The travelers from Galilee pushed their way through the crowded streets, and on up to the Temple on the hill. Here was God's own house! How large it was! Herod the Great had built this Temple. Ten thousand men had worked many years to build it, and it was not quite finished yet. Eight gates led into the beautiful building with the white walls and the golden towers. Inside there was room for many thousands of people.
What a clatter and a clamor and a tumult there was! It seemed as though all the world were there. Doves and cattle, as well as lambs, were offered in the Temple as a sacrifice to God. You could hear the poor creatures calling out—the cows lowing, the lambs bleating, the doves singing their sweet, sad song. Money was clinking on the tables. Only one kind of coin could be used as an offering, and travelers had to exchange those they were carrying for Jewish money. The men who made the exchange often cheated the visitors.
The people from Galilee separated when they came to the Court of the Women. The women and girls could go no farther, but the men and boys went up some steps into the Court of Israel. There they watched the priests of the Temple taking the doves and lambs and cattle that the worshipers had brought, and offering them up as a sacrifice. The priests killed the animals, and let the blood drip on the altar where the sacrifices were given to God.
The Court of Israel was as far as anyone could go, unless he were a priest. There was another room called the Holy Place, which only priests could enter. To the people it was a place of great mystery. Then farther on was a still more mysterious room called the Holy of Holies. Even a priest did not dare to step inside that door. That was the secret place of God. Only the high priest, who was head of all the priests, could enter there. And he could go in only once a year.
The visitors from Nazareth saw a priest coming toward them. Anyone could tell from his clothes that he was wealthy. He came from one of the families that were known as the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the only people who were at all friendly with the Romans. The reason for this was that they were better off than most other people and well-satisfied with things as they were. They thought it wise to stay on good terms with Caesar. Nobody liked the Sadducees very well, but everyone had to admit that they were certainly very important. They sat in a high council and governed everything that went on around the Temple.
And here was a Pharisee, looking very well pleased with himself! Jesus had seen Pharisees before, around Nazareth, and they always seemed to have that look. The word "Pharisee" meant "someone who is different." What made the Pharisees different was that they were always talking about the Law, and claiming that they obeyed it better than anyone else. They were kindly folk, on the whole, and very well respected, but they did not have any official position, like the Sadducees. All they did was study the Law and tell other people about it. The Pharisee whom the visitors were watching began to pray so that everyone could see him. It seemed as if he were saying, "O Lord, I thank thee that I am better than these other people here!"
Most of the great throng crowding the Temple were not priests, or Sadducees, or Pharisees. They were plain people who had come to bring their sacrifices, or to talk about the Scriptures, or simply to be in the Temple because they loved God's house.
Nobody was paying much attention to Jesus. He was just a young boy, lost in the crowd.
The days went by, and the lambs were killed and eaten. The prayers were said and the hymns were sung. It was all over at last, and the time had come to go home.
Joseph and Mary did not see Jesus the morning they all were supposed to leave. They did not wait to find him, for the other travelers from Nazareth were anxious to get started on the long journey back to Galilee.
Joseph and Mary said to each other:
"Jesus is safe enough. There are so many of us from Nazareth that he can't get lost. No doubt he is somewhere in the party."
The Nazareth people said good-by to the Temple for another year, and started off for home. Out through the city gates they went, and back into the desert through which they had come. They walked a whole day, and still Joseph and Mary saw no sign of Jesus. This was beginning to seem strange. Surely they would see him somewhere!
At last it dawned upon them. He wasn't there at all!
They were frightened now. What could have happened to Jesus? What would become of him in Jerusalem? There was nothing to do but to leave the party, and turn back alone to the city. But Jerusalem was a big place, and they hardly knew where to hunt for Jesus. How would they ever find one boy among all those thousands of people?
They went to the Temple. But even if he were here, it would not be easy to find him quickly. Walking through one of the courts, they noticed a group of people gathered around a rabbi. There was nothing unusual about that. There were a great many teachers in the Temple, and a visitor often saw groups gathered around them to listen to their teaching.
But there was something different about this group. Most of the men in it were Pharisees who were themselves rabbis. And the strange thing was that they were not doing all the talking as they usually did. They were listening too. And they were not listening to a rabbi, but to the voice of a boy.
