The Twelve, and What He Said on the Level Ground

By now everybody in Galilee had noticed him, and one of the things they had noticed was that his followers did not behave the way a teacher’s followers were supposed to behave. Other men’s students fasted — went a whole day without food, on purpose, to show God they were serious. John’s men did it. The Pharisees did it twice a week. His men ate. So some of John’s followers came to him, and some of the Pharisees came with them, and they asked him straight out: “John’s followers go without food, and so do the followers of the Pharisees. Why do yours just eat?” And he answered them with a wedding. “Can the bridegroom’s friends go hungry while the bridegroom is still there with them? As long as they have him with them, of course they cannot. But days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them — and on that day they will fast.” That is the first time he said out loud, in front of strangers, that one day he would be taken away. Nobody caught it. Then he gave them two little pictures out of ordinary life, the kind of thing that happens in any house and any harvest: “Nobody sews a patch of new cloth onto an old coat. If he does, the new patch shrinks and pulls away from the old cloth, and the tear is worse than it was before. And nobody pours new wine into old wineskins. New wine is still working and swelling, and old skins are dry and hard, and they split — and then you lose the wine and the skins together. New wine goes into new skins.” What he had brought could not be sewn on to what was there like a patch, or poured into it like wine into an old bag. It needed somewhere new to go.

And then came two arguments about the Sabbath, one after the other, and those two are what turned the Pharisees against him for good. The first one happened in a field. It was the Sabbath — the seventh day, the rest day, the day God himself had rested on — and he and his followers were walking along a path through somebody’s grain. The men were hungry. So as they walked they picked the heads of grain, and rubbed them between their hands to get the husks off, and ate them as they went. Picking was allowed: the law let a hungry traveler take a handful from another man’s field. But rubbing grain between your hands, on the Sabbath, looked to a careful man very much like threshing. And threshing was work. So the Pharisees who were watching said, “Look at that. Why are they doing something on the Sabbath that is not allowed?” And he answered them out of their own scriptures, with a story about their own greatest king. “Have you never read what David did, when he and his men were hungry and had nothing at all? He went into the house of God and took the bread of the setting-out — the holy loaves that are put out before God, that nobody is allowed to eat except the priests — and he ate it, and he gave it to the men who were with him.” And then he said the sentence that goes to the bottom of it: “The Sabbath was made for people. People were not made for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” God had given them the day the way you give somebody a present. They had turned it into something a hungry man could be caught out on.

The second argument happened on another Sabbath, indoors, in a meeting house — and this time they were ready for him. There was a man there whose right hand was withered: shrunk and curled and useless, and it was the hand he would have worked with. And the scribes and the Pharisees sat and watched him closely to see whether he would heal the man on the Sabbath, because if he did they would have something at last to charge him with. They were not hoping the man would get his hand back. They were hoping to catch the healer. He knew exactly what they were thinking. And he did not do it quietly in a corner, either. He said to the man with the withered hand: “Get up. Come and stand here, in the middle.” And the man got up in front of everybody and stood in the middle of the room, with his bad hand hanging at his side, and waited. Then Jesus looked at the men who were watching him, and asked them a question. “I am asking you: is it right on the Sabbath to do good, or to do harm? To save a life, or to kill?” And nobody answered him. Not one of them said anything. The room went completely quiet, and the man with the withered hand went on standing there in the middle of it. And he looked round at them all, one face after another, and there was anger in his face — and underneath the anger, grief, because their hearts had gone hard. Then he said to the man: “Stretch out your hand.” And the man stretched it out, and it came back — as strong and as good as the other one. And the Pharisees walked straight out of that meeting house and went to find the Herodians, King Herod’s men, whom they could not stand at any other time. And the two of them put their heads together to work out how to destroy him. It began there, in a room where a man had just got his hand back.

