by Jay Parini
I told him that I would be speaking the next day in a synagogue, and that he should come.
And Paulus did, attending our small gathering near the harbor. He sat among the Jews, who looked at him with amazement. Could this really be their governor? What on earth brought him into their company?
I delivered the news of Jesus and the unfolding Kingdom of God, and marveled at the unqualified acceptance of this holy message in Paphos. This would, as it happened, prove a rare specimen of general assent, perhaps a gift to me from God. Yet the occasion startled me. The Lord had found me afresh that morning, and I spoke with an angel’s tongue and not my own. I lifted the assembly up to the roof beams, and then came bountiful singing and praying—everyone joined in, and somehow they knew prayers and songs that had never before been spoken or sung, and we all wept together at the end.
I led the group—more than a dozen, including Paulus—to a beach near the harbor, where Barnabas and I baptized each of them in turn. As their heads emerged from the salt spray, we shouted: Alleluia! In the Christ there is neither male nor female, neither slave nor free man, neither Jew nor Greek! Alleluia!
* * *
This improbable week in Paphos ended with the baptism of Bar-Jesus, whose sight immediately returned as he burst from the water. He kissed me on either cheek and acknowledged that a dark spirit had inhabited him. He was free now and would worship God through Jesus of Nazareth. He would study the scriptures closely, would pray, and would do what he could for the Way in Cyprus. This was, I think, another miracle.
Our work here accomplished, we set off for Asia on a lumbering square-rigged merchant ship from Thessalonica that carried a miscellany of cargo in crates and sacks. I heard geese and chickens gabbling about belowdecks and one braying donkey. As the green scalp of Mount Olympus receded, I had no wish to look back. Fresh triumphs for Jesus lay ahead, I felt quite sure. Who could have imagined our successes in Cyprus, especially at the court of Paulus in Paphos?
When people are hungry for the experience of God, God happens.
The crew spoke a rude dialect of Greek with many unfamiliar words, and they kept their distance, occasionally glaring at us. But with a few gold coins, we added something to their profit, paying more for this passage than seemed appropriate.
“They hate us,” said John Mark.
“I doubt they have an opinion, certainly nothing so strong. We’ve paid them very well.”
As we sailed into dusk, a purple bruise darkened in the western sky and deepened in the water. A low wind skipped over the straits from the north, and it felt chilly for late spring. The waves before us rushed to form white running horses, and the boat rocked miserably from side to side. Soon Barnabas, no sailor at the best of times, turned quite pale and went below with a bucket, nearly losing his footing on the ladder.
I began to worry about John Mark, whose cheeks quivered, and one hand drifted to his belly.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
He nodded, and I sat with him before the mast, where we sheltered behind a wooden crate covered with a tarpaulin that smelled of rancid beeswax and a crusty white mold. I spread our blankets in the lee, making a soft cushion for his head.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” said John Mark.
“God has called you.”
“I didn’t hear a voice. You’re the one who hears voices.” After a pause, he added: “Perhaps I should make my way to Damascus?”
I let this rudeness pass. He was young, after all, and unaccustomed to proper conversation. His mother had, I believed, indulged him, and he expected his elders to smooth the way on every excursion.
“Do you trust in God?” I asked. “And do you love Jesus?”
It was important to speak frankly, as we would rely on him in the coming months, perhaps in less than easy conditions.
“I hold him dearly.”
“That is belief,” I said. “It’s an affection kindled in the heart. It allows us to feel his presence through the Holy Spirit, which moves in each of us, a quiet river.”
“Why do you say ‘river’?”
“I speak in metaphors.”
“What is that?”
“It’s to say one thing in terms of another.”
“I don’t understand.”
“As in the hymns of David, it’s a common turn of thought. My soul thirsts for God. Do you know that line? I doubt the soul actually feels thirst. It’s a way to stimulate thought.”
“Stimulate?”
Once in a while I felt tongue-tied around John Mark, as he revealed few intellectual dimensions, though he was obviously intelligent and skilled as a scribe. I spoke to him with care, aware that he regarded me as an old man and, as such, inherently tedious. I thought back to Gamaliel, and how he had been so patient with the young. It would have been difficult for me to teach in a school like that.
“I don’t feel well,” John Mark said, as the boat continued to rock. The captain had lowered the two long steering oars in the water on either side at the aft to stabilize the vessel, and the mainsail came down hurriedly. When it began to rain—a cool slantwise drizzle—we crawled beneath an awning that reached from a beam, a perfect little cocoon. As long as John Mark suppressed the sickness in his gut, we should be fine here, sheltered and relatively dry.
The ship drifted, without direction, as night drew upon us. One could hardly anchor in these depths, so we had few options.
When John Mark began to shudder, I covered him with a rough blanket.
He had never been at sea before we left Syria for Cyprus and was lucky that his first experience had been with a flat sea and steady wind on the way to Salamis.
“I feel quite awful,” he said, and I sensed the urgency, leading him to the gunnels, where he spewed a green bilge overboard that smeared his tunic. A fit of coughing followed as I patted his back.
“I’m dizzy,” he said.
“Lie down and close your eyes. Pretend you’re elsewhere.”
I settled him on the blanket, wrapping him as tightly as I could. But his shuddering disturbed me.
I pressed as close as I could, to keep him warm, putting an arm around his shoulder.
To my relief, the wind settled before long, and the rains gave way to a clear night with a cascade of stars. I could make out through a gap in the tarpaulin a slice of moon in its waning phase, and one could see the rest of the moon, too, in faint outline. It was much like the mind, most of whose contents—memories, ideas, dreams—remain nearly invisible. Whatever one sees or feels represents only a sliver of content, the visible manifestation of much that remains unseen or barely seen.
John Mark shuddered into sleep and began to snore, smelling lightly of vomit. I watched him breathe, noting the rise and fall of his chest. His lips parted since he could not get air through his nose, and he gasped now and then, as if choking. I found myself caring for him, loving him, and wondered if this mirrored the experience of fatherhood, something I would never know.
I may have slept but can’t be sure. Certainly in the early dawn I lay awake and felt the lovely sleep-warm presence of John Mark beside me, his head against my chest.
Had he put his head there during the night?
The sky slowly drained itself of dark. The sea moved below us with the slightest waves now licking against the hull of our ship. I took this waking slowly, letting it arrive in its own time. Nobody moved aboard the ship, which pleased me. I wanted only to linger in the gathering of dawn, to savor the silence, and to let the night crumble into dawn.
John Mark’s head slipped from my chest, and he nestled beside me. I studied his face, the dark eyebrows and pink lips, still slightly parted. His sleep was deep, the breathing soft and regular, though it occasionally caught and held. A faint smile passed on his lips, and I assumed that a dream must have pleased him. An aura of purity, even innocence, bathed
him, a nimbus that one cannot earn. It is grace itself.
I could not resist touching his hair, chestnut brown, silky. I touched him in the way a father might touch a sleeping child, with complete affection.
One eye opened unexpectedly, and John Mark winced, sitting up.
“What are you doing?”
“I like to watch a young man sleep.”
John Mark glowered at me.
“I meant no harm.”
“You dislike me, and try to embarrass me.”
“Nothing in that remark is true,” I said, drawing back. “This is preposterous!”
“Listen to yourself. Preposterous! Dear God…I must go home.”
“But we have work to do, for the kingdom. We have to trust and love each other, much as God loves us.”
“I can’t, and I won’t.” John Mark stood, looking down at me. “You’re peculiar. I will tell Peter and James that we are incompatible. I won’t tell them the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That you are, as I just said, too peculiar. I’ve had enough.”
A familiar tingling of shame began in the soles of my feet, stung my heels, and rose along my spine, breaking over my skull.
Soon enough, two muscular Greek sailors lifted a sail, which caught the breeze and snapped. There was just enough wind to move us forward.
Later, I explained to Barnabas, who resurfaced and looked well again, that John Mark had taken an odd turn and didn’t wish to proceed with us.
“But why?”
“It’s a matter of youth,” I said. “The young are moody.”
“I was never moody.”
I suspected Barnabas didn’t want to travel alone with me, and he tried to persuade John Mark to continue, underscoring the promise of our mission. “We have accomplished so much in Cyprus,” he said. “An auspicious beginning, I would say. We may do wonderful things in Asia as well.”
But there was no changing the young man’s mind.
“I’m going back to Jerusalem,” he said.
I detected clarity and resolve in his voice, and wished I had seen this sooner.
“There is so much work to do,” Barnabas said. “And Paul’s letters—”
“I don’t need a scribe,” I said, waving off any attempt to persuade John Mark to shift his position. I knew it would not be difficult to find a slave if I needed one, although he would never copy my words with such speed and accuracy, and would almost certainly not improve upon what I said, as dear Luke would do in years to come, taking my rough drafts and polishing them, expanding them, clarifying what often remained unclear in my own thoughts.
Later that day, our ship thudded into dock in an unknown harbor (at least to me) that smelled of dead fish and brine. While the men unloaded crates and animals, we sat like three separate trees on the bow, not speaking. A green scum on the water oozed around the hull. And I worried about what lay ahead for us, especially with Barnabas as my sole companion.
* * *
We exchanged our sailing vessel for a barge that crawled along a brown pelt of water. It slipped almost silently through vineyards and stony fields, past villages of mud huts and tents. The dark-skinned pilot said nothing to us, although he took our coins. He would ferry us most of the way to Perga, from which we planned our trek to Pisidia through a high mountain pass.
John Mark remained set upon returning to Jerusalem, and I could see that his disgruntlement and disloyalty perturbed Barnabas, who had not imagined this turn of events. “I shall have a word with the boy’s mother one day,” he said. “She needs to know she has spoiled this child.”
It was too hot by noon, the deck like a griddle in the sun, with no place to shelter. I wiped my face with a cloth, watching crows settle on the carcass of a sheep along the bank. The breeze whirled the smell of rotting sardines, and—did I imagine this?—I saw the corpse of a shepherd boy on the banks of the river as well. It was propped against a mossy stone, smiling and open-eyed.
