I was about to ask her many questions, particularly concerning the creation of destiny itself but she had already begun to tell of other things.
46
BREAD OF LIFE
It was near Passover, pairé, when Jesus sat with his disciples on that mountainous fertile outcrop near the Sea of Galilee. He had brought them here, again, to teach them of those things that were hidden from others…’
‡
…Simon-Peter was sat near his master, looking out at the moon that seemed like a splinter in the flesh of the black sky and the stars that were locked in conversation. Simon-Peter knew nothing of the moon, save that it enticed the waters, and he nothing of the stars, save that they pointed the way home, so he looked at the sky is if it were a silvered sea and this calmed him.
It had been over a year since he and his fellow fishermen had left their boats to follow Jesus, and since then, Simon-Peter had seen the master turn water into wine and cause the lame to walk and the deaf to hear. He had watched, awed and fearful, as he admonished the Pharisees, as he cast out demons, and cure plagues. His wonderworking had not only brought a girl back from the brink of death, but also a dead youth back to life and at those moments he seemed like a god known only to a man in his dreams – an awesome powerful, terrible God, full of glory. At other times, when he slept and taught and walked with them, he seemed no more than a man.
In truth, when his master was not teaching or healing, he was often times quiet and withdrawn, walking ahead of them with his feet bloody from blisters and his head bent, like a ghostly shape that either melted into the heat-haze, or dissolved into the desert wind. Many times Simon-Peter found himself speaking like his master. His fellow disciples too, seemed inspired by his way of being, so that they also talked in his manner, with his voice.
These were strange goings on for a lowly fisherman, and whenever he thought on it he felt a dullness overtake him. He missed his sea and his boat and asked god for a dream, a dream of his boat, limed and new and ready, with its lateen sails full of breeze.
And so he slept. And God granted him a dream.
He dreamt of crowds on the shores of the lake. They were hungry and were fed bread and fish by his master, who seemed happy. But then his dream took him out on his new boat but it was not a calm day, the water was raging and the lateen sails were torn and the great waves broke over the bow. His master was in the water, calling out to him to come. Simon-Peter was afraid and yet he attempted it and found he could not stand on the water, he was sinking, and he knew it was because doubt had made his faith run out.
On waking he remembered the dreams and did not know what to make of them. Even at that hour, many were arriving at the shores of the lake to be healed, and after a hasty breakfast of bread, soaked in honey, his master began to address the crowds.
He took some bread in his hand, and said to them. ‘You eat bread to feed your hunger, but your souls need something else, your souls need what I teach, which is the bread of life. Unless you eat of my teachings, you have no life in you! Nothing everlasting, for the bread and water of ordinary life are not meat and drink for heaven!’
Murmurs came from the crowds and someone said to him, ‘Are you not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Why should your teachings be like bread, and why should we eat of it?’
‘Those who know me, also know that if they eat of my teachings they shall have life even after death!’
Simon-Peter saw red beard, Judas Iscariot, making a mocking face to a number of people who were shaking their heads. Thomas was frowning and so were others.
The crowds became restless.
A man, no doubt a scribe sent from the Pharisees, stepped forward.
‘When you tell ordinary people these hidden things without preparing them, it is like letting them eat bread without washing their hands!’
Jesus did not speak, but waited. The crowds grew noisome and angered, and it was a long time before his calm voice caused a well of silence to form, ‘Well did Isaiah prophecy of you hypocrites…’ he said, ‘for you concern yourselves more with who is listening and care nothing for the teaching that I give you. It is not what goes into your mouth that defiles you, but what comes out of it…for your teaching, Pharisee, is like putrid meat!’ he said.
Offended and angry, he and those who had come with him made to leave with much hatred in their hearts.
Later, when the master and his disciples walked on the shores of the lake again, trailing behind those few who had remained with him, Simon-Peter deigned to ask him a question.
‘Those folks were offended at what you said. They did not know what to make of what goes into the mouth and what comes out of it. Come to think of it, I don’t know what to make of it myself, but that is because I am ignorant and stupid!’ He looked askance, ‘But there are others…clever men, who do not love you as I do. They follow you with disdain upon their faces. What you say offends them.’
He looked at Simon-Peter without anger and raised one quizzical brow, ‘Do you say this because it offends them, or because it offends you, my brother?’
Peter felt shame rise to his cheeks and he averted his eyes. ‘My rabbi, all your followers will go if you keep with such talk, and you will be left with nothing but scraps…’
‘I have you. Is this not true?’ he said, looking at Simon-Peter and others who were gathered about.
Simon-Peter’s face opened up. ‘Yes, of course, rabbi, always shall you have me, a thousand times shall you have me, but how must the few of us who are true to you, gather in the harvest?’
‘Yes, rabbi,’ Andrew added catching up, ‘how are we to do it? After all, we are a sorry lot!’
His master regarded Andrew. ‘The blind cannot gather a harvest, this must be left to those who see…if a blind person leads a blind person into a field, they will both fall into a hole. Let all those who are led by the Pharisees, who are blind, go after them…they shall not reap much together that is certain. They are not my concern.’ Then, ‘Andrew, tell me, what do you see?’
