by Ann Swinfen
After a time he waded ashore and I recognised the man Shim’ôn who had teased my brother the evening before. He tipped his fish into a small stone cistern in front of his house, laid his net carefully spread out to dry in the sun, and walked over to where I was sitting. I was not quite accustomed to seeing these men wearing nothing but their loincloths, and I averted my eyes.
‘Well, sister of Yeshûa, what do you think of our town?’
‘It’s very lovely,’ I said. ‘And people seem well and prosperous.’
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes. We are not always so fortunate in our fishing as we were last night.’
I could sense the question behind the words. He seemed a blunt, simple man, but even so he hesitated to ask me directly about that odd event.
‘I expect you would have found the fish yourselves, if you had happened to cast your net there,’ I said.
He shook his head.
‘We had gone back and forth, all along the shore, both far out and close in. Not a fish.’
He was staring out at the lake, his hands on his hips. I saw that the casting of those heavy nets, and hauling them in when they were full of fish, had given him strongly muscled arms, like a labourer.
‘Do you know what he calls me?’ he asked suddenly.
I shook my head.
‘Kêphas. The Rock.’ He gave a bark of laughter. ‘Thinks my head is as heavy and dull as a rock, likely.’
With that, he went off home.
By the time the next Sabbath came, the three of us were quite settled in Capernaum, Yeshûa and I at the home of Salome and Zebedee, and Yehûdâ still with Shim’ôn ‘The Rock’. I had raised with my brother the question of finding employment, but all he had done was to smile sweetly and say, ‘The Lord will provide.’
I bit my tongue to stop myself pointing out that it was Salome and Zebedee who were providing, not the Lord, and instead did what I could to help Salome. She seemed to hold my brother in a sort of awe since the episode of the boats sinking under the weight of fish. Me, she treated like a daughter, and when I asked if she would show me how to make the delicious sweetmeats and cakes she served after every meal, she set about teaching me. Yeshûa had been invited to preach at the kenîshtâ on the Sabbath, so we made our way there with Zebedee’s family, meeting up with Yehûdâ, Shim’ôn and Andreas on the way.
‘Shim’ôn’s mother-in-law is very ill,’ Yehûdâ said to me. ‘They’re worried about her. Shim’ôn’s wife has stayed at home to care for her.’
For myself, I was worried about what might happen in the kenîshtâ. Were we about to be driven out of town again, if Yeshûa said something that the townspeople took amiss? I hardly heard the first part of the service, sitting with my hands clenched between my knees, dreading the moment when my brother stood.
At first all was well. He did not offer a learned and detailed commentary on the scriptural passage he had read, as the elders of the kenîshtâ do. He did not quote cryptic passages from the Book, as he had done at home in our village. Instead, he began to talk as if he were sitting under the awning on some family’s terrace, cracking nuts and drinking shechar.
‘My friends,’ he said, reaching out his arms to us, ‘I have come to tell you of a new world that is soon to come, a kingdom of righteousness.’
His eyes were alight, his smile as warm and embracing as the gesture of his arms.
‘Think of it! A kingdom of righteousness! What does that mean?’
He seemed to invite us to answer, but we looked at each other, tongue-tied. It was impolite to interrupt the speaker in the kenîshtâ.
‘Or let us think of it like this—What is wrong with the world now? Men are poor and cannot provide for their families. Women are bowed down with labour from dawn to dusk. Children wander the streets in rags, their bellies swollen with hunger, their diseased eyes the nesting places for flies. Is this right? Is this what the Lord God wants for his children?’
There were a few soft murmurs, and one or two people shook their heads.
‘We have rich men who feed the leavings of their feasts to their goats, while the poor lie, starving, at their gates. Our wild and hilly places are filled with outlaws, many of them men who were once as honest as you or I, but have been stripped of every possession by drought and famine and taxation. They live like wild animals, preying on their fellow men. Do you not know, yourselves, of some who have been driven from their homes, even here in the pleasant town of Capernaum? And it is even worse amongst the small farmers.’
My brother seemed to light up with his passion, and he filled the whole room with that light. He burned with a sudden powerful energy, as if it had been clamped down all the years of his confinement in the village and at last had burst forth into bloom, like a desert suddenly blessed with rain. I could feel a tension in the room, as if everyone there was holding his breath. In fact, I was holding my own breath, and let it out cautiously. Everyone there knew about these terrible things of which he spoke.
‘You may say: What is this to do with me? I am a simple person. I have little enough myself. It is for the great men, the Sadducees who control the Sanhedrin, the priests and Levites, the tetrarch Antipas, the Roman occupiers, even the Emperor away in Rome, to change the world. What can an ordinary man like me, going about his daily work, do to change things? This is the way of the world. This is how it has always been, and that’s how it’s always going to be!’
More people were nodding now, grinning ruefully at each other, shrugging their shoulders. Of course that was how it was always going to be.
‘No!’ My brother slammed his fist down so hard on the reading stand that the scroll leapt and rolled sideways. It was only stopped from being defiled by contact with the floor through the swift dive of the shammâsh, who caught it as it fell.