“The dead live everywhere around us,” I said to Barnabas.
My poetic observation fell flat, and he sighed. I think he wished he had not accepted this assignment from Peter and James.
In Perga, we made our way to a synagogue where Barnabas had been given the name of a well-known rabbi, Ezra ben Ezra, who already seemed to know about the purpose of our mission and to approve, although when I questioned him, he referred to Jesus as “the magician from Tyre.” I dissuaded him from this over dinner, and he didn’t seem to mind. “God sends us many of these messengers,” he said. “I have witnessed such wonders. Voices! The gods speak, and abundantly.”
“Only Jesus is Lord,” I said.
“A Nazarene magician, is that it?”
“He is not a magician.”
This puzzled Ezra ben Ezra, but I saw no point in trying to sort it out for him. His mind was not unlike a sponge that absorbs every kind of unnatural liquid and, itself, begins to stink in time.
John Mark slept by himself that night, as far from me as possible, and I saw that Barnabas had grown pensive, angrily so, as if his abstract and grand idea of our journey had collapsed. I don’t believe he knew what to make of whatever had transpired between John Mark and me, and I wasn’t sure myself what to make of it.
After an early breakfast, John Mark announced his departure.
Thinking of potential pitfalls, I offered him a small purse. “You will find any number of ships to Caesarea, even Jaffa. These coins will help.”
He held the purse in his hand, considering. Then threw the money at my feet.
After he disappeared, Barnabas shook his head. “It makes no sense,” he said.
“He’s a child.”
Barnabas sighed. “Perhaps we should return to Antioch?”
“We do have a plan,” I said.
“But it’s gone amiss.”
“Not at all, although I can go by myself, if need be.”
Barnabas waved a hand as if wiping away the foolish idea of ending our journey now.
“Pisidia awaits us,” I said.
“Pisidia, yes,” he said. “And Iconium. Derbe.”
“And Lystra. I have heard good things about Lystra—the people are ready for God in that city, ready for the love of Jesus.”
In truth, I was glad to see the last of John Mark, who posed a distraction for me on many levels. Focus was essential: The end of history loomed, and we must do whatever we could to spread the Good News while there was yet time.
Chapter Nine
LUKE
I had evasive conversations over the years with Paul about Barnabas and their tumultuous journey to Cyprus and parts of Asia. It had begun well in Cyprus, where the Way took root as a result of their deft and early planting. The conversion of the Roman governor Paulus altered circumstances on the island, and gatherings multiplied in Paphos and Salamis and spread to villages around the coast, on the plains of Mesorea, even into the high mountain regions of Troodos and Madari.
It was largely among the Greeks, not the Jews, that the Way of Jesus prospered in Cyprus, making it a model for future missions.
But something had gone amiss, and the matter troubled Paul. A young man recruited by the Pillars had taken against the apostle for reasons Paul never understood. “He challenged my friendship, my affection,” said Paul, in what I took as an elusive remark with enough truth in it to deflect further inquiry. Whatever happened, the boy abandoned this mission after Cyprus, returning to Jerusalem, where he did nothing to enhance Paul’s reputation among the Pillars.
“I don’t know what passed between Paul and John Mark,” Barnabas later said to me, “and I would never ask. Paul is, in my view, an awkward fellow, at best.”
There were unfair innuendos in that comment, but I didn’t press him.
Certainly Paul could be irascible, even peevish, which I knew b
etter than most. As a companion on the road, he tested one’s patience, insisting on his own diet, sleeping arrangements, and directions. I knew enough not to contradict him on many things, and the backlash would foul our relations. He could be intrusive, too, asking personal questions in the way that children do. But there was nothing black in his soul. He might well have behaved toward John Mark without complete respect, only to have his actions (whatever they were) misconstrued.
This unhappy turn after Cyprus bothered Paul, but I stayed away from his occasional efforts to talk about it. Why pick at old wounds?
Paul didn’t lose sight of the mission at hand, and realized after the boy’s departure that two could travel more easily than three. They could change directions quickly, hide, or flee. Lodging became less complicated, and the need for food diminished. (Paul occasionally mocked Barnabas about his plumpness, he told me, calling him “our fat angel.”)
Because Barnabas had no talent or even inclination for public speaking, the burdens of oratory fell exclusively on Paul, who began to hone his skills in front of audiences, trying various tactics to hold their attention. Poor Barnabas struggled to understand Paul’s ideas, especially the notion that one actually became Jesus by following him, by emptying oneself and taking on what Paul memorably called “the mind of the Christ.”
But Paul was Paul, a man who could not resist thinking in complex ways in public, pushing ideas to the point where the normal lines of argument broke down. He could excite and inform listeners but might also leave them confused as he outrode their capacities, and even his own. “What I don’t know defines me, not what I know,” he said.
I suspect it was Paul’s unguarded and natural intimacy that offended John Mark, as it did many others. In conversation, he pressed too close, his nose hairs spiking though his nostrils. He touched you when he talked, often poked and jabbed to make a point. The garlicky rankness of his breath could prove overpowering. When he met you, he locked gazes, and it was impossible to evade him or pull away.