Chapter II: The Last Day in the Ministry of Jesus

I: Jesus and the Members of the Sanhedrin, Parables of the Vine-Dressers and the Wedding Festival

Mark xi. 20-33, xii. 1-12; Matt. xxi. 20-46, xxii. 1-14; Luke xx. 1-19.

The following morning, after spending this night, like the preceding one, without the city walls, Jesus returned for the last time to the Temple. By the roadside still stood the fig-tree He had condemned when passing that way yesterday, now no longer arrayed in glistening foliage, but parched and dry, blasted to the root.  Peter was the first to notice it.

"Master," he said, "look yonder!  The fig tree which you coerced has withered away."

A fig tree (Hinnom). J-J jTissot.

The suddenness of this death so astonished the Apostles that they forgot the lesson which Jesus had drawn from the incidents the day before, preoccupied as they were with the overwhelming effects of His lightest word.  Accommodating Himself to their thoughts, the Lord now spoke to them of this attribute of Omnipotence, and declared that they might rightfully assume alike power.

"Of a truth," He said, "if you have faith and a waver not you shall not only cause a fig tree to wither away, but you shall say to this mountain, 'Uproot thyself, and cast a thyself into the sea!' Immediately it shall be done."

The Apostles, who had been so amazed at the wonder He had worked, were even more astounded to hear Him say that they might do as much.  In their surprise they stood staring at the Mount of Olives, whither the Lord had just pointed, their minds bewildered at the notion of stirring so huge a mass.  Jesus pursued His thought further.

"All things which you shall ask in prayer do but believe and you shall receive them."

Surely this was to give the sole a partnership in the Divine Power.  But the faith of which the Master is speaking here is worthless without charity, and this truth He inculcated by adding that no prayer is granted which does not spring from love and forgiveness of injuries.

"And when you would betake yourselves to prayer, whatever you may have against any one forgive it him, in order that your Father Who is in Heaven may also pardon you your offences.  And if you do not forgive him neither will your Father Who is in Heaven pardon you your offences."

Meanwhile, conversing in this manner, they had passed under the gates of Jerusalem and ascended to the Temple.  The crowds had not yet gathered in any great number.  Walking under the galleries Jesus was beginning His instructions to such as He found already assembled there, when a deputation approached him.  It included, if not the whole Sanhedrin, at least representatives from its various divisions,— Pontiffs, Scribes, and Ancients of the people.  Filled with wrath, as they watched the Galilean's triumphant reception during the last few days, they now came in person to question Him, making sure that their presence would overawe the multitude; and in fact the people at once fell to one side at their approach.

"By what authority," they demanded, " do you do all these things?  And who has given you this power" of instructing and exercising dominion in the Temple?

"I also will propose a question to you," so Jesus, "and, if you answer Me, I will tell you by what authority I do these things?  From whom are was the Baptism of John?  From Heaven, or from men?"

John the Baptist and the Pharisees. J-J Tissot.

The Sanhedrin delegation was disconcerted; for, with a word, the Saviour had reversed their respective roles, and obliged His judges to defend themselves.

"Answer Me," He repeated.

But it was without avail.  They saw only too well just what His question involved, for John had given testimony in the presence of all Judaea that Jesus the Christ was still greater than he.

"If we say:'It was from Heaven,'" they muttered among themselves, "he will answer us:'Why did you not believe him?'And if we say:'It is from men,' the people will stone us." For all regarded John as a true Prophet, and they would incur great danger by even contradicting his words; so then, dreading any uprising of the multitude, the Sanhedrin's emissaries were forced to acknowledge their defeat, saying:—

"We know nothing about it."

They knew nothing about it!  they, the masters of Israel, who had arrogated to themselves the right of expounding everything, of judging all things, of alone being able to distinguish the inspired Prophet from the seducer of the people,— they could not tell what this man was whose voice had startled Judaea, and attracted to the Jordan, not only the ignorant multitude, but the Doctors of the Law and the great men of Jerusalem.  They were so publicly put to confusion that Jesus was content to add:—

"No more will I tell you by what authority I do these things;" and He turned away from them.

After having thus reduced the lawyers and doctors to silence Jesus continued to teach the people.6

" What think you of this?" He asked them.  "A man had two sons, and coming to the first he said to him:—

"'My son, go work today in my vineyard.'

"'I will not,' he answered; but afterwards, touched with repentance, he went.

"Coming to the second, he spoke to him in the same words.

"'I go, Sir,' this one answered, and went not.

"Which of the two did the will of his father?"

With one voice the crowd exclaimed:—

"The first!"

Thereby they unwittingly condemned the Sanhedrin party, for it was to them that Jesus referred under the guise of this son, so ready with his lip-service,— too insincere to disobey openly, too corrupt either to will or to do what is right.  Then He added that publicans and harlots should go before them into God's Kingdom.  The latter indeed were converted by the power of John's words; whereas the princes of the people, on the contrary, " had seen all that perfectness of righteousness which is of the Law that was in John, yet nothing about him had touched them or moved them to believe."

But what after all was this incredulity when compared with the crimes which they were even now meditating?  In order to display its blackness Jesus brought forward another Parable.  He described one of the vineyards which then covered the suburbs of Jerusalem.