Everyone jumped. There were gasps of surprise, and perhaps even of fear.
‘A new kingdom of righteousness will come,’ Yeshûa said, ‘but only through our own actions, each and every one of us. We must all look into our hearts and cleanse them of sin. We must feed the hungry and shelter the widow and orphan. We must heal the sick and treat our neighbours with kindness.’ He smiled around at everyone, suddenly gentle again.
‘It is not necessary to be a rich man to give unto others.’
I was reminded suddenly of Daniel, crying out joyously, ‘He wasn’t a beggar, he was an angel!’
I caught the eye of the woman who had given me the peach and smiled. She smiled back, and I began to relax. Everyone was listening attentively, nodding in agreement. Their faces were bright with interest and hope. They seemed to approve of what he said. I thought: It helps that here they think of him as the man who helped the fishermen to a wonderful catch, however it was done. They do not see him as a nobody, the carpenter’s son, setting himself up to lord it over them.
I had relaxed too soon. There was a movement, a disturbance, amongst the men sitting near the door. A man stood up, wild-haired and wild-eyed. He shouted out, ‘Let us alone!’ His voice rose to a shriek as he clambered over the benches in front, thrusting people aside, and ran out into the centre of the room. He was shaking and sweating, great damp patches on his tunic.
‘What have we to do with you, Yeshûa ben Yosef? Have you come here to destroy us?’
My brother stayed quite calm. He strode forward until he was close to the man, laying his hands gently on the man’s shoulders and confronting him face to face. The strangest thing was that for a long time he said nothing at all. He merely fixed the man, who was surely possessed by mazzíkím, with a terrible intense gaze. After he had compelled the man to look into his eyes and not turn away, he called out, ‘Hold thy peace and come out of him!’
The man fell writhing to the floor, then lay there, limp. I thought at first he was dead, but then I could hear his gasping breath, until suddenly he was quiet. Yeshûa reached down and helped him to his feet. The man stumbled and looked confused, but he was quiet and biddable as a good child. He went meekly back to hi
s seat and sat down.
The rest of the congregation could contain itself no longer. A roar of noise filled the kenîshtâ and for a moment I thought they were going to attack Yeshûa, as our own villagers had done. Then I realised that their faces were elated, not angry. People left their seats and crowded round him, some simply reaching out to touch him.
Salome turned a shining face towards me.
‘That man has been afflicted for years. No one has ever before been able to bring him peace. Your brother must be truly beloved of the Lord.’
I followed her out of the kenîshtâ, where I saw Shim’ôn talking urgently to my brother, holding him by the arm. Yeshûa was standing with lowered head, almost like a man ashamed. Then he nodded and followed Shim’ôn in the direction of the shore.
‘Mariam.’ It was Yehûdâ, his face excited. ‘Come with me. I think we may see something remarkable.’
When we reached Shim’ôn’s house on the foreshore, a crowd was already gathering around it, but they made way for us, whispering, ‘It’s his sister and his friend.’
We followed Shim’ôn’s brother Andreas upstairs and stopped outside an open bedroom door. Inside I could see a woman lying very still in the bed.
‘It’s the mother-in-law,’ Yehûdâ whispered. ‘This morning the fever was so high, they thought she could not live.’
I saw my brother step up to the bed. He leaned forward and took the woman’s hands in his. He seemed to say something, but I was too far away to hear. He passed his hand gently over her face. Then he and Shim’ôn helped the woman to her feet. For a moment she looked about her uncertainly, then she patted her hair into place, and put her hands palm to palm, to greet my brother formally. As she walked steadily towards us, looking as healthy as any woman I have ever seen, a gasp went up from our little group beside the door, which parted to let her pass.
‘Andreas,’ she said, ‘tell the maidservant to lay out the Sabbath meal for our guests. We will eat at once.’
Could this woman have truly been as ill as her family seemed to believe? I did not know what to think, for I saw no sign of illness about her.
We ate a peaceful cold meal with Shim’ôn’s family, as was fitting for the midday of a Sabbath, and afterwards sat talking quietly under the vine arbour at the back of the house, looking out over the lake, which was also bathed in calm, for no boats would put out on the Sabbath. Shim’ôn’s mother-in-law presided over the meal as though she had never experienced any illness, and no one spoke of it, though while we spent what was to be our last tranquil afternoon I noticed one or other of the guests stealing covert glances at Yeshûa.
In my own mind I was confused. Three times in the space of less than a week I had seen my brother do something strange. I had caught the word ‘miracle’ as we left the kenîshtâ, but could that be true? Yeshûa himself had told me of the cures he had studied while he was at Qumrân. I knew that these had including the calming of madmen and the casting out of the mazzíkím that possessed them. Were these miracles? I had heard of holy men who had had God-given powers, like Honi the Circle-Drawer and other miracle-workers, who had lived not long ago, in our grandparents’ time, not back in the misty past of Abraham and Moses. And the glut of fish? Well, perhaps it was just as I had said to Shim’ôn the other day—the fish were there all along, and the fishermen could have found them, had they looked in the right place.
