Bright Dark Madonna

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  “What has any of this got to do with the teachings of Jesus?” A woman’s voice suddenly rang out over the din. “What does renouncing magic have to do with loving your neighbor as yourself—loving your enemy?”

  To my astonishment the voice was mine and, moreover, I had stepped forward, my shawl falling away. Paul paled as he recognized me and looked for a moment as though he was going to be sick. Then he recovered and glared at me.

  “Women are to keep silent in the ecclesia!” the apostle thundered.

  “This is not the ecclesia,” I pointed out reasonably enough. “It’s a public square. I will not be silent. I have nothing more to lose. It may be that I have wronged Jesus and the church by my silence.”

  “Who is this woman, Apostle?” asked a man. “I do not recognize her. Is she a believer? Has she been baptized by the Holy Spirit?”

  Paul was in a pickle, since he had baptized me himself, albeit against my will.

  “Oh, dear!” said Priscilla stepping forward and forgetting to keep silent. “I’m afraid I do recognize her. She’s the one I told you about who claims to be a Moabite. I don’t believe she’s been baptized by anyone.”

  “Oh, but I assure you I have been most thoroughly baptized,” I countered. “By John the dipper himself, and then most certainly by the Holy Spirit thanks to your apostle here.” Paul blanched. “But I count those baptisms as nothing next to the baptism of Jesus’s own blood, sweat and tears.”

  And other bodily fluids I had the rare good sense not to mention.

  “Who has given this woman authority to speak?” people shouted. “Who has authority over her?”

  “No one has authority over me!” I laughed. “I am a widow, as you see. As for who my husband was, I will tell you—”

  “Aquila! Quick, a torch!” shouted Paul. “We will make a bonfire for Christ Jesus, a bonfire of our vanities, a bonfire of our unbelief. Christ Jesus is Lord. He is our head. Only he has authority. Only he can save us from death and sin.”

  As he spoke, Aquila lit the pile of scrolls on fire, the flames caught and spread rapidly, the scrolls crackling impressively, and the first recorded book burning by Christians was underway. The crowd quickly lost interest in me. An outspoken, possibly crazy, widow was no competition for a holy blaze consuming costly wicked books.

  I turned away, invisible again. What had I been thinking, anyway? How could I beat Paul at a game he’d perfected, while I—I had dropped out of the game long ago. I headed for the upper gate, past excited and outraged onlookers.

  “There ought to be a law against performances like this. Dangerous, whips up the populace!”

  “Public speakers should at least have to apply for permits.”

  “Expensive permits!”

  I got clear of the crowd and slipped out the gate. Looking up to the hills, I felt an almost guilty longing for the peace of Meryemana. Maybe Jesus just didn’t want me to be a proselytizer on his behalf. Maybe taking care of his mother was enough. But the sense that I had failed again pursued me, like a yappy little dog. But that was not the only thing that followed me.

  “Healer Woman!” Paul of Tarsus called after me, in a harsh whisper, as if he did not want anyone to hear him. He must have wanted to speak to me urgently to have slipped away from his merry little blaze. I turned to see him looking around to make sure no one had followed him. Then he motioned me to meet him in the shadow of a large olive tree.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “What are you doing here?” I countered. “Never mind. Stupid question. It’s obvious. Your pals Priscilla and Aquila sent for you, and you have set everyone straight about the true baptism, and now you’re moving on to book burning.”

  He eyed me with alarm and perhaps a little fear.

  “You are a witch,” he pronounced.

  I didn’t want to spoil the effect by telling him that I was a practiced eavesdropper, but there was something chilling in his tone that made me cautious. If you burn magic books, can witches be far behind?

  “Really, Paul.” I’d be damned if I was going to address him as Apostle. “I hardly need magical arts to know the names of some big-wig followers of the Way or to keep track of your ubiquitous whereabouts. Everywhere I go, you’ve been or are about to be. By the way, did you succeed in running Apollos out of town?”

  “He went to Achaia with letters of recommendation,” Paul spoke through clenched teeth. “Once we showed him his error, he was quick to correct it and receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.”

  I almost shrugged to show my indifference to doctrinal hairsplitting; then I thought better of it. This man and I had a strange but intimate bond. I had saved his life. Between us we had driven Sarah away. We shared guilt. Why not be real with him?

  “Paul, do you really think Jesus, or Christ Jesus as you call him, would want people arguing over the proper baptism or making a show of their repentance? He didn’t much care for public displays of piety, as I remember. He once told people they ought to pray in a closet.”

  For a bewildering moment, Paul’s animosity gave way to awe or perhaps envy.

  “You knew him. You knew him.”

  He seemed momentarily overcome. Maybe by the thought that the woman standing before him had known Jesus in the most intimate way—and he, he had known the woman in that way, too, however briefly and unsatisfactorily. He looked queasy again.

  “Here, have a drink.” I passed him a skin of the strong mead.

  He waved it away, waved me away.

  “You knew him, and yet you know him not. “ He recovered his indignation. “You deny him as the Risen Christ!”

  “I do not deny him. I have denied him nothing. As for the Risen Christ, he rose in me. Do you hear me? He rose in me!”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.” He looked at me as if all of the seven demons Jesus had supposedly cast from me had returned with reinforcements.

  “I know perfectly well what I’m saying. The trouble is I don’t seem to be very good at getting anyone else to hear me. That’s the only way I’ve failed him.”

  “The only way?” he repeated slowly. “The only way!”

  We stared at each other, but I knew we were both seeing Sarah, as a young girl intent, intense, torn.

  “No,” I said quietly. “That’s not the only way I failed.”

  We were both silent for a time, deadlocked.

  “Healer Woman,” he cried out suddenly as if against his will, as if some spirit or maybe the Spirit had seized him. “I do wrong to accuse you. The fault is mine, too, Christ forgive me, the fault is mine, too.”

  Now I struggled with myself. He was my enemy. I did not want to comfort him. Yet had I not just quoted Jesus on that subject moments before?

  “Listen, Paul,” I said, touching his arm; he flinched, but let my hand rest there. “I have reason to believe that Sarah is alive—alive and well.”

  “Praise God!” he breathed. “How do you know? What have you heard—or seen? Have you seen her?”

  I hesitated again. I did not want to give him any detail. I did not want him pursuing her or reporting her to the Roman authorities. How did I know to what lengths he might go to save her or to save her soul?

  “I can’t tell you that,” I said. “But you may trust me when I tell you that her father is with her, and…and is well pleased with her.”

  It might strike you as strange that any father could be pleased that his daughter had grown up to be a pirate, but he had given me that impression.

  “So, whatever harm you or I did,” I went on, “she’s all right now. By some grace, she’s all right now.”

  “By the grace of Christ Jesus,” he insisted, but when he looked at me he had tears in his eyes. “By the grace of her father.”

  Grace, whosoever it was, certainly worked in bizarre ways, and it dawned on me that this longtime enemy might be made an ally.

  “Paul, are you staying long in Ephesus?”

  “For as long as the Sp
irit of Christ Jesus commands me to be here. Why do you ask?” He was wary again. “And you never answered my question, what are you doing here?”

  “I am living in the hills, in greater Ephesus,” I said with Ma’s emphasis, “with Jesus’s mother.”

  “The Old One? She still lives? But why here? She seemed content enough among the Galatians.”

  I decided not to answer in too much detail. There was nothing about Ma being understudy to Artemis of Ephesus that Paul would understand.

  “She just took it into her head,” I said truthfully enough. “She’s a seer, you know.”

  “A prophetess of the Lord,” he corrected me.

  “Yes, well, as to that, she thinks….” I paused again; did I want to trust him? Why not? Grace had brought me safe thus far. “I think she believes Sarah will come here. She said, ‘All roads lead to Ephesus, and all the paths of the sea.’ Paul, I must ask you to do something for me.”

  Who else of all the people in Ephesus would recognize Sarah, know who she was.

  “What is it, Healer Woman?” he sighed.

  “If you should see Sarah in the city, tell her how to find us. We live near the top of that mountain, in a fold between three hills. She must ask for Mary’s house, Meryemana. Any of the people on the mountain will tell her where it is.”

  Paul looked at me intently, not asking the question I sensed hovering on the tip of his tongue. And why should I tell her how to find a sinful woman who utterly failed her as a mother?

  “I am asking you, Paul, in the name of Jesus, for the love of Jesus.”

  “Healer Woman,” he said at last. “In the name of Jesus, I promise to help your daughter find you, if it be her wish. But I must ask a promise of you in return.”

  I’m not sure that’s how grace works, Paul, it’s supposed to be free. I wanted to say, but there was too much at stake for a rash retort.

  “Yes?”

  “Do not, and I mean not ever, under any circumstances, interrupt one of my teachings again.”

  I bowed my head, so that he could not see my face. It was a lot to ask. Here I was about to make another deal with another apostle, to give away spiritual authority so that I could see my daughter. Then I realized that all the time I had spent listening to pharisaic debates had not been entirely wasted. Paul hadn’t asked me to promise not to refute his teachings or undermine them, just not to interrupt them. Well, that was only polite.

  “All right,” I said. “I promise I will not interrupt one of your teachings again.”

  “Promise in the name of Christ Jesus.”

  “I am not sure he would approve all of this promising in his name business,” I felt obliged to point out. “He didn’t like being put on a par with God when he was alive.”

  Of course the god-making death might have changed all that, I did not add.

  “Just do it,” said Paul. “I haven’t got all day.”

  It was true; the blaze of magic books was probably smoldering embers by now. He’d better get back before he lost his audience.

  “All right, in Jesus’s name, I won’t interrupt your teachings again.” Although I might in the name of Artemis or Isis, I added silently.

  He gazed at me sternly almost sorrowfully.

  “Goodbye, Healer Woman.”

  To my astonishment, he gave me the kiss of peace.

  “The peace of the Lord be always with you.”

  “You, too,” I said, not very liturgically.

  And we turned and went our separate ways.

  As I began my long climb into the hills, slower now with the burden of my supplies, I hardly noticed my shortness of breath, the strain on my back, the sweat. Seeing Paul of Tarsus had stirred all the memories of those last days on the mountain with Sarah. Now I had a new bizarre hope that he might help me find her or help her find me. For she was out there on the sea, not far away, I was certain. Who else could be working the weather magic the sailor had reported?

  About halfway back, I stopped to rest by the side of the road, and at last my mind calmed and my senses reasserted themselves. The air was cooler, the shadows longer, the sun beginning to move in and out of western cloud banks. The city of Ephesus, with its commerce and public debate, its book burnings and baptisms, already seemed far away, a toy city, full of self-importance. Above me rose greater Ephesus, its bees busy in the heights where the sun lingered longest.

  I stood and suddenly felt the heaviness of my sacks, the weariness of my legs. Not too far below me a man was leading a donkey up the road. I decided to wait to see if he would help me with my burdens part of the way, if his donkey wasn’t too heavy laden. As the man drew nearer, I thought he looked familiar, but I didn’t recognize him as one of our neighbors. He was about my age, I reckoned, grey and bearded but quite hale. Just as I was about to approach him to get a closer look; he halted his donkey and stared.

  “Mary?”

  I was so startled, I looked around to see if there was anyone else nearby, but except for the donkey, the man and I were quite alone.

  “Mary!” he said again.

  Then I wondered if someone had mistaken me for Ma, since our neighbors called her by her Greek name. I looked at the man more closely. I knew I knew him, but still no name would come to me.

  “Mary of Magdala,” he spoke for a third time.

