Child of Gilead

by Douglas S. Reed

  The plea fades away into the void. The Old Man lowers his pistol and walks over to The Merchant who lies gravely wounded. The Merchant looks up at the Old Man wearily but defiantly, and without fear. The Old Man locks eyes with him. He raises his gun and points it at The Merchant. No words are spoken

  Two shots ring out in the night.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-ONE

  Mama has a story to share.

  An outsider finds himself walking along the Road Less Traveled. He’s a craftsman, a carpenter by trade. He spends his days and nights cutting and shaping the beams of wood that support the path of the subway tracks that snake their way through The City. And now, he emerges from the tunnel that twists and bends beneath the Road Less Traveled. He exits the train station alone. He seeks a moment of rest and a meal, before heading back to work.

  But the Carpenter has gotten himself turned around. He meant to exit at the other end of the station through the gate that would have left him closer to that place called The Madness. It is a few minutes before midnight, the streets are dark and desolate and there is no late-night eatery in sight.

  The Carpenter is lost.

  He can very well return to the subway’s pit and retrace his steps. But instead, he tells himself to just walk along the same path above ground under the light of a full moon. There is a playground up ahead. Most would feel compelled to cross over to the other side of the street believing that it’s never safe to walk past an empty schoolyard late at night. There’s no telling what may lurk in the shadows. But the Carpenter does not yield to such fear. He continues along the path.

  The Carpenter walks past the schoolyard and sees a rustling in the shadows beneath the massive oak tree at the center of the park. He sees a body huddled, curled in a ball, shivering and weeping. The Carpenter walks over to the body and kneels down beside it. He sees a young girl, probably eighteen years of age, but no older than twenty. She has been badly beaten.

  Weakly, she says, “Help me, please. Help me.”

  The Carpenter takes her hand and holds it. He doesn’t squeeze hard, nor does he take her hand roughly. The Carpenter says to the young girl, “Shhh, don’t be afraid.”

  “Look what’s been done to me. No one would stop and help me. You’re the only one. Who would do such a thing? What kind of world is this? The Madness.” The young girl continues to weep softly. “Your name? Tell me your name?”

  The Carpenter takes a single finger and gently traces it along her brow and then along the young girl’s eyelid, wiping away the dirt and bloodied hair that blocks her vision. His touch is gentle. “Joshua. My name is Joshua.”

  ∏

  Joshua... my name is Joshua. Now that you know my story, you may now know my name. My name is Joshua.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-TWO

  Hannah’s child wakes up and it’s a new day. His scars from Gilead are not going away anytime soon. He knows he’ll be cooped up in the house for a little while. But that’s OK. He knows that he will heal.

  Hannah calls for him to come down to the basement apartment. The Boy runs to her voice and finds her standing in the open doorway of the Old Man’s apartment.

  “He’s gone.”

  These words hold no surprise. Hannah motions for the Boy to come closer and invites him to enter the studio apartment. He steps into a large room bathed in sunlight. The apartment is spotless. The bed is freshly made, military grade with the linen razor-sharp and tucked in tight along all sides.

  “Have a look on the table,” says Hannah.

  A small worktable and chair are set against a rectangular wall that divides two windows that look out ground level to the street outside. Atop the table is a small ivory-colored note card.

  Hannah says, “Go on. You can read it.”

  I believe in family. That’s why I came back... to feel like a part of a family again. But the bonds that keep family strong and safe must be pure. They must be rooted in honesty and in truth. They can’t be obscured by secrets or by unspoken truths, or half-truths. In a family, people must be honest about who they are. I’m a selfish old man incapable of sharing myself completely and honestly. And that is why I must go.

  I want you to know this... you and the boy are special to me. And I want you to know that you are loved.

  The Boy stops reading. He takes a look to see if there is more written on the other side. It is blank.

  “There’s nothing more needed. It says it all.”

  The Boy says nothing at first. For a moment, he considers what his mother has said, perhaps wondering about the fairness of it all because finally he says, “How will the Old Man ever know that we love him too?”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-THREE

  The Quiet Hour is like it once was. Just Mama and me alone again, sitting in different parts of the living room with our thoughts. Mama has her artist sketch pad in her lap. She’s sitting on the windowsill. I have Wolf and Boy in my lap but have yet to open it. I tell Mama, “I never got a chance to tell the Old Man the end of this story.”

  “You can tell me,” says Mama, with a soft smile. “Because a story told must have an ending.”