Joseph and Mary moved closer. There could be no mistake about it—it was Jesus who was talking! He was asking questions; he was answering questions. The long-bearded rabbis were standing there, their mouths open in astonishment. Jesus was not just a boy in the crowd any longer. Men old enough to be his grand-father were listening to what he had to say.
Mary's surprise turned to anger. She pushed her way through the crowd and took Jesus by the arm.
"Why did you do this?" she cried. "Your father and I have been looking for you everywhere."
Jesus stood just where he was. It was as though he belonged there. He said:
"Why did you come to look for me? Don't you know that I must be looking after my Father's business?"
Joseph and Mary stood there too, not knowing what to make of their boy or of what he said.
They waited to see what he would do.
And then, in a minute, Jesus turned and went with them. They did not have to ask him again. The three of them went home to Nazareth.
Jesus knew that someday he would go back to the Temple. But he was not ready for that yet. He must do his duty to his parents. He must obey God at home. Then he would always know how to obey God in the wide world beyond Nazareth.
The lambs went quietly to the Temple when they were taken there to be offered to the God of Israel. Jesus must be obedient like a Lamb of God.
4. Jesus Goes to Work
When Jesus was thirty years old, people began to talk about the great man who had come to Palestine.
"This man is so great," they said, "that he may be the Messiah."
But it was not Jesus they were talking about. It was his cousin, John.
John was a preacher. He was afraid of no one, and as a result everyone was a bit afraid of him. John was a rough, strong man. Next to his skin he wore leather, and over that he wore a cloak of camel's hair. Honey and locusts were his food.
Every day John preached down by the river Jordan. The people flocked out from Jerusalem and from all the countryside round about to hear him preach. It was a wild and dreary place to come to, but when John preached everybody wanted to be there.
This was how he preached:
"Give up your sins, and begin a new life at once, for God is coming to rule over men! I am a voice crying in the wilderness. I tell you—prepare for the Lord!"
And when the people heard him, they were afraid. Many of them cried out, "We have sinned!" and came forward out of the crowd. John led them down the bank into the river and baptized them as a sign that they wanted to be cleansed of their sins and begin a new life. Thus John came to be known as "John the Baptist."
But when John thought that a man was not in earnest, then he refused to baptize him. Some of the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to be baptized, and John would have nothing to do with them. They might be great men in Jerusalem, but John called them "snakes in the grass." He told them:
"I've seen the snakes out here in the wilderness, wriggling for dear life to get out of the way when the grass catches fire. That's what you remind me of. You're scared. You think that something terrible is going to happen, and so you're pretending to be good people so that it won't go so hard with you. You will have to show me that you want to be something different from what you are! And don't think that you amount to anything just because you are Jews. God could make as good Jews as you are out of these stones."
That is how John the Baptist talked to some of the great men of Jerusalem. It made people think more than ever that he might be the Messiah. Who except the Messiah would dare to talk that way to Pharisees and Sadducees?
But others shook their heads and said, "No—this couldn't be the Messiah!" For they thought that when the Messiah came he would drive the Romans out of the country; and many people said that the only way to do that would be to get an army together. Some men were meantime killing all the Romans they could. They were called "Zealots," because they were so much filled with zeal about killing off the Romans. A few even carried daggers with them, and stuck the daggers into Romans whenever they got a chance.
"The Romans will not be overthrown," they said, "just by preaching. You will have to get out and kill the Romans."
John himself said that he was not the Messiah.
"There is someone coming who is greater than I," he told the people. "Someone is coming whose shoe-laces I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. Compared to him, I am nobody. I am just preparing the way for the Messiah."
One day there was a great crowd, as usual, down by the Jordan, and John was busy baptizing the people as fast as they came to the water. One after another they came. It went on for hours.
John had just baptized one man and helped him to the bank. The next one was coming forward. John looked up to see who it was. He was looking into the face of Jesus of Nazareth.
"You! Not you!" John spoke in a hoarse whisper. "No! I can't baptize you. You must baptize me instead!"
