The Redeemer (15 page)

“Princess,” he cooed, “come and dance for your papa, and I’ll give you something nice.”

Salome didn’t respond, but Herodias did.

“What will you give her?”

“Anything she desires—including your crown if she wants it.”

The guests roared with laughter as Herodias’s face reddened.

Herodias whispered into her daughter’s ear. At first the girl continued to shake her head in protest, but her mother insisted. Finally Salome turned from her mother’s embrace and walked toward Herod.

“You’ll give me anything I ask?” she purred.

Herod couldn’t take his eyes off her, but I sensed a trap being set. I had to do something, so I jumped in front of Salome and clapped my claws together in Herod’s face.

“Herod, sober up this instant. You’re in no condition to make a deal.”

“What will you give me, daddy?” she asked, pushing me aside.

“Up to half my kingdom,” the drunken king slurred.

Ooohs
and
aaahs
from the guests.

The girl looked back to her mother, who nodded her head. Then Herodias smiled and signaled the musicians to play another song. The choirmaster tapped on the drum and changed the beat as the music began pulsating across the room. Salome walked to the middle of the floor and removed the jeweled clip from her long red hair and let it cascade around her shoulders. Then she began to dance.

The audience was spellbound.

When she dropped her outer cloak to the floor, Herod’s eyes widened all the more at her seductive beauty. She was clothed in the sheerest of silks. I’d never seen a woman like her. May I say she was extremely fit—and flexible.

No one could look away. Every time she twirled, another silk scarf would fall to the floor. I worried that she was getting close to running out of scarves and hoped it would soon be over. Then, just in time to avoid being embarrassingly underdressed, the music stopped, and so did she, right in front of Herod, kneeling in front of him and taking hold of his extended hand and touching it lightly with her lips.

“Anything,” his voice was raspy. “Ask me for anything, and it’s yours.”

“I want—” she said softly.

“Yes, yes, anything.”

“—on a silver platter—”

“Diamonds, rubies—command me and you shall have it.”

“—the head of John the Baptist.”

Herod did not see that coming. He slumped back into the cushion of his chair with a look of horror on his face. I sat down on a nearby pillow, certain my face looked the same way. Herodias hurried to her daughter’s side and draped her cloak around her shoulders, sneering at her husband.

“No,” Herod said in a low voice. “Ask for something else.”

“Will the king be a liar in front of his guests?” Herodias prodded.

Herod rose unsteadily from his chair then stumbled across the room and out the door. I knew I had to stop him. I ran after him down the stone stairs and out to the prison courtyard where John was jailed. Herod grabbed hold of the bars on the window and shouted, waking John from a sound sleep.

“Why didn’t you leave us alone?”

I wiggled my way between Herod and the window bars.

“It’s not too late. You’re the king. You make the rules. Don’t do this,” I pleaded with him.

“It’s your own fault, John. I didn’t want this.” Herod was almost weeping.

Just then the guards appeared behind him. Wiping his face, Herod turned to face them.

“Your Majesty?” said the lead soldier.

“Cut off his head.”

I didn’t stay around for the rest.

By the time I got back to the camp where the disciples were spending the night, Peter was stoking the fading embers of the campfire as the other disciples got up and headed for their beds. They yawned their good nights and left, but I stayed. I hoped Jesus would come over to warm Himself by the coals before going to bed. I had a few things I wanted to talk to Him about. I practiced what I would say.

“You knew what was going to happen to John, didn’t You? When you told his disciple, ‘Tell John to finish well,’ this is what You meant, wasn’t it? You knew, yet You did nothing to stop it. I’m worried about the public backlash. You know John isn’t really dead, but nobody else does. They may have heard about Hades, but it isn’t real to them. The people are bound to question Your motives. Was he nothing to You? No more than collateral damage on Your way to saving the world? You must think about how this must look to them. If You couldn’t—or wouldn’t—save John, why would the people believe You’re able to save anybody else?”

I stopped practicing when I heard footsteps. Jesus was coming toward the campfire! I panicked and ran and hid in Matthew’s tent.

C
HAPTER 18

T
HE NEXT DAY
we were in a boat on the way to the region of the Gerasenes. I was hoping one of the men would voice my concerns about how Jesus had seemed to ignore John’s plight, but none of them did. He was sure to have to answer the question at some point, maybe from one of John’s grieving disciples. It couldn’t hurt to practice.

I waited in the boat with the others while Peter and John pulled us into the shallow water and drove a stake in the sand as an anchor. Just as Jesus set foot on the beach, from out of nowhere a man came running toward Him screaming as if he were in torture. One could not help but notice he was naked. To me, a screaming, naked man running with a stick in his hand is never a good sign. I decided to wait in the boat until someone took charge of the situation.

“Where did he come from?” James jumped in between Jesus and the would-be attacker.

“He must have been hiding in the tombs,” Peter answered. “Don’t let him get past you.”

“Stop him,” yelled another man who came chasing after the naked one. “He’s dangerous.”

The three of them couldn’t grab him before he pushed James to the side and fell into a convulsive fit at the feet of Jesus.

“Here,” the chaser said as he handed one end of a rope to Peter. “Help me tie him up.”

“Who are you?” Peter asked.

“I’m the custodian of the tombs. His name is Mattias; he chewed through his cords and got away.”

Peter, James, and the custodian struggled with the man until they were finally able to subdue him and tie up his feet. When they tried to drag him away, Jesus stopped them.

“Wait, who is he?” Jesus asked. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Don’t trouble Yourself, rabbi. This man has lived in the tombs for years. No one can bind him anymore, not even with a shackle.”

The man snarled like a captured animal when the custodian tried to turn his wrists and ankles to show Jesus where the chains had once been.

“You can see the marks left by the irons we placed on him, but he was able to break them apart. He’s possessed by an evil spirit, and when it rises up in him, no one is strong enough to restrain him.”

“This is fresh blood,” Jesus said, taking note of the gashes in the man’s naked chest.

“I know, but he does it to himself. Every night he breaks through his fetters and wanders among the tombs. He cries out, and he cuts his own skin with stones.”

Suddenly the man stopped convulsing and looked up at Jesus. The empty look that had been in his eyes earlier gave way to terror as the demon spirit within him recognized Jesus.

“Keep away,” he growled as he tried to crawl away on his hands and knees.

“Stop,” Jesus commanded him.

The man rose up on his knees and began howling as if trying to alert the dead in the tombs of imminent danger. Jesus stretched out His hand, and the man jumped backward and fell onto his elbows as he tried to scoot himself away from Jesus.

“What do You want with me, Jesus, Son of the most high God? In God’s name, don’t torture me!”

“What did he call your friend?” the custodian whispered to Peter. “Who is He?”

“God,” John replied as he came over to help. “Son of God, to be precise.”

Jesus ignored the others as He kept His gaze locked on the squirming demoniac. He pointed to him and spoke firmly.

“Come out of him, you vile spirit.”

“Aaargh! You’re hurting me.” The man contorted on the ground. “Leave me alone. You know it isn’t time.”

“What is your name?” Jesus asked.

“My name is Legion,” he moaned as he held his stomach and writhed in pain, “for we are many.”

Legion! A thousand of the disembodied evil spirits are in him. How can he still be alive?

Having been on the road with Jesus for a while, I knew the most likely thing to happen next would be evil spirits would come flying out in a panic. I dropped down to the floor of the boat and hoped none of them would see me.

“Have mercy, Jesus.” Multiple voices poured out of the man’s mouth. “Don’t send us into the abyss. Send us into the pigs, and we’ll come out.”

The spirits begged Jesus to loose them into a herd of pigs held in a pen on a nearby hill. He knelt down and looked into the eyes of the tortured man, then stood up and rendered a verdict.

“Go into the pigs.”

Immediately the tormented man collapsed on the ground.

Suddenly the pigs began squealing and running until they broke through their corral and ran off the edge of a steep embankment into a lake, where all two thousand of them drowned. A group of men who had been tending the pigs saw the whole thing and panicked.

I could hardly blame them. A demon-possessed human is bad enough, but believe me, you don’t want to be around a demon-possessed pig. The pig tenders threw their staffs to the ground and ran away as fast as they could toward the town. Had I been in their place, I would have done the same thing.

The disciples didn’t know quite what to make out of what Jesus had done, and neither did I. The custodian was confused and upset.

“What happened? What’s wrong with the pigs? Did you see that?”

What Jesus did was not in the exorcism playbook. If nobody else was going to ask, I had to.

“Jesus, why did You allow the evil spirits to attack innocent pigs instead of sending them to the abyss where they belonged?”

Now, I grant you that the redeeming characteristics of a pig may not be immediately apparent to everyone, and therefore, this might not have been considered a great loss to many people, especially to the Jews, who were not allowed to have anything to do with pigs. That is probably why the disciples were not nearly as disturbed as the custodian.

Nonetheless, I happened to know that Jesus was somewhat partial to pigs. When He was just plain Adonai, before He became a human, He Himself created pigs. I was there when He did it, although I’m pretty certain a pig, in its present incarnation, is not what He started out to make.

He got interrupted in the middle of putting the first one together and ended up rushing at the last minute, slapping on some spare parts out of His accessory box to finish it off. That’s why a pig looks the way it does. Its legs are too short for its oversized midsection, its ears were clearly intended for a small dog, and the snout and corkscrew tail were never part of the original artist’s rendering. Same thing happened with the hippopotamus.

Later on in His career, Jesus would warn His followers against beginning a project without figuring out in advance how much it would cost and how long it would take. He spoke from His own experience.

Because He didn’t put a lot of thought into pig brain development, the entire species, in my mind, is somewhat on the dumb side and would have a hard time fending for themselves in the wild. I believe Jesus has always felt badly that pigs are not an example of His best work. That’s why He allowed the Gentiles to make a business out of taking care of them. The fact that Gentiles also
eat
pigs is part of His genius. Whatever animals humans raise for food will never be on the endangered list. That’s the reason there are so many chickens.

So why now was He willing to sacrifice two thousand pigs, which, by the way, represented a tidy sum on the commodities market to the owners? It could not be to accommodate demonic spirits who represented nothing but evil. At last Peter asked the question to which everyone was dying to know the answer.

“Why did You do it, Lord?”

“Tell me, Peter, when an evil spirit comes out of a person, how does it come out? What does it do?”

“I know,” James jumped in. “I’ve seen the exorcists try it many times. It comes out fighting and screaming. If it’s a strong spirit, the person often dies as it tears the body apart trying to keep its place.”

“You’re right,” Jesus said. “Now imagine what could happen to a person if a thousand evil spirits battled together to keep from being cast out. What would happen to the person?”

“Dust,” James answered.

Poof.
Peter blew some sand from his hands. “Smithereens.”

“Now do you understand?” Jesus asked.

“No,” they shook their heads.

I’ll tell you what He means. He let the spirits go into the pigs because they offered to go without a fight. Jesus cared more about saving the man’s life than what happened to pigs.

While Jesus tried to explain the complexities and nuances of deliverance from evil spirits to the disciples, I decided to find the pig herders. I was curious to hear how the pig owners and townspeople, for whom the animals were a big business, were going to take the news. There was already a crowd when I got there.