After this remark of Mine, we have also reached the mansion’s great courtyard at a leisurely pace. All the servants come toward the merchant, exceedingly astonished and embarrassed. The head servant, the steward of the servants, speaks for them and says, ‘Master, master! What a fine state of affairs this is! Our cooks, both men and women, cannot get a single dish ready; everything goes wrong! We wanted at least to set the tables with fruit and wine and a good quantity of bread, but all the rooms are so firmly locked that with all our strength we could not open even one door! What shall we do now?’
The merchant, himself partly exceedingly astonished and partly quite angry, says, ‘This is how it is the moment I set foot across the threshold: nothing but disorder upon disorder! What are the cooks doing? Have not ten thousand guests often been entertained here, with everything proceeding properly? Now there are scarcely a thousand in all, and everywhere the greatest disorder shows itself! But what do I see? Young men are looking out of every window! So my mansion is full of people, and you and the servants under you say that all the doors in my mansion are locked! How is that possible? Are you lying and trying to gloss over your laziness before me? Or if the rooms are locked, who locked them?’
The steward does not know what to answer his master, and the entire large household of servants belonging to the lord of this mansion is in great embarrassment, consternation and anxiety at his visible anger. No one knows what to do or how to help himself.
But I say to this merchant, ‘Dear friend, let matters rest as they now stand! Look, when your servants and guards came to Me in the grove a little while ago, sent by you to ask who I was and what I was seeking here with so large a company, I demanded of you as a lord that you give us all a good midday meal. You quickly decided to do so, although you did not know who it was that claimed a right to demand a midday meal from you for so many guests.
‘Your servants, like you, at first took Me for a prince of Rome, and for that reason you were all the more active in meeting My request. But as our conversation, instructive in many ways, brought you to the understanding that I was the Messiah, you were happy in your heart and thought all the more about entertaining Me and the whole company as well as possible. You wanted Me to be pleased to remain with you until you had brought together your supposed fighting force against the Romans from Upper Asia and the farther reaches of Asia, in order under My leadership to drive out of God’s land all the enemies who are mere heathens and do not believe in the living God.
‘When you had resolved this in your mind, I too secretly resolved something: namely, that you should now be My guest, even though in your house, and not I yours. I therefore gave orders to My excellent servants, and look, everything is now already in the best readiness, and today you shall be fed at My side with the most genuine food of heaven!
‘But set the fruit of your gardens and what your kitchen has supplied before those slander-loving loudmouths from Sychar who are still roaming about in the grove and are beside themselves with anger that they too are not among the invited guests! I think this will cause you no distress; for look, when I see a right will in someone, I immediately accept such a will as the full work. But in you I noticed a right will and therefore freed you from the work that would be costly for you. For I am richer than you, and I do not wish to satisfy Myself with your food; rather, I wish you to be satisfied by Me!’
Here the merchant’s eyes widen, and after a while of deep reflection he says, ‘Lord, this is too much at once for a poor, sinful human being! I cannot grasp the miracle in all its greatness and depth. If You were only a human being, as I am only a human being, this would be impossible for You; for I saw no food carrier in Your company. But where, most extraordinarily, could You now have obtained food by natural means? A little while ago I did notice some such most beautiful servants, or perhaps female servants, among or in Your company, and I still see them, the very same ones. But where have these come from? The rooms of my mansion are many, and most are exceedingly spacious; ten thousand people easily have enough room in them. Yet I now see these most beautiful servants looking down at us from every window! So I ask again: where, from what place, have they come?’
I say, ‘Friend, when you leave your house for some other country to buy or sell there, you too take servants with you according to your needs and have them serve you. And look, I do the same. I have exceedingly many of them; you could scarcely ever grasp their number. Now when I go out, why should My attendants and servants remain at home on such an occasion?’
The merchant says, ‘Lord, all that is perfectly in order. But I would only like to know from where You and all these most glorious servants of Yours have come! That, that is what I am so eager to learn!’
I say, ‘Let us first take the midday meal, and afterward there will surely still be a time when you can receive fuller instruction about this. But for now we have spoken enough, and it is quite time to take rest and refreshment. So let us go into the great hall, which lies toward the east in this mansion and cannot be seen by us now, since we are on the mansion’s western side, where one cannot see its great wing!’
Here the merchant nearly faints from sheer wonder, and after a while he says in the utmost astonishment, ‘Lord, now this truly is almost becoming too overwhelmingly wondrous for me! There was once an eastern wing of this mansion of Esau, but two centuries have probably already rolled down into the irretrievable past since that eastern wing existed. My ancestors and I hardly know anything about it anymore. How, then, do You speak of the great hall in the eastern wing of this mansion?’
I say, ‘Only if you find no eastern wing in this mansion of yours may you speak; but if you find one, then reflect and grasp within yourself that with God all things are possible! But be silent about it and say nothing of it to My company, for those around Me are not yet ready for deeds of this kind!’
The merchant says, ‘Truly, now I am indeed burning with desire to see this eastern wing of my mansion, of which my distant ancestors hardly heard anything said. The foundation walls are still visible here and there, but that is all that has come down to me of this wing of the mansion, which is said to have been so magnificent once.’ Only now does the merchant go briskly ahead, and we follow him.