As dusk fell and the Sabbath came to an end, our party began to stir and break up. The fishermen talked of preparing their boats to go out on the lake for a night’s fishing. Sometimes they would set a flaming torch in the bows of the boat to attract the fish, and they were discussing whether tonight would be a good night for spear-fishing by torchlight. Shim’ôn’s mother-in-law was anxious to set about the household tasks that had been neglected while she was ill, but would not do so while we guests were present. It was then that we heard a growing noise of voices approaching the front of the house. When we walked round to see what was afoot, we were met by a press of people, crowding into the narrow street in front of the row of fishermen’s houses. Some carried torches, which distorted their faces into grotesque bumps and hollows. I saw that some had rashes, others were lame, many had the unmistakable signs of blinding eye diseases. Some had made their way here on foot, others had leaned on the shoulders of their friends, some were even carried on litters.
‘There are people here who are not from the town,’ Shim’ôn whispered to Yeshûa. ‘How can they have heard so quickly?’
Somehow, even on a Sabbath, when no man is permitted to travel far, word of what had happened in the kenîshtâ had reached the nearby villages. Perhaps the healing of Shim’ôn’s mother-in-law, though in a private house, had also become known. I saw my brother recoil as the crowds pressed forward, almost crushing him against the front of the house.
‘Heal me, master, I beg of you!’
‘Please, lord, my child is lame!’
‘Master, let me see your face, cure my blindness!’
Hands were reaching out towards him, groping, fumbling, tugging at his clothes.
Under the light of the torches, Yeshûa was as white as newly bleached linen. I realised that, like me, he was afraid. Partly I was proud that so many came to honour him. Then the crowd surged forward again and their excitement and hope flowed out towards me like a great wave, but I began to panic. There was such desperate urgency in their cries, they looked as though they might rip him apart, limb by limb, if he did not feed the hunger of their need.
I was terrified.
‘Mariam!’ Yehûdâ caught me by the arm. ‘I’ll take you away from here, back to Zebedee’s house.’
I shook my head.
‘You must stay with him. He will need you.’
‘Are you sure? Will you be safe? Promise me that you will go straight back there.’
‘I will go round by the beach. And Yehûdâ . . .’
‘Yes?’
I did not know what it was I needed so urgently to say. All I could manage was: ‘Look after him.’
It was late by the time they returned, Yeshûa and Yehûdâ and the four fishermen. Salome, Zebedee and I had waited for them, sitting silently around a table in the light of a single oil lamp. Even here we could hear the sounds of the crowds from along the street. Sometimes exultant cries reached us, sometimes what sounded like groans of despair. At last the six of them came in, all looking dazed, like the survivors of a terrible storm or an earthquake, Salome and I served them wine and a supper which had been keeping hot by the fire. No one spoke much until they had finished, then Yeshûa looked round at the fishermen and Yehûdâ.
‘Will you join me in this work?’
‘Lord,’ said Shim’ôn, ‘we cannot lay on hands and heal the people.’
I noticed that he no longer called my brother ‘the lad from the mountain village’.
‘I shall teach you to be a fisher of men,’ said Yeshûa. ‘In my name, I think you may heal them also, but much more important than that is to bring them the word. We must prepare Israel for the coming of the new kingdom. That is my mission. I am sent unto the lost sheep of Israel, above all to rescue sinners and persuade them to repent, before the final judgement.’
I shivered. There was a new note of conviction in his voice, and authority in his manner, that I had not seen before. It made the hairs on my arms rise.
‘I will ask you to follow me throughout the Galilee, for it is here I must make a start. You must leave behind your homes, your wives and children, and live celibate and pure.’
At that, I saw Yehûdâ’s eyes turn towards me, but I avoided them. This was not a matter to be discussed before others.
Shim’ôn alone spoke.
‘If, when I have prayed and sought for guidance from the Lord, and when I have taken counsel with my family, then I will decide whether I will come with you,’ he said simply. ‘For now, I cannot say.’
‘You do not refuse outright?’
‘No. I do not refuse.’
The other fishermen nodded. I think none of them could have refused him, after the events of that extraordinary day. But to convince them to give up everything and follow him on some mission whose extent and purpose seemed unclear, that would demand all the powers of persuasion my brother could muster.
Later, when everyone else had gone home or retired to bed, I found Yeshûa still sitting by the embers of the dying cookfire. He was pale as death and shaking. Kneeling beside him, I put my arms around him and tried to still the shaking with the warmth of my own body.
‘Oh, Yeshûa, what is it? Are you ill? All those sick people . . .’
He buried his face in my shoulder, so that his voice was muffled.
‘I could not cure them all, Mariam. I could not cure them! And their cries of desolation, all hope gone, I cannot get them out of my head.’
‘Hush,’ I said, rocking him as he used to rock me when I was a child. ‘Think of all those you did cure, how you have changed their lives forever. Had you not come here, they would have gone to bed tonight, as they have done every other night, blind, or lame, or bleeding, with corrupt flesh.’
‘And besides,’ he said, as though he had not heard me, ‘my mission is to preach the new way, the true way to God, through love. Not to go about like a jobbing doctor, treating men’s bodies and ignoring their souls.’