01.02. SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST.
Chapter 2 SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST " And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto Him, They have no wine."
John 2:3 " Therefore his sisters sent unto Jesus, saying, Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick."
There can be no greater contrast than that presented by these two scenes. In the one we have the homely merriment of a rustic wedding, in the other the despair of two desolate women’s hearts. The mother of Jesus and the sisters of Lazarus stand at opposite poles of feeling. But from the station of each a straight line can be drawn to where Jesus is. Sorrow and joy have an equally open road to Him, and find equal sympathy there. The gravity of the respective needs in these two incidents is singularly different. The one is a trifle, the other a crushing weight. But, great or small, transient or lifelong, as cares or wants may be, they are best met and conquered and supplied when told to our Lord. Not less noticeable is the identity in manner of the two sayings. The mother of our Lord simply says, "They have no wine," and adds no more. The sisters send only the message, " He whom Thou lovest is sick," and proffer no request. That manner of addressing Christ, alike in sorrow and joy, in trivial and in great necessity, with the simple statement of what presses on life or heart, and the suppression of all prescription to Him of what He is to do, may suggest some not useless considerations as to the tone and manner which should mark our intercourse with Jesus.
I Our intercourse with Him should be characterized by frank familiarity of communication, such as befits love and friendship.
It was a natural impulse which brought both these utterances to Jesus. His mother was troubled when the scanty store of her friends at Cana began to give out, and, as she saw the wineskins becoming more and more flaccid, a spirit in her feet carried her to her Son, perhaps before she well knew what she did, or wished Him to do. The two sad hearts at Bethany, as they saw the black wing of the angel of death hovering over their home, turned spontaneously to Jesus, and, though they did not know what He could do if He came, still felt that the sorrow would be more easily borne if they knew that He knew it. Now, that same instinctive prompting to tell dear ones all our thoughts and wishes is an unfailing character of real love. It makes the blessedness of many a happy pair of hearts, to whom knowing and being known are equal delight and simple necessity. The depth and purity of our human love may be roughly, but with tolerable accuracy, measured by the strength of that impulse. Where reserve is possible, love is shallow or coarse. The impulse affects all that interests or concerns a pair of friends. Not even dark secrets of shame escape, for true love seeks to share these too, and they are less of a barrier when told than when hidden. The magnitude of the thing is of no importance. We do not ask whether it is large enough to trouble those whom we love with it. A child runs to its mother with a broken toy, or the scratch of a pin on its finger, or an untied shoe. Love has no care for great or small. Concealment of little is concealment also of much, and the confidence which tells trifles is perhaps greater than that which tells important things; and what love prizes is the confidence, more than the knowledge given. The love which binds human hearts to one another is not different in kind from that which knits men to Jesus. Love is love, to whomsoever it is directed and whatever may be the differences of its accompaniments. What our love does in us when it is fixed on one another, that it should do when it is fixed in humble faith on Jesus Christ. Many of its signs and effects will necessarily be different, but in the one case, as in the other, perfect frankness of communication and delight in yielding to the impulse of laying bare every corner of our hearts, whatever inner baseness may lurk there, will assuredly attend real love. We may live in the light of an ever gladdening consciousness of Christ’s love and sympathy, and if we walked in that light as we may, and therefore should, we should no more be able to carry secret cares hidden beneath our cloaks to gnaw at our hearts, than loving husband or wife can hide troubles or thoughts from wife or husband loved.
