by Ron Cooper
Verse Two
Jesus, Judas, and I set out to find John. First, we went to the Lake of Kinneret, and the village of Magdala, where Judas visited Mary, whom he had not seen in months. When she heard what we aimed to do, she decided to go with us. Her family was angry. “You will be an unmarried woman traveling with men,” they said. “You will bring us shame.”
“Then I shall marry,” said Mary.
Verse Three
We found several cults in the harsh land near the Jordan. One group called themselves the Watchers, awaiting what they called the last days. They refused to have children and did not bathe. They slept during the day and sang hymns at night.
Another group followed a man named Nahor. He rode about on a mule and said that he would lead his people to Rome as Joshua of the scriptures had led our ancestors against Jericho to reclaim our homeland, a seven-hilled city that would flatten like a slain seven-headed beast.
Others had come to hide, either as fugitives or scheming radicals, but none escaped Roman eyes. Soldiers passed through often, making sure to be seen.
“This is not good,” I said. “Whatever John is doing, he will be seen as one of these militants.”
“He is a militant,” said Judas. “Is that not why we are here?”
Jesus smiled. “Judas, my beloved cousin, John is not interested in bloodshed. Neither are we.”
Mary stroked Judas’ forehead. “Listen to Jesus, my love, and cool your anger.”
“Do not worry about him, Mary,” said Jesus. “His blood is hot, but his heart is larger than he will admit.”
Far south along the Jordan, we came to a place where two or three hundred sat by the river, listening to a gaunt man who shouted from atop a crude wooden platform. He accentuated every third or fourth sentence by ending with “ha!” or “unk!” and foamed at the mouth like a possessed dog. I hoped this spastic lunatic, dressed in rags that barely covered him, with hair matted like a forest goat’s, was not John. Besides, the audience seemed too small to account for the attention John was receiving.
“Rejoice, my people!” he shouted, pointing at us as we neared the front of the crowd. “These are good men from Nazareth, these three out of tens of thousands, who have much to teach us.” I knew then that this crazed man was John, and I wondered what would happen next.
A man near us said, “I’ve heard that nothing good comes from Nazareth.”
Judas scowled, but Jesus said, “You speak truly, my friend. Why do you think we left?”
The man laughed. “I have also heard that nothing good comes from anywhere else in the Galilee,” he said, “so we share the same fate.”
He was a fisherman named Andrew. We spoke with him for some time, and he told us that John had a way of providing hope to his listeners, more by his intensity than by anything in particular that he said. Andrew was in John’s inner circle and smart enough not to be a mere follower.
Verse Four
For two months, we lived as outcasts with John and his straggly assembly. In the mornings, some would try to catch fish while others pulled up reeds with bulbous roots that tasted like grainy radishes. Jesus and I built a proper platform from which John could deliver his sermons.
He would start at midday and preach for hours about how we were in another form of captivity, this one worse than what our ancestors had faced under the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Greeks. He would call for God’s wrath to bring about a great apocalyptic cataclysm. When I witnessed his ferocious speeches, his knotted hair jerking, spit flying from his lips, his bare feet stomping the rough stage, I could almost believe him.
When the sky was clear, we slept on the ground. If rain threatened, we huddled together like sheep under oiled sheets draped over ropes. These people were lost in their own homeland, aching to feel that they belonged, and looking to John to give them shelter. Some seemed lost in their own bodies, having no sense of identity, no belief that their lives were unfolding in meaningful stories, and hoped that John was a magician who would draw out the life hidden within them just as a conjurer draws out birds from his cloak.
Others wanted John to call down a legion of angels with flaming swords to slaughter the Romans and the Judeans as well. Still others had no idea what had lured them to this jagged edge of a crumbling world. But as each day passed without such miracles, I expected them all to lose their enchantment with him and stumble off to seek another promise-maker. It never happened.
Once a month, at night during the full moon, John would lead the group into the water and baptize newcomers. Some—those who must have thought themselves incurably soiled—would jump into the line to be dunked each time he offered.
Mary said that we should join them to represent a new beginning.
“I’m not sure,” Jesus said. “Baptism is a ritual cleansing. Do you feel unclean? Besides, John is not a priest.”
I was confused by Jesus’ comment. “Ritual? Priest? When did you start caring about rites?”
Jesus picked at the back of his hand as if removing a flea. “I don’t care. I just . . .” He lowered his head and rubbed his temples. “It would mean that we are putting our faith in John. He seems to believe the Lord will lead us in war, or . . . I don’t know. What do we expect? Maybe the time isn’t ripe.”
“When do you think the time will be ripe?” asked Judas. “Do you have a plan? Let’s just get into the water. That will align us more closely with John. At least he has a following, and more people join every day. We can build upon it. It’s not much now, but we could have the start of an army here.”
Jesus looked up at Judas. “You’re the only one here thinking that.”
Judas laughed. “You haven’t been listening to John.”
Judas, Mary, and I took our places in the baptismal line. Andrew, who had been baptized the month before, stood on the river bank and waved at us. We entered the water and John submerged us one by one, each time chanting something about entering the water as stained slaves but rising as washed soldiers for the Lord. Andrew hugged each of us as we walked out of the water.
