by Nick Tosches
I immediately recognized this as one of my omnipurpose homilies, one that was simple and dulcet, but subtly edged with the lace of revolution. He wove Greek and Hebrew, that everyone in this rustic backward hamlet might understand him.
“The seasons of a tree are many. The seasons of a man are few. We are told in the Book that some prophets of old lived to be many hundreds of years old. But these are not the reckonings of the years these prophets walked the earth. They are the reckonings of their years as was measured by the depth of their wisdom. Thus a prophet may not live to see his eightieth year, but may be said to have possessed eighty upon a hundred and more years of wisdom. I am sure that some among us here today, if their ages were to be calculated in wisdom-years, would be said to be very old indeed.
“Yes, we dwell on earth for only a span. But I am here to tell you that, though we perish, yet we live on. The loving arms of God await our spirits as the grave awaits our bodies. This, too, is as designed. For your good works will not be without reward. And beyond the grave, there will be neither toil nor years, for there will be only the fruit of your good works, and they will be yours for all eternity, which is vast and not to be measured by the years of man or the years of his wisdom.”
He paused long and let his eyes wander among theirs. They were in the thrall of what he said and his manner of saying it.
“But something approaches. Something glorious with light, dark with terror. A light as you have never before known. A darkness as you have never before feared. Yes. Something comes.
“You say that I am the possessor of a key. You say that I have made the lame to walk. You say that I have graced the blind. You say that I am of deliverance. You say that I have raised the dead.”
Oh, how pleased I was to hear him add these two lines to what I had written. He was brilliant.
“These things that you attribute to me, I tell you that they are as nothing to what approaches.”
He raised his right hand before him, and before all who gazed on him, and he slowly turned it.
“If this frail hand can do as you say, imagine the powers that lie in the hand of my Father: the powers of the light and dark of what approaches.
“And I tell you that these are the last of days.” His gentle smile in time returned.
“A great and holy new temple is to be built. That, and the spreading of the Word, is our mission.
“I know that you are poor. As I have said, I came here only because I felt a summoning to do so. I do not expect or ask any offering of you for the building of the temple, for you can ill afford it.”
Many of them turned to look at one man who stood with them.
“I want you to know, however, that the name of Simonias will be carved into the corner-stone of the temple, and that it will be yours to share in spirit and in flesh, and will welcome you, as all others who do prepare for what approaches.”
The man to whom others had turned retreated. He returned and put a coin into the hand of Jesus. From where I stood, I could see the soft gleam of gold.
A young man approached Peter. They studied one another, then smiled with recognition. The young man was also a fisher of the Sea of Galilee. They spoke for some time, and then the young man came to Jesus.
“I want to follow you,” he said.
“No one follows me,” said Jesus, more so that the others who gathered could hear him than to respond to the young man. “Men walk with me.”
“Then I want to walk with you,” said the young man. “Will you have me?”
“I will have any who believes in the Way.”
Oh, no, I thought. Two disciples, two fishermen. Was this to be a tilapia expedition or a mission that merely smelled like one?
And we would have to start defining this “Way” of ours. Vagaries could get one only so far.
“Look to my disciple Gaius here,” I heard Jesus saying. “He is a gentile by birth, and a Roman too, and even he is accepted among us, for he has accepted the Way.”
Maybe I had that one coming.
The young fisherman introduced himself. His name was Andreas, or such was the name that Jesus put on him.
We must try to bring the Sadducee priest into the fold. He would attest that a figure of the established religious authorities had seen the divine supremacy of our Way, whatever that might be. And, if I had rightly understood, the Sadducees were of the moneyed aristocracy. If we could open his family’s purse-string, other aristocratic purse-strings very well would be opened to us as well.
As if my thoughts had invoked him, our priest stood before us.
On our meeting at Bethlehem, the priest was accompanied by two men, one a Sadducee rabbi and one a subaltern to the vice-justice of the Sanhedrin. With him again now was the rabbi. As at Bethlehem, the priest wore garments of pure linen, but not the embroidered sash or other trappings of the attire that distinguished him in Jerusalem.
The priest stepped forward to kiss the cheeks of Jesus in greeting, and then my own.
Jesus introduced the priest to our new companion, the disciple Peter. Together Jesus and the priest ambled off. Making way for their aimless path, the gathering dispersed into smaller groups, each of which fell into discussion that was in turn pensive and excited. Peter and I and the rabbi walked in tandem behind Jesus and the priest at a respectful distance, but we could hear much of what they said. Our young Andreas tagged along at a farther length, happily telling those he encountered that he now traveled with Jesus.
“I have heard much of you on my journey here,” the priest told him.
“No lightning struck me, and there was no rainbow,” said Jesus. “It was merely a storm such as we all survive.”
“I heard nothing of thunderbolts and rainbows. I heard of the restoring of the lame and the blind. I heard this very day, crossing the plain of Esdraelon, that you have raised the dead.”
“He was not dead, but only slept.”
Peter was about to speak out, but I restrained him with a staying hand and a look that advised silence.
“How does a man who has done what you have done—how does such a man speak with such modesty?”
