Fifth Gospel (21 page)

Herod
shot fire from his eyes at his wife.  ‘Herodias, your daughter does not mind her father!’

‘That
, husband, is because you are not her father,’ she reminded him.

There was an awkward silence
, in which Herod’s face bloomed, and he drank down a gulp of wine to flush down the sting of his wife’s words.

I
n the meantime, an opportunity arose for the conversation to return to the subject at hand. Caiaphas was the first to take it and interpolated a clearing of the throat before saying, ‘The Sanhedrin has decided that Herod should seize John the Baptist when he comes next to that part of the Jordan which falls under his jurisdiction. Rome need not stain her brow with concern.’

Pontius, still contemplating Herod’s family squabble, took a moment to register these words.
‘On what charge?’

‘No charge…’ Herod
gave his part. ‘First the council will hear what the man has to say, it will consult the law and make its decision.’

Caiaphas
oiled his sharp voice on the tip of his tongue, ‘The point is,’ he said, ‘that you should not waste another moment on this matter.’

Pontius turned the wine in his cup around and around and around.
‘If you seize him it will lead to unrest, perhaps even a revolt…didn’t you say he has thousands of followers?’

‘
The arrest will be carried out quietly,’ Caiaphas assured him, ‘without fuss or spectacle. Besides, what Jew would contest the power of the Sanhedrin and risk excommunication?’

Claudia’s husband set down his cup
, he did not look convinced. He said, almost to himself, ‘Well, for my part, I will send someone to follow this Jesus of Nazareth. I am of a mind to think him more important than this John the Baptiser, whom I consider not yet a matter for Rome. I will not interfere with what you do with him so long as it is quiet. But mark well what I say,’ he looked at them with pointed eyes. ‘If I smell the slightest whiff of zealotry or hear the smallest whisper of an uprising, I shall send a message to the Governor of Syria calling for a sea of Roman Legions and Israel will again suffer the wrath of Rome. Who knows what reprisals shall then befall the likes of aberrant kings and suspect priests?’

The
se words quickened fear in the hearts of the ignoble guests and soon they were thanking their hosts and making their hasty exits.

Claudia was relieved
, for they seemed to take a pall of evil with them. For his part, her husband called for his
primus pilus
, Cassius Longinus, his senior centurion and adviser. This was that same man who followed her when she ventured into the streets. Now, from the shadows, Claudia heard Pontius tell Cassius to look for the man called Jesus of Nazareth, and to report back to him on the man’s doings.

That night
Claudia was troubled in her sleep. She dreamt strange dreams in which the faces of the priests and Herod and Salome came and went and in which the name Jesus of Nazareth was repeated over and over.

I
n the morning when she woke she knew she had to do something. So she took herself to the fortress of Antonia, to that centurion and informed him that she wished to accompany him on his journeys to the whereabouts of the man, Jesus of Nazareth. The Centurion, dumbstruck by this request, did not know how to answer.

For her part
Claudia considered his silence his affirmative reply.

THE ARREST

I
t was midsummer, the sun would soon begin its diminishing days and John was not surprised to see Christ Jesus come again to Ainon.

F
ollowed by his disciple he remained a time with him and they kept a quiet company. Moon after moon passed, sun-full days, rain-full days, sitting in the huts or by the hearth. The two men had no need for words for their hearts conversed in the silence, and in those moments John basked in the heart-light that lived in Jesus, and let his own, overgrown heart, retreat little by little into the horizon of his soul.

S
ome of Christ Jesus’ disciples had taken to baptising along the Jordan and he had gone with them. John’s followers approached him saying that these men were upstarts, and would take from him his doings. John told them that it was right and fitting for soon he would no longer be among them. When he said it out loud however, a deep, inconsolable sadness struck him. It was true, he was not destined to walk side by side with the long awaited one! He would not hear His words, or share His meals or sleep under the stars with Him for long. This is what it meant to stay behind and to diminish!

On
a day when the sun-drenched land bore the last heat-throws before winter, a great portion of Herod’s army arrived to take John by force. The multitudes that were gathered around him made to prevent it, but John admonished his followers not to defend his person but to go to Christ Jesus instead, for his time was over.

After that
, John allowed himself to be seized by the guards, and gave his hands to be clapped into chains like an animal. He braced his heart, for they were headed across the river and over the old roads to Herod’s country of Perea.

He knew this road
. It was the way to the fortress called Machareus.

THE
LORD OF THE SABBATH

J
esus taught in the synagogues. He walked up and down the countryside speaking to those who lived in the areas outside the larger towns in Galilee. In the evenings, when the sun was blood red and a shiver of light stood on the horizon, he preferred to go to places where he could heal those who came to him and where he could cast out the devils that lived in the souls of the weak.

Judas followed his every move, observing with one eye all his miracles and his healings
, while the other eye measured the man, Jesus, for the pluck of a king.

He found
him wanting.

He was meek and spoke of meekness, he was mild and preached mildness; even his healings were made without majesty or regal authority. How could such a man lead a people to a renewal of the Jewish kingdom? He had envisaged a
Messiah who would make fiery speeches, calling all men to arms. Not a man who spoke of turning the other cheek and of loving even those who hate you. In truth, his doings were few, dotted here and there among long intervals of silent, inward gazing. The others despaired whenever he retreated into his seclusions. For his part, Judas observed it with a growing feeling of disillusionment and impatience.

