The return to Capharnaum

II: The return to Capharnaum

Mark xvii. 23-26; xviii. 1-35; Mark ix. 32-49; Luke ix. 46-50.

This time the re-entrance of Jesus into Capharnaum was very different from those homecomings of former days: the little band of companions which was now left to Him traversed the streets almost unnoticed by the indifferent passers-by.  Only the tax gatherers made after them and asked Peter:—

"Doesn't your Master pay the didrachma?"

This tribute was the ransom which every son of Israel owed to Jehovah as the "Price of his Soul." Ordinarily it was taken up in the month of March.  That it was not demanded until autumn in this instance was because Jesus had been absent from Judaea for some six months; or it may be that, since He had been regarded hitherto as, by rank, a Doctor, He was considered exempt from this charge laid upon the people.

But now the Apostle, sore pressed for an answer by the collectors, assured them that the tax should be paid; yet, almost immediately, he realized that he had been somewhat rash in pledging his Master’s word in this offhand manner, and his embarrassment was very evident as he followed Him "into the house." Jesus did not wait for Peter to unburden his mind.

"Simon," He said to him, "how does this appear to your mind?  Of whom do the Kings of the earth exact tribute?  Of their own children, or of foreigners?"

"Of foreigners," was Peter's reply.

"Then the children are free," responded Jesus.

In this way He chose to remind the Apostle, who had been a witness of His Glory on Tabor, that the Christ the Son of God, was by the same title freed from the necessity of human laws, and thus exempt from the didrachma, the ransom of sinners.

"Nevertheless," He added, "that we may not give scandal to any one, go to the lake and cast a hook.  The first fish which you shall draw from the water, take it and open its mouth.  There you'll find a stater; this you will take, and give it to him, four Me and for you."

Jesus, the Son of Man, would obey the laws and pay the tribute; but He paid it even as God, by a miracle.

The Gospel does not tell us in whose dwelling this reply was uttered, but it gives us to understand that Jesus accepted the hospitality of some faithful family, for on this occasion we see a young child close by His side.  Very graciously did the Master greet the timid approach of such little ones, whose gentle frankness always gladdened His heart; and he drew this baby nearer two Him, in order to enforce another lesson upon the minds of His Apostles.

  

"What were you discussing on the road?" He asked them.

This abrupt question disconcerted them, for, seeing their Master walking at some distance ahead of them, "they had been disputing among themselves as to which one of their number was to be considered the greatest." Probably the preference shown to the three companions of Jesus upon Tabor had excited some jealousies and given rise to this wrangle.  Crestfallen at finding themselves detected, all stood before Him without a word.

The innocence of little children. J-J Tissot.

The Master sat down and gather the Twelve around Him.  "If anyone wishes to be the first," He said to them, "let him be the least and the servant of all." He took up the child, folded it in his arms, then, still holding it, He told the Apostles that this was to be their model.

"Whoever," He said, "receives a little child like this one before you, in My Name, receives Me, and he who entertaineth Me receiveth not Me but Him that sent Me."

The Lord could not bestow higher praise upon the innocence of little children than this, for He described Himself as of their nature, and commanded that they be entertained even as Himself, even as God, His Father.

Yet the disciples did not realise the full force of His words.  John himself, usually more clear-sighted than the rest, now only gathered that Jesus was speaking of those who present themselves in His Name.  At once he remembered that recently the Twelve had forbidden a man to drive out devils in the Name of their Christ, because this man was not one of them, and here he broke in upon the Master, desiring to know whether they had done rightly.  

"Do not forbid him," Jesus replied; for there is no one who, after he has worked a miracle in My Name, can at once speak ill of Me thereafter; he who is not against you is for you."

Then He reverted to His first thought, to the young child still nestling in His arms,— to those little ones "whose Angels forever behold the face of His Father cats who is in Heaven."

