The Crisis at Capernaum

153:1.1A dis­tin­guished con­gre­ga­tion greeted Je­sus at three o’clock on this ex­qui­site Sab­bath af­ter­noon in the new Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue. Jairus pre­sided and handed Je­sus the Scrip­tures to read. The day be­fore, fifty-three Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had ar­rived from Je­ru­sa­lem; more than thirty of the lead­ers and rulers of the neigh­bor­ing syn­a­gogues were also pres­ent. These Jew­ish re­li­gious lead­ers were act­ing di­rectly un­der or­ders from the San­hedrin at Je­ru­sa­lem, and they con­sti­tuted the or­tho­dox van­guard which had come to in­au­gu­rate open war­fare on Je­sus and his dis­ci­ples. Sit­ting by the side of these Jew­ish lead­ers, in the syn­a­gogue seats of honor, were the of­fi­cial ob­servers of Herod An­tipas, who had been di­rected to as­cer­tain the truth con­cern­ing the dis­turb­ing re­ports that an at­tempt had been made by the pop­u­lace to pro­claim Je­sus the king of the Jews, over in the do­mains of his brother Philip.

153:1.2Je­sus com­pre­hended that he faced the im­me­di­ate dec­la­ra­tion of avowed and open war­fare by his in­creas­ing en­e­mies, and he elected boldly to as­sume the of­fen­sive. At the feed­ing of the five thou­sand he had chal­lenged their ideas of the ma­te­rial Mes­siah; now he chose again openly to at­tack their con­cept of the Jew­ish de­liv­erer. This cri­sis, which be­gan with the feed­ing of the five thou­sand, and which ter­mi­nated with this Sab­bath af­ter­noon ser­mon, was the out­ward turn­ing of the tide of pop­u­lar fame and ac­claim. Hence­forth, the work of the king­dom was to be in­creas­ingly con­cerned with the more im­por­tant task of win­ning last­ing spir­i­tual con­verts for the truly re­li­gious broth­er­hood of man­kind. This ser­mon marks the cri­sis in the tran­si­tion from the pe­riod of dis­cus­sion, con­tro­versy, and de­ci­sion to that of open war­fare and fi­nal ac­cep­tance or fi­nal re­jec­tion.

153:1.3The Mas­ter well knew that many of his fol­low­ers were slowly but surely prepar­ing their minds fi­nally to re­ject him. He like­wise knew that many of his dis­ci­ples were slowly but cer­tainly pass­ing through that train­ing of mind and that dis­ci­pline of soul which would en­able them to tri­umph over doubt and coura­geously to as­sert their full-fledged faith in the gospel of the king­dom. Je­sus fully un­der­stood how men pre­pare them­selves for the de­ci­sions of a cri­sis and the per­for­mance of sud­den deeds of coura­geous choos­ing by the slow pro­cess of the re­it­er­ated choos­ing be­tween the re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions of good and evil. He sub­jected his cho­sen mes­sen­gers to re­peated re­hearsals in dis­ap­point­ment and pro­vided them with fre­quent and test­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for choos­ing be­tween the right and the wrong way of meet­ing spir­i­tual tri­als. He knew he could de­pend on his fol­low­ers, when they met the fi­nal test, to make their vi­tal de­ci­sions in ac­cor­dance with prior and ha­bit­ual men­tal at­ti­tudes and spirit re­ac­tions.

153:1.4This cri­sis in Je­sus’ earth life be­gan with the feed­ing of the five thou­sand and ended with this ser­mon in the syn­a­gogue; the cri­sis in the lives of the apos­tles be­gan with this ser­mon in the syn­a­gogue and con­tin­ued for a whole year, end­ing only with the Mas­ter’s trial and cru­ci­fix­ion.

153:1.5As they sat there in the syn­a­gogue that af­ter­noon be­fore Je­sus be­gan to speak, there was just one great mys­tery, just one su­preme ques­tion, in the minds of all. Both his friends and his foes pon­dered just one thought, and that was: “Why did he him­self so de­lib­er­ately and ef­fec­tively turn back the tide of pop­u­lar en­thu­si­asm?” And it was im­me­di­ately be­fore and im­me­di­ately af­ter this ser­mon that the doubts and dis­ap­point­ments of his dis­grun­tled ad­her­ents grew into un­con­scious op­po­si­tion and even­tu­ally turned into ac­tual ha­tred. It was af­ter this ser­mon in the syn­a­gogue that Ju­das Is­car­iot en­ter­tained his first con­scious thought of de­sert­ing. But he did, for the time be­ing, ef­fec­tively mas­ter all such in­cli­na­tions.

153:1.6Ev­ery­one was in a state of per­plex­ity. Je­sus had left them dum­founded and con­founded. He had re­cently en­gaged in the great­est dem­on­stra­tion of super­nat­u­ral power to char­ac­ter­ize his whole ca­reer. The feed­ing of the five thou­sand was the one event of his earth life which made the great­est ap­peal to the Jew­ish con­cept of the ex­pected Mes­siah. But this ex­traor­di­nary ad­van­tage was im­me­di­ately and un­ex­plainedly off­set by his prompt and un­equiv­o­cal re­fusal to be made king.

153:1.7On Fri­day evening, and again on Sab­bath morn­ing, the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers had la­bored long and earnestly with Jairus to pre­vent Je­sus’ speak­ing in the syn­a­gogue, but it was of no avail. Jairus’s only re­ply to all this plead­ing was: “I have granted this re­quest, and I will not vi­o­late my word.”