Mark 2:4

Unusual Methods

Mar 2:4

The idea is that if you want to get at Christ you can do so. That is all. If you do not want to get at Christ you can easily escape by excuse. That is true. We all know it: we have been partakers of that shameful trick. If you do not want to go to church you can find pleas enough for not going lions in the way by the thousand: if you want to go the lions may be ten thousand in number, but you will be there. So we come back upon a homely but expressive proverb which says, "Where there's a will there's a way." We can do very much what we want to do. This is true in all things. See if the fault be not in the will. What a weak point is here; what a very fickle constitution is there; what an irrational sensitiveness puts in its plea at another point. How selfishness plays a subtle but decisive part in the tragedy or comedy of life! Whoever knew an earnest man permanently baffled? But how difficult to be earnest about religion! It is invisible, impalpable, imponderable; it is so largely distant, so truly spiritual; it cannot be weighed, measured, looked at; it does not come within the range of observation to any extent which appeals to a competitive selfishness. So men fail, and blame the devil; so men do not go to Christ, and say they were fated to keep away; thus men tell lies until they shut out the light of noonday by their shadow. The men in question could not get easily at Christ: but what is worth having that can be easily got at? When they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they tore off the roof, they broke it up. They meant to succeed, we do not; they did succeed, we fail; they ought to succeed, we ought to be defeated. Shame upon the economy of the universe if the coward ever won a battle, if the lazy man ever came back with a sheaf of corn! Do we really want to get at Christ? Our answer will contain everything that explains our success or our defeat. Is it the heart that wants to see the Saviour? or is it some adventure of the imagination that wants to catch his profile and then vanish, because it is a profile that ought to be seen? Is it the soul that says, "I will"? If so, the battle is half won; Christ himself comes into vision when he hears that poignant cry.

For what purpose do we want to see Christ? Everything will depend upon our reply to that inquiry. Christ himself will not come to some calls. Herod expected to see some great thing done by him, and Christ went into a cold stone, looked at Herod as a corpse might have looked at him, answered him not not by look, or touch, or word, or sign until Herod was afraid. There is a silence more awe-inspiring than speech can ever be. For what purpose, therefore, do we want to see Christ? Is it upon real business? He answers nothing to curiosity; he cannot stop to chaffer with speculation; he will stay all night with an earnest Nicodemus; he will keep the sun from going down or rising up if the soul really wants him to settle questions of guilt and pardon. Are we prepared to take the roof away rather than not see Christ? In other words, are we prepared to take unusual methods, peculiar and eccentric ways, rather than be baffled in our quest after the Son of God? If these men had taken off the roof without first going to the door, Jesus Christ would have rebuked them. We must not be eccentric merely for the sake of eccentricity. There is a defiance of conventional propriety which is itself nothing but a base vulgarity that ought to be frowned down. But the men went to the door, they tried the regular way, and when they could not enter by the door, because the throng was so great, then they must make a door. Everything depends upon our treatment of circumstances. We must not defy conventional propriety merely for the sake of defying it; but when conventional propriety is closing up the door so that we cannot get in, we must find admission by the roof. Conventional propriety is killing the Church. Infidelity is doing the Church no harm at all. It does not lie within the power of a blatant scoffer to touch the Cross of Christ; but its protectors may not be faithful to their responsibility; the professors of Christ have it in their power to crucify him every day, and put him to an open shame.