Now, that is a very sharp test of Christian character, and makes short work of much complacent profession. If we really love Christ and feel to Him as to a friend, and if we heartily believe that we can speak to Him and be heard, we shall not need any one to tell us that it is our duty to pray to Him. "Access with confidence" will come spontaneously, as a relief to overcharged hearts and the blessing of solitary ones - and, after all companionship, who is not solitary ? The impossibility of imparting our whole selves to any makes our hearts often ache, and if we feel to Christ as we should, we shall thankfully still the aching by uttermost frankness of self revelation to Him. We should instinctively feel that whatever irritates or affects us, be it slight as a mosquito’s puncture or grave as a whip adder’s sting, must be told to Him. He who only invokes Christ’s sympathy and help when there comes a "knot" in his fortunes which he thinks " worthy " of such a hand to unravel, will seldom invoke Him, and will not usually do it to much purpose. Trifles are the bulk of life, and unless our communion with our Lord extends to trifles, it will be poor and partial indeed. We may well ask ourselves, then, whether such instinctive impulse, prior to all reflection as to duty or advantage, sends us to Jesus Christ, to make Him our confidant and unload our hearts to Him, in that frank outpouring which is the native tongue of love. Do we find ourselves telling Him of our annoyances, calamities, little wants and the like, almost before we know it ? There are heights and depths of Christian communion beyond such self regarding speech, but these sanctities and sublimities will seldom be reached except we first have acquired the habit of telling Him all that interests and harasses us in daily life. The mountain summits of a continent do not usually rise at the water’s edge, but from high uplands. How different our lives would be if we brought them all in their veriest trifles into touch with Jesus- noble, calm, joyous in the midst of sorrow, and with a certain breath of heaven rustling through them and freshening them ! " Pour out your hearts before Him," as a man might invert some golden vase, and empty its contents to the last drop trickling from the lip. The heart thus emptied in frank confidence will be filled with peace, and be conscious of an all-sufficing presence.
II
These two sayings may further suggest the trustful and submissive suppression of desire which should accompany this frank confidence.
" They have no wine." Did that mean, " Give them some"? It can scarcely be supposed that, at that early stage, the virgin expected her Son to work a miracle, even though she kept all the unforgettable events of the Nativity in her heart. " He whom Thou lovest is sick." Did that mean, " Come and heal him " ? Some faint hope of that sort may have been in the sisters’ hearts, as may be inferred from their half-reproachful greeting of Jesus when He came, but it was probably of the vaguest character. If there were such wishes in either case, the suppression of them indicates the speakers’ absolute trust in Christ’s superior wisdom and perfect sympathy, which makes their utterance of their wishes superfluous and presumptuous. But probably in neither case was there a definite expectation, and if there were anything in their minds beyond the impulse of which we have spoken, they apparently trustfully left the decision of what He should do in His own hands.
Let us tell Christ our needs and stop there. Surely we are well enough acquainted with His loving purpose to be certain that for Him to know is to pity, and to pity is to stretch out a full and strong hand of supply and help. We say that we believe in His Divine nature. If we do, we must believe that His knowledge needs no informing by us to move His sympathy. Why, then, should we tell Him our needs, if He knows them already ? We have already partly answered that question by pointing to the instinct of love ; but, further, we must remember that our communication of our wants is preliminary to His supply of them, not because it informs Him, but because it prepares us. He does not need to be told, but we need to tell Him. That being so, it is the part of faith to spread our needs before Jesus, and to do no more. All need makes appeal to Him, and many forms of it are supplied from His loving hand, without other prayer than the dumb, unconscious one of the necessity’s existence. " He heareth the ravens when they cry ; He openeth His hand, and satisfieth the desire of every living thing." When on earth, many miracles were wrought without either faith or petition. " He healed them that had need of healing," for no other reason than because they had need, and the silent pleading of their misery entered into His heart. That rock needed no stroke of a rod, nor even a word, to make its waters gush forth. The presence of the thirsty was enough. But for higher gifts there must needs be the confidence already spoken of, and where that exists there need not and should not be the prescribing of a course to Jesus. To do that is consonant neither with faith nor with reverence. Humble submission to Christ’s