The two men’s steps upon the ground were of equal pace, but the mind of my wily Jesus was one step ahead of the priest’s.
“Modesty? I fear that I have none. I fear that arrogance consumes me. These deeds of which you speak, these deeds that have been attributed to me: they are not of my doing. They are nothing.”
He beheld the palms of his hands, and the priest beheld them, too. The sun was now setting, and the palms of his hands took on a rosy glow.
“These deeds are not of these hands. If these hands had power, I would have them bring well-being and understanding to all.
“I am asked, and so I do; and always I expect nothing to happen, but something happens. Yet I have tried to effect things through these hands by my own wilfulness—simple things; the healing of my own aching feet—and I cannot. It makes me feel very insignificant. It makes me feel that this mortal shell I occupy is a plaything of capricious behests that are not my own.
“Why should one inconsequential man among the multitude of worthier men who went to the grave this day be raised from the dead?
“It makes no sense. It cannot be justified. It seems to me nothing more than monstrous spectacle, putid trumpery for the entertainment, not the edification, of the low-minded.
“It is the words that I am given that I would have them acclaim and noise abroad. Therein lies my arrogance.”
“So you still hear the voice of David?”
“No.”
“Then what is the source of these words that you are given?”
“The voice of another. A different voice. One that is not audible to others, unlike the voice of David, which my good companion Gaius heard as clearly as I. This voice speaks in elemental tones that are not words and yet are words.”
“If it pleases your arrogance, know that much is said, too, of the words that you speak.”
Jesus appeared gratified to hear this, but the true gratification was mine.
“Do you never feel that what you call monstrous spectacle is a way to summon the attention of people, to prepare them to more fully hear and heed your words?”
Jesus hesitated, as if thinking, then answered.
“No,” he said. “I feel that the Word is of more awe than the hideous sight of a corpse staggering forth from his bier only to one day die again. How can the author of so wondrous a Word be also the author of so cheap and abominable a display as befits a cheap and abominable magician?”
“Perhaps it is a metaphor.”
“Metaphor,” grumbled Jesus. “Metaphor for what?”
“For the new life and resurrection of which I have heard tell you proclaim. Perhaps it is an emblem of these things.”
“If this is true, it is an ugly metaphor, a shoddy emblem. And what of a single lame man who is made to walk while all the rest of the lame of the world are left lame? Is there a metaphor, an emblem, in that as well?”
“There is again a raising, a rising, in it.”
“This is why you are a great rabbi. You can speak in endless circles round anything, until the circles tighten to form a noose to throttle the truth.”
The priest laughed, but when he spoke again, it was in earnest.
“It is you who are the great rabbi,” he said. “It is you whom we have come to follow; you who were addressed by the voice of David in Bethlehem as mashiach, and are now addressed as mashiach by many people in many places. Yes, we have come to follow you on your way, if only for a while, to hear your Word as it unfolds.”
“I am honored to hear this.”
The snare I worried over had been fashioned and entered into by the prey.
“You know,” said the priest, “that we of the Sadducees have been taught that there is no resurrection, no life hereafter. You do espouse and proclaim these things, do you not? We wish to hear more of this ‘new life’ of which you are said to tell. We know that your meaning when you talk of these things is much different from that of the Pharisees.”
“I know little of the teachings of these schools. To me, these are all more to do with temple politics than with the Word and the Way. For me, there is only the Word, there is only the Way.”
“We believe in the word of the law as written in the Book. Is it not a new Word that you reveal?”
“It is the Word that lies before and beyond what is written. It is not new, but only unpronounced.”
“And we of the Sadducees have been taught that oral law is as nothing, that the written law is all.”
“The elemental tones are not oral. Nor do I speak of laws. How is it that you can accept and defend the raising of the dead, but not the Word of him who uses my voice as he uses my hands to perform such things?”
“I accepted you on the day that I met you. I have for far longer accepted the one who seems to dwell at times within you. This has nothing to do with acceptance, or even with the doctrine and nature of my officiating as a priest.
“It has to do with feeling. And I do feel, in Jerusalem and throughout the land, a shaking in the air. I feel that something is coming, or something has come.”
Jesus did not say that he had told the people of Simonias of the great approaching. It would be better that he heard tell of this from the townsfolk.
“It will be good to have you with us,” Jesus said.
“You call those who follow your teachings your disciples.”
“As are called those who follow any teachings.”
“And you are aware that this word, talmidim, which is the same in Hebrew as in Aramaic, is found but only once in the Book.”
“And you are aware that I am not so learned as you.”
“It occurs only once, spoken by God to the prophet Isaiah, meant by God to describe those who were taught of him.”
This Isaiah was becoming a haunting to us. The priest spoke the words from the Book:
“Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.” Jesus looked to him.
“The testimony,” said the priest, “is the written law. It is the doctrine of the coming of the mashiach, the coming of the Messiah.”
Jesus was silent awhile, then spoke: “This is most curious.”
The priest was silent awhile, then spoke: “It is a part of the shaking in the air.”
