The Gospel of the Twin

by Ron Cooper

  Tears welled up in my eyes. I knew, and so did he, that I could not leave him. “I want to see that light and hear that song, Brother.”

  “Sometimes I can know your thoughts, too, Thomas. You’re yearning to see Leah, aren’t you?”

  “I’m very tired. Let’s go to sleep.”

  Jesus laughed a bit but didn’t push the question. Sometimes, he did indeed know my thoughts before I voiced them.

  Verse Two

  The next morning, Mary came to offer us bread for breakfast. Judas, a few steps behind her, motioned to me. I went to see what he wanted as Mary sat down beside Jesus.

  “What were you and Jesus speaking about last night?” asked Judas, who was with Simon, Andrew, and the brothers James and John.

  “We were discussing when we should leave and where we should go.”

  “What more?”

  “That’s all, Judas. Why? What’s wrong?”

  Andrew placed his arm on my shoulder. “Thomas, when we were with the baptizer, we sat together most nights and talked—a council with no secrets. John may not have been the leader we wanted him to be, but we always knew what he was thinking. I’ve told Simon, James, and John all about him, and how I am even more dedicated to Jesus, but . . . I thought . . . Thomas, what will—”

  “Does Jesus have a plan?” Simon broke in. His tremendous jaw jutted to the side as if something was stuck in his teeth. “His discussions with us are enlightening . . .”

  “Yes, enlightening,” said James. John and Andrew nodded.

  “. . . but I agree with Judas,” said Simon. “We need organization—a chain of command.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Each of us could be responsible for a group of these people,” Simon said. “Then we could communicate to them more directly. Like officers with regiments, we—”

  “What do we communicate?” asked Judas, who often succumbed to his natural impatience, but most often with Simon, even when they were in agreement. “I’ve tried to talk seriously with Jesus, but I can’t get anything out of him.”

  “Yes,” I said. But I was torn. The concerns of these men were legitimate, but I needed to shield my brother while he struggled to give shape to his new mysticism. We were at risk of losing not just these men, but other followers who yearned for a more concrete path, whether political resistance or withdrawal to pray in dark corners, or communal withdrawal into caves like the Pure Ones, but I did not want to rush Jesus into a role he was neither ready for nor suited to fulfill.

  “I think what we’re all trying to say, Thomas,” Andrew said, “is that we’d all feel better if Jesus would talk to us, just us, on a deeper level than his sermons. Those are parables and lessons for the simple people, but we―those of us right here―need something more from him. Thomas, I want to put all my trust in him, all my family’s trust, and so does everyone else here. But he needs to show us that he trusts us.”

  “Yes,” I said. I could hear the ache in Andrew’s voice. First the Baptizer, now Jesus had offered him something more than wringing out the barest of livings on this murky lake, all while underneath a long Roman shadow. The woebegone souls gathered here by the water, who clung to Jesus’ every word and who couldn’t be sure they would eat the next day, had the same longing, and it seemed that I had to say something at that very moment, something at least to take the edge off their fearful hunger, or a thousand dim hopes would darken into shadow.

  I had to take a chance and hope that they did not see the obvious conflict with what I had just said moments ago. “Jesus told me remarkable things, friends, astonishing things,” I said. “If I told you only one of them, you would not accept it. He’s aware that something is developing in him, ripening to a fullness that I’m sure we all sense in him. He’s also aware that he cannot yet express this—this renewal—in a manner to which you can relate. But there is something that I should tell you. Remember, I am his twin, and we have shared an ineffable bond since before we could speak. You grew up with us, Judas. Is this not true?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And often I can express what is brewing within Jesus better than he can. Right, Judas?”

  “Yes.”

  “After all, this is why you came to me instead of him. Right?” They all nodded. I waited for the duration of eight or ten breaths, to give them the idea that I was about to reveal something of immense consequence. I had to make this sound good. “Friends, I believe that God is working within Jesus.”