better wisdom breathed through His mother’s words and the sisters’ message. True prayer is not pestering the Throne with passionate entreaties that a certain method of deliverance, which seems best to us, should be forthwith effected, but is a calm utterance of need, and a patient, submissive expectance of fitting help, of which we dare not define the manner or the time. They are wisest, most trustful and reverent, who do not seek to impose their notions and wills on the clearer wisdom and deeper love to which they betake themselves, but are satisfied with leaving all to His arbitrament. True prayer is the bending of our own wills to the Divine, not the urging of ours on it. When Hezekiah received the insolent letter from the invader, he took it and " spread it before the Lord," asking God to read it, and leaving all else to Him to determine ; as if he had said, " Behold, Lord, this boasting page. I bring it to Thee, and now it is Thine affair more than mine." The burden which we roll on God lies lightly on our shoulders ; and if we do roll it thither, we need not trouble ourselves with the question of how He will deal with it. The less we seek to prescribe to God, the truer and more blessed will be our intercourse with Him. It is enough to tell Him that the wine fails, or that Lazarus is ill. Leave Him a free hand to do as He will, in supplying deficiencies and healing diseases. A confident assurance of the fact that needs will be met, a blank sheet in our expectation as to how they will be, and a sharpened attention, alert to mark the direction which His help may take, should ever accompany our speech to Christ. The highest prayer is, " Not my will, but Thine, be done," and the best answer is, " The peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." The cares which are imparted to the beloved lose their poison, the tasks shared with them are lightened, and all joys become more joyful, and all objects of interest more poignantly stimulating when shared. The law of earthly love applies to the highest, in so far that to tell Jesus of burdens shifts them from us to Him, and disturbances are less disturbing when our disquiet has been breathed into His calm heart. Mary shook off responsibility for the empty wineskins when she told Jesus of them, and we bring a stronger arm than ours to deal with difficulties when we in like manner speak of them to our Lord. The sisters at Bethany felt less lonely and crushed when they thought that Jesus knew, though they did not venture to send requests to Him. So from these two instances, the one of a most trivial need, the other of a most tragic, we may learn the one lesson - tell your need, and then be silent, and let Him settle how it is to be met. Only be on the watch for what He may do, and be sure that He will do something, and that the right thing.
III These two incidents give two ways of taking Christ’s delays. Our Lord’s treatment of the two appeals is substantially the same. The answer to Mary sounds more repellent in English than in Greek, inasmuch as " woman " has in it a tinge of roughness not conveyed by the original. The question simply suggests independent action and not alienation ; but the request was certainly put aside, and its repetition forbidden. In the remaining clause, " Mine hour is not yet come," a promise, like a sweet kernel, is hidden in the words ; for " not yet " warrants and seems to be meant to create expectance that the hour will strike soon, and be heard by His ear. Precisely similar is Christ’s action in the other case. " When Jesus heard that he was sick, He abode still two days in the same place where He was." There again he delayed till His "hour" had come. That expression, so frequent on our Lord’s lips, implies that each act of His was regulated by the conviction, clear to Himself, that the time for it, appointed by the Father, had arrived. Whether it were the hour " when the Son of man should be glorified" by the supreme sacrifice of the cross, or the hour when the peasant wedding should have replenished stores. His ear heard it strike, without the possibility of mistake ; and till it was heard, nothing - not even a mother’s wistful look, or the sad hearts at Bethany - could induce Him to act. In proportion as we approach the same perfection of filial obedience, we shall be blessed with the same certainty of perception, and may hear, even amid the vulgar, loud noises of life, the solemn tones announcing the hour for great service or "small duty. Well for those who have so silenced the ringing in their own ears that they hear beyond mistake God’s chimes, and hearing, obey ! The time between Christ’s refusal to act on His mother’s hint and His acting on it was probably brief ; but much may happen in short space, and requisite conditions may have been quickly supplied. God’s clock does not go; at the same rate as ours, but " a thousand years " may some times be crowded into " one " of His days, and one of His days be lengthened to a slow thousand of our years. Two days seemed an eternity to the sisters, and no doubt bewilderingly long to some of the attendant disciples ; but, longer or shorter, the delays teach us the truth that Christ’s