443. Sour Experiences

Sour Experiences

Joh_19:30 : ’93When Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar.’94

The brigands of Jerusalem had done their work. It was almost sundown, and Jesus was dying. Persons in crucifixion often lingered from day to day’97crying, begging, cursing; but Christ had been exhausted by years of maltreatment. Pillowless, poorly fed, flogged’97as bent over and tied to a low post, his bare back was inflamed with the scourges intersticed with pieces of lead and bone’97and now for whole hours the weight of his body hung on delicate tendons, and, according to custom, a violent stroke under the armpits had been given by the executioner. Dizzy, nauseated, feverish’97a world of agony is compressed in the two words: ’93I thirst!’94 O skies of Judea, let a drop of rain strike on his burning tongue! O world, with rolling rivers, and sparkling lakes, and spraying fountains, give Jesus something to drink! If there be any pity in earth or heaven or hell, let it now be demonstrated in behalf of this royal sufferer. The wealthy women of Jerusalem used to have a fund of money with which they provided wine for those people who died in crucifixion’97a powerful opiate to deaden the pain; but Christ would not take it. He wanted to die sober, and so he refused the wine. But afterward they go to a cup of vinegar and soak a sponge in it, and put it on a stick of hyssop, and then press it against the hot lips of Christ. You say the wine was an an’e6sthetic, and intended to relieve or deaden the pain. But the vinegar was an insult. I am disposed to adopt the theory of the old English commentators, who believed that instead of its being an opiate to soothe, it was vinegar to insult. Malaga and Burgundy for grand dukes and duchesses, and costly wines from royal vats for bloated imperials; but sharp acids for a divine Christ. He took the vinegar.

In some lives the saccharine seems to predominate. Life is sunshine on a bank of flowers. A thousand hands to clap approval. In December or in January, looking across their table, they see all their family present. Health rubicund. Skies flamboyant. Days resilient. But in a great many cases there are not so many sugars as acids. The annoyances and the vexations, and the disappointments of life overpower the successes. There is gravel in almost every shoe. An Arabian legend says that there was a worm in Solomon’92s staff, gnawing its strength away; and there is a weak spot in every earthly support that man leans on. King George of England forgot all the grandeurs of his throne because, one day, in an interview, Beau Brummel called him by his first name, and addressed him as a servant, crying: ’93George, ring the bell!’94 Miss Langdon, honored all the world over for her poetic genius, is so worried over the evil reports set afloat regarding her, that she is found dead, with an empty bottle of prussic acid in her hand. Goldsmith said that his life was to him a wretchedness, and that all that want and contempt could bring to it had been brought, and cries out: ’93What, then, is there formidable in a jail?’94 Correggio’92s fine painting is hung up on a tavern sign. Hogarth cannot sell his best paintings except through a raffle. Andrew Delsart makes the great fresco in the Church of the Annunciata, at Florence, and gets for pay a sack of corn; and there are annoyances and vexations in high places as well as in low places, showing that in a great many lives are the sours greater than the sweets. ’93When Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar.’94

It is absurd to suppose that a man who has always been well can sympathize with those who are sick, or that one who has always been honored can appreciate the sorrow of those who are despised, or that one who has been born to a great fortune can understand the distress and the straits of those who are destitute. The fact that Christ himself took the vinegar, makes him able to sympathize to-day and forever with all those whose cup is filled with sharp acids of. this life. He took the vinegar!

In the first place, there was the sourness of betrayal. The treachery of Judas hurt Christ’92s feelings more than all the friendship of his disciples did him good. You have had many friends; but there was one friend upon whom you put especial stress. You feasted him. You loaned him money. You befriended him in the dark passes of life, when he especially needed a friend. Afterward, he turned upon you, and he took advantage of your former intimacies. He wrote against you. He talked against you. He microscopized your faults. He flung contempt at you when you ought to have received nothing but gratitude. At first you could not sleep nights. Then you went about with a sense of having been stung. That difficulty will never be healed, for though mutual friends may arbitrate in the matter until you shake hands, the old cordiality will never come back. Now I commend to all such the sympathy of a betrayed Christ. Why, they sold him for less than our twenty dollars! They all forsook him and fled. They cut him to the quick. He drank that cup of betrayal to the dregs. He took the vinegar.

There is also the sourness of pain. There are some of you who have not seen a well day for many years. By keeping out of draughts, and by carefully studying dietetics, you continue to this time; but oh, the headaches, and the sideaches, and the backaches, and the heartaches which have been your accompaniment all the way through! You have struggled under a heavy mortgage of physical disabilities; and instead of the placidity that once characterized you, it is now only with great effort that you keep away from irritability and sharp retort. Difficulties of respiration, of digestion, of locomotion, make up the great obstacle in your life, and you tug and sweat along the pathway, and wonder when the exhaustion will end. My friends, the brightest crowns in heaven will not be given to those who, in stirrups, dashed to the cavalry charge, while the general applauded, and the sound of clashing sabres rang through the land; but the brightest crowns in heaven, I believe, will be given to those who trudged on amid chronic ailments which unnerved their strength, yet all the time maintaining their faith in God. It is comparatively easy to fight in a regiment of a thousand men, charging up the parapets to the sound of martial music; but it is not so easy to endure when no one but the nurse and the doctor are the witnesses of the Christian fortitude. Besides that. you never had any pains worse than Christ’92s. The sharpnesses that stung through his brain, through his hands, through his feet, through his heart, were as great as yours certainly. He was as sick and as weary. Not a nerve or muscle or ligament escaped. All the pangs of all the nations, of all the ages, compressed into one sour cup. He took the vinegar.

There is also the sourness of poverty. Your income does not meet your outgoings and that always gives an honest man anxiety. There is no sign of destitution about you’97pleasant appearance and a cheerful home for you; but God only knows what a time you have had to manage your private finances. Just as the bills run up, the wages or the salary seems to run down. But you are not the only one who has not been paid for hard work. The great Wilkie sold his celebrated piece, ’93The Blind Fiddler,’94 for fifty guineas, although afterwards it brought its thousands, The world hangs in admiration over the sketch of Gainsborough, yet that very sketch hung for years in the shop window, because there was not any purchaser. Oliver Goldsmith sold his ’93Vicar of Wakefield’94 for a few pounds, in order to keep the bailiff out of the house; and the vast majority of men in all occupations and professions are not fully paid for their work.

You may say nothing, but life to you is a hard push; and when you sit down with your wife and talk over the expenses, you both rise up discouraged. You abridge here and you abridge there, and you get things snug for smooth sailing, and, lo! suddenly there is a large doctor’92s bill to pay, or you have lost your pocketbook, or some debtor has failed, and you are thrown abeam-end. Well, you are in glorious company. Christ owned not the house in which he stopped, or the colt on which he rode, or the boat in which he sailed. He lived in a borrowed house; he was buried in a borrowed grave. Exposed to all kinds of weather, yet he had only one suit of clothes. He breakfasted in the morning, and no one could possibly tell where he could get anything to eat before night. He would have been pronounced a financial failure. He had to perform a miracle to get money to pay a tax-bill. Not a dollar did he own. Privation of domesticity; privation of nutritious food; privation of a comfortable couch on which to sleep; privation of all worldly resources! The kings of the earth had chased chalices out of which to drink; but Christ had nothing but a plain cup set before him, and it was very sharp, and it was very sour. He took the vinegar.

There is also the sourness of bereavement. There were years that passed along before your family circle was invaded by death, but the moment the charmed circle was broken everything seemed to dissolve. Hardly have you put the black apparel in the wardrobe before you have again to take it out. Great and rapid changes in your family record. You got the house and rejoiced in it, but the charm was gone as soon as the crape hung on the door-bell. The one upon whom you most depended was taken away from you. A cold marble slab lies on your heart to-day. Once, as the children romped through the house, you put your hand over your aching head, and said, ’93Oh, if I could only have it still!’94 Alas! it is too still now. You lost your patience when the tops, and the strings, and the shells were left amid the floor; but oh, you would be willing to have the trinkets scattered all over the floor again, if they were scattered by the same hands. With what a ruthless ploughshare bereavement rips up the heart. But Jesus knows all about that. You cannot tell him anything new in regard to bereavement. He had only a few friends, and when he lost one it brought tears to his eyes. Lazarus had often entertained him at his house. Now Lazarus is dead and buried, and Christ breaks down with emotion, the convulsion of grief shuddering through all the ages of bereavement. Christ knows what it is to go through the house missing a familiar inmate. Christ knows what it is to see an unoccupied place at the table. Were there not four of them’97Mary and Martha, and Christ and Lazarus? Four of them. But where is Lazarus? Lonely and afflicted Christ, his great loving eyes filled with tears, which drop from eye to cheek, and from cheek to beard, and from beard to robe, and from robe to floor. Oh, yes, yes. He knows all about the loneliness and the heartbreak. He took the vinegar!

Then there is the sourness of the death-hour. Whatever else we may escape, that acid-sponge will be pressed to our lips. I sometimes have a curiosity to know how I will behave when I come to die; whether I will be calm or excited; whether I will be filled with reminiscence or with anticipation. I cannot say. But come to the point I must and you must. In the six thousand years that have passed, only two persons have got into the eternal world without death, and I do not suppose that God is going to send a carriage for us, with horses of flame, to draw us up the steeps of heaven; but I suppose we will have to go like the preceding generations. An officer from the future world will knock at the door of our hearts, and serve on us the writ of ejectment, and we will have to surrender. And we will wake up after these autumnal and wintry and vernal and summery glories have vanished from our vision; we will wake up into a realm which has only one season, and that the season of everlasting love.

