Bible Commentaries

Healing the Withered Hand

[An Analysis]

Mark 3:7-9

Why were these multitudes so urgent? Why was there any multitude at all? The man is simple, gracious, tender, sympathetic: why should there have been such a display of public interest in his ministry and action? He called his discourses "sayings," and he said they were his own—"these sayings of mine." Sometimes he spoke sharply, critically, with no mistake as to his moral purposes; the denunciation was explicit and tremendous; the beatitudes were tender, profound healing: why all this multitudinousness? We might have expected a few kindred hearts to follow such a ministry; but all the world went after him. There must be some explanation of this: what is that explanation? There are class preachers. We know the epithets which belong to them as of right; a superficial, transient, partly illegitimate right or claim; they are profound, polished, finished; exquisite, tasteful, brilliant, magnificent: but the world cares nothing about them, as a world—a grand, complete humanity. Those who do care for them care very much. The Gospel can fascinate classes; the Gospel can talk all languages, live in all climates, adapt itself to all circumstances; it can have an academy, it can go where people can neither read nor write; but the Gospel can do more than fascinate classes and sections of human nature. This is the explanation of Christ's ministry, in all its graciousness, in all its power of healing: he touched the universal heart. There was strength in Christ's teaching for everybody, for that everybody which is manhood. He did not speak to representatives, or recognise merely and exclusively aspects and phases of life; he poured his wisdom and his love into the heart of the world, and that heart knew him; if sometimes the testimony was reluctant, yet in the issue it was emphatic, fervent, overwhelming. There is a music which is for classes. We know the epithets which belong to that partial music; we know the illegitimate claims which are put in to understand it; we know the simulated intelligence with which the most consummate ignorance listens to it; it is classic music. Poor music! that it should ever be so debased as to accept an epithet. Music needs no qualifying terms. There is a music that belongs to the world; the moment it is uttered the world's heart answers it; it belongs to the child, the mother, the nurse, the shepherd on the mountains, the merchant in the city; the moment the right notes are uttered the whole world takes up those notes, and everywhere they are heard expressing emotions of the moment, or hinting at emotions deep as life, lasting as duration. So it is with the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can minimise it; you can found an academy with it; you can so speak it that nobody will either understand it or feel it; you can crucify the gospel as you crucified its Author. There is a witchery and influence that cannot be explained. You think you can unravel the mystery, and tell some brother man exactly how it is, and when you have completed your analysis you find you have simply mistaken the origin, and the drift, and the issue of your purpose.

What is, then, the influence that touches great multitudes? It is an influence which often disregards, we need not say despises, classes. Luther said, "I take no notice of the doctors who are present, of whom there may be twelve; I preach to the young men and maidens, and the poor, of whom there are two thousand." That was Christlike. When Jesus did turn to the classes it was with a look of denunciation; if any pity mingled with that denunciation it made but a painful irony. Scribes, Pharisees, rich, proud, selfish people; on all these he turned a face full of displeasure. He would not accept their patronage, he paid no attention either to their commendation or their flattery or their displeasure and repudiation; he was the Son of man,—in that title, in all its music, you have the explanation of these multitudes that followed him, and thronged him, and drew out of him all that he came to give the world. As a preacher you can have—that is to say, it lies within your power—the very selectest congregation that ever gathered. It lies within your power, sanctified by the Holy Ghost, to have the poor, and the young, and all kinds of men round about your pulpit, as thirsty men go where the fountain is, as hungry men flee with what strength is left to the house of bread. These multitudes are arguments. If they were mere mobs no heed need be paid to them. They are not mobs, they are illustrations, expositions; they tell on the human and needy side what Christ is telling on the divine and all-supplying side of this marvellous history. Men are not aware of all they are doing. To see men hastening to the house of prayer is, when properly understood and weighed, to see a new and exquisite aspect of Providence, to see a high and noble view of the human soul. Every man who so flies to the altar, hastes with the eagerness of hunger to God's house, condemns the world, in very deed tramples it under foot, and says by that very act of going into the sanctuary with a right purpose, The world cannot satisfy me: I pant for heaven as the hart panteth after the waterbrooks.

