The Road to Jerusalem, and the Man at the Gate

The time was coming for him to be taken up, and he knew it. So he set his face to go to Jerusalem. From that day he was turned toward that city like a man leaning into the wind.

He sent messengers on ahead, and they went into a village in Samaria to get a place ready for the night. And the village would not have him — because he was going to Jerusalem, and the Samaritans and the people of Jerusalem had quarreled for hundreds of years about which mountain God ought to be worshiped on. James and John — the two he had nicknamed the Sons of Thunder — saw the door shut in the messengers’ faces, and had an idea. “Lord — do you want us to call fire down out of heaven and burn them up?” He turned round and told them off. Then they walked on to another village.

As they walked, a man said, “I will follow you, Lord. But first let me say goodbye to those at my house.” Jesus answered, “Nobody who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

The crowds got worse the further he went. One day there were thousands of them, treading on each other to get near, and he talked to his own followers first, over the noise. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees, which is pretending to be what you are not. There is nothing covered over that will not be uncovered, and nothing hidden that will not be known. Whatever you said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and whatever you whispered into somebody’s ear behind a shut door will be shouted off the roofs of the houses.”

He was going away, and one day coming back, so he told them how to wait. “Keep your belts done up and your lamps burning — like servants waiting up for their master to come home from a wedding, so that the moment he comes and knocks they can open the door to him. Blessed are those servants: the master comes home and finds them awake. I tell you the truth — he will do up his own belt, sit them down at the table, and wait on them himself. And if he comes in the middle of the night, or in the last hour before morning, and finds them like that — blessed are they.

You know this much: if the master of a house had known what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You be ready too. The Son of Man comes at an hour when you are not expecting him.” And Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this story to us, or to everybody?”

He answered by telling another one. “Who is the trustworthy manager, the sensible one, that a master puts in charge of the other servants to hand out their food at the right time? Blessed is that servant if his master comes home and finds him doing it: he will put him in charge of all he owns. But suppose that servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking his time,’ and starts knocking the other servants about and eating and drinking and getting drunk. The master will come home on a day he was not expected — and that will be the end of him. From everybody who was given much, much will be asked back; and the more a man was trusted with, the more will be wanted from him.”

Some people came to him with news out of Jerusalem: Pilate had killed a group of men from Galilee while they were making their offerings. They wanted to know what he made of it. Everybody in that country had been taught that if something terrible happened to you, it was because of something you had done. “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because that happened to them? No, I tell you. But unless you change your minds, every one of you will be lost the same way. Or those eighteen people that the tower at Siloam fell on and killed — do you think they owed God more than everybody else living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you. But unless you change your minds, every one of you will be lost the same way.”

And then he told them about a tree. “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he came looking for figs on it and there were none. So he said to the man who looked after the vineyard, ‘Look — three years now I have been coming to this fig tree for figs, and there are never any. Cut it down. Why should it use up good ground?’ But the gardener said to him, ‘Master, leave it one more year. Let me dig round it and put manure on it. It may have figs on it next year — and if it does not, then you can cut it down.’”

He kept going, town after town, teaching as he went and making his way toward Jerusalem. And somewhere on that road somebody asked the question people always ask. “Lord — are only a few going to be saved?” He did not answer the question. He answered the man. “Fight your way in through the narrow door. Plenty of people, I tell you, will try to get in and will not be strong enough, once the master of the house has got up and shut the door. Then you will be left outside, knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open it for us’ — and he will answer, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ And you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you. You taught in our streets.’ And he will say, ‘I do not know where you are from. Get away from me, all of you who do wrong.’

There will be crying out there, and grinding of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets inside the kingdom of God, and yourselves shut out. And people will come from east and west and north and south and sit down at the table in the kingdom of God. And look — there are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

That same hour some Pharisees came to him, and for once with a warning. “Get away from here and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.” And he said, “Go and tell that fox: look, I am driving out demons and finishing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I am done. But I must keep walking today and tomorrow and the day after — because it would never do for a prophet to die anywhere but Jerusalem.”

And then, still days away from the city, he said this: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem — you who kill the prophets and stone the ones who are sent to you. How often I have wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. And you would not let me. Look: your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me again until the day you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the Lord’s name.’”

On a Sabbath he went to eat at the house of one of the leading Pharisees, and every man at that table was watching him out of the corner of his eye. And there in front of him was a man whose body had swollen up with water. Before he touched him, he asked the lawyers and the Pharisees a question. “Is it allowed to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”

Nobody said a word. So he took hold of the man and cured him and sent him home. And then he said, “If your son fell down a well on the Sabbath day — or your ox — which of you would not have him straight out of there, Sabbath or no Sabbath?” And they could not answer that either.

Great crowds were walking the road with him now, and he turned and spoke to them. He was not trying to keep them; he wanted them to know what they were walking into. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters — and his own life as well — he cannot be my follower. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come behind me cannot be my follower.