Before anyone could notice that anything was wrong, Jesus stepped to the water's edge.
"Don't say anything about it, John," he said softly. "Treat me just like the rest of them. We shall all be baptized together into a new life."
Jesus went forward into the river and John baptized him. In a moment Jesus was up the bank and lost in the crowd. The next man was coming forward.
John stared after the vanishing figure of Jesus. The crowd made way for Jesus, thinking, There goes another man who came to be cleansed of his sins.
But John said: "When I baptized him, I saw the Spirit of God come down out of heaven like a dove, and light upon him. Jesus is the Son of God. I am nothing. He is everything. He is the Messiah. He is the Lamb of God!"
The next man was coming down the bank toward John. John stood peering into the crowd. Jesus was nowhere to be seen.
Jesus had gone away to be alone, as God wanted him to do. He went into the loneliest part of the desert, where there were only the wild animals to keep him company.
I am the Messiah, he thought. There is no doubt that I am the Messiah. I must save my people. How should I begin?
There was nothing to eat in the wilderness, and Jesus grew hungry. He looked around him, and saw that the stones were shaped like loaves of bread.
There seemed to be a voice inside him which was not his own. The voice said:
"If you really are the Messiah, you oughtn't to be hungry. If you really are the Messiah, you would just have to say the word and these stones would be turned into bread. Then you would have plenty to eat for yourself, and, besides, you could go and give bread to all the hungry folk out there who are waiting for you to help them."
It was very quiet in the wilderness. The voice spoke up again.
"But maybe you are afraid to try. Suppose you said to the stones, 'Stones, become bread!' and then nothing happened! That would prove that you weren't the Messiah, wouldn't it?"
Jesus shook his head, to get rid of the thought. Some words from the Scriptures came into his mind. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." No, it would not do to try playing tricks with stones. It would not matter if he did turn them into bread. Bread was not the most important thing in the world. People might think that there was nothing so important as eating, but there were bigger things in life than that. People might think that what the Messiah ought to do was to make the country prosperous, but that would not help them so much as they thought. That was not the kind of Messiah he was going to be.
But what was the best way to prove that he was the Messiah? The tempting voice inside tried again.
"Maybe the best idea," it said, "is to go to Jerusalem and climb up on the tower and jump down! Everyone says that the Messiah is going to come suddenly out of heaven. You would come down suddenly enough that way! And nothing would happen to you. It says in the Scriptures that God will send his angels to hold you up and keep you from being hurt. Surprise the whole city by jumping off the Temple, and everybody will worship you at once!"
Again Jesus shook the thought away, and again he thought of what the Scriptures said.
"Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." I can't go and put God to the test, to see whether he will keep me from being hurt. And it won't make me the Messiah just to cause a big sensation in Jerusalem. That's what everyone is expecting, but that is not the right way at all. There must be some other way.
And the voice spoke up again.
"There is something else you could do. What the world needs is a ruler like you. Everybody says that the Messiah is going to be a world ruler, great and good. Don't let the people down! You are a great man. You could be anything you wanted to be—a general, a governor, a king."
Jesus thought, That's Satan tempting me, that's the devil himself talking!
He spoke out loud:
"Go away from me, Satan! For the Scriptures say, 'Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve!'"
The voice said no more. A great quietness came over Jesus. There was no great thing that he needed to do right away. He was the Messiah, but he did not need to make the country wealthy. He did not need to jump from the Temple, and he did not need to command an army or rule an empire.
There was one thing that he would have to do, but he could not tell anybody about it yet. It was going to be his secret for a while. But someday everybody would see what he was doing. Someday it would be understood.
And now it was time to be on his way. He had been in the wilderness forty days, and that was long enough. He found the trail back to the outside world, and soon he was on the road to Galilee.
When Jesus got home to Galilee, he began to preach to people in the streets. What he said at first was very much like what John the Baptist said:
"Give up your sins, and begin to live a new life, for God has come to rule over you!"
But the crowds that heard Jesus were not so large as those that went to the Jordan to hear John.
Jesus needed some followers now who would be with him all the time, and learn everything he had to tell them. John the Baptist had his followers; "disciples" was what they were called. Jesus began to look for disciples of his own.