When we looked back towards the river, we saw that Jesus had joined the line.
“Well, well,” said Judas. “Perhaps Jesus is ready to join the fight after all.”
“Stop it, Judas,” Mary said. “Jesus is only showing that he is with us. Right, Thomas?”
“Of course,” I said, although I really did not know what to think.
“I believe Jesus has ideas that none of us know,” said Andrew.
When Jesus’ turn came and he waded into the river, his back straight, his head high, John announced, “Behold this man! He is upright and good and righteous. Why do you seek cleansing? Are you not already favored by the Lord?”
“Am I not a man?” said Jesus. He placed John’s hand upon his head and lowered himself into the water. When he arose, the full moon emerged from behind a cloud, and he was awash in light, as if even the heavens knew that Jesus was unlike the rest of us. The people watching on the bank cheered.
A complex set of emotions—embarrassment, jealousy, admiration—swelled in me. Did Jesus expect John to say that he was not a man? What else could he be? Everyone who met him recognized that Jesus was special, but what was John suggesting when he said “favored by the Lord”? For that moment, I felt as if I were not part of Jesus—as if he had stepped into a room and locked me out. Am I not his twin? I thought. Am I not a man like him?
I left the riverbank. Soon Judas caught up with me. “Do you understand what just happened, Thomas?”
I did not answer but continued to walk away.
“John did not simply baptize Jesus as he did the rest of us. He anointed his successor. You saw how John acted when Jesus walked into the water. And what about the others? Have you heard anything like that when anyone else was baptized? These people, and surely many others, will do whatever Jesus say
s.”
“That’s their problem.”
“Thomas, you see how they look at John? Longing to be told what to do? He just repeats that the wrath of God is on its way and all they can do is wait. They sit for the same tired speech for days on end, but they ache to be given orders. If we counsel Jesus onto the right path, and if Jesus commanded it, we could raise tomorrow an army of Galileans who’d face the Romans barehanded.”
Judas actually made sense. “You may be right,” I said, “but first, John is still the leader here. Second, you know how Jesus rejects violence. If I agree with you on what we should do, we’ll need a long time to change Jesus.”
“He may change if something moves him enough—something to make him hate the Romans enough to reject his nonsense about nonviolence.” Judas had a smirk that I had known since childhood. He would get this smirk just before he stole a honey cake or throw a rock at a passing soldier.
“What are you talking about?”
“We can discuss this later, Thomas. For now, let’s go back to the river. I’ll have John baptize me again just to show him how serious I am.”
I could tell that Judas was working on a scheme, but I could not imagine then how monstrous it would turn out to be. I returned with him to the river, where John embraced Judas before re-baptizing him.
Just before his face went under the water, I again saw the smirk on Judas’ face.
Chapter Nine
Verse One
Mary said to Judas, “Why have you not married me? Do you not love me?”
They were relaxing with Jesus, Andrew, and me by the river. The cool season was finally moving in, and we were quite happy just to watch the reeds ripple in the breeze. Bluntness was in Mary’s nature, and she often asked intimate questions as easily as others ask what the hour of day is.
I was surprised when Judas answered without hesitation. “I love you more than I love the heavens and Earth and all that is within them,” said Judas. “I’d rather spend my life scrubbing the floors of a Roman whorehouse and eating pig bones from their table and know that you once thought of me fondly than live as the King of Persia without your memory. I’d rather haunt the caves of Sheol ten thousand years knowing that you lived and remembered me than sit by the throne of the Lord and be forgotten by you.”
I had never heard Judas speak with such tenderness. And I thought then that if anyone could temper his militancy, Mary could.
“Then let us marry now,” Mary said. “Is John not a priest?”
So we went with them to John. He was sitting on the edge of his stage talking casually to a few dozen people seated on the ground before him. I think his subject was the prophet Micah.
Mary led Judas by the hand, stepping briskly through the seated group. “John, Judas and I want you to marry us.”
“Who am I to marry you?” asked John. “I am not a man of the law.”
Mary placed her hand upon John’s. “If not you, John, then who?”
“Why do you seek anyone’s authority?” Jesus said. “Is your love not a strong enough bond on its own? Male and female seek their rest in union. This is the way of the world for all eternity. Bind your spirits as one, and you will become children of the Lord. Come with me.”
Jesus led Mary and Judas onto the platform. He turned them to face each other, then placed their hands together. Judas and Mary kissed, and then Jesus kissed them both. Jesus began to sing, “We are one with the Lord, and the Lord is one with us.” We all sang together and danced, and we told each other that we were not of the world but of a different kingdom, and that night we believed it.
“Your brother is a born leader,” someone said at my side. I turned to see Andrew smiling at the stage.
“Indeed. But we already have a leader here.”
“Perhaps for now,” Andrew said, and then he joined in on the dance.
