The Great Gospel of John
Volume 6
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
At the Sea of Galilee (John 6)
- Chapter 60 -
The merchants' indifference in the spiritual field.
There were still almost three hours before the middle of the day when we left our room on My request and went outside passing many guests. The innkeeper, who had a lot to do and speak with the guests, asked Me for forgiveness for paying so little attention to Me because of the many guests.
2
But I said to him: "Do not worry about that at all! Whoever is with Me in his heart can do his necessary daily work with his limbs unhindered as he wants and as he can and as his trade demands it, and he nonetheless devotes Me the fullest and truest attention; any other attention has anyway no value before Me.
3
We will now go outside until midday and will take a look at the activity of the sea from along the shore. But before we come back again a very heavy rain will come, arranged by Myself, which will drive these annoying traders home before us, as I have already mentioned; for these people of the world have the greatest fear of a storm. If they see a storm approaching, they will immediately and most quickly head back to the city. Just see to it that none of them leaves without paying!"
4
The innkeeper said: "Oh Lord, I thank You for this advice and particularly for the promised storm; for these guests are the most annoying for me!"
5
Thereupon we left, because the innkeeper was called by a guest, which caused the innkeeper to feel quite uncomfortable.
6
When we were outside, I asked Peter: "Well, have you noticed your old friend?! How did you like him?"
7
Peter said quite annoyed: "Ah, that is the end of everything! If these people had granted us even one glance or at least one had asked the other who we were! But no, they did not even give us a glance, although they know You and have heard already many things about You! Truly, I have never met such very dumb and most indifferent people before! If we meet a swineherd today, these animals will certainly look at us and begin to grunt at us; but we are as good as nothing to these people, as if we were not there at all. Oh you bad, deaf and very blind world! Oh Lord, just let a very heftiest storm break out over them with countless many flashes of lightning so that their overly stoic indifference will leave them! Yes truly, they are the real pigs to whom one should not throw Your pearls of life!"
8
I said: "I have said to you before that this is the way things are with these traders! They know only their stock and their money. Whoever has no stock and no money in comparison with them is likewise as good as no man at all to them. What they deign to think about a person of our moneyless kind consists simply of this, that they calculate by themselves and say: 'Look, what could this poor devil be worth as a slave?' Only as bad stock could we thus have any value for them; for there are many among them who secretly run the slave trade, and your old friend is one of the strongest among the others and has his business annually in Egypt, in Rome, in Greece and also in Persia. What do you say to that when a Jew does such a thing?"
9
Peter said: "He should be stoned! But I and actually all of us still do not fully understand it, how You, oh Lord, can look at such terrible people with so much patience and forbearance; for this is even more than Sodom and Gomorrah. If the heathens do this, they are to be excused, but never ever a Jew!"