And so it was that Aaron the priest and the rabbi Ephraim joined our merry glorious-doomsday band.
Now there were more eyes close upon us.
Aaron seemed unlike a temple priest. He seemed lacking in avarice and ambition. Ephraim seemed unlike a rabbi. He had a carefree and jovial side to him. Peter took Andreas under his wing like a younger brother, so that at times it was hard to tell whose disciple the young man was.
It was good to have as our disciples learned men of the Book as well as unlettered fishermen, men of the city as well as men of the countryside. It gave our mission an air of universality, widened our appeal.
I must say that it was strange to be the only gentile in our traveling troupe of players. And stranger still to be in a troupe in which most of the players were unaware of the heavy iron masks they wore. A fool was a fool, no matter his erudition or lack of it. I sometimes amused myself comparing the ways of the cosmopolitan aristocrat to the ways of the agrestian bumpkin, who were united in their unknowing folly.
But we are all fools, are we not?
Winter came, but in this beautiful land, the climate did not much change. So, as fools, we wandered on.
One afternoon, we came upon a spring and rested. The sun was low in the deepening blue and lavender-flowering sky, immense, like a vast planchet of gold, an enormous aureus not yet struck. We gazed at it, as if spellbound, watching it grow as it descended, turning from soft gold to apricot, from apricot to orange, from orange to cinnabar, from cinnabar to blood-red scarlet.
The perfect sphere sighed the last of its light on us, and in the deepening blue and lavender-flowering sky, we saw a great bird that was bigger than a man, a bird whose head was of white, whose body was pale brown, whose wings and tail-feathers were so dark to our eyes that they appeared to be black. If it was as long as a man, the span of its broad wings surpassed the length of two men.
None of us had ever seen such a thing in the sky before. It passed slowly, effortlessly, alone.
At last, when the creature could no longer be seen by us, the priest spoke.
“I believe it was a griffon vulture,” he said.
Not only had we never seen such a creature before, I and the fishermen had never heard of it before, either.
It was the rabbi who then spoke, saying: “The first bird to appear in the Book is the raven. There are many others. But the griffon vulture is the bird of God’s power. It is the bird of all power.”
“So this sign in the sky is good?” asked Peter.
“Its strength and longevity are noted,” said the priest. “In times past, many did make of the griffon vulture a false god.”
“Is its song known?” I asked.
“It has been described as a harrowing,” said the priest. “A dreaded, not to be forgotten sound.”
Jesus continued to stare into the sky, even though all was very near to darkness.
The rabbi let the priest become silent, then spoke words from the Book:
“Where the slain are, there is she.” Quiet fell again.
“And who is it in the Book who speaks those words?” asked the younger of our fishermen.
“God,” the rabbi answered him. “It is God who speaks those words.”
16
ONE NIGHT, AS WE PREPARED FOR SLEEP IN A CLEARING amid trees, the Messiah went off wandering through the tall pines, ostensibly to commune with his elemental tones but more likely to lay his healing hand to his cock and make his bestial sounds. I laid me down and after a while closed my tired eyes to the stars and the risen first-quarter crescent of the waxing moon. I could hear the subdued and quiet talk of Pet
er the fisherman and Ephraim the rabbi. Peter said:
“You are a very learned man. Our Jesus is not so learned as you. Yet you follow him, as I have come to follow him.”
“There are many degrees and kinds of learning, an infinity of them, between knowledge and wisdom. I believe that wisdom is holy and lies beyond the reaches of learning. I believe that he possesses it, in its truest and profoundest form. I believe the gift of being in his presence, the gift of witnessing his deeds and hearing his words, will lead me to the light that is in him, and to a greater light that lies before him on this road to the unknown that he travels, and we with him.”
Then I heard the voice of Jesus, returned from his solitary love-making. He asked the rabbi why the third and eldest man, who was with them at Bethlehem, was not with them now.
“He is a subaltern to the vice-justice of the Sanhedrin. The position of the vice-justice is high, between that of the chief justice and the high priest of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. His superiors—indeed all of the sixty-nine members of the Great Sanhedrin, the supreme high court of Jewish religious matters—would not look kindly on his taking leave, especially and certainly not on his taking leave to convene with a man such as you.”
“A man such as I?”
“Yes. A man such as you, who speaks and seeks the Word and the Way. The Sanhedrin care only for their own authority, their own share of the Temple’s riches, and they are not tolerant of any conceived threat to their status, that is to say, any conceived threat to the established observance of sacred judicial law.”
“So, these Sanhedrin would be against me on the ground of fixed motive? That is not justice.”
“It is to them.”
“But does not the Book they defend, from the first prophets to the last, speak much of the Messiah to come?”
“Yes. But they wish to delay his coming, for it is not in their best interests.”
“So, these Sanhedrin, they go against the words of God and his prophets while defending the law of the Book?”
“You could say that, yes. It was the Lord himself that told the serpent in Eden that there would be born of the generations of Eve a savior who would strike a great blow to the serpent. The Sanhedrin are devout as regards the Book’s foretellings and prophecies of the Messiah’s coming. But they do not want him to come now.