"If anyone," He said, "shall scandalise one of these children who believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hung about his neck and that he be plunged in the depths of the sea.  Woe to the world because of its candles!  It must needs be the scandals come, the world to them and by whom the scandal comes!"

With words like these Jesus talked to them in this house at Capharnaum; the conversation lasted much longer than this; for the Master was no longer, as of old, thronged upon by crowds eager to hear His every word: all alone with His disciples, He could adapt His words to their needs.  So it was that He made them glimpse the terrors of Hell, adjuring them to sacrifice everything, were it their limbs, or their sight, in order to escape "that Gehenna of fire, where the worm gnaweth and dieth not, whether flame burneth and is not quenched." And then He alluded to an altogether different fire, the flame of love, which, once alighted, does but purify all things which it touches.  But among all the conversations of that day, there is none more memorable or momentous than their talk about the rules which He gave His disciples for the adjustments of their differences.

The Christ has decreed that the Church is to be the Arbitrator for her children.  It is to her that it belongs to interprets the Moral Law, to determine the rights and the duties of her children, and to disown the unruly, treating them as the Jews treated Pagans and publicans.  Indeed Jesus had given her the power of binding and of loosing upon earth, and had promised her His never-failing assistance, not simply for the instructing and sanctifying of men's souls, but that they might be maintained in true obedience.  Let but two or three persons invested with the authority of the Church be gathered together in the Name of the Christ, "the Father Who is in Heaven will grant them all that they shall ask, and Jesus Himself will be in the midst of them."

Peter hearing these first rules of the Christian Law pronounced, wish that the Master would enunciate them with more precision.

"Lord," he asked, "if my brother sin against me, how many times shall I forgive him?  As much as seven times?"

The Apostle believed that he was going to great lengths in his indulgent mercy, since Rabbis taught that to pardon three times was the height of perfection; but under the gracious way of the Christ, forgiveness, like love, must be infinite.

"I do not say: Until seven times," answered the Lord; "but: Until seventy times seven times." And to make it better understood how rigorously His law of loving kindness must bind our actions, He set before the Apostles’ eyes one of those Oriental courts where the lightest fancy of their monarch can, in an instant, raise up or demolish the most splendid fortunes.

A King, He told them, set about procuring a reckoning from his ministers; then one of them was brought before him, as powerful a personage any of their number, who owed his sovereign ten thousand talents.  He succeeded in winning the pity of his lord, who forbore to sell him upon the spot, him and his wife and his children.  Yet even before he had passed out from under the palace gates a free man, he flung himself upon one of his comrades who owed him a trifling matter,—only one hundred denarii.  Clutching him by the throat, half-strangling him he repeated:—

"Hand over what you owe me!"

The wretched fellow fell at his feet, begging him: "Only have patience, and I will pay you all."

But the other would hearken to nothing, and dragged him to prison until such time as he should pay the whole.  The King, having knowledge of all this, bade them call the officer once more.

"Wicked servant," he said to him, "at your prayer I forgave you your debt; should you not have had pity upon your comrade as I have had pity upon you?" And, in his wrath, he delivered to the torturers.

"So, also shall My heavenly Father treat you," concluded Jesus, "if you do not, each one of you, forgive your brother from the bottom of your heart."

 

So, then, Charity, much more than Justice, should be the foundation of Christian righteousness, or rather one must be blended with the other!  "Mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other," even as two sisters.

"If your brother has sinned against you," said the Lord once again, "do not wait for him to be sorry; be the first to go to him and to chide him, you and he alone together.  If he listens to you, you will have gained your brother; if he does not listen to you, try again, taking two or three persons with you, so that it may be decided by the evidence of two or three witnesses.  If he will not hearken to them, tell their Church,"— for her to settle all differences, even as a mother does so among her little ones, reviving sweet accord in estranged and angry hearts, oftentimes rebuking us but always loving,— ay, most loving when she hurts us, that so she may bring back health and salvation to our souls.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam