The Jesus of HistoryGlover, T. R. (Terrot Reaveley)
Religion
The Jesus of History
Glover, T. R. (Terrot Reaveley)
Jesus Christ -- Historicity
But there is another side to friendship; for one great part of it is
taking what our friends do for us, as well as doing things for them.
How he will take what they have to give! He lets them manage the
boat, while he sleeps (Mark 4:38), and go and prepare for him (Luke
9:52), and see to the Passover meal (Mark 14:13). The women, we
read, ministered to him of their substance (Luke 8:3). There is a
very significant phrase in St. Luke (22:28), where he says to them
at the end: "Ye are they that have continued with me in my
temptations." He tells them there that they have helped him. How?
Apparently by being with him. Is not that friendship? In the same
chapter (Luke 22:15) we find an utterance that reveals the depth of
his feeling for his friends: "With desire I have desired (a Greek
rendering of a Semitic intensive) to eat this Passover with you
before I suffer." They are to help him again by being with him, and
he has longed for it, he says. The Gospel of John sums up the whole
story in a beautiful sentence: "Jesus, having loved his own which
were in the world, loved them unto the end" (John 13:1). Augustine
is right. "One loving spirit sets another on fire."
Note again the word which he uses in speaking to them ("Tekna": Mark
2:5, 10:24). It is a diminutive, a little disguised as "children" in
our English version. It reappears in the Fourth Gospel in even more
diminutive forms ("Teknia", 13:33; Paidia, 21:5) with a peculiarly
tender suggestion. The word of Mark answers more closely than
anything I know to "Boys," as we used it in the Canadian
Universities. "Men," or "Undergraduates," is the word in the English
Universities; "Students," in Scotland and in India; in Canada we
said "Boys"; and I think we get nearer, and like one another better,
with that easy name. And it was this friendly, pleasant word, or one
very like it, that he used with them. Nor is it the only one of the
kind. "Fear not, little flock!" he said (Luke 12:32). Do not the
diminutives mean something? Do they not take us into the midst of a
group where friendship is real? And in the centre is the friendliest
figure of all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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