The Damascus Road

by Jay Parini

  * * *

  Porcius Festus replaced Felix as procurator. He was a man of substance, with a noble lineage, unlike Felix, the former slave. He swept into Caesarea with imperial grandeur, surrounded by horse guards and courtiers, a clip-clop train of self-affirmation, a show of eminence and authority. With a brilliance that surprised even his supporters, he managed to suppress the rebellion, increasing the number of foot soldiers quite dramatically and executing in a ghastly fashion any rebel unfortunate enough to get caught. Spectacular violence was, as ever, a useful tool for controlling a population.

  Several of these rebels had just been strung from a gate at one entrance to Caesarea, each disemboweled with their entrails hanging out and swarmed by flies. Their cries of agony lofted over the rooftops as I made my way to visit Paul one morning, and the voices sickened me. When I told Paul about this barbarity, he said, “There’s no hope except in Jesus.”

  Despite his savagery, Festus generally found a receptive audience in Caesarea, encouraging theatrical displays and civic games, determined to turn this city into a little Rome, a marvel of sophistication in what he probably considered this barbarous outpost of empire. The amphitheater throbbed with entertainments, including plays—rather primitive ones, as I discovered after a visit one afternoon. The actors wore crudely painted masks, and mimes played beside them, clarifying whatever was said with vigorous (and often rude) gestures.

  When I complained about the lack of value in this dramatic work, Paul smiled weakly. “This isn’t the Athens of Pericles.”

  My impulse to visit the amphitheater baffled him altogether, but I had grown a little bored in Caesarea.

  “Our time grows short,” Paul said.

  And he did not have to say more.

  The Temple priests had never lost interest in Paul, and a further contingent arrived in due course from Jerusalem, again led by Tertullus, and they requested an audience with Festus. Paul’s case must be reopened, they told him. He led a dangerous sect, one that threatened Jewish ways. Unrest was sure to follow, and this could not be good for Rome. (The implication, of course, was that it could not be good for Festus either.)

  Festus refused to take their bait and showed no interest in hearing this case, saying Paul could rot in prison, and this would rid them of the problem.

  A convergence of events changed his mind, however. It happened that King Agrippa II was coming to town with Berenice, his sister. He was apparently curious about this preacher whose following in the Greek world evidently terrified the Sanhedrin. He told Festus that he would personally hear the man’s case, as it would entertain his sister, who had studied the scriptures and showed a fondness for religious disputation. Word of her intelligence and composure had, in fact, reached our ears before this.

  “She has an interest in this Nazarene sorcerer, whom I believe this Paul once knew,” Agrippa said. “They’ve got some sort of cult about him. Let us meet him and hear his arguments.”

  The news of a royal audience didn’t frighten Paul; he had stood before Gallio in Corinth and before Felix only two years earlier. Agrippa and Berenice would not faze him. I, on the other hand, followed him into the chamber with the weakest of knees. No good would come of this, I felt quite certain.

  What a scene greeted us! A retinue of military guards, trumpeters, and drummers preceded the king, who emerged in purple robes, with lots of jewelry in evidence. Berenice had green and blue feathers in profusion. Festus wore a flowing scarlet cloak.

  Paul was chained at the wrist to a court guard, who stood beside him as he approached the dais.

  Tertullus approached at the same time, bowing as he walked to indicate abject subservience to the royalty before him. He spoke first, as expected. With force, he condemned Paul once again as a radical Jew who led a dangerous rebel sect. “They pose a threat to us all, Jews and gentiles alike.” He then drifted off into lofty generalities about society and the need to obey laws and respect traditions.

  Agrippa fingered his beard, listening to the lawyer, who had grown mature since I last saw him, fuller in his face, with a tinge of grayness in his beard. The king gave nothing away with his impassive expression, making occasional grunts beyond interpretation. It struck me that the advocate for the Temple position had surely not managed to put forward a clear case against my friend, not one that would interest this judge. Abstract statements meant little in these circumstances. Only stories have the power to change hearts.

  Berenice listened closely and whispered in her brother’s ear, while Festus looked on with mild curiosity. He could see that Paul’s case offered decent entertainment for his royal guests, and that was probably all he wanted from this hearing. The idea of justice surely meant nothing to him whatsoever.

  “You shall speak for yourself, Paul,” Agrippa said. “They say you talk rather well. I’m eager to hear your answer to these charges, which strike me as quite serious. No regard for the law? A rebel who wishes to overthrow imperial authority? Is that so?”

