Last Days at Capernaum

154:6.1It was about eight o’clock on this Sun­day morn­ing when five mem­bers of Je­sus’ earth fam­ily ar­rived on the scene in re­sponse to the ur­gent sum­mons of Jude’s sis­ter-in-law. Of all his fam­ily in the flesh, only one, Ruth, be­lieved whole­heart­edly and con­tin­u­ously in the di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. Jude and James, and even Joseph, still re­tained much of their faith in Je­sus, but they had per­mit­ted pride to in­ter­fere with their bet­ter judg­ment and real spir­i­tual in­cli­na­tions. Mary was like­wise torn be­tween love and fear, be­tween mother love and fam­ily pride. Though she was ha­rassed by doubts, she could never quite for­get the visit of Ga­briel ere Je­sus was born. The Phar­isees had been la­bor­ing to per­suade Mary that Je­sus was be­side him­self, de­mented. They urged her to go with her sons and seek to dis­suade him from fur­ther ef­forts at pub­lic teach­ing. They as­sured Mary that soon Je­sus’ health would break, and that only dis­honor and dis­grace could come upon the en­tire fam­ily as a re­sult of al­low­ing him to go on. And so, when the word came from Jude’s sis­ter-in-law, all five of them started at once for Zeb­e­dee’s house, hav­ing been to­gether at Mary’s home, where they had met with the Phar­isees the evening be­fore. They had talked with the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers long into the night, and all were more or less con­vinced that Je­sus was act­ing strangely, that he had acted strangely for some time. While Ruth could not ex­plain all of his con­duct, she in­sisted that he had al­ways treated his fam­ily fairly and re­fused to agree to the pro­gram of try­ing to dis­suade him from fur­ther work.

154:6.2On the way to Zeb­e­dee’s house they talked these things over and agreed among them­selves to try to per­suade Je­sus to come home with them, for, said Mary: “I know I could in­flu­ence my son if he would only come home and lis­ten to me.” James and Jude had heard ru­mors con­cern­ing the plans to ar­rest Je­sus and take him to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial. They also feared for their own safety. As long as Je­sus was a pop­u­lar fig­ure in the pub­lic eye, his fam­ily al­lowed mat­ters to drift along, but now that the peo­ple of Ca­per­naum and the lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem had sud­denly turned against him, they be­gan keenly to feel the pres­sure of the sup­posed dis­grace of their em­bar­rass­ing po­si­tion.

154:6.3They had ex­pected to meet Je­sus, take him aside, and urge him to go home with them. They had thought to as­sure him that they would for­get his ne­glect of them—they would for­give and for­get—if he would only give up the fool­ish­ness of try­ing to preach a new re­li­gion which could bring only trou­ble to him­self and dis­honor upon his fam­ily. To all of this Ruth would say only: “I will tell my brother that I think he is a man of God, and that I hope he would be will­ing to die be­fore he would al­low these wicked Phar­isees to stop his preach­ing.” Joseph prom­ised to keep Ruth quiet while the oth­ers la­bored with Je­sus.

154:6.4When they reached the Zeb­e­dee house, Je­sus was in the very midst of de­liv­er­ing his part­ing ad­dress to the dis­ci­ples. They sought to gain en­trance to the house, but it was crowded to over­flow­ing. Fi­nally they es­tab­lished them­selves on the back porch and had word passed in to Je­sus, from per­son to per­son, so that it fi­nally was whis­pered to him by Si­mon Pe­ter, who in­ter­rupted his talk­ing for the pur­pose, and who said: “Be­hold, your mother and your broth­ers are out­side, and they are very anx­ious to speak with you.” Now it did not oc­cur to his mother how im­por­tant was the giv­ing of this part­ing mes­sage to his fol­low­ers, nei­ther did she know that his ad­dress was likely to be ter­mi­nated any mo­ment by the ar­rival of his ap­pre­hend­ers. She re­ally thought, af­ter so long an ap­par­ent es­trange­ment, in view of the fact that she and his broth­ers had shown the grace ac­tu­ally to come to him, that Je­sus would cease speak­ing and come to them the mo­ment he re­ceived word they were wait­ing.