The great multitudes that thronged Christ were not to be regarded only in a statistical way. They are rather to be interpreted as expressing a universal interest because a universal need. No subject can draw and permanently hold such great multitudes as the Gospel. Why? Curiosity has its momentary crowd, but the reason is assignable, and intelligible, and sometimes despicable. Novelty of this kind or that has its transient success, but the Gospel has not only a momentary fascination, but an enduring influence and a growing power over all who come within the mystery of its touch. Look at a congregation gathered to see Christ, as revealed in his Word, and what a spectacle it is! All men are there, in type, in characteristic, in symbolic need, in representative energy; the old man is sure that there will be some word for grey hairs, and leaning on the top of his staff he waits for his portion of meat; and the little child is sure that there will be some bright sentence, some parabolical outline; maybe some pathetic story, briefly told, with the urgency of earnestness, not with the elaborateness of mere artistic gift and passion; the humblest soul says to itself, My word will come presently; this preacher never neglects the humble, untaught, but necessitous soul. Let him talk in his grandest sentences for a while, he will not forget the poor: I wait. Broken hearts come to Christ's congregation, or altar, or Cross, for healing. The sanctuary that ignores broken hearts ignores the Cross whose name it desecrates. The sanctuary was built for the broken heart; not for the strong, mighty, gay, rich, flourishing, domineering, but for the shattered and the contrite, the lonely and the sad, the self-convicted sinner who cries in the very silence of agony, "What must I do to be saved?" So long as men are conscious of sin, and conscious of the need of salvation, the multitude following Christ will be very large, yet it will increase in number, and in expectancy and urgency; its very attitude shall be a prayer, its earnestness shall be a prevailing plea. A marvellous spectacle is any Christian congregation. The difficulty of the preacher is that so few people recognise the diversity of the congregation, and make allowance for a ministry that would follow the scale of Christ's own method of meeting human need. The selfishness of the congregation is seen in that every individual himself wants all the service. He cannot have it. The Christlike preacher must follow the lines of Christ: how high he is now, and anon how low down, walking amidst our very feet, and looking at our footprints as if haply he might interpret them into some attitude or direction that would betoken the state of our spirit; how profound in simplicity, how generous in concession, how condescending in taking up a little child and hugging the dear creature, and how tremendous in rebuking the men who have the patronage of the dead ex cathedr.

Christ had the multitudes because he spoke to the multitudes. No subject can so deeply affect great multitudes as the Gospel. It develops our humanity; it reaches and strengthens the point of fellowship. This Gospel handles the matter of individuality very delicately, but very fully. For a time the man, individual, singular, is everything; he is talked to as if there were nobody else in the universe but himself and God; yet immediately he is put down, and made of the multitudes that constitute humanity; and then he feels himself in totally other and new and enlarging relations; his vanity is reproved, his self-sufficiency is rebuked, he feels that he needs a friend on the right hand, and the left, behind, before, and round about him: he realises God's conception of humanity. Out of that we have the Church, we have fellowship, the commonwealth, the interchange of relations, sympathies, and interests—that marvellous interaction which makes up society in its highest aspects. Hence we have had occasion to say in rebuke to some, that men cannot pray altogether and exclusively alone. Solitary prayer we must have. Secret communion is essential to the full development of the spiritual life; but there is a larger prayer, call it the common prayer, in which I may hear what my brother needs, and my brother may catch from my tones some hint of my sorrow and my necessity; and thus by commingling of supplication, and the common expression of desire, we realise the larger conception of prayer, and create an atmosphere favourable to the cultivation and the progress of our noblest life; "forsake not the assembling of yourselves together." Hence, too, we have had occasion to say that no man can read the Bible alone. The Bible is a public book. Whatever was meant for the world must be read by the world in one grand multitudinous voice, if all its music is to be elicited, if all its emphasis is to be delivered with the thunder that is worthy of such eloquence. Here is a verse for one soul, and there is an appeal addressed to the solitary heart, and if some other man were present to hear it part of the message would be lost. The Bible has its corners and sanctuaries and places into which individual souls can repair for special perusal of heaven's will; but taking the book as a whole it realises God's idea when it seizes the whole world, and makes every man hear in the tongue in which he was born the wonderful works of God. Every man has a tongue of his own—to speak of the English tongue is to speak vulgarly. The English tongue has to accommodate itself to every lip over which it falls; has to catch its accent from every tongue that uses it, and has to have suggestions which can only be imported into it by the unutterable meaning of the heart.

The Gospel thus affects great multitudes by dealing with fundamental questions. If we looked to the Gospel for aught else we should be mistaken and disappointed. The Gospel is not a riddle book; the Gospel is not a series of conundrums which nobody can answer but priests and preachers, ministers and officebearers: the Bible is the people's book, it belongs to the common humanity; men who can barely spell can draw out of it living water. If this Gospel were a mere exercise in grammar, then only grammarians could be saved. When we rebuke grammarians they do not understand us; but what did a grammarian ever understand? He says, We must have grammar. Certainly; we must have vessels to hold the water; but it is the water that quenches the thirst. The meaning is beyond the letter, not in any sense of despising the letter, but in the sense of having a meaning to convey which the most significant symbols fail adequately to typify. Hence Christ's need of the hereafter. The present time was too small for him; it caged and barred him; so he must needs often say:—Hereafter ye shall see: hereafter ye shall know: what thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter. Time would be a very small cage to live in if it had not a door somewhere in it that opened on eternity: thus we get content and rest and assurance of hope; we say, This time-day is not long enough for us, but it opens upon a day that never darkens into night. So the Gospel affects great multitudes variously and profoundly; teaching patience to some, giving hope to all, and blessing the soul with an assurance that by-and-by we shall know as we are known; see as we are seen, and have access into the wider spaces, yea, into the infinite liberties of God's eternal revelation, as a man might reveal himself face to face with a friend he loved.