Near
to the Feast of the Trumpets, Judas followed in his train to Jerusalem. It was a long, painful march and along the way Jesus taught those who came to hear him. Some listened, some walked away waving their hands at his preaching of love and tolerance and at his parables, which they did not understand. Those who listened to him were mostly a mixture of defiled Jews, Samaritans, gentiles, publicans and tax collectors - a band of ragamuffins. Such a band would not do Jesus much good. They would ruin his reputation and make true Jews reticent to support him. This became all the more obvious the closer they came to Jerusalem.

In
Jerusalem itself Jesus led his band of followers to the Temple and here he spoke to the people on the steps, as was the custom in those days. His words found willing hearts in some quarters of the populace but in others it did not. The Pharisees and scribes would not accept him, they remembered him from that puzzling incident at the Temple some months ago, when he overturned the tables and cursed the moneychangers. Now, they took the opportunity to rebuke him publicly and to cut him down to size before the people.

‘We s
ee that you teach those of mixed blood; that you eat and drink with publicans and sinners and lowly people. Why do you break the laws of Moses?’

Jesus
took this in with a silent, calm serenity, and closed his eyes.

The pause lasted long. The people began to wonder if he would ever speak.

Judas had seen this strangeness before.

He
had seen him keep a hundred people waiting while he bent to observe the details of some flower he found fascinating. When he caressed the trunks of trees or the long grass, or pressed soil between his fingers, it seemed to Judas that these were like gold or precious jewels to him, and yet, when he handled the parchments of the law at Nazareth, he treated those ancient and friable items as if they were so many poisonous weeds.

Judas
could not understand why Jesus overlooked the rich and powerful to serve children and paupers as if they were kings. Or why when the rabbis and men of learning came to fathom the depths of his knowledge he spoke of simple things and sent them away thinking him addled. He spoke in parables concerning the most mundane things, and at other times, he spoke in a language that was clear as day, of the most complicated mysteries. When he met with zealous patriots, he said he had not come to rule. When the peaceful came to him for guidance, he said that his coming would not bring peace, but war. When the melancholic asked him for salvation from suffering, he told them there was joy in pain. When the proud and self-righteous spoke of the sins of the world, he told them that the persecuted would inherit the kingdom of heaven. When he observed the maltreatment of others, he spoke with a fiery zeal that made all men think the world would soon end. And yet, when he was abused, accused, or insulted, he stood silent, motionless, as if he had all eternity at his disposal, and did not need to answer to anyone.

This day was no different, faced with the protestations of the Pharisees
, he remained with his eyes closed and his face upturned to the sun for a long time, long enough for the question to come at him again.

‘Why do you teach those of mixed blood? Why do you eat and drink with publicans
, and sinners and lowly people?

When he opened
his eyes, he did not regard the Pharisees, but instead, turned his gaze to the simple people who had followed him, those of whom the priests spoke. He breathed in their fragrance, as if he were standing not before a group of defiled men, but before a landscape full of wild flowers. ‘Tell me, my friends, do the righteous need repentance? Do those who are well need a physician?’

The crowds were pleased with this answer.

He considered the Pharisees now. ‘My message needs new ears. For what I bring has to enter into souls not blemished by the old ways. To give what is new to souls infected with your old ways would be like sewing a new cloth onto an old garment, and that is why I choose those who do not belong to you, for my words would soon tear them apart!’

From the Pharisees came a rumble of voices
, but only one was raised higher than the others.

‘We have heard
that you do not observe the fasts, and that you allow your men to eat and drink as they wish, is this true?’

Jesus nodded
. ‘Why not? Why should they fast? Is it not true that in your tradition the guests at a wedding feast never fast while the bridegroom is among them? I am the bridegroom and while I am here it is a wedding celebration. My guests will eat and drink, for they are the children of the bridal chamber. But the day will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them by you and your old laws, and in those days, my followers will fast, since there will be a great sadness. While I am here, your old laws will not serve them.’

‘What do you say then
, of John the Baptist!’ one Pharisee shouted. ‘What do you consider him? Old or new?’

He looked at this
with a placid regard. ‘Among those men who are born from a woman,’ he said, ‘none is greater than John, that is true, he is the best of what is old among you, and yet those whose hearts are made new by my teachings, they shall be
greater
even than John, that is also true.’

‘Do you call yourself an initiate? Show us a sign, the sign of Jonah or the sign of Solomon
, so that we may see and be contented!’

Jesus
halted. Something in this had raised his ire. He looked at the Pharisees now with the fullness of his condescension. ‘You old serpents! You ask for signs and wonders because you only see with the eyes of your body! But I shall not give you signs to make your eyes contented! I am not an initiate! I am greater than the man Jonah! I am greater than Solomon, for I am not a seer! I am the subject of seeing, the subject of initiation itself, and those who have spirit eyes and ears will see and will hear me and they will be contented!’