Let us try to get at Christ, and first try to get in by the door. There are several doors, let us try the first. How crowded it is; how long-bearded the men are who are filling up the opening; and there is intelligence in their eyes, there is earnestness in every wrinkle of their venerable faces; these are men who have sat up all night over many a weary problem; they are not foolish men, they are men of culture, reading, thought, study; they are inquisitive men, they do not read the books of yesterday, they read the records that are a thousand years old. But we cannot pass them, because we have not learned their letters. These are the rabbis of the Church, and unless we can take their language and swing with them over ten centuries, we cannot be allowed to pass that way. Then let us try some other door. Here are other men not wholly dissimilar; they, too, have marks of study upon their faces; these eyes have been tried by many a midnight lamp; but they talk long words, and hard words; we never heard our mother use such language; every word is a word of many syllables that requires a kind of verbal surgeon to take it to pieces. Hear how they talk; though the words be very long, yet they speak them glibly, with a fluency that itself is a mockery, because we feel that we could not even stumble our way across such stony paths. Who are they? They are the philosophers. We cannot get in there; let us try another door. Here are men looking one another in the face, and reasoning in high argument, and proving and then disproving, reaching conclusions only to shatter them; we shall make nothing out at that door. Who are these men, who have weights and scales and measures, and who will not admit anything that does not prove certainties? They are the logicians, the controversialists, the men of open throat, and eye of fire, and tongue like a stormy wind; they will argue. What does it all come to? To blocking the way, to shutting up the door. You and I, poor broken hearts, cannot find access there. Shall we go home?

We came to see Christ, and we mean to remain until we do see him. Then let us try another door. Who are these men robed and certified, and who bear the image and aspect of officers? They are skilled hands here. Evidently they keep no end of keys; mayhap they may have the key we want. They are burning incense, opening doors, ringing bells, performing ceremonies, almost dancing in their strange gesticulations. Who are they? Ceremonialists. You never caught one of them ten minutes late in the morning. They live by ceremony; they like it, it suits them wholly. Who are they? They are ecclesiastics; men who have tailors to themselves. "Clerical tailors" is a word you now see in brass letters on certain audacious windows. We cannot get in there. Shall we go home? No. We came out to find the Son of God, and we will find him. Saviour, Son of David, have mercy upon us! What shall we do? We must resort to unusual ways. They will not allow us to go to church, then let us meet on the seashore; they will not admit us without certain cards and certificates and endorsements: ruin be to all their mechanism! Let us, brother, fall down here on bare knees at an altar consecrated by the incarnation of the Son of God; mayhap he will see us without the piece of official paper; he may hear heart-prayer when we cannot have access to written form, couched in noble language, if anything too dignified for heaven.

Do you want to see Christ? There are men who say they would go in but they cannot find their way through the rabbis, or through the philosophers, or through the logicians, or through the ecclesiastics, and there they are. Shame on them! they are not earnest; they would not allow a friend to escape in that way. They do not want Christ. Nicodemus found a way. It was a long weary day that. He looked often at the clouds and at the sun, to see if he could steal forth. He was determined not to rest until he had spoken to this wondrous man. He waited for the night, and the night like a veiled friend came and took him to the Saviour, and they sat up all night; and that night the heaven trembled with stars, there was hardly room in all the firmament for the stars that wanted to glitter out their infinite secret upon the heart of this inquiring master in Israel; never did a night so starry bend over the earth. To have been there! Zacchæus found a way. He said, I am short, I cannot reach over the shoulders of these men, but I will climb up yonder sycamore tree. He never would have been chief among the publicans, and rich, if he had been afraid of climbing a tree; that explains the man's success in life. To have seen him otherwise you would have just seen a dapper little gentleman that never seemed to have touched anything with his fine fingers; but when he wanted to carry an object, then see how the dapper little gentleman changed into a fiery little furnace that meant to win, and up the tree he went, for Christ was to pass that way. Some men would never have seen the tree; some men certainly would not have climbed the sycamore; others would have said, "Perhaps on another occasion we may see him." But to earnestness there is no "other occasion"; there is only one day, and that is to-day. There be indolent, leisurely, contemplative souls who play with time; they speak of "tomorrow" as if it were theirs; they speak of "another occasion" as if they had compromised with death, and staved the monster off for a settled series of years. Zacchæus has only one time, one opportunity; he lives in a burning now. There was a woman who found a way. They need not have called her a woman; she could not have concealed that fact; they might have told us the incident, and we should have fixed the sex. She said, If I might but touch the hem of his garment; if these poor fingers could but touch the craspedon, I shall be healed. She did it quietly, silently, but Jesus knew that she did it, for he said, "Who hath touched me?" and the vulgar disciples said, "Touched thee! Why, see how they throng thee, and sayest thou who touched thee? Why, we are all touching thee." "No," said Christ, "no; some finger has taken life out of me; whose finger was it? I am conscious that virtue has gone out of me." There is a rude touch that gets nothing; there is a sensitive touch that extracts lightning from God, virtue from the Cross. There is a hearing that gets nothing, because the hearer simply hears the noise, the succession of syllables, words, paragraphs; there is another hearing that catches a sound within the sound, music within the articulation; there is a hearing that only wants one word, it can supply all the rest; give it that one word, and see how it runs to tell its exultant joy. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear; he that hath fingers to touch, let him touch; he that hath eyes to see the invisible, let him look, and all heaven shall be full of angels. Do we want to see Christ? That is the urgent, recurrent, tremendous question.