  ∏

  It is said the boy never returned to the life he had known in the village. No one there was really sure of his fate. No one ever went looking. But there is one tale, told by a brave hunter, who became lost after chasing a large deer up the mountain one day. When he returned, he told a wild and unbelievable story of a boy and a wolf lying asleep together under a tree some distance away. But as he made his way, thrashing and crashing through the forest to where he thought he would rescue the lad, he became lost and could neither see nor find them. And so, he returned to his safe villager’s life, speaking in hushed tones of his brief glimpse of a different life he would never understand. People listened to his story, told over and over again until the words were worn. And as the long years passed, some who listened laughed. Some wept quietly. A few crossed themselves in disgust. And, once and again, some few took heart and would lie awake at night listening with hope to the strange and wolfish duet, sung high upon a distant peak in the silver moonlight.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The people in church exalt as the choir sings.

  The Lord is my shepherd;

  I shall not want.

  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

  He leadeth me beside the still waters.

  He restoreth my soul;

  And He leadeth me into the path of righteousness

  for His name’s sake.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death,

  I will fear no evil:

  For thou art with me;

  thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

  Thou preparest a table before me

  in the presence of mine enemies;

  Thou anointest my head with oil;

  my cup runneth over.

  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;

  and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord

  forever and ever and ever...

  and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord

  and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord... forever (My King)

  and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord, forever (My Master)

  and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord... forever

  and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord... forever

  and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord... forever

  and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord... forever

  forever...

  forever...

  forever...

  The final chorus fades away, yet Pastor remains seated. He makes no movement from his chair. He doesn’t step towards the pulpit and engage in his usual s
mall talk about the choir’s performance. Instead, Pastor remains motionless with his eyes closed. Anxiety begins to grow in his church. People start to shift uneasily in the pews.

  But Pastor finally speaks, though it’s almost in a whisper. It’s almost as though he is speaking to himself. The little microphone attached to his jacket’s lapel barely picks up Pastor saying, “Jesus is nice. And He wants us to be nice, too.”

  Pastor rises from his seat and slowly walks up to the dais. Again, he repeats almost wearily, but now loud enough for all to hear, “Jesus is nice. And He wants us to be nice, too.”

  He pauses for a moment to straighten a few papers at the pulpit. “That’s what the church’s message has become. A simple and easily digestible message for a child, or worse, an adult who thinks like a child. A little boy asked me recently, ‘My mother is in pain. Can you say something for her? A word that will help her understand?’ I look around now, and I don’t see the boy and his mother sitting here amongst you. And I’m saddened. Because I know his mama. I know her story. I know her pain. She wants to come to a place where she’ll hear a message that holds power. She wants a message of Truth. The mother seeks wisdom. A word based on wisdom will ease her pain. Jesus is nice and He wants us to be nice, too. That’s not a message of wisdom. There is so much to this faith. There is so much to His teachings. And it’s not about being nice.

  “Jesus is nice. And He wants us to be nice, too. It’s a message rooted in what we think it means to have the correct beliefs. We treat our faith as though we are signing a contract where we agree to follow a strict set of rules. It’s a message for those who want something easy to manage. It’s for juvenile thinkers who want a message of what to eat and not eat, what to wear and not wear. They want a message that tells them who they should allow into your home and who they should not. A message that answers the question: Who is my neighbor?

  “But let me be honest with you. A real seeker of truth asks, ‘what did Jesus teach?’ The true seeker is not so much concerned about where in the history books one finds proof of His existence. Rather, this seeker of truth wants to know, ‘how do we get inside the mind of Jesus and view our place in the world through His eyes?’ The true seeker wants to know, ‘how do we feel through His heart?’

  “’Who do you say I am?’ This is something Jesus asks over and over again in the Gospels. What He’s really asking is, ‘who or what in you recognizes me? Do you know me?’

  “To answer this question requires wisdom. And when you’re about the wisdom of Jesus Christ, it’s not about the correct beliefs. It’s about the correct practices.

  “How do we die before we die? How do we love our neighbors as we love ourselves? How do we connect that which we believe into what we can actually live? These are profound questions. But we think, if we say we believe it, or if we know what page to flip to in the Bible to where it’s written... or if we preach it... that we can just do it.

  “But it’s not possible.

  “That is, not until we go beyond the mind. To do so, we must focus on the path that seeks to answer, ‘how is Jesus like us? How is that what He did, something that we can do ourselves.’ This is a different teaching from those that teach that Christ is different from us, belonging to a higher order of being.

  “As I am, you, too, can and must become. I will be here to help you, but you must do the work yourself.”