Verse Two
We continued to live with John for nearly another year. Hundreds more followers came to hear him preach from his platform about “the filth piling up to our necks that no Jordan can wash away, but which can be cleansed only by the flaming hand of God,” and about “the awful clash between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness when the Lord sends us His anointed one whose sword will flash like a blinding star,” and about “the long night of blood when we shall cry out for death but instead shall endure to rejoice over the grave of the slain seven-headed beast.” His followers wept and cheered at these stark, frenzied words and believed him anointed by the Lord to bring about a revolution. John said nothing to deny that belief. In his speeches, he would tell the people that they were unworthy to do the Lord’s work, and they would cry to him, “Make us clean!” Each month the lines grew longer, forming long before sundown, with those waiting to have him submerge them in the river.
At night, as we sat around the fire with him and a few of his closest followers, he would tell of a great transformation that the Lord would soon initiate.
“The world will change,” John said to us. “The Pure Ones have scriptures that tell of this, and I have seen visions of it myself. But the Pure Ones were satisfied, like most of our people, to sit and wait. That is why I left them, for I am trying to prepare us to take charge as the Lord gives us the signs.”
“How will the signs come?” I asked.
“They come each day,” he said. “You and Jesus and Judas—you are signs.”
“We’ve heard this before,” said Judas. “Many have claimed that the Lord will appoint a leader, and some have claimed to be such saviors. Each has proved false, and most have paid with their lives. The Romans charge them with sedition and nail them to trees so that we can watch them die in agony. We must prepare in secrecy and choose our compatriots with care.”
“You speak as if you’re fearful, Judas,” said John.
“I fear only that you’re walking the wrong path—one that leads us nowhere,” Judas said.
“Judas may sound rather sharp,” Andrew said, “yet I think, John, maybe you should give us a clearer idea of how and when the revolution will occur.”
“Look about you!” John said. “You’ve seen the numbers grow. Already we have two thousand, and more arrive each day. They all want the same as you. Soon they will be joined by another ten thousand, and we must prepare them all.”
“I have spoken with some here who are brave and ready, in the same manner as I,” said Judas.
“We know well your readiness, Judas,” Jesus said, “but perhaps the path we walk is wide enough for both you and John.”
I was sure that Jesus did not understand the differences between those two. John was waiting for the Lord, in a flaming, cloud-borne chariot, to lead armored angels in battle against a demon throng while an anointed general led us in a parallel campaign against the Romans here below. Judas had no such heavenly illusions and was unwilling to wait on a God he believed had forgotten us.
I thought they were both misguided, although I agreed more with Judas. But Jesus saw only their fervor. I struggled to abide his habit of seeing only the best in people, sometimes ascribing to them a clarity of purpose and sincerity that they hardly possessed. I constantly worried that he would be exploited by some charlatan he thought a friend.
Verse Three
“Your brother’s notion that John and I can walk a path together is foolish,” Judas said to me the next evening after another day of John’s sermons. Earlier that day, he had asked me to take a walk with him to discuss an “urgent matter.” Now he pointed back toward the camp, where dozens of fires were already lit. “All those people there―are they on the same path? They’re willing to follow John even if the path leads off a cliff. They have no direction, and what’s worse, neither does he.”
We stopped and, for a minute or longer, I watched the campfires brighten in the twilight and thought of their various metaphors. The light of knowledge in the darkness of igno
rance. Portable hearths for the homeless. John’s cosmic Sons of Light amid the Sons of Darkness. I knew that Judas was waiting for me to take his cue. A dialogue would mean, to him, a privileged understanding between us, or even a conspiracy.
“We’ve been here a long time,” I said.
“Yes. And what have we done?” He looked into the darkness as if trying to identify a familiar form, and we resumed our walk away from the camp. “You listen to John just like the rest of us. Have his ideas progressed since we got here? He’s repetitive, and he’s dependent upon style over substance. ‘Prepare you the way of the Lord. A revelation is soon coming. Good will triumph over evil, light over dark. Deliverance from Babylon.’ I admire his talent as showman, and he could no doubt motivate an army to action. But so far, Cousin, he inspires his followers simply to sit and cheer him on. I don’t know how they maintain their patience. John has no plan, Thomas. Am I right?”
I said nothing.
Judas clutched my sleeve, and we stopped. “We are at a crucial point, a point at which we must ask ourselves the unavoidable question: Does Jesus have a plan?”
“You think we should leave.”
Judas used his dagger to scrape at the heel of his palm, perhaps to shave a callus. “I thought for a while that John could distract the Romans while we efficiently carried out a plan. If they believed John was mounting a revolt and focused their attention on him, we could raise a real movement out of their sight. Thomas, we are here because we followed Jesus. We believe in him. You know that he has charisma. People will follow him, but he’s become distracted. He’ll never fulfill his promise as a leader so long as he’s enthralled by John.”
“He’s not enthralled. He’s waiting for the right time.”
Judas spat on the ground. “Then we have to convince him that the time is right.”
I had to agree with Judas. Most evenings when he, Jesus, John, a few others of the inner circle, and I would hold council, Jesus grew increasingly likely to support John rather than disagree: God will deliver us; God will be ready for us only when we are ready for him; the war will not be for land, but for the cleansing of the Earth. That would not have been problematic if John’s ideas were not, as Judas said, so repetitive. “I’ll speak to Jesus.”