time is determined by considerations which we are little able to appreciate. " The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, as men count slackness." The same connection of ideas is presented also in that remarkable incident which this evangelist alone records, when our Lord’s brethren scoffingly suggested to Him to go up to the feast, and received the same answer as did Mary, "My time is not yet come." It came in a few hours, and probably was marked to Christ’s consciousness by an inward impulse rather than by any change in circumstances. Thus, an action which looked like mere vacillation, and has often been felt as a difficulty, becomes, when rightly understood, a striking witness to the continual communion with the guiding will of the Father, and regulation of all His life thereby, which Jesus enjoyed and practiced But, in regard to His answers to our requests, as in regard to His answers to those in our texts, though the considerations which determine His hour are beyond our sight, the great governing principle of which they were products is clear. Whatever holds back His hand, it is not lack of sympathy with our sorrow, disregard of our confidence, nor unwillingness nor inability to respond to our cry. The consideration of what is best for us and others who may be helped by our experience is sovereign with Him. All delay is the result of His love, and meant for highest good, not only to the individual most concerned, but to others also. " I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe." The similarity which we have traced in the two superficially so different instances does not extend to the manner in which the two delays were received by the persons interested. These are contrasted rather than parallel, and while the one is an example, the other is a warning. Mary’s meek faith, though there had been so little hitherto to feed it, drew hope from the seeming rebuff. Apparently she clung to the glimmer of hope in that " not yet," else her charge to the servants has nothing in the narrative to account for it. It was but a slight foothold, but it was enough for her. A heart truly in harmony with Christ will ever hear in His most discouraging words the undertones of promise. " Not yet " may darken today, but it ensures a bright tomorrow. " If winter comes, can spring be far behind ? " The very sorrow is a veiled prophet, and the night of weeping leads in the morning of joy. That was a noble and wise faith which bore away from Christ’s " not yet," not fear, doubt, disappointment, nor the sense of repulse, but a hope certain as to the fact of His help, and quietly ignorant of the time and way, "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it," was a triumph of faith, penetrating the surface denial, and sucking the sweet drop stored in the depths of the flower. The six water pots full of wine vindicated the confidence which translated "not yet" into " in good time." So will it be with us, if we leave Him to settle when "right early" is. We shall "wonder at the beauteous hours, the slow result of winter showers," and see at last what we believed while He tarried, that delay is a form of love, and His hour the right hour. The two sisters at Bethany seem to have had natural regrets during the four days between their message and Christ’s coming. Apparently, indeed, their brother was already dead when their messenger reached our Lord. But, if we may judge from the salutation with which each met Him, " If Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," they had often wearily looked at one another in their lonely misery and said the same thing. How we may recognize ourselves in them ! That same weakening and useless regret that something did not happen which, if it had happened, would have changed everything, tortures us all in our sorrows. The sisters did not so much complain as regret. They did not think that Jesus should or might have come, they only thought - How blessed if He had come, or never gone ! They had to learn the purpose of His delay and of their sorrow, and when in a few minutes they did learn it, how ashamed of their " if" they must have been ! The delay to heal was in order to prepare a mightier blessing, and the sharp sorrow was allowed in order that its wounds might be filled with fragrant balm, which only a wounded heart could receive. It was more to give back to empty hands the blessing that had been torn from them than to have kept it there. Jesus did not come to heal the brother who was sick, because He would come to restore to the sisters’ embrace the brother that " was dead and is alive again, was lost" in the dark grave, "and found again" in the gladsome light of life. So it ever is with the experience of those who wait His time, nor let their faith droop, nor doubt that His absence and their sorrows are the fruits of His love and the preparation for larger blessings and deeper joy. So He vindicates His delays. So He answers the confidence which tells Him all its needs and troubles, and leaves Him to determine how and when to work. So He rewards the faithful and submissive prayer, of which the inmost spirit is, " Not my will, but Thine ; not my time, but Thine ! ’