  Paul lifted his chin, with its dimple looking cavernous and purple, saying, “I’m honored to have a chance to bear witness to my Lord, Jesus the Christ.” He began with an account of his own lineage, setting the argument in his usual frame, then admitted to stoning the “great servant of God, Stephen,” gesturing as he told about crushing the poor man’s skull with a heavy stone. I could see the eyes of Berenice widen as he told about the poor man’s “crown splintering, with a pool of blood and bone and flesh.”

  He soon recounted the story of the Damascus Road with a flourish that I had not heard in many years: “The skies opened, and there were trumpets—loud glorious trumpets.”

  “No drums?” asked Festus with a wry smile, and the king laughed. It was proving a good day for them, a jolly diversion.

  Paul continued without pause, mounting phrase upon phrase as only he could do. “Angels—a thousand angels, with such gold wings that the sky changed color. The sun appeared to explode, and I went blind. I fell to the ground, which pulsed now, throbbing and tilting. I could feel the Adversary on one side and the Lord Jesus on the other. ‘Come toward me, Paul!’ cried the Lord. So I crawled toward him, and he held my head in his beneficent lap. I wept.”

  A new version! At first, I wished my friend had preferred a simpler version of the story, but he knew his audience, and Berenice rose from her chair, unable even to sit. She actually clapped and smiled.

  Paul stopped talking out of respect, but she called, “Please, sir, do continue. This is splendid. Go on!”

  The spirit of God possessed him now, and he shook, his lips quivering, his eyes seeming to fork lightning. Did I hear thunder overhead? Paul spoke suddenly in tongues, or so I thought. In the intensity of the moment, I lost track of everything, nearly swooning. I felt the hot presence of the Lord surging through the air, an invisible power. Apart from Paul’s voice, only a quivering silence filled the room.

  “What does God want of us?” asked Berenice, when Paul had finished.

  Paul told her that Jesus opened a way to God, that we saw the Almighty in the face of our Christ. He said that death meant nothing. Jesus had conquered death. “We must hide ourselves in him forever,” he said. “We must lose our petty names, these passing shadows to which the soul briefly clings. We live eternally in him, here and always.”

  I saw, and everyone saw, that Paul had moved Berenice, as her cheeks shone, and she wiped her eyes. Her brother also looked quite astonished and put a hand on his sister’s shoulder.

  Tertullus broke in: “You must let us have him! We’ll take him to Jerusalem, and the Sanhedrin will hear him out. This is a Jewish matter, a Temple case!”

  Paul silenced him by speaking over him, quoting the scriptures at length, saying that the prophets had long ago predicted the arrival of God’s son. And the Lord Almighty God shall raise up among you a prophet, he intoned, from Deuteronomy, and he compared Jesus to Moses, wh
o had met God on Mount Sinai. He recalled an eloquent passage from Isaiah, then a sequence from Daniel. And he concluded with a line from David’s hymn: Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices, and this flesh dwells secure in the knowledge that God will not abandon us to the darkest place.

  The king was moved now, his features mobile, expressive. I could not tell his state of mind, but it was obvious that something had occurred inside him. “Paul, this is well spoken,” he said. “But you have maddened yourself with so much learning. I confess, I’m almost persuaded by your arguments. This teacher, your Rabbi Jesus, he sounds like a man of wisdom.”

  Paul struggled to draw the right words into the open. “I only wish every knee would bow before my Lord,” he said. “The Kingdom of God will arrive any day. It has already dawned in my heart, as in the heart of my friend here, dear Luke.”

  I wished that he had left me out of this, as I certainly had no wish to speak in court.

  Tertullus repeated his request: “Let us have him, please. I ask in the name of Daan, our high priest. The Temple demands this.”

  The king nodded. “This is obviously a case for Temple elders,” he said. “I do see that.”

  At this, Paul turned his palms up before the court, saying in a loud voice, “I am a citizen of Rome, Your Excellency. Caesarem appello!”

  He appealed his case to Caesar!

  Every Roman citizen of good standing and, more usually, in possession of wealth or influence, had this right of appeal. He or she could demand a hearing in the imperial courts, in Rome. But this was a bold and unexpected move, and Paul’s utterance hushed the chamber. Agrippa turned to speak in the ear of Festus, who leaned toward him to hear. An exchange took place that I couldn’t follow.

  “You appeal to Caesar?” asked Festus. “Fine, then. That’s where you shall go!”

  Agrippa nodded with approval. They would send Paul to Rome under guard, by ship. He would have a hearing in the imperial city. Berenice nodded eagerly. This made sense to her, I could see.

