Personal Friendships of Jesus by J. R. Miller (surface ebook reader txt) 📖

Another word which reveals the deep hunger of the heart of Jesus for friendship and companionship was spoken in view of the hour when even his own apostles would leave him: "Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone." The experience of the garden of Gethsemane also shows in a wonderful way the Lord's craving for sympathy. In his great sorrow he wished to have his best friends near him, that he might lean on them, and draw from their love a little strength for his hour of bitter need. It was an added element in the sorrow of that night that he failed to get the help from human sympathy which he yearned for and expected. When he came back each time after his supplication, he found his apostles sleeping.

These are some of the glimpses which we get in the Gospel story of the longing heart of Jesus. He loved deeply, and sought to be loved. He was disappointed when he failed to find affection. He welcomed love wherever it came to him,—the love of the poor, the gratitude of those whom he had helped, the trusting affection of little children. We can never know how much the friendship of the beloved disciple was to Jesus. What a shelter and comfort the Bethany home was to him, and how his strength was renewed by its sweet fellowship! How even the smallest kindnesses were a solace to his heart! How he was comforted by the affection and the ministries of the women-friends who followed him!

In the chapters of this book which follow, the attempt is made to tell the story of some of the friendships of Jesus, gathering up the threads from the Gospel pages. Sometimes the material is abundant, as in the case of Peter and John; sometimes we have only a glimpse or two in the record, albeit enough to reveal a warm and tender friendship, as in the case of the Bethany sisters, and of Andrew, and of Joseph. It may do us good to study these friendship stories. It will at least show us the humanheartedness of Jesus, and his method in blessing and saving the world. The central fact in every true Christian life is a personal friendship with Jesus. Men were called to follow him, to leave all and cleave to him, to believe on him, to trust him, to love him, to obey him; and the result was the transformation of their lives into his own beauty. That which alone makes one a Christian is being a friend of Jesus. Friendship transforms—all human friendship transforms. We become like those with whom we live in close, intimate relations. Life flows into life, heart and heart are knit together, spirits blend, and the two friends become one.

We have but little to give to Christ; yet it is a comfort to know that our friendship really is precious to him, and adds to his joy, poor and meagre though its best may be—but he has infinite blessings to give to us. "I call you friends." No other gift he gives to us can equal in value the love and friendship of his heart. When Cyrus gave Artabazus, one of his courtiers, a gold cup, he gave Chrysanthus, his favorite, only a kiss. And Artabazus said to Cyrus, "The cup you gave me was not so good gold as the kiss you gave Chrysanthus." No good man's money is ever worth so much as his love. Certainly the greatest honor of this earth, greater than rank or station or wealth, is the friendship of Jesus Christ. And this honor is within the reach of every one. "Henceforth I call you not servants … I have called you friends." "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you."

The stories of the friendships of Jesus when he was on the earth need cause no one to sigh, "I wish that I had lived in those days, when Jesus lived among men, that I might have been his friend too, feeling the warmth of his love, my life enriched by contact with his, and my spirit quickened by his love and grace!" The friendships of Jesus, whose stories we read in the New Testament, are only patterns of friendships into which we may enter, if we are ready to accept what he offers, and to consecrate our life to faithfulness and love.

The friendship of Jesus includes all other blessings for time and for eternity. "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's." His friendship sanctifies all pure human bonds—no friendship is complete which is not woven of a threefold cord. If Christ is our friend, all life is made rich and beautiful to us. The past, with all of sacred loss it holds, lives before us in him. The future is a garden-spot in which all life's sweet hopes, that seem to have perished on the earth, will be found growing for us.

  "Fields of the past to thee shall be no more
   The burialground of friendships once in bloom,
  But the seed-plots of a harvest on before,
   And prophecies of life with larger room
      For things that are behind.

  Live thou in Christ, and thy dead past shall be
    Alive forever with eternal day;
  And planted on his bosom thou shall see
    The flowers revived that withered on the way
        Amid the things behind."

    Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One!
  My flesh, my Lord!—what name? I do not know
  A name that seemeth not too high or low,
    Too far from me or heaven.
  My Jesus, that is best!
      * * *
  Sleep, sleep, my saving One.
                           MRS. BROWNING.

