no acquaintances, strength less invalids, those who are incurably
sick, those whose wits no longer rightly serve them, who have no understanding, who cannot work. The
weak in mind, the weak in body, the bankrupt, the rejected, the abandoned,
those who one day eat and the next day do not, who never have enough to satisfy
their hunger, those who pick up what others throw away, the pieces of dry
bread, fish-heads, fruit-cores and skins; and sleep now here and now there, and
suffer from the winter cold and every year wait for summer, paradise of the
poor, for then there are fruits to be plucked along the roads. They too, the
beggars, the wretched, the children, the sickly and the weaklings, when the
Sabbath comes, go to the Synagogue to hear the accounts of the Bible. They
cannot be sent away: they have as much right to be there as any one, they are
sons of the same Father and servants of the same Lord. On that day they feel a
little comforted in their poverty because they can hear the same words heard by
the rich and the strong. Here they are not served with another sort of food,
poorer and coarser, as happens in the houses where the owner eats the best and
the beggar on the threshold must content himself with scraps. Here the fare is
the same for the man of possessions and him who has nothing. The words of Moses
are the same, everlastingly the same for him who owns the fattest flock and
for him who has not even a quarter of lamb on Passover day. But the words of
the Prophets are sweeter to them than those of Moses, harder on the great of
the world, but kinder for the humble. The poverty-stricken throng at the back
of the Synagogue waits every Sabbath for somebody to read a chapter from Amos
or from Isaiah because the Prophets take the part of the poor, and announce the
punishment and the new world. "And
he who was clothed with purple shall be made to handle dung."
And behold
on that Sabbath there was One who came expressly for them, who talked for
them, who had come back from the desert to announce good tidings for the poor
and the sick. No one had ever spoken of them as He did, no one had shown so
much love for them. Like the old prophets, He had for them a special affection
which offended more fortunate men, but which filled their hearts with comfort
and hope.
When
Jesus had finished speaking they observed that the elders, the middleclass, the
masters, lords, Pharisees, men who knew how to read and make money, shook their
heads forebodingly, and got up, making wry faces and nodding among themselves,
half contemptuous, half scandalized; and as soon as they were outside, muttered
a grumbling of prudent disapprobation through their great black and silver
beards. But no one laughed.
The
merchants followed them, erect, already thinking of the next day; there
remained behind the working men, the poor, the shepherds, the peasants, the
gardeners, the smiths, the fishermen, and all the herd of beggars, orphans
without inheritance, old men without health, homeless outcasts, friendless unfortunates,
penniless men, the diseased, the maimed, the worn-out, the rejected. They could
not take their eyes from Jesus, they would have liked Him to go on speaking, to
reveal the day of the New Kingdom when they too would have their return for
all this misery, and see with their own eyes the day and way of reckoning. The
words of Jesus had made their bruised and weary hearts beat faster. A gleam of
light, a glimpse of the sky and of glory, the hallucination of prosperity, of
banquets, of repose and abundance, sprang up from those great words in the
rich souls of the poor. Perhaps they scarcely understood what the Master meant
to say, and perhaps the Kingdom glimpsed by them had some resemblance to a
materialistic Land of Cockaigne. But no one loved Him as they did. No one will ever love Him like the poor of
Galilee, hungering after peace and truth. Even those who were less destitute,
the day-laborers, the fishermen, the working men, though less hungry for bread,
loved Him for the love of those poor.
And
when He came out from the Synagogue all those stood waiting in the street to
see Him again. They followed Him timidly as if in a dream; when He entered into
the house of a friend to eat they were almost jealous and some waited outside
the door until He reappeared; then, grown bolder, they detained Him and went along
together beside the shores of the lake. Others joined them on the way, and now
one and now another (they were braver under the open sky and outside the
Synagogue) began asking questions. And Jesus paused and answered this obscure
crowd with words never to be forgotten.
