Thou Art A Samaritan

Say we not well that Thou art a Samaritan?'--John 8:48.

THE multitude is fond of nicknames, and usually invents them with some accuracy of insight. But its judgment of the worth of the characteristics which it discerns is generally unreliable, for it admires what is low, and scoffs at what is pure and noble. So the censure of the crowd is apt to be praise, and its praise blame.

Jesus Christ had His full share of such missiles. None of His followers have been called by worse names than was He. But the hostile taunts flung at Him are really tributes. Collectively they form a body of evidence as to His character and work, all the more valuable because it comes from His enemies and was supposed to be fatal to His claims. His opponents' caricatures present substantially the same face as is lovingly painted by the Evangelists. This name of Samaritan, for example, shows the maliciously distorted image of some facts in His teaching and conduct. The question in the text proves that the designation had been previously in common use, and its currency proves the general feeling of its appropriateness. If we ask how Jesus earned it, we are led straight to some of the most glorious aspects of His character and work. Let us, then, take the guidance of His enemies, and use the help of their rancorous abuse to aid us in understanding what it was in Him which struck dull brains and malicious hearts so as to give occasion for this name.

There are three points especially which seem to me to be brought out by it. The name witnesses to Christ's prophet-like boldness of rebuke of national prejudices and national sins. It witnesses to what I may call, for want of a better word, His originality. And it witnesses to His universality. These three thoughts seem to me to be the truths which underlie my text. And with them for its meaning we may answer its question with, Yes, ye said well that He was a Samaritan.'

 I. Christ's Prophet-Like Boldness In Cutting Against The Grain Of National Prejudice.

First, then, the name witnesses to Christ's prophet-like boldness in cutting against the grain of national prejudice, and in rebuking national sins.

The occurrence which gave occasion to my text may be taken as a specimen of a whole series of facts which underlie this name. Our Lord has just been rebuking the Jews for their sinfulness, denying that they are Abraham's seed, asserting that they do not belong to God, telling them to their faces that they are slaves and children of the Devil. And they, in their folly, think that no one who was a good Jew at heart could say such bitter things about the chosen people. They hear the tongue of an enemy in such words, and so they fiercely turn upon Him, Thou art a Samaritan!' They did not recognise the love that underlay the sternness, the throbbing of a heart that desired their good, and therefore warned them of their evil. Nations, like individuals, too often think that the man becomes their enemy who tells them the truth. And these people, misunderstanding the impulse of the words, and feeling keenly their sharp edge, can only suppose that He is a bad Jew, and at heart an enemy to His race, who can speak thus.

The saying then points to one outstanding characteristic of our Lord's teaching--viz, to the sternness with which He denied all validity to the merely natural descent on which the whole nation prided itself. Because of mere physical origin they fancied themselves to be Heaven's favourites, and high above these dogs of the uncircumcision' round them; and here came one of themselves, saying, You are not Abraham's children unless you do the deeds of Abraham.'

Again, Christ depreciated as of no value the mere externalisms of worship. He made a clean sweep of Rabbinical casuistry. He turned a stream of cold water upon the excited Messianic hopes of worldly dominion which so fired their hearts with enthusiasm. He never spared the lash of condemnation for the sins that were rampant round Him, and His gentle voice rose into sternness when He spoke with tears, and yet with unfaltering confidence, of the certain fatal end of it all. And so this Man, running counter to national prejudices, keeping no terms with popular delusions, despising, and trying to make others despise, the lies which led the people away, had the charge flung at His head, Thou art a Samaritan,' which only meant that, prophet-like, He set the trumpet to His mouth, and declared to the house of Israel its transgression, and to Jacob his sin.'