Andrew could not hold the master’s eyes. ‘I am only a fisherman, Lord. I understand about fish and nets and the sky and the sea. I know very little of these things you tell, but I believe in you.’
The master clapped him on the shoulder and gave it a shake. ‘You have always asked me to speak plainly to you, and yet, is there one of you who hears my words? What shall you do when I am no longer with you, hmm? What shall you do, when you have no one who can tell you how to live?’
The day had turned hot as they had walked along the lake’s edge. His master brought up the cowl of the robe without a seam and put it over his head and sat down on the sand with his feet touching the cool water. The others all did likewise, except for the red beard, Judas.
‘I have spoken plainly to you, but you don’t listen. Listen…the Pharisees give the people something they can take hold of, laws, traditions, but these are not eternal, they are only for the body, you see? What I give you is something that you can never take hold of, but once you have it, you can never lose it because it will have a life in your soul, it is eternal. Do you understand?’
He looked to Judas and to Thomas. ‘I see that there are some of you who do not believe in my words. And I say to you that you are in this circle because it pleases God…even those whose hearts are hardened against me.’
Judas shook his head, ‘My heart hardens when you speak of the soul without telling us how we are to liberate our bodies! First, you must liberate us from our oppressors. Then, only then, we will eat of your teachings!’
‘If you liberate your souls,’ the master said, ‘if you change your souls, then the world will also change, not the other way around. The world is as hard as it is, because in your hearts you are hard.’
‘You are not in me, and you do not know how I feel,’ Judas said.
‘You say I do not know you, but you have no faith, Judas, and because of it you do not know yourself. Faith melts away hard hearts and wakes the mind so that it can
know itself.’
Simon-Peter remembered his dream, the multitudes and the bread and the fish, and his faithlessness in the stormy seas, and now he understood! Yes! Of a sudden he saw his ordinary self, fall away from him, the self that was made up of country, of folk and family. In his heart a vision arose of another self, a higher, more clearly his – self. And this self was none other than his teacher, who sat among them.
Fish and Fisherman were one!
He realised then, that what his master had given them had many names, and yet had only one name. This bread, this food, these teachings, this kingdom brought down to earth, was an intimate thing – a light that pierced his soul. Suddenly all that his master had said had come true! The river of the world roared in Simon-Peter’s ears then, and he told himself,
This is that something you can never take hold and yet once you have it, you can never lose it – your own eternal selfhood, which is given to you by Christ!
‡
‘What a riddle!’ I said to Lea.
‘Yes…but he understood it, pairé,’
‘Well, are you going to elucidate it for me?’
‘It just means, quite simply, that a man’s word, his I AM, is the God in the man.’
‘The God in the man is his Word! Oh! Yes…the fish and fisherman were one, pupil and teacher, lower self and higher self! I see my, child!’
‘And that moment of grace, of exquisite, concentrated knowing, would never leave Simon-Peter. Even many years later, when Roman soldiers nailed his racked and tortured body to an upside down cross, he would recall it with joy: that once, amid life’s dream he had caught a glimpse of his true self.’
‘What every man would seek to see outside himself!’ I said, ‘Even though it is always looking at him, from within his own heart – Christ, the Son of the living God!’
Lea smiled like a proud parent.
47
THE BEARER
Joseph of Arimathea stood at the gate of his garden rubbing his beard. The people called this place ‘the paradises’ because it was not far from where stood the tomb of Adam and the shrine of Jeremiah. Its verdant lushness also separated Jerusalem from the harsh desert, and that hill of the gallows, used by the Romans for their crucifixions.
The day was not yet woken from sleep and in the cool airs Joseph bent to remove a weed. He was a wealthy and prominent member of the Sanhedrin and an Israelite, deemed worthy to represent the people of Israel, but if the truth were told he was more at ease in his garden with his weeds than at the temple.
‘Who would know him from an ordinary man?’ his wife would say to her neighbours. ‘He wears old clothes and old sandals and when he’s not digging in his garden he is visiting the Essenes! Anyone would think he has no family!’
Joseph sighed now to think on it. Over the years he had been designated a ‘friend’ of the order, which meant that he was given generous hospitality at any of their houses, whether they be monasteries in the desert or fraternal houses in the towns.
‘He gives those ascetics everything, while his family must cope with crumbs!’ his wife would say, ‘even that house in Jerusalem he owned with Nicodemus has been given over to them! It’s no small wonder they love him so!’
Joseph passed a hand over his brow. He knew the Essenes did not love him only for that house, which they had made their own, but also because he had entered into their teachings with energy and with vigour and had withstood many trials and passed many tests.
He paused to take in the aroma of his garden, the fragrant scent of dew and wet grass, and his mind turned from his wife’s nagging, to that time not long ago on the banks of the Jordan when he had seen something remarkable. After witnessing the Baptism of Jesus he had gladly neglected all his duties at the Sanhedrin, and yes, he had left his family and friends to follow Jesus from place to place, town to town, in order to listen and to learn from him.
One evening, as he was near to falling asleep, Jesus came to him and said, ‘Joseph of Arimathea, wake up, my brother! You should return to your home, for the time is near reached when you must prepare your grave.’