 

Vineyards with watchtowers. J-J Tissot.

This one the master of the household has planted with his own hands, has encircled with a wall and bristling shrubs whereby to ward off the wild beasts; his zealous care has prompted him to have a tower built, and by night and by day a watchman keeps guard from this height; a huge basin, hollowed from the rock, receives the wine which the vine dressers pour in purple streams from the press.  Nothing is wanting to complete this cherished vineyard, and the lord may well demand:—

" What more ought I to have done that I have not done?"

And, notwithstanding, when the vintage season came at last it was of no avail for him to send his servants the Prophets to warn them that it was high time to render some fruits.  The husbandmen laid hold upon these Messengers, beat some, slew and stoned the rest.  Others of his retainers sent in greater numbers suffered the same outrageous treatment at their hands.

What else was this but a history of the same Jews, of whom Saint Stephen could truly say:—

"Which one of the Prophets have not your fathers persecuted?  They have massacred them which proclaimed you the coming of the Just One, of Whom you have been but now the betrayers and murderers."

The rest of the Parable still more plainly declared what the Sanhedrin was about to put into effect only three days later.

The master of the vineyard had an only son whom he loved much.

"What shall I do?" He mused.  "I will send them my beloved son; perchance when they see him they will have respect for him."

Then, when the husbandmen had caught sight of him, they said among themselves:—

"And this is the heir.  Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours!"

And laying hold on him, they dragged him outside the vineyard, and there they killed him.

"When, therefore, the master of the vineyard shall come what will he do to these vine-dressers?" demanded Jesus, and He looked fixedly at these members of the Sanhedrin.

But on their part the sole thought was to divert the attention of the multitude from themselves; accordingly, in order to forestall any such personal application, they stigmatised the crime in unmeasured terms.

" He will punish these wicked men in proportion to their wickedness," they said; " he will have them slain, and let out his vineyard to others."

"God forbid!" cried out the people, who comprehended that this Vineyard was Israel, and now heard their leaders launching curses upon their own heads.  But Jesus did but confirm this sentence which they now had uttered against themselves.

According to the Psalmist's Prophecy the Stone at first rejected by men for the foundation of God's Church was thereafter to become the mighty Basework whereon Jews and Gentile should together erect a new Edifice.  This Corner-stone was Jesus, whose humble appearance had made Him a stumbling block to these masters of Israel.  Woe unto them, for that they had fallen against this Rock of Offence, and were thereby broken in pieces!  Yet, even now, there was space left them to retrieve their fall and rise once more; whereas, if they consummated their crime, the Stone would crush them, grinding them into such fine chaff that the lightest wind would sweep them from off the threshing-floor.

"The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you," said the Lord, "and given to the people who shall bring forth the fruits thereof."

These last words of the Saviour left no room for misconception; "the princes of the priesthood and the Pharisees understood that He was speaking of them, and sought means to seize Him; but still they feared the people, who regarded Him as a Prophet." Thus protected from their wrath, Jesus only answered them by forcing them to hear what should be the result of their plottings.

To this end He went on to repeat an illustration which He had used at other times, that of a marriage-banquet which the guests refused to attend.  But since the day when the Lord first presented this picture of their reprobation before the eyes of the Jews the aspect of affairs had altogether altered; the hatred, so long repressed, had broken its bonds; the Pharisees, who had formally invited the Christ to sit at table with them, only gathered about Him here in Jerusalem in the hope of apprehending Him and putting Him to death.

These deplorable circumstances are reflected in the details of the Second Wedding Feast.  For this time the scene is one of imposing richness; it is no longer a private individual who bids them to a dinner,— now all we have anything left celebrating the nuptials of his son.  While those invited to the first entertainment excuse themselves courteously, these who are called to the second shamefully maltreat the servants of the prince, while some proceed so far as to scourge and kill them.  Such heinous crimes cry out for vengeance; accordingly, while only excluded from the banquet in the first Parable, in the present one the guilty ingrates are punished rigorously.  The king "dispatches his armies, destroys the murderers, and sets fire to their city." The threatening Prophecy indeed; one, alas!  which the Jews did not comprehend even when Jerusalem lay in ashes at their feet.

Turning away from these reprobates, Jesus spoke of the other guests whom the Apostles, His servants, were soon to usher into the Church; for He had commanded them the "to gather in all that they should find, good or evil," in order to fill up the banquet-hall.  But it would not be enough for a man to have been called to the feast-making with Jesus in order to make him really worthy of such high honour.  Indeed it would be with them as when "the king, having gone in to see the guests, perceives a man present who has not on a wedding-garment.  Whereupon he says to him:—

"'Friend, how did you enter here without having put on marriage raiment?'

"And he had nothing to answer.

"Then sayeth he to his servants:—

"'Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness!'

"There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Jesus could add nothing to this Parable but that one cry of warning so often repeated by him:—

" Many are called, but few chosen!"

This He exclaimed now, no longer with the hope of alarming the Jews, but thinking more of His disciples, since even in their ranks and at His Last Supper this saying would find its fulfilment.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.