A great roar went up from the congregation. All his old friends got up from their seats and rushed to the front of the synagogue. They took hold of Jesus and dragged him out of the building. At the edge of the town there was a high cliff, and they took him there to throw him down on the rocks below. But Jesus slipped out of their hands, and turned around. Calmly he walked through the crowd. n.o.body had the courage to touch him again.
Jesus never went back to Nazareth any more. Once, when he was preaching in another town, someone came and told him that his mother and his brothers had come to take him home. They thought that he ought to stop this nonsense of pretending to be the Messiah.
But Jesus would not go home with them, for they did not believe in him. It was better to stay with his disciples. He was at home with those who trusted him.
"My mother?" he said. "My brothers?"
He looked around at his disciples, and said: "These are my mother and brothers--my own disciples. Anybody who obeys the will of G.o.d is my brother and my sister and my mother, all in one. That"s the kind of family I want!"
Back in Nazareth n.o.body thought that Jesus was of much account. But in other places he meant everything to people who needed help. The Pharisees were often glad to see him go away. But the poor and the sick could never see enough of him.
Once there came to Jesus a man who was sick with the dreaded leprosy.
A leper"s skin was deathly white, and his flesh was rotting, and he was sure to die of the disease. n.o.body needed help more than a leper did, but no one would even touch him.
The people back in Nazareth were too proud to admit that the carpenter"s son from down the street might be the Messiah. But a leper did not have any pride. This leper came to Jesus, and fell on his face before him, crying out, "Lord, if you will do it, you can make me clean from this disease!"
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Then Jesus did what everybody else was afraid to do. He reached down and put his hand on the sick man, and said:
"I will. Be clean."
At once the man was healed of his leprosy. Jesus told him to go and give thanks to G.o.d, and not to tell anyone what had happened. But the leper could not help telling. Jesus became still more famous as the man who healed the sick.
Another time he made a blind man see again. The Pharisees tried to get this man to say that the person who cured him had not been sent from G.o.d. But the man who had been blind knew better. When the Pharisees tried to threaten him, he did not give an inch. He said:
"Who ever heard of anyone opening the eyes of the blind since the world began? But this man did it. How could he have made me see, if he hadn"t come from G.o.d?"
When Jesus heard of this, he went and found the man who had been blind, and asked him,
"Do you believe that I am the Son of G.o.d?"
The man answered,
"Yes, Lord, I believe."
The blind man had found his Messiah.
Then there was a man who was paralyzed so that he could not move. His friends wanted to bring him to Jesus, but there were so many people standing around the house where Jesus was teaching that they could not get near him. But somehow or other they must get the sick man there.
Like many of the houses in Palestine, this house had a flat roof, with a stairway leading up to it. They placed their friend on a mat, carried him up the stairs, and cut a hole in the roof. After fastening a rope to each corner of the mat, they gently lowered it to the floor, right at Jesus" feet.
Jesus was glad when he saw the faith they had in him. He looked at the helpless man, and said,
"Man, your sins are forgiven you."
There were scribes and Pharisees standing there, waiting, as usual, to find fault with Jesus. They began to talk among themselves. They said:
"Who is this who is talking as if he were G.o.d? Such blasphemy! Who can forgive sins, except G.o.d himself?"
But Jesus knew what they were saying, and he answered them:
"Which do you think is easier--to say, "Your sins are forgiven you,"
or to say to this man, "Pick up your mat and walk away"? I will show you that I can do one as well as the other!"
He turned to the paralyzed man and said,
"Pick up your mat, and go on back to your house."
The sick man got up from the floor, rolled up the mat and put it under his arm, and went home. As he walked, there was a song of praise to G.o.d in his heart. And many of the people who saw what had happened were so surprised that they did not know whether to be glad or to be afraid. But they all agreed on one thing. They said,
"We have seen strange things today!"
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Nothing that Jesus did seemed to please the Pharisees. But there was one thing that made them especially angry. He was not so careful as they thought he ought to be about keeping the Law.
Now the Law meant everything to the Pharisees. They were so much in earnest about keeping G.o.d"s Law that they were not satisfied with what was in the Scriptures. They followed many rules which had been made up since the Scriptures were written. Unless a man kept all these rules, it did not matter to the Pharisees how much good he did.
Jesus was always getting into trouble with them about the Sabbath. The Pharisees had a list of thirty-nine different kinds of work that n.o.body was allowed to do on the Sabbath Day. This list included so much that unless a Jew was careful, he would be likely to break the Sabbath without even knowing it.
If he tied a knot that could be untied with one hand, that was all right; but if he took two hands to untie it, then he had broken the Sabbath. He even had to be careful about sitting in a chair, for if he happened to drag his chair across the dirt floor the Pharisees said that he was plowing, which was a great sin on the Sabbath Day. It was forbidden to make a fire on the Sabbath. And so, if a woman wanted hot food, she had to cook it the day before, and keep it warm. But that did not mean that she could set it on a stove. For the stove might get hotter than it was, and make the food hotter, and that was just the same as making a fire. The only safe way to keep a meal hot was to wrap the dishes in cloth or pigeon feathers.
Jesus did not think that rules like this were what the Scriptures meant when they said, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy." He did not think that this was the way to honor G.o.d. And because Jesus did not agree with them about the Sabbath, the Pharisees were always watching for a chance to put him in the wrong.
Once, when Jesus and his disciples were walking through a field of grain on the Sabbath Day, the Pharisees saw that the disciples were eating some of the grain. There was nothing wrong with eating it, if they were hungry. But the trouble was that in order to get the grain they had to pluck the ears. That, said the Pharisees, was harvesting!
Moreover, they had to take the ripe ears and rub them in their hands to get rid of the chaff. The Pharisees thought that that was just the same as threshing! Such things to do on the Sabbath Day! The Pharisees stopped the disciples, and demanded to know why they were doing something that was against the Law.
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It was really Jesus with whom they wanted to pick a quarrel, and so Jesus answered for the disciples:
"Why, you must have read in the Scriptures that King David and his soldiers once went into the Temple and ate some of the holy bread which only a priest is allowed to eat. Surely if David could do a thing like that, my disciples can pick a few ears of grain in a field!
"You don"t understand what the Sabbath is for," Jesus went on. "We aren"t supposed to be slaves to the Sabbath; this day is meant to do us good. The Sabbath was made for man; man was not made for the Sabbath."
Then he added something else, which took the Pharisees by surprise:
"The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath."
They were puzzled. Jesus was talking again as though he was the Messiah. So far as the Pharisees could see, Jesus was just a preacher who broke the Law.
The Pharisees began to watch him still more carefully. They found another chance to get him into trouble soon after this. Jesus had gone into the synagogue to teach, and in the synagogue was a man whose hand was withered and useless. On any other day there was no doubt that Jesus would heal this man. But this was the Sabbath, and it was against the Law to heal anybody on that day unless he were in danger of dying. A man with a withered hand could wait another day. Surely even Jesus would not dare to break the rules again!
Jesus knew that they were watching to see what he would do. They would never forgive him if he made a move to heal this man.
He called out to the man,