He must have seen the apprehension on his face for Jesus said, ‘Don’t be fearful, Joseph…death always comes, and when it comes, it is better if there is a grave. Go now, before it is too late!’
Remembering his sadness for his oncoming death, he paused at the threshold of the great walled vaults of his sepulchre and peered into the darkness of it. He knew his grave contained enough niches to house thirteen bodies, and so it was grand by normal standards, with even an anteroom, and two further rooms beyond it. The work was near finished and still he did not feel ready, God forgive him! To think on it made big tears fall from his eyes to the dirt at his feet. A gasp escaped his mouth and he fell then, with his knees on the wet, fragrant dirt outside the grave.
He kissed the dust and cried, and kissed it again, and cried again. ‘Dust dust! How stiff-necked and stubborn you are! How shameless you are that you consume all the light in the world and then grind it into nothing! How impertinent you are that you will take Joseph into your bosom to eat him up when he is not ready!’
But a bird flew overhead and his eyes were directed to the heavens, to the gold-gleaming of the waning moon making its slow descent towards the west. He saw something in the moon’s dark shadow; in that great disc dimly visible above the shimmering vessel there was something so faint as to be only a whisper of the eye…
He remained upon that impertinent dust, looking up to the heavens long after the moon had set and the sun had risen and the day had begun. When his stonemason found him, he sent one man to Joseph’s wife and another to the physician, for he thought that Joseph had collapsed from some strange malady. But no one knew what was wrong with him.
They did not understand that Joseph was not ill at all, but merely overwhelmed with a feeling of veneration, which had, for a moment, seized his limbs and made them like stone. For he understood what he had seen in that black disk within the gleaming gold sickle of the moon: It was a word written in the cosmic script…a name…
Joseph.
48
WHO AM I?
They were near the coasts of Caesarea Philippi and Jesus walked ahead of the large group. Young John bar Zebedee walked beside his brother James, and Philip and Simon-Peter, and they talked amongst themselves. These last weeks had been difficult. Many of those that in the beginning had followed the master willingly with love in their hearts, those that had been healed or saved from evil spirits had been turned away from him by the sermonising of the Pharisees.
Numerous deputations had come from Jerusalem to lure Jesus with questions that worked like traps, seeking always for answers that transgressed the laws of Moses, or that spoke ill of the Romans, answers that could be used to brand his master either a blasphemer or an insurgent. But Jesus, time and again, saw beyond all their tricks and answered their questions eloquently and skilfully.
Others came to discourage him, telling their master that Herod Antipas was seeking to kill him. To these men he said,
‘Tell that fox that a prophet does not die outside of Jerusalem. When I am ready to die, I will come to the city and offer myself up to be killed!’
As time passed, temple guards, as well as other soldiers at the behest of Herod, were sent to seize him and to take him away for questioning, but they did not know him from his disciples and were forced to turn back. Amid these vicissitudes his master led them over the land like hunted men, fleeing over the sea one moment, or to the farthest reaches of Palestine the next to escape the clutches of those who would do him harm.
Some days previously, a report had arrived of John the Baptist’s beheading at Machareus and this had caused great mourning and anger among the disciples. Afterwards, Jesus spent many a day deep in prayer. Young John and his fellows wondered what their master would do next, feeling afraid for their own safety, desolate and alone for the absence of the one whom they had followed even before Jesus.
Even so
, John sensed the beneficent presence of John the Baptist, as if his spirit were paused over them in blessing. He tried to tell his brother and the others of it, but only Peter would acknowledge it. The others turned their grieving ears more and more to Judas.
This day, as the sun sat close to the margins of a sky scattered with cloud, John walked with the others across a great plain of reed and marsh. Judas was speaking to them and to the greater following that trailed behind, with his dark eyes and his soft rasping whispers.
His talk made John low in spirits since it began to shape the thoughts of his fellows and turn them against his Lord. As the sun descended, even his own mind turned to his sore and aching feet and to something to eat and a cool place to rest, and he too began to wonder if his master were considering their exhaustion and their need for comfort.
He was full with relief when, having come to a place where there were a number of Essene herders, his master made a sudden pause and gestured to a great tree atop a grassy knoll where they would spend the night. The air had been hot all day and now there was the rumble of thunder. John thought it a shame that it was not yet night, for he loved to see the lightning chase the skirts of the clouds. He ate their cheese and drank their milk, grateful for food, and was lost in his thoughts when Jesus’ voice disturbed him,
‘Compare me to something, and tell me what I am like.’ His voice was light and in his eye the look spoke of a riddle. John liked riddles and he looked around the circle and the others were all looking at him. His smiled waned and he was full of uncertainty.
‘You are…’ he began.
But Philip, who had been chewing on his cheeks, broke in. ‘Some say you are inspired by what comes from Elijah or what lived in other prophets…they say you are a messenger!’
‘Would you call Elijah, a Son of Man?’ he said to John again.
John felt his face flush. A long time he felt it, and then he harnessed his courage to say, ‘You are…’
Fifth Gospel: A Novel (Rosicrucian Quartet) Paperback Page 26