The first friend a child has in this world is its mother. It comes here an utter stranger, knowing no one; but it finds love waiting for it. Instantly the little stranger has a friend, a bosom to nestle in, an arm to encircle it, a hand to minister to its helplessness. Love is born with the child. The mother presses it to her breast, and at once her heart's tendrils twine about it.

It is a good while before the child becomes conscious of the wondrous love that is bending over it, yet all the time the love is growing in depth and tenderness. In a thousand ways, by a thousand delicate arts, the mother seeks to waken in her child a response to her own yearning love. At length the first gleams of answering affection appear—the child has begun to love. From that hour the holy friendship grows. The two lives become knit in one.

When God would give the world a great man, a man of rare spirit and transcendent power, a man with a lofty mission, he first prepares a woman to be his mother. Whenever in history we come upon such a man, we instinctively begin to ask about the character of her on whose bosom he nestled in infancy, and at whose knee he learned his life's first lessons. We are sure of finding here the secret of the man's greatness. When the time drew nigh for the incarnation of the Son of God, we may be sure that into the soul of the woman who should be his mother, who should impart her own life to him, who should teach him his first lessons, and prepare him for his holy mission, God put the loveliest and the best qualities that ever were lodged in any woman's life. We need not accept the teaching that exalts the mother of Jesus to a place beside or above her divine Son. We need have no sympathy whatever with the dogma that ascribes worship to the Virgin Mary, and teaches that the Son on his throne must be approached by mortals through his more merciful, more gentle-hearted mother. But we need not let these errors concerning Mary obscure the real blessedness of her character. We remember the angel's greeting, "Blessed art thou among women." Hers surely was the highest honor ever conferred upon any woman.

  "Say of me as the Heavenly said, 'Thou art
  The blessedest of women!'—blessedest,
  Not holiest, not noblest,—no high name,
  Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame,
  When I sit meek in heaven!"

We know how other men, men of genius, rarely ever have failed to give to their mothers the honor of whatever of greatness or worth they had attained. But somehow we shrink from saying that Jesus was influenced by his mother as other good men have been; that he got from her much of the beauty and the power of his life. We are apt to fancy that his mother was not to him what mothers ordinarily are to their children; that he did not need mothering as other children do; that by reason of the Deity indwelling, his character unfolded from within, without the aid of home teaching and training, and the other educational influences which do so much in shaping the character of children in common homes.

But there is no Scriptural ground for this feeling. The humanity of Jesus was just like our humanity. He came into the world just as feeble and as untaught as any other child that ever was born. No mother was ever more to her infant than Mary was to Jesus. She taught him all his first lessons. She gave him his first thoughts about God, and from her lips he learned the first lispings of prayer. Jewish mothers cared very tenderly for their children. They taught them with unwearying patience the words of God. One of the rabbis said, "God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers." This saying shows how sacred was the Jewish thought of the mother's work for her child.

Every true mother feels a sense of awe in her soul when she bends over her own infant child; but in the case of Mary we may be sure that the awe was unusual, because of the mystery of the child's birth. In the annunciation the angel had said to her, "That which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God." Then the night of her child's birth there was a wondrous vision of angels, and the shepherds who beheld it hastened into the town; and as they looked upon the baby in the manger, they told the wondering mother what they had seen and heard. We are told that Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart. While she could not understand what all this meant, she knew at least that hers was no common child; that in some wonderful sense he was the Son of God.

This consciousness must have given to her motherhood an unusual thoughtfulness and seriousness. How close to God she must have lived! How deep and tender her love must have been! How pure and clean her heart must have been kept! How sweet and patient she must have been as she moved about at her tasks, in order that no harsh or bitter thought or feeling might ever cast a shadow upon the holy life which had been intrusted to her for training and moulding.

Only a few times is the veil lifted to give us a glimpse of mother and child. On the fortieth day he was taken to the temple, and given to God. Then it was that another reminder of the glory of this child was given to the mother. An old man, Simeon, took the infant in his arms, and spoke of him as God's salvation. As he gave the parents his parting blessing he lifted the veil, and showed them a glimmering of the future. "This child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against." Then to the mother he said solemnly, "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also." This was a foretelling of the sorrow which should come to the heart of Mary, and which came again and again, until at last she saw her son on a cross. The shadow of the cross rested on Mary's soul all the years. Every time she rocked her