Which of you, wanting to build a tower, does not sit down first and work out the cost, and whether he has enough to finish? Otherwise he lays the foundation and cannot finish, and everybody who walks past laughs and says, ‘This man started building and could not finish.’ Or what king, marching out to meet another king in a war, does not sit down first and work out whether he can face twenty thousand men with ten thousand? And if he cannot, he sends men down the road, while the other is still far off, to ask what his terms are. So then: not one of you can be my follower unless you say goodbye to everything you own.”

He talked about money more than almost anything else, and he told two stories about it. “There was a rich man who had a manager running his house and his land for him, and somebody came and told him the manager was wasting his money. So he called him in and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Hand over the accounts. You are not managing my house any longer.’

And the manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do? My master is taking the job off me. I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. — I know. Then when I am put out there will be people glad to take me into their houses.’ So he sent for his master’s debtors, one at a time. ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ‘Six hundred gallons of olive oil.’ ‘Here is your bill. Sit down, quickly, and write three hundred.’ And to the next one, ‘And you — how much?’ ‘Six hundred bushels of wheat.’ ‘Here is your bill. Write four hundred and eighty.’

And the master found out — and he praised that crooked manager, because he had been clever about it. The people of this world are cleverer with their own sort than the people of the light are. So I tell you: use the money of this world to make yourselves friends, so that when it gives out they will welcome you into the tents that last forever. Anybody who can be trusted with a very little can be trusted with a great deal. If you have not been straight with the money of this world, who is ever going to hand you anything real? No servant can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and money.”

The Pharisees had been listening to all of that, and they were men who liked money, and they laughed at him. So he told them the second story.

“There was a rich man who dressed in purple and fine linen, and every single day of his life was splendid. And a poor man named Lazarus was laid down at his gateway, covered in sores, longing to be fed with what fell off the rich man’s table. And the dogs used to come and lick his sores.

And the poor man died, and was carried away by the messengers to Abraham’s side. And the rich man died too, and was buried. And in Hades, in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham a long way off, and Lazarus beside him. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember: in your lifetime you got your good things, and Lazarus got the bad ones. Now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. And besides all that, there is a great canyon fixed between us and you, so that people who wanted to cross from here to you could not, and nobody crosses from your side to ours.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father — send him to my father’s house. I have five brothers. Let him tell them, so that they do not come to this place of torment as well.’ And Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said. ‘But if somebody went to them from the dead, they would change their minds.’ And Abraham said to him, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be talked round by somebody rising from the dead either.’”

That is where he stopped.

He said the next part quietly, and only to his own followers. “Things will come that make people trip and fall; there is no stopping it. But it will be a bad day for the one they come through. Better for him to have a millstone hung round his neck and be thrown into the sea than to make one of these little ones trip. So watch yourselves. If your brother does something wrong, tell him so. And if he changes his mind, forgive him. And if he does wrong to you seven times in one day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I have changed my mind’ — forgive him.”

And the twelve said, “Give us more faith.” And he said, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

And then, so nobody would feel grand about it, he said this. “Which of you, when your servant comes in from plowing, says to him, ‘Come straight in and sit down to eat’? Do you not say, ‘Get my dinner ready and wait on me while I eat, and afterwards you can have yours’? Do you thank a servant for doing what he was told? It is the same with you. When you have done everything you were told, say: ‘We are only servants. We have done what we had to do.’”

They were near Jerusalem now, and people were saying the kingdom of God would appear at any minute. So he told one more story before he went up the road. A mina was silver — about three months’ wages for a working man. “A man of a great family went off to a country far away to be made king, and then to come back. He called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas between them, and said, ‘Do business with this while I am away.’ But the people of his own country hated him, and they sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We do not want this man to be king over us.’

He was made king all the same, and he came home, and he sent for the servants he had given the silver to, to see what they had made with it. The first came and said, ‘Master, your one mina has made ten more.’ And he said, ‘Well done, good servant. You were trustworthy with a very little thing; take charge of ten towns.’ And the second came and said, ‘Master, your mina has made five.’ And he said, ‘And you: take charge of five towns.’

And another came and said, ‘Master, here is your mina. I kept it laid away in a cloth. I was frightened of you, because you are a hard man: you pick up what you never put down, and you reap what you never sowed.’ And he said, ‘I will judge you out of your own mouth, you bad servant. You knew that I am a hard man? Then why did you not put my silver in the bank? I would have come home and collected it with the interest.’ And he said to the men standing there, ‘Take the mina off him and give it to the one who has ten.’ And they said, ‘Master — he has ten already.’ ‘I tell you: everybody who has will be given more, and from the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away. And those enemies of mine who did not want me for their king — bring them here and put them to death in front of me.’”

And when he had said that, he went on ahead of them all, up the road to Jerusalem.