No subject can so lastingly bless the multitude as the Gospel. It is not a sensation, an impression, it is in no sense a merely momentary feeling; it is a conviction, a persuasion, a regeneration, a new life. There are theories that are cheerful, vivacious almost to impertinence and insolence, when everything is quiet and bright and prosperous; but they have an ungrateful way of dropping off from the pilgrims" side when the road is very steep and the valley is very dark, or the wind is very cold. There are a thousand such theories lying dead at the mouth of the valley yonder; go and pick them up if you have peculiar taste for gathering things that are dead and never can be revived. They were lovely for a time, quite blooming little impertinences, with a smart way of talking, and a glib way of criticising the universe, and a haughty way of pronouncing upon all things, from trinities down to insects. They are lying yonder, dead, a thousand thick; go and make what you can of them. This Christ of God never leaves, never forsakes, the souls that put their trust in him; he is most when we need him most, tenderest when we are sick; and if a lamb is shorn he goes out to feel the wind before he lets the shorn lamb go out to full exposure. Gentle Jesus, gentle Shepherd, loving Lord, where we cannot understand the deity we can feel thy motherliness, and such motherliness means deity.

How did Christ exercise his influence? He never lowered his moral tone. He never made the Ten Commandments into nine, or took away three of them to accommodate some rich young ruler that was willing to bestow a very dignified patronage upon the kingdom of God. He never said, You must not strive after academic justice; it is well enough to hear ideal theorists talk about ideal righteousness, but you must do what you can, and above all things never make righteousness a discipline or a burden. No such speech did Christ ever teach to men; he said, Unless a man take up his cross he cannot come; except a man deny—not a habit or a custom, but—himself, he cannot be my disciple. Suicide begins regeneration. We have now an adaptable morality. We are tempted to say to the erring public, Dear friends, what do you want? Jesus Christ never talked so to the multitude. He spake the Commandment, he delivered himself as a king; he commanded, he uttered the decree; yet when he came to deal with men how gracious he was, and meek and gentle, but always making his gentleness the conductor of his righteousness. His pity never conducted men past the law in any evasive sense; rather did that pity mysteriously fulfil the law, and show that where there is no mercy there can be no justice. Never did Jesus Christ use his influence with the multitudes to promote selfish objects. He came to bless men, to save men, to do men good on every hand; he did "great things" according to this chapter,—"A great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him." Whatever he did was great. The great man makes great occasions. Even the simplest sayings of Christ root themselves in his deity. There are sentences we think we can understand, but when we come into close quarters with them we find they go back syllable by syllable, up, up to the eternal throne. There is no simplicity in Christ that can be interpreted as meaning mere shallowness. Never did Jesus Christ do anything that was not in the heart of it great; when he did it, it might look easy enough, but it was the King that did it. The heavens look well shaped, but it was not man's clumsy hand that rounded the sky; the stars are all peaceable as if they were filled with a spirit of content. How serene they are in their brightness! It looks quite easy to make these stars; yet it was God that made them, and Omnipotence makes all things easy; but who, God only excepted, has omnipotence? When his popularity rolled through the land, and when the people came to be healed, and pressed upon him to be touched; when men afflicted with plagues and unclean spirits came before him, and cried out, "Thou art the Son of God," he said, I do not want you to preach my doctrine. For reasons we cannot understand, Christ might forbid even the saintliest men to anticipate some of his revelations; but by an accommodation that could well vindicate itself we may learn from such prohibitions as are given in this chapter that Christ will not be revealed by unclean spirits. He says in effect, Do not talk about my divine sonship, do not reveal my deity; it is not for your lips to use holy words. The bad man cannot reveal the Son of God; the hollow-hearted, self-seeking preacher cannot preach Christ's Gospel; he may preach about it, but he cannot deliver the message that whosoever will may come and be saved, and the chief of sinners is the chief guest at Christ's love-table, at Christ's redeeming Cross.

A message of this kind should be uttered with the tears of the heart, with the very agony of love, with a self-prostration which men cannot understand, but which adds ineffable value to every message that is delivered. If we would reveal the deity of Christ we must ourselves be divine men, in the sense of being pure of heart, lofty and incorruptible in purpose, unselfish in spirit, marked through and through, all over, not with the image, but with the meaning of the Cross. Do I speak to some man who has no multitude to talk to? I would not discourage him. Sometimes one man is a multitude. Do not be victimised by merely statistical lines and numbers. If Christ will come where there are two or three gathered together in his name we ought not to be ashamed to make such a convocation a great occasion. What Christ accepts surely it does not lie within our right to despise or reject. On the other hand, let us be careful lest we make the Gospel a message to a class, lest we be damned by respectability. Our message is to the whole world, and wherever there is a multitude that multitude belongs to the humblest minister amongst us. The preacher does not rule, so to say, morally and influentially over his own numerable congregation; the humblest preacher that preaches Christ is in a sense the preacher to the greatest multitude that ever assembled. Let us hold not only the unity of the faith, but consequently the unity of the Church.