  “Is he the messiah?” asked John.

  I wiped my sweating forehead on the arm of my robe. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure that God will reveal something through him, as he did with the prophets. But Jesus is part of a plan. When we are speaking in private, I hear something more―almost another voice, as if the spirit of the Lord dwells in him. He’s at the center of something that is taking root, a great unfolding, like watching a lily grow.” I was afraid I was sounding as nonsensical as Jesus had sounded to me. Judas was much better at such fabrications, as when he convinced the Romans that John was a serious threat to them, and like any talented liar, he was also adept at detecting lies. But when I glanced at him, I saw no suspicion.

  Simon tilted his great head and released a sigh. “Thomas, I believe you. I also believe that Jesus can help reclaim our nation and build a new temple. So tell us what to do now. Are you saying that Jesus needs some time? We can give him that. But in the meantime, we need to get things in order—get our people in order. They need structure. They need discipline and training.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll speak to Jesus again today—a serious talk about plans. We can discuss this again tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” they all said, except for Judas, who turned about sharply and walked away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Verse One

  That afternoon, as a few dozen townspeople joined our followers to hear Jesus speak, a young woman in mourning—she wore black and most of her face was covered—approached Jesus and fell at his feet weeping. “Master,” she said, “I have been told that you are a great teacher—that you are blessed by the Lord with wisdom.”

  “Woman, I am no one’s master,” said Jesus. “Stand up. Tell me of your pain.”

  The crowd began to gather around. Jesus helped the woman to her feet, and she moved the shawl from around her mouth. “My baby is dead,” she said. “He was only four months old and suffered his entire short life. For three weeks, I spent my days on my knees, looking up to heaven, beseeching God to spare my precious baby. Why did He take my child? I want to know why He did this to me!” Her mouth fell open and released a deep wail, and she went limp into Jesus’ arms.

  “Ease my pain, Master? Ha!” said a man teetering at the back of the crowd. A wine skin hung from his shoulder; he was obviously drunk.

  A quick spasm rippled under Jesus’ eye, which I’m sure no one else noticed, but I knew he had been thrown off his guard. He must have sensed that his handling of this woman was a major moment for him, for he did not look toward me for an indication of support, which the crowd might have taken as a sign of desperation. The woman wept and coughed. Jesus steadied her and stroked her hair as some in the crowd murmured. I wanted to help him, but what could I do?

  “Are you going to bring her child back,” yelled the drunkard, “or give her one of your own?”

  James and John emerged as if they had burst up from the bowels of the earth. Each took one of the drunkard’s arms as Simon directed them to toss the man into the water. The man cursed the entire way, calling Jesus the “son of a half-shekel whore” and James and John “bastard swine.” He spat on them both and bit James as they dragged him to the water’s edge and shoved him. He stumbled and fell under the water, then arose, threw a handful of mud at them, and raised his wet garments to expose his ghastly groin, inviting everyone to fellate him in the same way as, he said, all the
ir mothers had done Roman soldiers.

  Many in the crowd gasped, but others laughed. Many of the newcomers whispered to each other, and I wondered if they were troubled—as I was, but slightly—by the display of force against an obviously pathetic degenerate.

  Simon beamed, no doubt thinking of himself as sergeant-at-arms or a centurion, capable of protecting Jesus from any danger. I’m sure he thought of James and John, and probably all of us except Jesus, as his legions. He looked to Jesus as if expecting praise, but Jesus only stared toward the men in the river, expressionless, as if he were a disinterested spectator. I thought he was sizing up the spectacle, deciding whether to comment or to let it die on its own.

  Along the river’s edge, the drunk walked away, calling back curses that we couldn’t hear. James rubbed mud on his arm where he’d been bitten. I hoped that the distraction would somehow resolve the affair of the woman and her dead child. Perhaps the people gathered about would forget and wander off or realize that expecting Jesus to end the poor woman’s suffering was too much to ask even of a prophet, but the crowd returned to Jesus like a flock of starlings obeying an invisible cue.