  Magdala! At the very name of the place that had been more home to me than any other place in the world, I could smell roses, and hear the slap of waves on the shore, the sensual late afternoons when we would bathe and decorate each other with henna and flowers. In two places at once, I took a step toward the man, toward a memory of a group of young Galilean fishermen teasing their friend Peter, who had brought a thank offering for the birth of his son—to a whorehouse. How good-natured and loud the men had been, how wonderfully and simply male. I took another step and another.

  “John?” I spoke at last.

  His face opened into a smile, and he looked almost as young as when I met him.

  “Son of Zebedee and Salome?”

  He nodded and took a step towards me.

  “One of the infamous Sons of Thunder?”

  He was weeping now. He opened his arms to me. I walked straight into them.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  BELOVED DISCIPLE

  SO YES, YOU HAVE JUST MET the one-day-to-be Saint John whose ruined church still stands near the desolate Artemisian plain, the John some people believe was the beloved disciple, while others argue it was really me. The John Jesus is supposed to have addressed from the Cross. Son, behold your mother, mother, behold your son. The John people call the Evangelist, though I am here to tell you, he did not write that Gospel, nor did he write Revelations, for which people also credit him. John, then as now, was a common name. John Doe, John Smith. John, son of Zebedee, a fisherman from Galilee, one of my beloved’s best friends, and a companion to me in one of the sweetest interludes of my long widowhood. Here our stories come together briefly, kernels of truth for legends that grew beyond us.

  “Oh!” I said when we released each other, our sweat now thoroughly mingled. “You’re that John!”

  “Which John?” he said, understandably confused.

  “The John who lives by the sea and sometimes visits the hills, the John who teaches the people to be kind to widows and orphans, to welcome the stranger. That John, who teaches as our friend Jesus taught.”

  “Oh, Mary, I pray I am that John,” he said. “But how do you come to be here? When I heard that some woman had challenged Paul of Tarsus in public, I thought to myself just the sort of thing one of the Marys would have done. I felt homesick for the old days. But I never dreamed it was you. No one has heard of you since, since you—”

  “Since I managed to give you all the slip in the midst of your siege of my home?”

  He had the grace to look embarrassed.

  “I can see now that it was wrong and cruel to try to take the child from you. Ah, Mary, we’ve all made so many mistakes, had so many
disputes among ourselves. That’s why I came here in the first place, to get away from all the wrangling in Jerusalem and Antioch. It’s hard to know what’s right or wrong without Jesus here, without the way he would look at you, straight into you, so that you could not lie to yourself—or him.”

  I felt suddenly impatient, not just with him, with us all.

  “Do you really believe Jesus was always so certain of everything himself? We can’t use his absence as an excuse. We’ve got to stop hiding behind him, dressing up our will as his. We have to face ourselves.”

  My vehemence surprised me. It had been so long since I had spoken with anyone other than Ma who had known Jesus in the flesh. He lifted his eyes from the ground and just looked at me. This once boisterous man, always making jokes, often at Peter’s expense, had grown thoughtful. He seemed tired and more than a little sad.

  “I don’t want to quarrel with you, John. Come with me to Miriam’s house,” I said. “They call her Mary here.”

  “The Lord’s mother!” he said. “She is still living? Has she been with you all along?”

  “Much of the time. We’ve come to these hills because she wanted to. I’ve just been in the city buying winter supplies.”

  “And…and the child?”

  “That is not a tale to tell standing in the road.” If I tell it at all, I added to myself. “Come, Meryemana is just up there, in that fold.”

  John looked where I pointed.

  “How can that be?” he asked. “No one lives there. The people believe it to be the dwelling place of some…some goddess. Even those who have come to believe in the saving grace of Jesus persist in pagan superstition.”

  “It may be more than superstition,” I hinted. “Come and see for yourself.”

  He looked at me, curious, hesitant. In their youth, the Thunder Brothers had been overly full of zeal, on one occasion pleading with Jesus to call down fire from heaven to consume unconverted Samaritans. I found this new lack of self-assurance touching.

  “Of course, I will,” he said at last. “You must let me carry your burdens.”