There is a permissive violence "They uncovered the roof... and when they had broken it up------" There are respectable persons who lock up their churches six days out of seven, lest by some accident some poor blunderer should scratch the paint. They say they are careful of the church. So they are, much too careful. But the church was made for man, not man for the church; the roof was made for man, not man for the roof. Were they going to let fifteen feet of canvas stand between them and the living Healer of the universe? Were they going to balance a dying man against a root that a hand could tear off? They must be at Christ. There is an acceptable violence. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." That is his constant reply to earnestness. It is not stated that he had any conversation with the man. Some of us are blessed on the road to church; it cost us a great deal to get to church that day, and Jesus joined us on the road and gave us Sabbath before we got inside, so that when we came within the gates of the sanctuary the whole place glowed like a chamber let down from heaven. Jesus knows what it cost some people to get at him; he knows that they have to give up old acquaintances, bad ways of business, habits that had laid themselves with iron grip upon the heart, and before they have time to speak, he says, I know it all; thou shalt have the fatted calf, a ring for thy hand, and shoes for thy feet, and this shall be thy father's house; as for thy sins, they are in the sea, they have gathered themselves together and plunged into the deep. Son, stand up! There is a church-going that amounts to battle and victory in one supreme act. Unusual ways are permitted under certain circumstances; when there is real need they are permitted; where there is no alternative they are allowed.

This is where the Church has got wrong. It has its little methods, and its small plans, and its neat ways of doing things, and the devil never was afraid of neatness. That is an awful blemish anywhere. A "neat" sermon! Could you degrade that loftiest, noblest, grandest speech more than by calling it a neat sermon? We must get rid of a good many people in order to get at reality in all this matter of adaptation to the necessities of the case. We must part with all the cold hearts; they have occupied so much space in the church in what are called for some inscrutable reason "pews," and therefore we shall miss them, because they did weigh and measure so much arithmetically; but they are better gone! Personally I would turn every church to its most multifarious uses, if I could do good in that way which is impossible in any other way. Unusual ways have always been permitted. Once there was a man who was very hungry, and there was nothing to eat but the shewbread, the holy bread, and he took it ravenously and devoured it, and God said, "That is right." Hunger has a right to bread. No man should be punished for taking bread when after honest endeavour and strenuous service he has failed to get it otherwise. He is no thief who, being honest in his soul, has failed to get bread and is dying of hunger, and that openly says, "This is for man, and I solemnly, religiously take it." God never condemned such an action. I know how dangerous it is even to hint at this, because there be some mischievous minds that do not turn water into wine, but wine into water, and water into poison; there is a process of deterioration; if any such man should pervert my words so the blame be his, not mine. Once it was impossible to eat the passover in the regular way; circumstances so combined that a good deal of the prescribed mechanism had to be done away with; and we read in the historical books that they ate the passover, "otherwise than as it was written." Everything goes down under the agony of human need. Once there was a number of persons who assailed the Son of God because he healed a man on the Sabbath day; and he said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." If we do not find Christ, blame ourselves. Never does Christ blame himself because the people have not found him. That is a remarkable circumstance; consider it well; in no instance does Jesus Christ say, "These people might have been saved if I had shown myself to them. But I kept out of the way purposely, therefore they are not saved." He declares the contrary to be the fact; he says; "I would, but ye would not; ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" He never says, "He would not." He lived to die; he died to live; he ascended to intercede.