One morning he went down to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. When he came back to the town, he had four disciples with him.
Two of them were brothers named Simon and Andrew. Andrew remembered Jesus, for he had once been a disciple of John the Baptist. He had seen John point to Jesus, and heard him say, "He is the Lamb of God!" Andrew had told Simon all about it.
When Jesus came to them along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he found them putting a net into the water, for Andrew and Simon were fishermen.
Jesus said to them,
"Come and follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."
Fishing was good business, but Simon and Andrew were ready to give it up to follow the man John had called "the Lamb of God." They came away with him at once.
Farther along the shore was another pair of brothers. One of them had also been with John the Baptist. Their names were James and John, and they were with their father, Zebedee. They had done so well at fishing that they could afford to have servants to help them. But when Jesus called them they also came at once, and left their father and the servants behind.
That was four to start with, and soon he had eight others. But no one of them was a very important person, and people said that one of them was wicked. That was Levi, who was also called Matthew. The trouble with Levi was that he was a taxgatherer. Everybody hated taxgatherers. They were called "publicans," and it was thought that no one could be much lower than a publican.
The publicans worked for the Roman government. They were not Romans themselves, but Jews, which made it all the worse. They were looked upon as traitors, for they collected the taxes for the hated Romans, and made a fortune for themselves by cheating the people.
Levi's job was to collect the fee for traveling along the road, and what he could collect over and above the amount he ought to have charged, he kept for himself. Then Levi heard Jesus preaching. He heard him say that he ought to give up his sins, and begin to live a new life. When Jesus came to Levi's table one day, and said, "Follow me," just as he had said it to the honest fishermen by the lake shore, Levi was ready to come away. Without a word Levi got up and left his taxgathering behind, and all his fortune. Levi became a disciple like the other eleven, and was treated like the rest.
But other people were shocked when they saw a publican with Jesus, and tongues began to wag. No one seemed to notice that Levi had stopped collecting taxes. He had been a publican once, and no one except Jesus was ready to give him a second chance.
Other publicans sometimes came to have dinner with Jesus and his disciples, along with many people who were looked down upon in the community.
The Pharisees in particular were angry when they saw the company that Jesus kept. One day they came to one of these dinner parties, and told the disciples that they did not care for Jesus' choice of friends.
"How is it," they asked, "that your master eats and drinks with publicans and sinners?"
Jesus heard them, and replied:
"It is not well people who need a doctor, but the sick. I didn't come here for the sake of the good people, such as you think that you are, but for the sake of sinners—to lead them into a new life."
But the Pharisees still objected. They said:
"Look at John the Baptist. John is a good man. His disciples are so religious that they sometimes go without their meals. Your disciples always seem to be eating!"
"Why shouldn't they eat and feast and be merry?" Jesus answered. "They are like the friends of a man who is being married. When someone is to be married, his friends have a great feast. They are joyful because the bridegroom is with them. In the same way my disciples are joyful because they have me with them."
Jesus meant that they were joyful because he was the Messiah, and his disciples were glad to be with him. But he did not say that he was the Messiah, and no one knew what he was talking about. The Pharisees would have had more respect for him if he had had a better class of friends. Fishermen might do, but not publicans and sinners of that sort! If only Jesus were more like John the Baptist!
They never once thought that Jesus might be the Messiah. When they saw the kind of friends he had, they wondered if he was even a good man.
5. A Busy Time
The Pharisees may not have liked Jesus, but no one could deny that he knew how to preach. The crowds that came to hear him were growing larger. Often Jesus stood at the foot of a hill and preached to the crowd that had gathered on the hillside.
Now everyone who heard Jesus preach was likely to be surprised. For he did not say the things that people expected to hear. Often he said the very opposite of what they wanted him to say.
He did not believe in giving people a good opinion of themselves. He told them what was wrong with them. He did not say that it was easy to be good. He said that it was much harder than anybody thought. He did not try to preach sermons that would make him popular, for he was not thinking of himself. He was thinking of what God had to say to the people, and so he told them plainly what they ought to know and what they ought to do.
