5. JESUS AND MEN
What was the attitude of Jesus towards men and women?
The New Testament shows him in various relationships: as a child to his
parents; as an adult to his widowed mother; as a kinsman to his relations.
He was the one awaited by his precursor, and the Master to his disciples.
The band of Twelve are marked off from the other disciples and live on
terms of special intimacy with him. Within the Twelve, the three who were
present at the raising of Jairus' daughter, the Transfiguration, and in
Gethsemane, are even closer to him than the rest. These are Peter, James
and John. The last of these is "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (John 13.
23; 21. 7).
He was bound by a special tie of friendship to the family at Bethany, and
within that family he was particularly attracted to Mary (Luke 10. 38 ff.).
He had another equally close attachment with Mary of Magdalen, who is found
beside his grave at Easter (John 20. 11 ff.).
Then there is the crowd: the people with their needs, their longing for
salvation, unreliable and changeable. A whole series of individuals can be
singled out from among them: those whom he had helped, such as the deaf-
mute, the cripple, the blind man, the grateful leper, the centurion and his
servant, and the woman with an issue of blood.
And there were many enemies, among whom, again, were such individuals as
the inhospitable Pharisee. There were people who wanted to embarrass or
hinder him, the disciple who betrayed him, and the individuals who took
part in the events of his last two days.
That is to say, there were human relationships of all kinds, which gave
scope to all kinds of different feelings of sympathy, attachment, animosity
and strife. Can we find some characteristic attitude of Jesus in all this?
He approached men with an open heart. He was almost always to be found in
the company of people. He had no house of his own where he could be alone:
he was a guest wherever he lived. We might almost say that he had no
"private life" at all. He was sensitive to men's needs and full of an
inexhaustible readiness to help them. We recall words like these: "Come to
me, all you that labor and are burdened; and I will refresh you" (Mat. 11.
28), or: "And seeing the multitudes, he had compassion on them; because
they were distressed and scattered abroad like sheep that have no shepherd"
(Mat. 9. 36); or the parable of the shepherd who had lost one animal from
his flock.
On the other hand, he was reserved towards men, even towards his closest
friends. He always remained peculiarly detached. John says: "Jesus would
not give them his confidence; he had knowledge of them all, and did not
need assurances about any man, because he could read men's hearts" (John 2.
24-5). He wanted nothing from men. Between him and men there was no
community of mutual interests, not even one of common work. We never find
him portrayed attempting to clarify an issue in common with his companions,
or seeking with them a way to become master of some situation. We do not
even find him working together with them. Apart from occasions devoted to
common worship, like the Paschal meal, he is never even seen praying with
them. And the only time he did look for comfort of human companionship, he
did not find it: "Could you not watch one hour with me?" (Mat. 26. 40).
And so a continual solitude enveloped Jesus. There were always men about
him, but among them he was alone.
His solitude arises because no one understands him. His enemies do not
understand, the multitude does not, but neither do his disciples. The depth
of this lack of understanding is revealed by a series of incidents. For
example, there is the shattering experience described in Mark 8. 14 ff.
They are together in a boat on the lake. He had been speaking about the
leaven of the Pharisees and they assume that he is talking about the
provisions they had forgotten to bring with them. So he says plainly: "Why
do you discuss the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet know or
understand? Have you still your heart blinded? Having eyes, see you not?
And having ears, hear you not?" Then he reminds them of the recent miracle
of feeding the multitude. "How do you yet not understand?" Or, we can
recall the scenes when he was arrested and put to death; or the sense in
which they understood his message about the coming of the kingdom of God
right up to and including the time after Easter (Acts 1. 6).
This lack of understanding constitutes to a decisive degree Jesus' fate. To
see how deep that misunderstanding was, we have only to note the radical
change which took place in the attitude of the disciples after Pentecost.
Thus, the life of Jesus is lacking in every presupposition for being
understood. It is well to be quite clear in our minds just how much this
meant.
We gain the impression of a rigid isolation; a muteness in spite of much
speaking. For life only begins to unfold before us from the heart of the
other; and the word we speak is only perfected in the ear of one who
understands. It is this isolation of Jesus which St. John tries to express
in his Prologue in terms of the barrier which is raised up between him and
the world: "And the darkness did not comprehend it (the light). . . He
came unto his own and his own received him not" (John 1. 5, 11). Connected
with this is the impression we get of the futility, in the ordinary sense,
of the activity of Jesus. With most religious leaders in history, their new
message usually began to be felt, after a period of struggle, within their
own lifetime. By contrast, Jesus was to see no return at all; we are
reminded of the picture of the grain of wheat which must die before it can
bring forth fruit (John 12. 24); even in his disciples. This
misunderstanding did not arise merely because his message was too lofty,
but because it came from a God whom no one knew, and because between his
message and mankind there lay the indispensable revolution in values which
the Gospel calls "metanoia" (repentance). For this reason understanding
could only come through the Holy Spirit who was to be sent by that selfsame
God.
It might now be asked why this Spirit had not come sooner, in Jesus' own
lifetime; or why he who supported Jesus' being--see the account of the
baptism--and accomplished his words, had not been transmitted to his
audience. This is a circle which we are unable to break. People do not
understand because the Holy Spirit has not come to them. He does not come,
because they are not ready for him. Yet this very preparedness is itself a
gift of the Holy Spirit. Thus, normal thinking can find a way neither in
nor out. This is the mystery of the new beginning in God himself, and as
such it is inscrutable. But this much is certain: Jesus' message fell on
deaf ears.
It was his existence, even more than what he said, that remained
misunderstood, for it and his message were one. What his message was if we
consider it as doctrine and proclaimed potentiality is that he himself was
as an existent being. Let us take the concept of the focal point of
existence. This is the spiritual fulcrum on which men balance their lives,
the point of departure from which they approach both men and things and to
which they return from them again. The greater and more exalted the
personality, the deeper lies this focal point. Whether or not a man
understands other men depends upon his capacity for observation and
sympathy, upon his power to see things as a whole, and penetrate them; but
most of all it depends upon the extent to which his own depth of existence
is equal to or greater than that of others. We will have more to say about
the nature of Jesus' existence later; but we may say here that the
starting-point from which he looked upon, judged and confronted men,
rejoiced and suffered, are obviously unfathomably deeper than that of his
environment. For Jesus there was no such thing as a "we" in the sense of a
direct community of existence, but only in the sense of a sovereign love
which loves before others are capable of loving, and without their being
capable of reciprocating the love shown them. Scarcely a single act of
genuine communal existence is recorded in the Gospels; scarcely one true
"we" in the strict sense of the term. Not even in prayer is it ever
expressed. The resume of his message from the Father, and the basis of the
proper relationship to him, were given by Jesus in the prayer, Our Father.
The subject of the Our Father is the "we" of the Christian: but Jesus never
repeated this prayer with his disciples, never included himself with this
"we". There is no place, as far as I can see, where he took the lead in
joining together with his disciples in prayer. Where he himself is seen to
pray, as for example at the end of the Last Supper, and still more
strikingly, in the Garden of Olives, he speaks and adopts an attitude which
no other man can imitate.