After that he went away to the lake, and the crowds became frightening. People came from all over Galilee, and from Judea, and from Jerusalem, and up from Idumea in the south, and over the Jordan, and along the coast from Tyre and Sidon — everybody who had heard anything, and everybody who had anything wrong with them. They pressed in on him so hard that he told his followers to keep a small boat ready at the water’s edge, so that he could push off a few feet from the shore and not be crushed. And in the middle of all that, he went up the mountain by himself, at night, to pray. And he stayed up there all night long. The whole night, in the dark, on the hill, praying. And when it got light he called his followers up to him, and out of all of them he chose twelve, and gave them a name: apostles, which means the ones who are sent. He chose them so that they would be with him, and so that he could send them out to tell people, and to drive out demons. These were the twelve. Simon, whom he named Peter, which means Rock. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, whom he nicknamed the Sons of Thunder. Andrew, who was Peter’s brother. Philip. Bartholomew. Matthew, who had been the tax man. Thomas. James the son of Alphaeus. Simon, who was called the Zealot, from the hot-headed men who wanted the Romans thrown out by force. Judas the son of James, whom the others called Thaddaeus. And Judas Iscariot, who handed him over. Fishermen, a tax collector, a man from a party of fighters, and one who would betray him. Not a single scholar among them. He had prayed all night about it.

Then he came down the mountain with them and stood on a flat place on the hillside, and there was a great crowd waiting there: his own followers, and people from Judea and Jerusalem and the sea towns, come to hear him and to be healed. Everybody who was ill was trying to get near enough to touch him, because power was going out of him and healing them all. And he lifted up his eyes and looked at his followers — looked right at them — and this is what he said.

“Blessed are you who are poor — the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are hungry now — you will be filled full. Blessed are you who are crying now — you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and shut you out, and insult you, and throw your name away like something evil, because of the Son of Man. On that day be glad. Jump for joy. Your reward in heaven is great — because that is exactly what their fathers did to the prophets.” And then he turned every one of them over and said the other side of it out loud: “But how terrible for you who are rich — you have had all the comfort you are going to get. How terrible for you who are full now — you will be hungry. How terrible for you who are laughing now — you will be sad, and you will cry. How terrible for you when everybody speaks well of you — because that is exactly what their fathers did to the false prophets.” Four blessings and four terribles, matched one against one, like the two halves of a door.

Then he asked them for the hardest thing he ever asked anybody, and he was asking it of people who lived under an army that was not theirs. “But I say to you who are listening: love your enemies. Do good to the people who hate you. Speak well of the people who curse you. Pray for the people who treat you badly. If somebody hits you on one cheek, turn the other one to him too. If somebody takes your coat, do not stop him taking your shirt as well. Give to everybody who asks you. And if somebody walks off with what is yours, do not go after him demanding it back. And whatever you would like people to do for you — do exactly that for them. If you love the people who love you, what thanks do you deserve for that? Even people who are no good at all love the ones who love them. If you do good to the people who do good to you, what thanks is there in that? Anybody does that much. And if you lend to people you are sure will pay you back, what thanks is there in that? Even bad men lend to bad men, when they know they will get every penny of it back. No. Love your enemies, and do good, and lend without expecting anything back at all. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High — because he himself is kind to people who are ungrateful, and to people who are wicked. Be kind, the way your Father is kind.”

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Let people off, and you will be let off. Give — and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over the top, they will pour into your lap. Because the measure you measure other people with is the measure that will be used on you.” That last one is a picture of a grain merchant filling a bag: pushing the grain down with his fist, shaking the bag so it settles, tipping in more and more until it spills over the edge and down into the fold of the coat you are holding out to catch it. That much.

Then he told them a little riddle. “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into the ditch? A student is not above his teacher. But everybody who has been taught all the way through will turn out like his teacher.”

And then the trees, which he came back to more than once. “There is no good tree that grows rotten fruit, and no rotten tree that grows good fruit. Every tree is known by what grows on it. You do not gather figs off thorn bushes, and nobody picks a bunch of grapes off a bramble. A good person brings good things out of the good that is stored up in his heart, and an evil person brings evil things out of what is stored up in his. Because what a man’s mouth says is whatever his heart is full of, spilling over the top.”

And he finished the way he had finished on the mountain, with two men and two houses. “And why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things I say? I will show you what somebody is like who comes to me, and hears my words, and does them. He is like a man building a house, who dug down and went deep and laid his foundation on rock. And the flood came, and the river burst against that house — and it could not even shake it, because it had been built well. But the one who hears and does not do is like a man who built his house on the bare ground, with no foundation under it at all. And the river burst against it, and it fell in at once — and the wreck of that house was terrible.” Every person standing on that flat piece of hillside had seen a dry stony valley turn into a brown roaring river in a single winter night. They knew exactly what he meant. And when he had finished all of it, he came down off the hill and went into Capernaum.