Jesus knew that his listeners found it easier to hate other people than to love them. And so he stood one day at the foot of the hill and said:
"You have all heard the saying, Love your friend and hate your enemy. But that is not what I say. I say, Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who use you badly. That is what God does. He makes the sun rise on everybody, good or bad. He sends the rain to fall on everyone, no matter who he is.
"If you love only those who love you, you don't deserve any credit for that. That's what everybody does. Be like God. He is merciful, and you ought to be merciful too. Forgive those who do you a wrong, or you cannot expect God to forgive you."
All the people thought that they were at least doing the right thing in hating the Romans. How could anyone help hating those rough Roman soldiers, who often came along and made Jews carry their packs for them? But Jesus said,
"If a Roman soldier makes you carry his pack for a mile, carry it another mile as well, to show that you love him."
Another thing that Jesus knew about his listeners was that many of them were worried about money, and food and clothes. It was hard to blame them for that; for some of the people were very poor, and were never sure that they were going to get enough to eat.
Jesus was poor enough himself. His disciples were also poor, and they got no richer by following him. Turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them,
"Blessed are you who have nothing you can call your own."
The disciples pricked up their ears. "Blessed"—that meant to be fortunate, or well off. What was good about having nothing? Jesus went on:
"Blessed are you who have nothing, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are you who often go hungry, you shall be fed later on.
"Blessed are you who are sad, the time will come when you will be joyful.
"Blessed are you, when other people hate you, and will have nothing to do with you, because you are my disciples. Be glad when that happens, because that is what has happened to all God's servants. God will reward you for everything you suffer for my sake."
There was silence. Jesus looked out over the crowd and spoke again,
"Woe to you who are rich!"
Again the disciples were amazed. The rich people would not like that! The disciples were poor themselves, but they wondered what was wrong with being rich.
Jesus thought of a rich man whom he knew, who wore fine purple clothes and ate the best food in the land. And he thought of a poor beggar who sat all day long outside the rich man's house. His body was covered with sores, and he was so hungry that he would have been glad to get the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. But the only friends he had were the dogs that came and licked his sores.
Jesus continued, in a stern voice:
"Woe to you who are rich! For you have already had everything you are ever going to have! Woe to you who are well-fed! The time is coming when you will go hungry. Woe to you who are enjoying yourselves all the time! Someday you will weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you! It is easy to be popular if you aren't faithful to God. That's the way it has always been."
Jesus knew that all of them were too much interested in the things that money could buy. They wanted the Messiah to come so that he would make them all rich. And so Jesus said, to show them where they were wrong:
"Don't be always thinking about what you are going to eat and drink and wear. Why, that's the kind of thing the Romans worry about. There is more to life than food and clothing."
He paused for a moment. It was a warm summer day. The birds were flying overhead, and singing; and up the hillside the wild flowers made patches of color in the grass. Jesus spoke again:
"Look at the birds of the air. They never plant crops, or reap harvests, or gather the grain into barns. Yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more important than birds? Think of the lilies of the field, how they grow. They never yet made any clothes for themselves, and yet the great King Solomon in all his glory was not so beautifully clothed as one of these little flowers. You people who have so little faith in God—think! If God clothes the flowers of the field, which are here today and gone tomorrow, will he not clothe you? Seek the Kingdom of God first of all, and you will be given all the food and clothes you need. Never worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will look after itself when it comes. Think about how you ought to live today."
There was another weakness that Jesus had seen in people, especially in the Pharisees. They loved to show off their good deeds. He had to speak about this too.
"When you give something to the poor," he said, "don't make a great noise about it, like some people I could mention, who want to impress everybody with how generous they are. If you give anything, keep quiet about it. God will know what you have done, and that's enough.
"It's the same with prayer," Jesus continued. "Don't stand praying on the street corners where everyone can see you. There are many people who do that. When you pray, go into your own room and pray with the door closed. God will hear you, and he is the only one who needs to hear."
Jesus had his admirers. Some people admired him so much that they began to call him "Master" and "Lord." But Jesus did not think that they were all in earnest. He spoke plainly about this also.