  “Do not look for God in the heavens,” Jesus said to the woman, loud enough for the rest to hear. “If God were above, would He not fall to the ground? In the sky, you find vultures soaring, clouds floating, the sun, the moon, the stars, and other mysterious lights moving about the firmament. What do they represent? Distance. They are all out of reach. The God that is our being is depth. God is in the thickness of every experience, in the fiber of the flesh, in the ground beneath our feet. God is that which makes possible touch, appearance, being with the things of the world. Crack open a stone, and God is there. Split a timber, and God is wedged in the grain.”

  It was one of those moments in which I felt the air crackling about me, like when you slip into a wool blanket on a brisk night and the wool prickles and snaps. Just as Mary had described, I sensed that Jesus was tapping into some divine current of truth that could not be directly transformed into language. I was sure others were affected in the same way, but I feared more would be confounded. The more momentous a pronouncement, the more likely it is to be misunderstood.

  Whispers began to move through the crowd. “Did he say that God is the dirt and rocks?” a man beside me asked a woman.

  “I think he said God is flesh,” she said.

  “That’s even better,” the man said.

  Jesus held up his hand. “Listen. A man took his son for a walk through their village. The man stopped to purchase olives from a merchant. When he turned to leave, he could not find his son. The man searched madly for the boy. His neighbors and the city managers shouted the boy’s name and checked all the shops in the village.

  “Then the man found his son playing with sticks not far from where the man had last seen him. He hugged his son and wept. ‘You were lost, and I have never been so afraid,’ the man said. ‘I could not live without you.’”

  Jesus turned to the woman and placed his palm upon her cheek. “The boy said to the man, ‘But how could you lose me, Father? Haven’t you told me that we are the same flesh?’”

  The woman wrapped the shawl back around her face and walked away. We all watched in silence as she moved through the crowd, breathing sharply through her nose as if to stave off tears. She made her way back towards the town, her back straight, head high, paces brisk. When she was about a hundred cubits away, Jesus bent down and picked up a handful of dirt, stood, and rubbed it between his palms. Simon, still beaming, took Jesus’ arm and led him through the crowd.

  “Did you see? Jesus healed the suffering woman,” said Simon. “She was grieving, in unbearable pain, and Jesus soothed her tormented soul.” He stopped along the way to address people individually. “You, sir. You saw it, and you heard the divine power of Jesus’ word. Go and tell your families of this miracle.”

  I turned to ask Judas what he made of this. Jesus had pulled something inspiring from this tragedy. He had taken an incident that could have resulted in utter embarrassment for him and deftly transformed it into a moving moment, but did Simon really believe that a miracle had occurred, that this woman, who left no better off than she had been when she arrived, been “healed” by a “divine power”? Was this not just a strange power play by Simon? But Judas ran to Jesus’ other side.

  “Friends,” said Judas. “The mother of a dead child, and Jesus performed a miracle. He delivered this woman from despair. Let him do the same for you! Follow him and let him do the same for Israel!”

  Instantly, the people were murmuring.

  “He healed her. Did you see it?”

  “Did Jesus raise the child?”

  Mary walked in front, tears streaking her radiant cheeks.

  I was astonished. I didn’t think Jesus had even comforted the woman, and some of these people somehow thought he’d raised a dead child. I expected Jesus to pull himself away from them and express the same disgust I felt, but instead he pressed through the sea of bodies, reaching out to brush the haggard hands of devotees who were now more dedicated to him.

  In the early evening, after supper, when some had returned to their homes in the town, Judas, Mary, Simon, Andrew, and the Zebedee brothers fanned out among the crowd to, as Simon put it, “administer.” My brother’s peculiar words still trembled in my ears, and I could not make up my mind whether they were craftily designed or accidentally brilliant. I took Jesus to the water to be alone and tried to get him to describe what had happened as he’d moved through the revering crowd, but he was still just too full of himself.