  ∏

  There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus, and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

  Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” The scholar said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

  Since the Lawyer cited the Law, Jesus replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” But the Lawyer, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

  “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half-dead. Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So, likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

  ∏

  “‘What can I, myself, do to obtain eternal life?’” This is what the Lawyer asks at the beginning of this parable. But the Lawyer should know that we are unable to save ourselves. The Lawyer believes that eternal life is in his power. This man of law does not seem to understand salvation and the need for grace.

  “In this passage, we hear Jesus ask, ‘what is written in the Law?’ And what does the Lawyer do? He quotes the Law, which is correct: ‘Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’ But the Lawyer is wrong to believe that upholding the Law is something within his power. The Lawyer is taking the call to love God with his whole heart, mind, and strength, lightly. This should not be some token gesture. If we’re honest, we know that we do not love God this way. We’re more concerned with serving our own needs first. The world’s needs come next. And then, from whatever is left over, we give a few crumbs to God. We’ll pray, if we have time at the end of our busy day at work. We’ll read our Bible, if it doesn’t interfere with watching the game. We’ll throw a couple of dollars in the collection plate, after we pay our rent. We’ll follow the teachings of God, so long as it doesn’t interfere with our politics or worldview. God always gets the scraps. The Lawyer should know that, by ourselves, we can’t pull off loving God with our whole heart, mind, and strength. To think that we can even come close is crazy.

  “’And who is my neighbor?’

  “The Lawyer wants to keep the meaning of ‘neighbor’ easily definable. If this world is filled with all his neighbors, there’s no way he can pull this off. The Lawyer wants to dumb down the meaning of being a neighbor because this is what the flesh does: we praise God’s laws but don’t take them seriously. The Lawyer wants to haggle over a precise definition of ‘neighbor’ and keep that category as small and exclusive as possible. He has to do this because he wants to adhere to the Law, but do so on his own, by his own merit and power.

  “A Jesus who is nice, and who wants us to be nice too, would allow you to live in your own fantasy. But Jesus does not play nice, and that is why He tells the Lawyer the story of the Samaritan.

  “The Jesus who tells this parable is not nice and will not offer a simplistic definition of who is a neighbor. You see, the priest and the Levite refused to help the victim by the roadside. Maybe they were scared, because to touch this man would make them unclean for the Temple. They symbolize the human belief that God can be bought off by religious observance. If I go to Church, pay tithes, say a few prayers, sing along with the choir, I can convince myself that I am righteous and have met all my duties.

  “We live in a time when God’s providence has been replaced by the nature of progress. People now believe that we don’t need God to be moral.

  “When you pat yourself on the back and claim you’re being righteous, it becomes easy to walk past the homeless. It becomes easy to turn a blind eye to evil and remain silent. You tell yourself God is OK with this because at least you were in church on Sunday. But Jesus is not impressed. He
is saying that we can’t buy God off. Going to Church, financially supporting the Word of God, praying, these things do not represent the end of faith. They are just the beginning. Let’s be honest, if you really sit in the pews each Sunday, and really feel the Word, then you cannot disregard the homeless, you cannot ignore injustice, nor tolerate evil and remain silent.

  “Morality for us, Christians, should not be about convenience. If you are a truly moral person, you don’t just help the people you like. You don’t only forgive people that you like or be nice to only people that you like.

  “Jesus is nice. And he wants us to be nice too. If I was to preach that sort of message, I would finish reading this parable and then tell you to go out and live like the good Samaritan. Go forth and carry some extra money in your pocket and have some resources so you can help those in need. But that’s not the point of the story. I don’t want you to be biblically uneducated. I don’t want to be a pastor that tells you to apply Scripture to your life. That’s not the proper interpretation. I wouldn’t be getting you to understand what the passage is meant to teach. You wouldn’t be on the path of wisdom.

  “The lesson is... we can’t obey the law. We can’t follow the two great commandments to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love thy neighbor as you love yourself. We fall short. So, in the end we can’t justify ourselves. But it’s through grace that we are justified. God wants us to rest in the truth that it is by faith and through grace... by His love... that we are justified.

  “Still, I know I’ll be asked, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ And I’ll say to you, ‘Your neighbor... is those who you love.’

  “But understand this, Jesus is not redefining the definition of one’s neighbor in this parable. He’s redefining love. What it means to love somebody.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Any story told should have an ending... isn’t that what Mama says? I owe you an ending for you having taken the time to journey with me. It’s only fair. And so, I will tell you my ending as, well... a story.