"It won't do you any good to come saying, 'Lord, Lord,'" he said, "unless you do the things God expects of you. Someday, I suppose you will come and tell me of all the wonderful things you have done in my name. And then I will have to say to you: 'I don't even know who you are. Go away!'
"If anyone hears my teachings, and does what I tell him to do, he will be like a man who builds his house upon a rock. The rain comes down and the wind blows, and the house keeps on standing there, because it is built upon a rock. You will be strong like that house, if you do as I say. But anyone who hears my teachings and pays no attention to them is like a man who builds his house upon the sand. When the rains and the floods and the winds come, the house will fall down and that will be the end of it. You will be weak like that house, if you do not obey my words."
Now when the people heard how Jesus preached, they were amazed. They wondered who this was who spoke to them as though he were God himself. That was not how other preachers taught. They were always quoting somebody else, as though they were afraid to speak for themselves.
But Jesus simply said, "I am telling you." He said, "Listen to me."
Every Friday evening at sunset the Sabbath began, and there could be no more work until sunset on the following day. Saturday morning all the Jewish people went to attend the service in the synagogue. The people would come in and take their places, with the most important people up in front. At the beginning of the service, everyone stood and faced in the direction of Jerusalem, and recited some verses from the Scriptures. These were always the same. They began: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might."
After this there was prayer. Then the minister opened a cabinet and brought out the Scriptures, which were written on long pieces of skin made into a kind of paper. The pieces were kept rolled up when they were not in use. The minister brought two of the rolls and laid them on the reading desk. Someone read the Scripture lessons then, and after that anyone in the congregation who wished could go up to the front and explain what the lesson meant.
Like all the other Jews, Jesus went to the synagogue on Saturday mornings. One Saturday when he and his disciples were in the town of Capernaum they went to the service as usual. When the time came to explain the lesson, Jesus went up to the front. He surprised the people as he always did; but something else happened which surprised them even more.
There was suddenly a great commotion at the back of the synagogue. A man began to cry out. There seemed to be some evil thing inside him, which made him hate the very sight of Jesus. The people said that he had "an unclean spirit."
Strange, wild words came pouring out of the man's mouth.
"Let me alone!" he cried. "What have I to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy me? I know who you are. You are the Holy One of God!"
Jesus stood his ground, and spoke to the evil thing in the man.
"Be quiet," Jesus said, "and come out of that man."
There was another wild shriek and then silence. The man looked around him as though he wondered where he was. He was in his right mind again.
The people were amazed by what they had seen and heard. On the way home from the synagogue they asked each other,
"What kind of preaching is this, which makes a madman well again?"
Before the day was over, word of what Jesus had done had gone all over town.
After the service, Jesus went to Simon's house, and there he found more trouble waiting for him. Simon's wife's mother was sick in bed. Jesus went to her bed-side, and took her hand, and helped her to her feet. All at once the sickness left her, and she was able to prepare the meal.
Jesus could rest in the afternoon, but when the sun went down in the evening he had to go to work again. Everyone had heard of how he cured people who were out of their minds, and of how he was able to heal the sick. As long as the Sabbath lasted, the people had to stay quietly at home. But once the sun had set the Sabbath was over, and they could do as they pleased. It seemed as though the whole town wanted to do only one thing, and that was to go to see Jesus.
A great throng of sick people were soon gathered outside the door of the house, with everyone else in Capernaum looking on. Jesus came out to heal the sick. Darkness fell, and night came on, and still the people pressed around Jesus to have him touch them and make them well. Hour after hour he worked with them, until it was too late to do anything more that night.
Yet Jesus was out of bed in the morning before the sun was up. It had been a busy Sabbath, and he needed to go off by himself and rest. And what he needed more than anything else was to pray. He wanted to be alone for a while with his Father. So many people to preach to! So many men who had begun to hate him! Jesus needed strength for it all, and he knew that praying would make him strong.
While everyone else was sleeping, and the darkness still lay upon the land, Jesus silently slipped away from the house. He found a lonely place, where no one would disturb him.
But when Simon and the other disciples woke up, they could not wait for him to come back. They went at once to look for him. And when they had found him, they said,
"Everyone is looking for you."
