9. “Come unto Me, All You That Labor and Are Heavy Laden, and IWill Give You Rest”
Chapter Nine
Invocation
It is true that it has been eighteen hundred years since Jesus Christ wandered here on the earth, but, after all, this is not an event like other events, which pass over into history as soon as they are done and then pass over into oblivion as distant past. No, his presence here on earth never becomes a thing of the past and therefore not more and more past either—if, at that time, faith is otherwise found on earth. For, if not, even in that same moment it is a long time since he lived. On the other hand, as long as there is a believer, this person—in order to have become that—also must have been and, as a believer, must be just as contemporary with Christ’s presence as his contemporaries. This contemporaneity is the condition of faith, and, more accurately defined, it is faith.
Lord Jesus Christ, would that we also might become contemporary with you in this way, might see you in your true form and in the actual surroundings in which you walked here on earth, rather than in the form into which an empty and meaningless or a thoughtless-romantic or a historical-talkative remembrance has twisted you, since that is not the form of degradation in which the believer sees you, and it cannot possibly be the form of glory in which no one has seen you yet. Would that we might see you as you are and were and will be until your second coming in glory, as the sign of scandal and the object of faith, the lowly human being but the savior and redeemer of the human race, who came to earth out of love in order to seek the lost, in order to suffer and die, and yet out of concern—alas, for every step you took on earth, for every time you called to those who are in error, for every time you reached out your hand to do signs and wonders, and for every time you, defenseless, suffered the opposition of people without raising a hand—again and again had to repeat: “Blessed is he, who shall not be offended in me.” Would that we might see you in this way, and that we, then, might not be offended at you!
The Invitation
Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
How wonderful, wonderful that the one who has help to bring is the one who says: “Come here!” What love! It is already loving when one is able to help, then to help the one who asks for help. But to offer the help oneself! And to offer it to everyone! Yes, and precisely to all those who could not help in return! To offer it—no, to shout it out, as if it were the helper himself who needed the help, as if he who can and wants to help everyone were still a needy person himself in one respect—that he feels need, and really needs to help, needs those who suffer in order to help them!
I
“Come here!”—Yes, there is nothing strange when the one who is in danger and needs help—perhaps needs quick and immediate help—shouts: “Come here!” And there is nothing strange either when a huckster begins shouting: “Come here! I have the cure for every sickness.” Alas, in relation to the huckster, the untruth that it is the doctor who needs the sick is only all too true. “Come here, all you who are able to pay dearly for the cure—or really the drugs. Here is medicine for everyone—who can pay. Come here, come here!”
But normally it is the case that the one who can help must be sought out. And when one has found him, he is perhaps still hard to talk to. And when one has talked to him, one must perhaps still plead with him for a long time. And when one has pleaded with him for a long time, perhaps he lets himself be persuaded at long last—that is, he makes himself expensive. And at times, just when he will not take money or when he magnanimously forgoes it, this is but an expression for how infinitely expensive he sees himself.
In contrast, he who gave himself up, he gives himself up here as well. He himself is the one who seeks those who have need of help; he himself is the one who goes around—and calling, almost pleading—says: “Come here.” He—the only one who can help and help with the one thing needful, who is able to save from the only life-threatening sickness in the truest sense—he does not wait for anyone to come to him. He comes by himself, without being called. For, after all, he is the one who calls on them. He offers help—and what help!
Yes, that simple wise man of antiquity was just as infinitely much in the right as most persons when they do the opposite, when they are wrong, in that he neither made himself nor his teaching expensive (even if, in another sense, he thereby expressed the dissimilar value with noble pride). But he was not so concerned out of love that he implored anyone to come to him—should I now say “although,” or should I say “because”?—he was not entirely certain about what his help would mean. For the more certain one is that his help is the only help, the more reason, humanly speaking, to make it expensive, and the less certain, the more reason to offer his possible help with greater readiness, in order to do something after all. But he who calls himself the Savior and knows himself to be that, he says out of concern: “Come here.”
“Come here, all of you!”—Wonderful! That a person, who perhaps cannot help one single person in the end, says too much and thoughtlessly invites everyone—that is not so wonderful, considering that people are the way they are. But when a person is entirely certain that he can help, and when he also is willing to help, when he is willing to expend all his time in this way and with every sacrifice: even so he usually reserves one thing for himself—to make a choice. However willing one is, one still does not want to help everyone; one will not abandon oneself in this way.
But he—the only one who in truth can help and in truth can help everyone, the only one therefore who in truth can invite everyone—he makes no condition at all. This saying, which seems to have been designed for him from the beginning of the world, he says it as well: “Come here, all of you.” Oh, human self-sacrifice, even when you are most beautiful and most noble, when we admire you the most, here is still one sacrifice more—to sacrifice every determination of one’s own self. Consequently, in the willingness to help, there is not even the least partiality. Oh, love, thus to set no determination of price at all upon oneself, to forget oneself completely, so that one is someone who helps, entirely blind to who it is one is helping, seeing with infinite clarity that, whoever he is, he is a sufferer. Thus to want to help everyone unconditionally—alas, therein different from everyone!
“Come here to me!” Wonderful! For, after all, human sympathy also willingly does something for those who labor and are heavy laden. One feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, makes charitable donations, starts charitable foundations, and, if the sympathy is more heartfelt, one probably also visits those who labor and are heavy laden. But to invite them to come to one, that cannot be done; then one’s entire household and way of life would have to be changed. To live and to reside in a house together in a common life and in day-to-day dealings with the poor and the miserable, with those who labor and are heavy laden, is not acceptable, even when living in abundance or, at any rate, in peace and joy.
In order to be able to invite them to come to one in this way, one must live exactly in the same manner oneself—poor as the poorest, esteemed as lowly as the lowly man among the people, familiar with life’s sorrow and agony, totally belonging to the same condition as those one invites to come to one, those who labor and are heavy laden. When a person wants to invite the sufferer to come to him, he must either change his condition in conformity with that of the sufferer or change the sufferer’s condition in conformity with his own. For, if not, the dissimilarity only becomes greater in contrast. And if a person wants to invite all suffering persons to come to him (for, after all, he can make an exception for an individual and change his condition), it can only be done in one way—by changing his condition in conformity with theirs, if it is not already originally so designed, as was the case with him who says: “Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden.” He says that, and those who lived with him saw and see that there is truly not the slightest thing in his way of life that contradicts it. With the silent and truthful eloquence of action that his life expresses—even if he never would have said these words—his life expresses: “Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden.” He stands by his word, or he himself is his word. He is what he says: in this sense, too, he is the Word.
“All you who labor and are heavy laden.” Wonderful! The only thing he is worried about is that there might be one person who labored and was heavy laden who did not get to hear this invitation. That many persons might come is not his concern, since he is not afraid. Oh, where there is room in the heart, there is indeed always room. But where was there room in the heart, if not in his heart! How the individual will understand the invitation, he leaves that to the individual. His conscience is free; he has invited all those who labor and are heavy laden.
But what is it, then, to labor and to be heavy laden? Why does he not explain it more meticulously, so that one can know with certainty what he means? Why is he so sparing of words? Oh, you nitpicker, he is so sparing of words in order not to be nitpicking; you narrowhearted person, he is so sparing of words in order not to be narrowhearted. It is precisely love (for “love” is for everyone) that holds him back, lest there be a single person who can be made anxious by brooding over whether he is among the invited as well. And the one who would call for a more meticulous definition—would it not be a form of self-love that calculated that especially this would take care of and be suitable for him, without considering that the more such stricter and stricter definitions there were, the more inevitable that, in turn, there might be individuals and individuals for whom it would become increasingly harder to define whether they were invited.
Oh, human being, why does your eye only look to your own interest? Why is it evil, because he is good! The invitation to all opens the inviter’s arms, and, in this way, he stands as an eternal image. As soon as a meticulous definition appears, which perhaps would help the individual to another kind of certainty, then the inviter looks different, then a shadow of change, as it were, hovers over him.
“I will give you rest.” Wonderful! For, then, surely that saying “come unto me” must be understood in this way: “Remain with me; I am the rest, or to remain with me is rest.” Thus it is not as it usually is—that the helper who says, “Come here,” next must say, “Now go back,” while he then explains to each individual where the help he needs is to be found, where the pain-killing herb grows that can heal him, or where the quiet place is where he can unwind from his labor, or where the more fortunate part of the world is where one is not heavy laden. No, he who opens his arms and invites everyone—oh, if all, all who labor and are heavy laden would come to him, then he would gather them all in his arms and say: “Now remain with me, for to remain with me is rest.”
The helper is the help. Oh, wonderful, he who invites all and wants to help all, his way to treat the sick is precisely as if it were intended for each individual, as if in each sick person he had, he only has this one sick person. Normally, a doctor must divide himself among his many patients, who, however many there are, are still very far from being everyone. He prescribes the medication; he says what needs to be done, how it is to be used; and then he goes—to another patient; or if the patient has been with him, he lets the patient go. The doctor cannot sit all day with a single patient, even less have all his patients at home with him and yet sit the entire day with one patient—without neglecting the others. That is also why the helper and the help are not one and the same thing. The help that the doctor prescribes is kept by the patient all day for the sake of regular use, while the doctor looks in on him only now and then, or the patient sees the doctor only now and then. But if the helper is the help, then, after all, he must remain with the sick person or the sick person with him the entire day—how wonderful, then, that this helper is the very one who invites everyone!
II
Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
What immense diversity, what almost boundless dissimilarity among those invited. For a human being, a lowly human being, certainly can try to give an account of some particular differences—the inviter must invite all, even each one separately or as an individual.
So, then, the invitation goes out along the highways and the byways, and along the loneliest way—yes, where there is a way so lonely that only one person, one solitary person knows it (otherwise no one does), so there is only one trail—that of the unhappy person, who fled down that way with his misery (or else no trail and no trail by which one can come back along this way): there, too, the invitation fights its way. It finds the way back itself easily and safely, most easily when it leads the runaway with it to the inviter. “Come here, come here all of you, and you, and you, and you as well, you the loneliest of all those who run away!”
The invitation goes out in this way, and, wherever there is a crossroad, it stands still and calls. Oh, just as that soldier’s bugle call turns to all four corners of the world, so does the invitation resound wherever there is a crossroad, and not with an uncertain sound—for who, then, would come!—but with the reliability of eternity.
It stands at the crossroad—there where temporal and earthly suffering placed its cross—and calls. “Come here, all you poor and wretched, you who must slave in poverty in order to secure for yourselves—not a carefree but a toilsome future.” Oh, bitter contradiction: to have to slave in order to secure what one sighs under, what one flees from.
“You who are looked down upon, you who are overlooked, whose existence no one, no one cares about, not even as much as a domestic animal, which has more value!—You sick, lame, deaf, blind, crippled, come here!—You bedridden, yes, you come here too. For the invitation dares to invite the bedridden…to come!—You lepers!” For the invitation disrupts all differences in order to gather all; it wants to make good again what difference is guilty of: to assign to one person the position as ruler over millions, in possession of all the goods of fortune, and to another a place out in the desert—and why (what cruelty!), because (oh, cruel human conclusion!) because he is miserable, indescribably miserable, and so then because he needs help or compassion, and so then because human compassion is a despicable invention that is cruel where the greatest need is to be compassionate and only compassionate where it really is not compassion in truth!
“You who are sick at heart, you who only through pain got to know that a human being has a heart in a different sense than an animal and what it means to suffer there and what it means that the doctor can be right that a person is heart healthy and nevertheless heartsick; you whom faithlessness deceived and whom human sympathy (for human sympathy rarely keeps one waiting) then made a target for mockery; all you mistreated and injured and violated and abused; all you noble ones who—as everyone knows to say to you, after all—deservingly harvested the reward of ingratitude, for why would you be stupid enough to be noble, why foolish enough to be loving and unselfish and faithful; all you sacrifices to cunning and deceit and slander and envy, whom baseness picked out and cowardice left high and dry, whether you are sacrificed in some out-of-the-way and lonely place after having gone away to die, or whether you are trampled down by the human throng, where no one asks about what right you have, no one asks about what wrong you suffer, no one asks about where it aches or how it might be painful, while the throng tramples you into the dust with beastly vigor: come here!”
The invitation stands at the crossroad, where death comes between death and life. “Come here, all you sorrowing ones, you who labor and are heavy laden in vain!” For there is certainly rest in the grave. But to sit by a grave or to stand by a grave or to go to a grave is, after all, not yet to lie in the grave. And again and again to read silently one’s own writing, which one can do by heart, the inscription that one put there oneself, and one best understands oneself who it is who lies buried here: that, of course, is not the same as lying buried oneself. In the grave there is rest, but by the grave there is no rest. It is said: up to here and no further, so you can go home again. But however often you come back to that grave day after day, in thought or on foot—you come no further, not from the spot. And this is very trying and does not convey rest. “Therefore come here.” Here is the way by which one goes further; here is rest by the grave, rest from the pain of privation. Or there is rest in the pain of privation—through him, who eternally reunites those separated more firmly than nature unites parents and children, children and parents—alas, they were separated in the end; more fervently than the priest unites husband and wife—alas, separation indeed entered in; more indissolubly than the bond of friendship unites one friend and another—alas, it was undone, after all. Everywhere separation pierced through to bring pain and unrest. But here is rest!
“You, too, come here. You whose whereabouts are consigned among the graves, regarded as dead by human society but not missed, not lamented—not buried yet dead, that is, neither belonging to the living nor to the dead—alas, you to whom human society cruelly shut itself, and for whom still no grave has opened out of mercy: you, too, come here. Here is rest, and here is life!”
The invitation stands at the crossroad, where the way of sin swerves from the fence of innocence—oh, come here, you are so close to him. A single step along the other way, and you are so infinitely far away from him. It may well be that you still do not need to rest, do not understand what that truly means, but follow the invitation so that the inviter may save you from what is so hard and dangerous to be saved from. Thus saved, you may remain with him, who is the Savior of all, even the Savior of innocence. For even if it were possible that perfectly pure innocence was found somewhere: why should it not also need a savior who could keep it safe from evil!
The invitation stands at the crossroad, where the way of sin swerves more deeply into sin. “Come here all you who have stumbled and gone astray, whatever your error and sin was, be it more excusable in human eyes and yet perhaps more terrible, or be it more terrible in human eyes and yet perhaps more excusable, whether it became manifest here on earth or whether it is hidden and yet known in heaven—and even if you found forgiveness on earth but still not rest on the inside, or found no forgiveness because you did not seek it or because you sought it in vain: oh, turn back and come here; here is rest!”
The invitation stands at the crossroad, where the way of sin swerves for the last time and vanishes before one’s eyes—into perdition. “Oh, turn back, turn back, come here.” Do not shudder at the difficulty of retreat, no matter how hard it is. Do not be afraid of the burdensome path of conversion, however laboriously it leads to the Savior, whereas sin leads onward with winged speed, with rising velocity—or leads downward so easily, so indescribably easily, even as easily as when the horse, completely exempt from pulling, still cannot stop the wagon with all his might, so that it runs into the abyss. Do not despair over every relapse, which the God of patience has the patience to forgive and under which a sinner really should have patience to humble himself. No, fear nothing and do not despair. He who says, “Come here,” is with you on the way; from him are help and forgiveness on the way of conversion, which leads to him. And with him is rest.
“Come here, all, all, all of you.” With him is rest. And he makes no difficulty; he does only one thing: he opens his arms. He will not first ask you, you suffering one—alas, as righteous persons do, even when they want to help: “You are not yourself to blame for your misfortune, are you? You have nothing to reproach yourself for, have you?” It is so easy, this human tendency to judge according to appearance, according to the result: when one is a cripple, is deformed, has an unprepossessing appearance, then to judge that ergo he is an evil person; when one is unfortunate enough to suffer badly in the world, so that he amounts to nothing or so that it hit rock bottom for him, then to judge that ergo he is a bad person. Oh, and it is such an exquisitely invented kind of cruel pleasure to want to feel one’s own righteousness just opposite a person who is suffering, by explaining his suffering as God’s punishment upon him, so that one therefore does not even dare to help him, or by laying that disapproving question before him, which flatters one’s own righteousness before one helps.
But he will not ask you in this way; he does not want to be your benefactor in a cruel way. And if you are conscious of yourself as a sinner, he will not ask you about it; he will not break the bruised reed even more but will raise you up when you join him. He will not point you out by contrast, as he places you apart from himself, so that your sin becomes even more terrible. He will give you a hiding place with himself, and, hidden in him, he will hide your sins. For he is the sinner’s friend. When one is talking about a sinner, then he does not simply stand still, open his arms, and say, “Come here.” No, he stands—and waits, as the father of the prodigal son waited. Or he does not stand and wait; he goes to seek the sinner, as the shepherd sought the strayed sheep, as the woman sought the lost penny. He goes—still no. He has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd and any woman. After all, he went the infinitely long way from being God to becoming a human being; he went that way in order to seek sinners!
III
Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
“Come here!” For he assumes that those who labor and are heavy laden are sure to feel the burden heavy, the labor heavy, and now stand there perplexed and sighing: one, with a glance, looking all around to find help, another with downcast eyes because he saw no comfort, a third staring upward, as if it might still come from heaven—but all searching. Therefore he says: “Come here.” The one who ceased to seek and to sorrow, he does not invite.
“Come here!” For he, the inviter, knows that just this is part of true suffering, to go to a secluded place by oneself and ponder in quiet hopelessness, without courage to confide in anyone, still less to dare to hope for help with boldness. Alas, that man possessed by a demon was not the only one beset by a dumb spirit; any suffering that does not begin by making the suffering person speechless does not mean much, as little as erotic love when it does not make one silent. Suffering persons whose quick tongues run effortlessly with their stories of suffering neither labor nor are heavy laden. See, that is why the inviter does not dare to wait for those who labor and are heavy laden to come to him; he himself calls them lovingly. Perhaps all his willingness to help would not really help, if he did not say these words and thereby take the first step. For in the calling of these words (“Come unto me”) he certainly comes to them.
Oh, human sympathy, at times perhaps it is still respectable self-control, even perhaps at times true and heartfelt compassion, when you refuse to ask the one whom you suspect is going and brooding over a hidden suffering. But, to be sure, it is often a shrewdness as well, which does not wish to get to know too much! Oh, human sympathy, how often it was still only curiosity, not sympathy, that you dared to venture into a suffering person’s secret, and how you felt it as a burden, almost as a punishment of your curiosity, when he followed the invitation and came to you! But he who says these freeing words, “Come here,” he does not deceive himself as he says these words. Nor will he deceive you when you come to him in order to find rest by casting your burden on him. He follows his heart’s prompting in saying that, and his heart follows the words—if, then, you follow these words, then they follow you back again to his heart. It is a matter of course that the one follows from the other—oh, that you would only follow the invitation.
“Come here!” For he assumes that those who labor and are heavy laden are so weary and exhausted and fainting that they, as if sedated, have become oblivious to the fact that there is comfort. Or, alas, he knows that it is just all too true that there is no comfort and help, if it is not sought in him. That is why he must call out to them, “Come here!”
“Come here!” For, after all, every society has a symbol or something by which it is known that one belongs to it. When a young woman is spruced up in a certain way, one knows that she is going to a dance. “Come here, all you who labor and are heavy laden.” “Come here!” You do not need to wear an external and conspicuous sign of distinction. Come with only an anointed head and washed face, when you labor and are heavy laden in your heart alone.
“Come here!” Oh, do not stand still and think twice. No, consider, consider, that for every moment you stand still after having heard the invitation, the next moment you will hear its call more faintly and, in this way, distance yourself, even if you remain on the spot. “Come here!” Oh, however tired and weary you are of the labor or of the long, long, and yet previously futile running after help and rescue, even if it seems to you that could not gain one step more, could not hold out one moment longer without dropping: oh, even now, just one step. Here is rest! “Come here!” Alas, but if there was one who was so miserable that he could not come—oh, a sigh is enough. That you sigh after him—even a sigh is to come here.