My friends, the same fate attends all men who play the same part. A democracy demands flattery, and public men are more and more abasing themselves to the degradation of ministering to the supposed wishes instead of cutting dead against the grain of the wishes, if necessary, in order to meet the true wants, of the people. Wherever some one strong man stands up to oppose the wild current of popular desires, he may make up his mind that the charge of being a bad citizen, unpatriotic, a lover of the enemies of the people,' will be flung at him. You Christian men and women have to face the same calumnies as your Master had. The rotten eggs flung at the objects of popular execration--if I might use a somewhat violent figure--turn to roses in their flight. The praises of good men and the scoffs of loose-living and godless ones are equally valuable certificates of character. The Church which does not earn the same sort of opprobrium which attended its Master has probably failed of its duty. It is good to be called gloomy' and sourvisaged' by those whose only notion of pleasure is effervescent immorality; and it is good to be called intolerant by the crowd that desires us to be tolerant of vice. So, my friends, I want you to understand that you, too, have to tread in the Master's steps. The imitation of Jesus' does not consist merely in the sanctities and secrecies of communion, and the blessings of a meek and quiet heart, but includes standing where He stood, in avowed and active opposition to widespread evils, and, if need be, in the protesting opposition to popular error. And if you are called nicknames, never mind! Remember what the Master said, They shall bring you before kings and magistrates', the tribunal of the many-headed is a more formidable judgment-bench than that of any king' and it shall turn to a testimony for you.'

 II. The Originality Of Jesus Christ.

Now, secondly, this name is the witness to what I venture to call, for want of a better term, the originality of Jesus Christ.

It bears witness to the dim feeling which onlookers had that in Him was a new phenomenon, not to be accounted for by birth and descent, by training and education, or by the whole of what people nowadays call environment. He did not come out of these circumstances. This is not a regulation pattern type of Jew. He is a Samaritan.' That is to say, He is unlike the people among whom He dwells; and betrays that other influences than those which shaped them have gone to the making of Him.

That is one of the most marked, outstanding, and important features in the teaching and in the character of Jesus Christ, that it is absolutely independent of, and incapable of being accounted for by, anything that He derived from the circumstances in which He lived. He was a Jew, and yet He was not a Jew. He was not a Samaritan, and yet He was a Samaritan. He was not a Greek, and yet He was one. He was not a Roman, nor an Englishman, nor a Hindoo, nor an Asiatic, nor an African; and yet He had all the characteristics of these races within Himself, and held them all in the ample sweep of His perfect Manhood.

If we turn to His teaching we find that, whilst no doubt to some extent it is influenced in its forms by the necessities of its adaptation to the first listeners, there is a certain element in it far beyond anything that came from Rabbis, or even from prophets and psalmists. Modern Christian scholarship has busied itself very much in these days with studying Jewish literature, so far as it is available, in order to ascertain how far it formed the teaching, or mind, of Jesus the Carpenter of Nazareth. There is a likeness, but the likeness only serves to make the unlikeness more conspicuous. And I, for my part, venture to assert that, whilst the form of our Lord's teaching may largely be traced to the influences under which He was brought up, and whilst the substance of some parts of it may have been anticipated by earlier Rabbis of His nation, the crowd that listened to Him on the mountain top had laid their fingers upon the more important fact when they wondered at His teaching,' and found the characteristic difference between it, and that of the men to whom they had listened, in the note of authority with which He spoke. Jesus never argues, He asserts; He claims; and in lieu of all arguments He gives you His own Verily! verily! I say unto you.'

Thus not only in its form, but in its substance, in its lofty morality, in its spiritual religion, in its revelation of the Father and the Fatherhood for all men, Christ's teaching as teaching stands absolutely alone.

If we turn to His character, the one thing that strikes us is that about it there is nothing of the limitations of time or race which stamp all other men. He is not good after the fashion of His age, or of any other age; He is simply embodied and perfect Goodness. This Tree has shot up high above the fences that enclose the grove in which it grows, and its leaf lasts for ever.

Run over, in your mind, other great names of heroes, saints, thinkers, poets; they all bear the stamp of their age and circumstances, and the type of goodness or the manner of thought which belonged to these. Jesus Christ alone stands before men absolutely free from any of the limitations which are essential in the case of every human excellence and teacher. And so He comes to us with a strange freshness, with a strange closeness; and nineteen centuries have not made Him fit less accurately to our needs than He did to those of the generation amidst which He condescended to live. Thickening mists of oblivion wrap all other great names as they recede into the past; and about the loftiest of them we have to say, This man, having served his generation, fell on sleep, and saw corruption.' But Jesus Christ lasts, because there is nothing local or temporary about His teaching or His character.

