By “Gospel” men nowadays mean usually the book where the quadruple story of Jesus is printed; but Jesus neither wrote books nor thought of volumes. By “Gospel” He meant, according to the plain and sweet meaning of the word, “good tidings.” Jesus is a messenger (in Greek “angel”) who brings good tidings: He brings the cheerful message that the sick will be cured, that the blind will see, the poor will be enriched with imperishable riches, that the sad will rejoice, that sinners will be pardoned, the unclean purified, that the imperfect can become perfect, that animals can become saints, and saints become angels, like unto God.
If this Kingdom is to come, if everybody is to prepare himself for its coming, we must believe in the message, believe that the Kingdom is possible and near. If there is no faith in this promise, no one will do what must be done to fulfill the promise. Only the certainty of the truth of this good tidings, only the conviction that the Kingdom is not the lie of an adventurer or the hallucination of an obsessed zealot; only the certainty of the sincerity and validity of the message can arouse men to put their hands to the great work of its foundation.
With those few words, obscure to the majority of men, Jesus began His teaching. The fullness of time, the need to begin at once! The coming of the Kingdom, victory of spirit over matter; of good over bad, of the saint over the beast. “Metanoia”—the total transformation of the soul. The Gospel—the cheerful assurance that all this is true and eternally possible.
CAPERNAUM
Jesus taught His Galileans on the threshold of their shabby little white houses, on the small shady open places of their cities or the shore of the lake, leaning against a beached boat, His feet on the stones, towards evening when the sun sank red in the west, summoning men to rest.
Many listened to Him and followed Him because, says Luke: “His word was with authority.” The words were not wholly new, but the man was new, and new was the warmth of His voice, and the good done by that voice, overflowing from His heart and going straight to the hearts of others. The accent of those words was new, and new the sense that they took in that mouth, lighted by His look.
Here was no prophet of the mountains shouting in waste places, far from men, solitary, distant, forcing others to come to him if they wished to hear him. Here was a prophet living like a man among other men, a friend of all, friendly to the unfriended, an easy-going and companionable comrade, searching out His brothers where they work in the houses, in the busy streets, eating their bread and drinking wine at their tables, lending a hand with the fisherman’s nets, with a good word for every man, for the sad, for the sick, for the beggar.
The simple-hearted, like animals and children, know instinctively who loves them, they believe him, are happy when he comes (their very faces suddenly transfigured) and are sad when he goes. Sometimes they cannot bring themselves to leave him and follow him to the death.
Jesus spent His time with them walking from one region to another, or talking, seated among His friends. Always dear to Him was the sunny shore of the lake, along the curve of quiet clear water scarcely ruffled by the wind from the desert, dotted with a few boats silently tacking back and forth. The western coast of the lake was His real Kingdom; there He found His first listeners, His first converts, His first disciples.
If He returned to Nazareth, He stayed there but a short time. He was to go back later, accompanied by the Twelve and preceded by the renown of His miracles, and they were to treat Him as all the cities of the world,—even the most renowned for amenity, Athens and Florence, have treated those of their citizens who made them great above others. After ridiculing Him (they had seen Him as a child, it is out of the question that He can have become a great prophet) they tried to cast Him down from the precipice.