154:6.5It was just an­other of those in­stances in which his earth fam­ily could not com­pre­hend that he must be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness. And so Mary and his broth­ers were deeply hurt when, not­with­stand­ing that he paused in his speak­ing to re­ceive the mes­sage, in­stead of his rush­ing out to greet them, they heard his mu­si­cal voice speak with in­creased vol­ume: “Say to my mother and my broth­ers that they should have no fear for me. The Fa­ther who sent me into the world will not for­sake me; nei­ther shall any harm come upon my fam­ily. Bid them be of good cour­age and put their trust in the Fa­ther of the king­dom. But, af­ter all, who is my mother and who are my broth­ers?” And stretch­ing forth his hands to­ward all of his dis­ci­ples as­sem­bled in the room, he said: “I have no mother; I have no broth­ers. Be­hold my mother and be­hold my breth­ren! For whoso­ever does the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven, the same is my mother, my brother, and my sis­ter.”

154:6.6And when Mary heard these words, she col­lapsed in Jude’s arms. They car­ried her out in the gar­den to re­vive her while Je­sus spoke the con­clud­ing words of his part­ing mes­sage. He would then have gone out to con­fer with his mother and his broth­ers, but a mes­sen­ger ar­rived in haste from Tiberias bring­ing word that the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin were on their way with au­thor­ity to ar­rest Je­sus and carry him to Je­ru­sa­lem. An­drew re­ceived this mes­sage and, in­ter­rupt­ing Je­sus, told it to him.

154:6.7An­drew did not re­call that David had posted some twenty-five sen­tinels about the Zeb­e­dee house, and that no one could take them by sur­prise; so he asked Je­sus what should be done. The Mas­ter stood there in si­lence while his mother, hav­ing heard the words, “I have no mother,” was re­cov­er­ing from the shock in the gar­den. It was at just this time that a woman in the room stood up and ex­claimed, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and blessed are the breasts that nursed you.” Je­sus turned aside a mo­ment from his con­ver­sa­tion with An­drew to an­swer this woman by say­ing, “No, rather is the one blessed who hears the word of God and dares to obey it.”

154:6.8Mary and Je­sus’ broth­ers thought that Je­sus did not un­der­stand them, that he had lost in­ter­est in them, lit­tle re­al­iz­ing that it was they who failed to un­der­stand Je­sus. Je­sus fully un­der­stood how dif­fi­cult it is for men to break with their past. He knew how hu­man be­ings are swayed by the preacher’s elo­quence, and how the con­science re­sponds to emo­tional ap­peal as the mind does to logic and rea­son, but he also knew how far more dif­fi­cult it is to per­suade men to dis­own the past.

154:6.9It is for­ever true that all who may think they are mis­un­der­stood or not ap­pre­ci­ated have in Je­sus a sym­pa­thiz­ing friend and an un­der­stand­ing coun­selor. He had warned his apos­tles that a man’s foes may be they of his own house­hold, but he had hardly re­al­ized how near this pre­dic­tion would come to ap­ply to his own ex­pe­ri­ence. Je­sus did not for­sake his earth fam­ily to do his Fa­ther’s work—they for­sook him. Later on, af­ter the Mas­ter’s death and res­ur­rec­tion, when James be­came con­nected with the early Chris­tian move­ment, he suf­fered im­mea­sur­ably as a re­sult of his fail­ure to en­joy this ear­lier as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus and his dis­ci­ples.

154:6.10In pass­ing through these events, Je­sus chose to be guided by the lim­ited knowl­edge of his hu­man mind. He de­sired to un­dergo the ex­pe­ri­ence with his as­so­ciates as a mere man. And it was in the hu­man mind of Je­sus to see his fam­ily be­fore he left. He did not wish to stop in the midst of his dis­course and thus ren­der their first meet­ing af­ter so long a sep­a­ra­tion such a pub­lic af­fair. He had in­tended to fin­ish his ad­dress and then have a visit with them be­fore leav­ing, but this plan was thwarted by the con­spir­acy of events which im­me­di­ately fol­lowed.

154:6.11The haste of their flight was aug­mented by the ar­rival of a party of David’s mes­sen­gers at the rear en­trance of the Zeb­e­dee home. The com­mo­tion pro­duced by these men fright­ened the apos­tles into think­ing that these new ar­rivals might be their ap­pre­hend­ers, and in fear of im­me­di­ate ar­rest, they has­tened through the front en­trance to the wait­ing boat. And all of this ex­plains why Je­sus did not see his fam­ily wait­ing on the back porch.

154:6.12But he did say to David Zeb­e­dee as he en­tered the boat in hasty flight: “Tell my mother and my broth­ers that I ap­pre­ci­ate their com­ing, and that I in­tended to see them. Ad­mon­ish them to find no of­fense in me but rather to seek for a knowl­edge of the will of God and for grace and cour­age to do that will.”