The rabbis could say nothing
, they seemed confused by his words, and this had stilled their tongues. They made to leave.

Judas said to them, ‘Wait!’

But they did not wait.

He went to Jesus
and said to him, ‘Why do you not reason with them? Surely it is good to have them on our side. Teach them of your greatness! Perform some miracle to convince them!’

Jesus
turned to him with a look he had seen before. A look that was quizzical and serene, and yet it pierced the heart and winkled out the truth from its opposite. ‘There are as many men who can perform miracles, Judas, as there are teachers in the world. My task is not perform miracles or to teach, it is to live and to die.’

‘But why not
tell them of the mysterious things you have told us, the secrets of existence and of the kingdom of God?’

‘Would you give grass to a dog, Judas, or meat to a cow? I look at the condition of a man’s soul and I give him what he can bear, according to whether I see in him an animal
, or a man. Only to my brothers do I give the fullness of my teachings.’

He led Judas and the others away then, across the forum and through the Sheep Gate
. They were headed for Olivet, where they would spend the night and to do so they had to pass a place called Bethesda, the ‘House of Healing’.

Bethesda consisted of five porches
, which enclosed a pool made from the waters of an intermittent spring. The bubbling up, or ‘troubling’ of this pool, was said to foreshadow healings attributed to an angel. Around it, sick people congregated and when the spring began to swirl, the sick and afflicted scrambled to enter its waters to be healed, and for this reason every expectant eye was fixed on the pool.

Judas saw Jesus go to the most wretched man
of all, a man who sat without an attendant or friend to help him to the pool. Jesus asked this man if he had the will to stand. The man said that he did. Jesus looked at him full of love and told him to take up his coverlet and to go since he was healed. When the man did as he said, all were amazed, not only because the man had been healed but also because this healing infringed upon rabbinic law, which forbade work on a Sabbath.

Judas
did not know what to think.

The next day
when they came again to the Temple, the Rabbis and Pharisees were gathered waiting for him. They had heard of the healing.

‘You healed a man on the Sabbath
!’ one Pharisee said, pointing a dry bone of a finger at him.

‘
It is true,’ said Jesus, tranquilly.

‘Did you tell him to take up his bed and to walk, knowing
this to be unlawful?’

His voice was so quiet that the old men who had gathered around had to cup their ears to hear it, ‘I am the Lord
of the Sabbath, if I wish to do good on a Sabbath, then I will do it. You, on the other hand, should be ashamed, for you do not care about the man’s cure or the spirit that enabled it. You think only that he took up his bed on the Sabbath.’ He looked at them and his face did not change but his voice became deeper. ‘Your rigid laws need to be broken! You see God as a God of death, but I tell you He is a God of life! You see him as hateful and disdainful, a God Who longs for revenge, but I have come to show that He is a God of love and warmth and light. He comes to bring salvation and redemption of sin to mankind; to save it from the fear that you cultivate!’

Angered
, the rabbis shouted, ‘How can a man bring redemption? You cannot forgive sins! This is only for God to do!’

‘I can forgive sins because
what lives in me is above the laws of the Sabbath, the laws of the Sabbath are the laws of necessity, the laws of death. But I can free a man from necessity, I have come to free him from sin, for my power does not come from dark Saturn which names your Sabbath, my power comes from the Sun and my day is Sun-day, the day of light, and life!’

After that
, there was heated discussion. The priests were displeased and left to confer amongst themselves. Judas followed them to the hall of justice where, after a further scrutiny of the blind man’s evidence, they plotted against Jesus.

Backwards and forwards they disagreed on the finer points of the law
. In the end, they resolved that Jesus was certainly more than a prophet, or perhaps even more than a priest, but they could not allow the people to know it. The people, that childish rabble full of lusts and desires and propensities to sin, had to be kept in their place, and such a man had a mind to set them free! Free from sin, free from the Sabbath rule! What would result, if they began to believe in a God of love? What consequences would befall Israel from evildoers if they were robbed of their fear of the pain, disease and death that God inflicted on the iniquitous? Healings and speeches were one thing, yes, but what next, the expulsion of the priests from their positions, the tearing down of the Temple, and the burning of the sacred writings of our forefathers?

Before their eyes
lay the devastation of Israel and the ruination of the faith of generations and it was too great a vision to be contemplated by so small a number. They resolved, therefore, to take the matter to the full gathering of the Sanhedrin.

At that moment
, Judas realised that what Jesus had done, though dangerous and foolhardy, was acceptable. For it had revealed to all men not only the hypocrisy of the priests, but also that Jesus was indeed more than John the Baptist; that he was more than a prophet or a priest. For he had spoken with a Godly authority that even the priests could not deny, and which had made them fearful!

When Judas returned to the circle
in the outer suburbs of Jerusalem he went directly to Jesus and spoke to him again.

He said, ‘
Jesus…you have shown me why you do not bother with the Pharisees, for they are like dogs in a manger, they do not want the truth, and yet they will prevent any other from knowing it, but now you must prepare how, and when, you will take up your rule of the kingdom of Israel from them. It is time for pruning and you must do it in a hurry, while you have many supporters who can help you cut down the dead stalks!’