It was quiet out there in the hills. Jesus would have liked to stay there for the whole day. All day long he could have rested and prayed. But then he thought of the people who were waiting for him. He thought of the people who needed him. He thought of the places he had not yet visited. There was so much to do, and there was so little time.
He rose to his feet.
"Let us go, then," he said. "Let us go to the next towns, so that I can preach in them too. After all, that is why I came into the world—to tell men the good news from God!"
He left the quiet countryside, and went back to the towns. The people who loved him were there. The people who needed him were there. And the people who were afraid of him, and the people who had begun to hate him—they too were there.
Jesus returned to the towns, where his friends and his foes were waiting.
6. Friends and Foes
Jesus thought the time had come to visit Nazareth. Before he had gone away, there was nobody who thought that he was a person of any great importance. But he had become a famous man. The whole of Galilee was talking about him. And now he was at home with his friends and family again.
On the Sabbath morning he went to the old familiar synagogue. There was a full congregation that day, for everyone supposed that Jesus would preach. He had never preached in Nazareth before.
When the time came to read the Scripture lesson, Jesus walked up to the front. He took the roll from the minister, and found the place he wanted. It was in the book of the Prophet Isaiah. He began to read:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; he has sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach liberty to the prisoners and recovering of sight to the blind, to set free those who suffer, and to say that God will be good to his people."
Jesus stopped reading and handed the roll back to the minister. He sat down in the seat from which Jewish preachers always spoke to the people in the synagogue.
The whole congregation was very still, waiting to hear what Jesus had to say. That was an exciting lesson he had read from the Scriptures. It made the people think of the Messiah. Someday a preacher would be able to say, "This has all come true!" And that would mean that the Messiah had come.
Jesus looked around at the faces he knew so well. Thirty years he had lived among these people. Now he was back to tell them something that they had never known before.
He began to speak.
"Today," he said, "you are seeing this Scripture lesson come true."
A thrill ran through the audience. The Scripture had come true? The Messiah was really here? Could he mean that he was the Messiah? The people gasped. Some laughed. Others were angry. They started to talk among themselves.
"The Messiah? Him? Why, that's only Jesus! The carpenter's son!"
"Everybody knows who Jesus is! Lived down the street since I don't know when!"
"Who does he think he is?"
Jesus again raised his voice above the others':
"I know what you are going to say. You are going to quote that old saying, 'Doctor, cure yourself.' You are going to tell me to start doing the things I am supposed to have done in Capernaum. I'm not surprised. A servant of God never gets any honor among his own people. The same thing happened to the prophets long ago.
"Don't expect me to do anything wonderful here in Nazareth. You wouldn't believe it if you saw it. Why do you think you ought to get any special favors from God?"
A great roar went up from the congregation. All his old friends got up from their seats and rushed to the front of the synagogue. They took hold of Jesus and dragged him out of the building. At the edge of the town there was a high cliff, and they took him there to throw him down on the rocks below. But Jesus slipped out of their hands, and turned around. Calmly he walked through the crowd. Nobody had the courage to touch him again.
Jesus never went back to Nazareth any more. Once, when he was preaching in another town, someone came and told him that his mother and his brothers had come to take him home. They thought that he ought to stop this nonsense of pretending to be the Messiah.
But Jesus would not go home with them, for they did not believe in him. It was better to stay with his disciples. He was at home with those who trusted him.
"My mother?" he said. "My brothers?"
He looked around at his disciples, and said: "These are my mother and brothers—my own disciples. Anybody who obeys the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother, all in one. That's the kind of family I want!"
Back in Nazareth nobody thought that Jesus was of much account. But in other places he meant everything to people who needed help. The Pharisees were often glad to see him go away. But the poor and the sick could never see enough of him.
Once there came to Jesus a man who was sick with the dreaded leprosy. A leper's skin was deathly white, and his flesh was rotting, and he was sure to die of the disease. Nobody needed help more than a leper did, but no one would even touch him.
The people back in Nazareth were too proud to admit that the carpenter's son from down the street might be the Messiah. But a leper did not have any pride. This leper came to Jesus, and fell on his face before him, crying out, "Lord, if you will do it, you can make me clean from this disease!"