Christ on the Road to the Cross.
We learn from John's Gospel that the resurrection of Lazarus precipitated the determination of the Jewish authorities to put Christ to death; and that immediately thereafter there was held the council, at which, by the advice of Caiaphas, the formal decision was come to. Thereupon our Lord withdrew himself into the wilderness which stretches south and east of Jerusalem, and remained there for an unknown period, preparing Himself for the cross. Then, full of calm resolve, He came forth to die. This is the crisis in our Lord's history to which my text refers. The picture has not attracted the attention that it deserves. I think, if we ponder it with sympathetic imagination helping us, we may get from it some very great lessons and glimpses of our Lord's inmost heart in the prospect of His cross.
I. We have here what, for the want of a better name, I would call the heroic Christ. I use the word to express simply strength of will brought to bear in the resistance of antagonism; and although that be a side of the Lord's character which is not often made prominent, it is there and ought to have its due importance. We speak of Him, and delight to think of Him, as the embodiment of all loving, gracious, gentle virtues, but Jesus Christ as the ideal man unites in Himself what men are in the habit, somewhat superciliously, of calling the masculine virtues, as well as those which they somewhat contemptuously designate the feminine. We are to look to Jesus Christ as presenting before us the very type of all which which men call heroism, in the sense of an iron will, incapable of deflection by any antagonism, and which coerces the whole nature to obedience to its behests. Christ is the pattern of heroic endurance, and reads to us the lesson, resistand persist,whatever stands between us and our goal,
II. We see here not only the heroic, but what I may call the self-sacrificing Christ. We have not only to consider the fixed will which this incident reveals, but to remember the purpose on which it was fixed, and that He was hastening to His cross. The very fact of our Lord's going back to Jerusalem with that decree of the Sanhedrim still in force was tantamount to His surrender of Himself to death. He recognised that now that hourof which He spoke so much had come, and of His own loving will offered Himself as our Sacrifice.
III. This incident gives us a glimpse of what I may call the shrinking Christ. Do we not see here a trace of something that we all know? May not part of the reason for Christ's haste have been that desire which we all have, when some inevitable grief or pain lies before us, to get it over soon and to abbreviate the moments that lie between us and it. Was there not something of that feeling in our Lord's sensitive nature when He said, for instance, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished"? And may we not see in that swift advance in front of the lagging disciples, some trace of the same feeling which we recognise to be so truly human? Christ did shrink from His cross. There was shrinking which was instinctive and human, but it never disturbed the fixed purpose to die. It had so much power over Him as to make Him march a little faster to the cross, but it never made Him turn from it. And so He stands before us the Conqueror in a real conflict, as having yielded Himself up by a real surrender, as overcoming a real difficulty, "for the joy that was set before Him, having endured the cross, despising the shame."
IV. So, lastly, I would see here the lonely Christ. In front of His followers, absorbed in the thought of what was drawing so near, gathering together His powers in order to be ready for the struggle, with His heart full of the love and the pity which impelled Him, He is surrounded as with a cloud which shuts Him out of their sight as afterwards the cloud of glory received Him. There never was such a lonely man in the world as Jesus Christ. Never one that carried so deep in His heart so great a purpose and so great a love which nobody cared a rush about. And those that were nearest Him and loved Him best, loved Him so blunderingly and so blindly that their love must have been often quite as much of a pain as of a joy. And all this solitude, the solitude of unappreciated aims, and unshared purposes, and misunderstood sorrow during life, and the solitude of death with all its elements ineffable of atonement, all this solitude was borne that no human soul, living or dying, might ever be lonely any more. "Lo I," whom you all left alone, "am with you," who left Me alone, "even till the end of the world."
A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth,Nov. 11th, 1886.
I. There was something in the aspect of Christ, in the emanation of His spirit, which struck His disciples with a great awe. He had not yet spoken to them, but they felt what He had to say. But they were less than ever able to leave Him. Such awe was a magnetic spell which kept them within His circle. As they followed Him they were afraid, but if they forsook Him they were dead. "Lord, to whom shall we go but unto Thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life." Awful as the words sometimes seem, fearful as is the vision they open, let us hear them, let us enter into life by them. To turn from them is to enter into death the death which is eternal.
II. There are moments when we are amazed as we listen to Jesus, and as we follow we are afraid. I think that it is with us in our Christian lives much as it was with Christ; there are great broad tracts of serenity and sunlight, crossed by shadows of awe and dread. Remember, the life of Jesus Christ must have presented the reverse of a gloomy or repellant aspect. The Shepherd is His chosen character. "I am the Good Shepherd" uttered perhaps the deepest thought of His heart as to His relations to mankind. His words, His work, the spirit He breathed, were sweet and fresh as the fragrant meadows to the hot and dusty wayfarer of life. The main experience of a true Christian life should be joyful and hopeful, as things are glad that live in the sun. The elements of joy in our lot are abounding. The certainty of blessing is absolute. Nothing can harm us, nothing can daunt us, nothing can drive us to despair. But there are moments when thoughts and visions rise from deep springs within us and chase the joys. They may bury us in a gloom which yet is not chill and drear; which has a golden gleam of sunlight through it, chasing all its terrors away. There are moments when life in any form seems very solemn, very terrible, when we tremble before the vision of an undying existence, an infinite capacity of suffering or of being blessed; while we are conscious inwardly of fatal weakness, a deadly proneness to sin. Blessed, thrice blessed they, who in this dread crisis see the form and clasp the hand of Him who has trodden the path before them, and trodden it till it issued in glory.
J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon,p. 53.
I. Notice here the singular combination of the compatibility and the union of two apparently contradictory things; though they feared they followed, and though they followed they feared. The fear was not enough to stop the following, nor the following sufficient to arrest the fear. There was a love in the fear which kept them following, and yet a nature in the following which still left them fearing. It was the fact of the following which originated the fear. And fear is the strongest fascination. There is always a tendency to go to what we greatly fear. It is a principle true in love. There is fear in all true love. And the fear in the love makes a part of the fascination of the love. So the following led up to the fear, and the fear led up to the following.
II. That walk to Jerusalem appears to me strangely illustrative of the path by which many of you are going to heaven; Going to heaven! yes, you are going to heaven, but not enjoying all you might, or glorifying all you ought by the way. We come to the question, How is it that a real follower may be a real fearer? And I will find the answer on that road up to Jerusalem. Why did the disciples fear? (1) They had not adequate ideas of Him whom they followed. They did not know what they learnt afterwards what exceeding care He takes of His own, how by His suffering He was going to prevent their suffering, and by His own death to prevent their dying; they had not read the full character of Christ, therefore they misread their own future. (2) Though the disciples loved Christ, they did not love Him as He deserved. If they had done so, the love would have absorbed the fear; they would have rejoiced to endure with Him, even to the death. (3) They had not what their Master had one great, fixed, sustaining aim. It was that which bore Him so bravely, and that would have borne them. (4) The disciples had their fears undefined. It was the indefinite which terrified them. Take, then, four rules. (1) You that follow and are afraid, fortify yourself in the thought of what Christ is His person, His work, His covenant, and what He is to you. (2) Love Him very much, and realize your union with Him. (3) Set a high mark, and carry your life in your hand, so you may reach that mark, and do something for God. (4)
Often stop and say deliberately to yourself, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" and do not go on till you have got an answer.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1867, p. 53.
References: Mark 10:32-45. A. H. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 282; H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man,p. 225.Mark 10:33; Mark 10:34. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 52.Mark 10:35-38. Homilist,3rd series, vol. i., p. 177. Mark 10:35-40. W. Romanis, Church of England Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 111.Mark 10:36. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 12.