But you say, ’93I don’92t want to break up from my present associations. It is so chilly and so damp to go down the stairs of that vault. I don’92t want anything drawn so tightly over my eyes.’94 If there were only some way of breaking through the partition between the worlds without tearing this body all to shreds! I wonder if the surgeons and the doctors cannot compound a mixture by which this body and soul can all the time be kept together? Is there no escape from this separation? None; absolutely none. So I look around among you’97the vast majority of you seeming in good health and spirits’97and yet I realize that in a short time all of us will be gone’97gone from earth, and gone forever. A great many men tumble through the gates of the future, as it were, and we do not know where they have gone, and they only add gloom and mystery to the passage; but Jesus Christ so mightily stormed the gates of the future world that they have never since been closely shut. Christ knows what it is to leave this world, of the beauty of which he was more appreciative than we ever could be. He knows the exquisiteness of the phosphorescence of the sea; he trod it. He knows the glories of the midnight heavens, for they were the spangled canopy of his wilderness pillow. He knows about the lilies; he twisted them into his sermon. He knows about the fowls of the air; they whirred their way through his discourse. He knows about the sorrows of leaving this beautiful world. Not a taper was kindled in the darkness. He died physicianless. He died in cold sweat, and dizziness, and hemorrhage, and agony, that have put him in sympathy with all the dying. He goes through Christendom and he gathers up the stings of all the death pillows, and he puts them under his own neck and head. He gathers on his own tongue the burning thirsts of many generations. The sponge is soaked in the sorrows of all those who have died in their beds, as well as soaked in the sorrows of all those who perished in an icy or fiery martyrdom. While heaven was pitying and earth was mocking, and hell was deriding, he took the vinegar.

To those in this audience to whom life has been an acerbity’97a dose they could not swallow, a draught that set their teeth on edge and a-rasping’97I preach the omnipotent sympathy of Jesus Christ. The sister of Herschel, the astronomer, used to help him in his work. He got all the credit; she got none. She used to spend much of her time polishing the telescopes through which he brought the distant worlds nigh; and it is my ambition now, this hour, to clear the lens of your spiritual vision, so that, looking through the dark night of your earthly troubles, you may behold the glorious constellation of a Saviour’92s mercy and a Saviour’92s love. Do not try to carry all your ills alone. Do not put your poor shoulder under the Apennines when the Almighty Christ is ready to lift up all your burdens. When you have a trouble of any kind, you rush this way, and that way; and you wonder what this man will say about it; and what that man will say about it; and you try this prescription, and that prescription, and the other prescription. Oh, why do you not go straight to the heart of Christ, knowing that for our own sinning and suffering race he took the vinegar?

There was a vessel that had been tossed on the seas for a great many weeks and been disabled, and the supply of water gave out, and the crew were dying of thirst. After many days they saw a sail against the sky. They signaled it. When the vessel came nearer, the suffering people on the ship cried to the captain of the other vessel: ’93Send us some water. We are dying for lack of water.’94 And the captain on the vessel that was hailed responded: ’93Dip your buckets where you are. You are in the mouth of the Amazon, and there are scores of miles of fresh water all around about you, and hundreds of feet deep.’94 And they dropped their buckets over the side of the vessel, and brought up the clear, bright, fresh water, and put out the fire of their thirst. So I hail you to-day, after a long and perilous voyage, thirsting as you are for pardon, and thirsting for comfort, and thirsting for eternal life; and I ask you what is the use of your going in that death-struck state, while all around you is the deep, clear, wide, sparkling flood of God’92s sympa-thetic mercy. Oh, dip your buckets and drink, and live forever. ’93Whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely.’94

Yet my utterance is almost choked at the thought that there are people here who will refuse this divine sympathy; and they will try to fight their own battles and drink their own vinegar, and carry their own burdens; and their life, instead of being a triumphal march from victory to victory, will be a hobbling on from defeat to defeat, until they make final surrender to retributive disaster. I wish I could gather up in my arms all the woes of men and women’97all their heartaches’97all their disappointments’97all their chagrins’97and just take them right to the feet of a sympathizing Jesus. He took the vinegar.

Nana Sahib, after he had lost his last battle in India, fell back into the jungles of Iheri’97jungles so full of malaria that no mortal can live there. He carried with him also a ruby of great lustre and of great value. He died in those jungles; his body was never found, and the ruby has never yet been recovered. And I fear of us there are some who will fall back from this subject into the sickening, killing jungles of their sin, carrying a gem of infinite value’97a priceless soul’97to be lost forever. O, that that ruby might flash in the eternal coronation! But no. There are some who turn away from this offered mercy, and comfort, and Divine sympathy; notwithstanding that Christ, for all who would accept his grace, trudged the long way, and suffered the lacerating thongs, and received in his face the expectorations of the filthy mob, and for the guilty, and the discouraged, and the discomfited of the race took the vinegar. May God Almighty break the infatuation, and lead you out into the strong hope, and the good cheer, and the glorious sunshine of this triumphant Gospel.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage