Jesus Teaches Men Who Were Curious

« It is so. But why do You say that corn and soil are better than men? »

« Why?… Not long ago a man begged for a piece of bread, out of pity, at the gate of a village. And he was driven away because the people of that place thought he was a Judaean. He was expelled as people threw stones at him and crying him a "leper", which he thought referred to his thinness, but was intended for his origin. And that man almost died of starvation along the road. Thus the people of that village, the people that sent you to question Me and would like to come to the house where I live, to see the man who was cured miraculously, are worse than corn and clods of earth. Because they were not able, although they had been well taught by Me for a long time, to bear the same fruit as was yielded by that man, who is neither a Judaean nor a Samaritan and had never seen or heard Me, but had accepted the words of one of My disciples and believed in Me without knowing Me. And because they are worse than the clods of earth, as they rejected the man because he was of a different seed. They would now like to come to satisfy their hunger for curiosity, whilst they were not able to satisfy the hunger of a languishing man. Tell them that the Master will not satisfy such vain curiosity. And you all had better learn the great law of love, .without which you will never be able to be My followers. It is not your love for Me that by itself will save your souls. But it is the love for My doctrine. And My doctrine teaches brotherly love without distinction of race and census. So let those hard-hearted people who have grieved My Heart go away, and let them repent if they want Me to love them. Because, bear this in your minds, if I am good, I am also just; if I make no distinctions and I love you as I love those of Galilee and Judaea, that must not make you so stupidly proud as to think that you are the favourite people or authorise you to do wrong without being afraid of being reproached by Me. I praise and reproach, according to justice, My relatives and apostles as well as any other person, and there is love in My reproach. And I do so because I want justice in the hearts of people so that one day I may reward those who have practised it. You may go and inform the others so that the lesson may bear fruit in everybody. »

Jesus envelops himself in His mantle and strides towards Ephraim, leaving His interlocutors who go away rather dejectedly to repeat the Master's words to the people of the unmerciful village.