THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 173 -
The stoicism of the inhabitants of the little fishing village.
The host hurries into his hut with his wife and his already grown children, but soon comes back full of joy and thanks and says in the most joyful tone, "Which of you did that for me secretly then? My larder is so superbly filled that we all have enough to eat for a full year! Yes, now you may stay here a year long, and we will never get to the end of our great provisions! Wherever I and my family must only have had our eyes, that no83 one noticed how you filled my rooms with so many meals?! Yes, now we will not eat any fish simply cooked in unsalted water, since we have salt in a great amount! But now to the good work!"
2
When the people of this little village returned to their huts because it was midday, I said to the twelve, "What do you think about the people here?"
3
Peter says, "Yes, what should we actually think of them?! They seem to be very honest people; they cannot do anything about the fact that they are poor. Fishing and a stony ground has never made anyone rich, which I can prove from a many years of experience in accordance with the truth. And such fishermen are these people too; they have perhaps the worst bay of the whole sea. Their huts indeed stand on rocks; but on such earth and ground grows often not even a little blade of grass. How then should they become rich?
4
Thus they must remain honest; for in this area there is neither anything to neither steal nor even less someone to rob. And if a thief and a robber takes the opportunity, these people must then remain honest for the rest of their lives; for among these people the old saying 'Opportunity makes the robber' can never be used here "That is my opinion about these people who are certainly no scribes, and among whom there is certainly no Pharisee."
5
I say, "Your judgment is quite right for this world; but behind the present status of a person there is, as you now have learnt and experienced already many times, a soul and in the end a purely spiritual side. How about that side of the people, do you think?"
6
Peter shrugs his shoulders and says, "Lord, making a final judgment about this on my own will be somewhat difficult! Yet in as far as they are highly simple and necessarily very honest people, they must at least be very fruitful ground for spiritual sowing! For as it is an easier thing to make a fitting tunic for a well-built body than for a crippled and hobbled one, so also such simple and naturally pure souls are certainly more malleable for spiritual clothing than the highly crippled and fossilized souls of the Pharisees and scribes. I believe that if one presented something about the kingdom of God to these people at a good opportunity, they would soon be in the pure. "Well, that is once again my very simple opinion; even if no impressive words appear in it, nonetheless the nail may more or less have been hit on the head with this!"
7
I say, "Very well judged; therefore we will also test them afterwards and see how suitable they are for something higher! But I will not appear here as a teacher, but instead all of you will do that as missionaries and even disciples of the wise man of Nazareth. Only when they have heard you and have accepted the word about the arrival of the kingdom of God on Earth you may then point Me out and say that I am exactly that person of whom you have preached.
8
And so we will perform a great deed here on this smallest and most unsightly place in the whole Earth! But you must not see the work as too easy from the beginning. For as simple as these people may seem to be, they are nonetheless complicated and very confused within!
9
They think themselves to be wise men of the world and are stuck in over the ears in so-called stoicism, which is the hardest of all to conquer. I have therefore led you here in order to give you the opportunity to test yourselves now also with such people, in that you have learned very much of the true inner wisdom with old Mark.
10
But I am telling you all in advance that you will have to gather yourselves very much! For it is never harder to effectively give a law to those who do not have the very slightest fear of even the greatest adversities of life, yes, even of the most painful death of the body, and considers any great blessing of life to be nothing at all. And those are exactly such Gentiles who do not care about anything, but do not consider anything of any other virtue than alone simply on making their needs as small as possible, and who simply live and do something because the nature that is all in all for them once called them to life.
11
We have never had to do with people like these before! Therefore you should collect yourselves! Few words "but none should be brought before them without a firm basis! The best thing about them is that they are very curious cats despite all their stoicism and consider the knowledge of a person in itself to be something. "But now our host is already coming along with his household and is bringing fish and bread in a basket. We will thus take our midday meal here in the shade of this tree."
12
Here the fisherman, his wife and his children come to us and set the food basket down before us.
13
Setting the basket on the ground, the fisherman says, "Here, my unknown friends, is the requested midday meal! We do not have any tables, benches and chairs, plates or several other things useful for eating, and our needs, which are very small, can also be satisfied very well without them. But at the same time our means were always small enough that we never could have created anything unnecessary. We eat only when we are hungry, and then a basket and our hands are sufficient; everything else goes without saying! I wish you to enjoy this simple midday meal."