Now this peculiar originality, as I venture to call it, of Christ's character is a very strong argument for the truthful accuracy of the picture drawn of Him in these four Gospels. Where did these four men get their Christ? Was it from imagination? Was it from myth? Was it from the accidental confluence of a multitude of traditions? There is an old story about a painter who, in despair of producing a certain effect of storm upon the sea, at last flung his wet sponge at the canvas, and to his astonishment found that it had done the very thing he wanted. But wet sponges cannot draw likenesses; and to allege that these four men drew such a picture, in such compass, without anybody sitting for it, seems to me about the most desperate hypothesis that ever was invented. If there were no Christ, or if the Christ that was, was not like what the Gospels paint Him as being, then the authors of these little booklets are consummate geniuses, and their works stand at the very top of the imaginative literature of the world. It is more difficult to account for the Gospels, if they are not histories, than it is to account for the Christ whom they tell us of if they are. And then, further, there is only one key to the mystery of this originality. Christ is perfect man, high above limitations, and owing nothing to environment, because He is the Son of God. I would as soon believe that grass roots, which for years, in some meadow, had brought forth, season after season, nothing but humble green blades, shot up suddenly into a palm tree, as I would believe that simple natural descent brought all at once into the middle of the dull succession of commonplace and sinful men this radiant and unique Figure. Account for Christ, all you unbelievers! The question of to-day, round which all the battle is being fought, is the person of Jesus Christ. If He be what the Gospels tell us that He is, there is nothing left for the unbeliever worth a struggle. What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?' The Jews said, Thou art a Samaritan!' We say, Thou art the Christ; the Son of the living God!'

 III. Lastly, The Name Bears Witness To Christ's Universality.

I presume that, in addition to what seemed His hostility to what was taken to be true Judaism, another set of facts underlay the name--viz, those which indicated His kindly relations with the people whom it was every good Jew's pleasant duty to hate with all his heart. The story of the Samaritan woman in John's Gospel, the parable of the good Samaritan, the incident of the grateful leper, who was a Samaritan, the refusal to allow the eager Apostles to bring down fire from heaven to consume inhospitable churls in a Samaritan village, were but outstanding specimens of what must have been a characteristic of His whole career not unknown to His enemies. So they argued, If you love our enemies you must hate us; and you must be one of them,' thereby distorting, but yet presenting, what is the great glory of Christ's Gospel, and of Christ Himself, that He belongs to the world; and that His salvation, the sweep of His love, and the power of His Cross, are meant for all mankind.

That universality largely arises from the absence of the limitations of which I have already spoken sufficiently. Because He belongs to no one period as regards His character, He is available for all periods as regards His efficacy. Because His teaching is not. dyed in the hues of any school or of any age or of any cast of thought, it suits for all mankind. This water comes clear from the eternal rock, and has no taint of any soil through which it has flowed. Therefore the thirsty lips of a world may be glued to it, and drink and be satisfied. His one sacrifice avails for the whole world.

But let me remind you that universality means also individuality, and that Jesus Christ is the Christ for all men because He is each man's Christ. The tree of life stands in the middle of the garden that all may have equal access to it. Is this universal Christ yours; thine? That is the question. Make Him so by putting out your hand and claiming your share in Him, by casting your soul upon Him, by trusting your all to Him, by listening to His word, by obeying His commands, by drinking in the fulness of His blessing. You can do so if you will. If you do not, the universal Christ is nothing to you. Make Him thine, and be sure that the sweep of His love and the efficacy of His sacrifice embrace and include thee. He is the universal Christ; therefore He is the only Christ; neither is there salvation in any other.' Through Him all men, each man, thou, must be saved. Without Him all men, every man, thou, can not be saved. Take Him for yours, and you will find that each who possesses Him, possesses Him altogether, and none hinders the other in his full enjoyment of the bread of God which came down from heaven.'

THE END