It is never easy to get at Christ; it ought not to be easy to get at him. It means battle, pressure, determination. "Strait is the gate, narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." The road is over a place called Calvary, and a voice says to those who attempt that way, "Except a man deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me, he cannot be my disciple." To one man Jesus said, "Sell all that thou hast, and come"; to another he said, "Except a man hate his father and his mother [in comparison] he cannot be my disciple "; another who thought he was going on to riches and honour said he would go, and Jesus said, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." But the battle has a great victory. Small efforts end in small consequences. Again, therefore, the question recurs, Do we want to see Christ? Is it our heart that wants him, or our curiosity? Are we only asking the question of imagination, or are we propounding the inquiry of agony? To-day I set open the door of the kingdom of heaven in the name of Jesus. To weary men I would represent him saying, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst" Lord, we all thirst; our hearts thirst, our souls have drunk rivers of water and still they thirst "if any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." May we all go? "He, every one that thirsteth, come!" Who says so? The Spirit, the bride, and the Giver of the water, the First, and the Last. It is an awful thing to have heard this discourse. It puts us into a new relation. Cursed be the tempter that led me into this church! some soul may say, for without being here I should have bewildered myself and perplexed myself and excused myself; but this man has torn the roof off the house of my excuses, and laid my bad man's pleas open to the sun of heaven. Others may say, Blessed be God for this word, for we have heard to-day that if any man really desires to see the Son of God, him the Son of God will see.

Prayer

Almighty God, teach us that all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole world; there is nothing hidden from the sight thereof. Help each of us to say, Thou God seest me. In this fear and in this hope may we live every day. We thank thee for the Son of God, who reads our hearts, who knows our inward and unspoken reasoning, and who will judge us accordingly. Behold, we stand before him to be judged; but do we not first stand before his Cross to be saved? May we not there plead with God, each saying for himself, God be merciful unto me a sinner? Then we shall not fear the judgment-seat, for there shall we meet our Saviour, and he will know the power and grace of his own priesthood. We would therefore live in Jesus: we would be crucified with Christ, that we may rise with the Son of God: we would know the fellowship of his sufferings, that we might afterwards know the power of his resurrection. Help us to be true in soul, pure in heart; then shall our lives be open, fearless, useful. Holy Spirit, hear us when we humbly say, Dwell with us: continue thy ministry of light and purification in our mind and heart until the sacred process is complete. For all we know of light, for all we care for things divine and eternal, we bless and magnify the grace of God. Once we were blind, now we see; we have returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls: may we go out no more for ever. May we abide in the tabernacle of the Most High, and be sheltered evermore under the wings of the Almighty; may our spirits grow in holy anger against all things wrong and mean, false and selfish. Because thou knowest us altogether we will come to thee with fearless childlike trust. Lord, undertake for us; show us the right way; may we give no heed to our own vain imaginings, but look into the law and to the testimony of wisdom and progress, and abide in the same, diligently obeying the will of our Father in heaven. Pity us wherein we have been wrong, and done wrong in instances countless, each aggravating the other. The Lord shows us that where sin abounds grace doth much more abound; that the Cross of Christ erects itself in welcoming love above all the tumult and uproar of human sin. Keep us until the end, until the day of doom; then, life's little journey done, may we stand, through the power of the everlasting Cross, among those who are arrayed in white garments, never more to be spotted by the world. Amen.