  “The kingdom must awaken within before it spreads without,” he said. At another time, I would have been happy to pursue the ramifications of the metaphor, but at the moment I needed to know if he was aware that his friends were transforming this ragtag band of foundlings into a movement.

  “That may be true,” I said, “but what of Simon and Judas’ claims―this business about a miracle?”

  “Where else would a miracle occur but in the healed soul?”

  “Can we save the poetry for another time? Do you think you healed that woman’s horrible agony? And whether you do or not, is that the basis for a movement? Magic?”

  He smiled and looked out across the water. A lone boat was returning to shore late.

  “What is magic, Thomas? Isn’t it—”

  “Are we going to do this all night?” I said, raising my voice. Jesus snapped his head toward me. I saw his widened eyes in the dim evening glow. “I’m trying to get you to answer me directly, and you keep spewing your graceless proverbs. I’m not one of your childish admirers, and I’m not Judas or Simon, who might only be using you for whatever wild schemes scamp about in their heads.”

  “You’re speaking very harshly, Thomas.” The white of Jesus’ eyes still showed.

  “Of course I’m speaking harshly!” I realized that my teeth were grinding and my lips were drawn in like a cornered animal. I also realized that I had cornered myself, not quite sure of what he could have said that might satisfy me. I uncurled my fists at my sides, inhaled deeply, and squatted. I rocked on my heels with my arms stretched out over my knees. Jesus didn’t move or say a word. “I just want to get a better idea of where this is all going.”

  Jesus squatted down by me. “I was counting on you to tell me.”

  Verse Two

  “I am fortunate to have friends like them, Brother,” Jesus said to me early the next day. “The empire of the Lord could have no better governors.”

  “Governors,” I said. “They would appreciate such a title.”

  We were beside a stand of cedars. The trees’ spicy aroma wafting in the cool morning breeze and the thin shafts of sunlight needling through the branches gave me a sense of the world beginning afresh around me. I wished that I hadn’t been so brusque with Jesus the night before.

  He took off his sandals
and slapped them together. “A transformation is taking place. You must have noticed how our friends have become more focused. A movement, as you call it—more organized, more official—needs a plan. This is what our friends hope to force from me?”

  “You have been working toward this all your life, Brother,” I said. “We have a dedicated following—brave men who put all their faith in you. You are their hope. Not Israel, not the Lord. You. But personality alone will not keep them in your footsteps.”

  Jesus closed his eyes and turned his face upward. He filled his lungs, swayed as if hearing music, and released his breath with a low hum. “I’m feeling it, Brother.” He twisted his ankles as if he were digging his heels into the dirt. “The earth quivers and moves through me. It throbs into me like waves on the lake. I think if I spread myself just right, I will roll like a drum.” He grabbed my forearm. “Do you feel it, Thomas? Do you feel it?”

  I wanted to feel it. Perhaps a tinge of what was rippling through him could tell me where he was heading, whether he was marching to Rome like a conqueror or curling into himself like a snake. For a moment, I cared little for the followers, for Judas and Mary and Simon and the others, for a plan, or even for the future of my people. I cared only for some sense of what my brother was becoming. He squeezed my arm and hummed. I concentrated on his hand as it pressed harder against my skin. I waited for something to quake. I felt nothing.

  “You feel that, don’t you, Thomas?”

  “Yes. Yes, Brother, I do. I felt something. I mean I felt it, this, yesterday when you spoke of the Lord as depth. What does it mean?”

  Jesus’ chin sank to his chest, and he inhaled deeply through his nostrils. Sweat dropped from his brow. He released my arm and rubbed his temples with the heels of his palms. “Now the pain comes. The earth smells sweet and brightness rings my vision. I hear them, something—almost like voices singing behind walls.” He leaned forward with his face near his knees. “This pain in my head is part of the message. This reminds me that the calling is mine only. No one else can have this pain, and no one else can answer this call.”