  When Tertullus objected, Festus told him to be quiet. “I don’t want to see you again,” he said. “Tell the high priest I have no other option.”

  With the roll of drums and the blaring of trumpets, the royal party, followed by Festus, left the chamber.

  Chapter Nineteen

  PAUL

  My voluble prison guard suggested they might just have let me go free, as the Temple Jews had no case against me. The imperial courts were not religious courts, and Berenice had said as much to Festus, urging my release.

  “You should never have asked for a hearing,” my jailor told me.

  “How can you possibly know this?”

  “The court has a thousand little ears,” he said.

  He annoyed me, and I tried to avoid conversations with him, without much luck. For his part, Luke agreed that I should never have appealed to Caesar, saying I should have held my tongue.

  Me?

  Was I not an apostle of the Lord, appointed by Jesus himself on the Damascus Road to proclaim his truth to the world? In accepting this call to prophecy, I had given up any right to my own volition, even to my body. I belonged to God now and had eternal life in him. The right to appeal to Caesar mattered, perhaps because it would lift the Way into a kind of prominence. I longed to put the case for Jesus as the Christ before Nero. This could become a final victory before the end of history, an appropriate one.

  Much as I loved Luke, and I did, I saw that he often failed to understand the obvious: that God lives in us, and we live in him. And I must do as he commands. But the dear fellow never would abandon me, and this loyalty counted. As did his willingness to act as my scribe; that was a gift, for a man of his stature, and also an act of humility, a sign of his wish to serve God in whatever capacity seemed appropriate. He often said that my letters were a gift from the Almighty Lord, and that the Holy Spirit governed my tongue.

  I could believe this, as I had no sense of my own voice when I wrote to the assemblies. I was simply a vessel, conducting God’s word. I had no choice, no way to stop this language, which often felt oddly alien to me, as if I discovered exactly what my readers discovered. God’s voice welled in me, broke into being. It was exhilarating but terrifying as well.

  Our young friend Aristarchus appeared in Caesarea, having heard the news of our departure. His persistence surprised me, and I loved him for it. He wished to accompany us to Rome, he said, where he hoped to assist the gatherings, which had recently made such headway among the gentiles there. I knew that the future of our mission required men like him, so I agreed happily to this.

  Rome would become the center of God’s kingdom, not Jerusalem. Jerusalem was lost.

  It was obvious that the war between the Jews and the Romans would intensify, leading to chaos and, in the end, a woeful scattering of the tribes. The sacking of Solomon’s Temple by the Babylonians would find itself reenacted, a repetition that could not be stopped. Herod’s Temple would become a heap of holy rubble, a smoldering expanse. Exile and sorrow lay ahead, a consequence of Israel’s rejection of Jesus, their Christ. Of course the Kingdom of God could well arrive even before this crash, before the complete ruin of Israel. Perhaps the Lord did not wish to see his Temple crumble but to oversee its transformation?

  It was pointless to try to predict the sacred plan, as God would reveal everything in his own time. I kept reminding myself to pray as the Lord had prayed, saying, Thy will be done.

  I stood with Luke and Aristarchus on the dock, eager to board our ship for Rome, as a dry wind crackled the pines. Julius, a young centurion, had been appointed to escort us, and I liked him from the outset. Nonetheless it astonished me, and Luke as well, that a man of such rank in the imperial army had been assigned to this task. Did Festus wish to send a message to Nero? How was it even possible that my case had aroused such interest? Surely this was God’s invisible hand at work, I told myself.

  “Winter is almost upon us,” Aristarchus said. “It is late in the year for a voyage.”

  Our accomplice and friend rarely spoke, but when he did it was often in empty statements, as I realized now. I loved him but knew I must accept that the obvious appealed to him.

  It was, of course, clear to everyone that we had left this journey late in the calendar year.

  Listening to Aristarchus, I badly missed Timothy, his wit and goodwill. I wondered if he had made it back to Galatia, as he had planned. I’d sent a letter to him in care of his mother, but no reply had come. Now Aristarchus proved a poor substitute, this sweet but inarticulate young man.

  But I must put Timothy out of mind. I must think of Rome.

  Winter journeys by sea rarely end well, that much I knew, and the prospect before us left me feeling uneasy, even a little frightened: a rare feeling, in fact. I could usually dispense with doubts, allowing myself to rest in God, and to trust that he had something in mind for me. Luke had, perhaps wisely, asked to delay our passage until spring, but Julius explained that we had no choice in the matter. Festus ordered us to go, being somehow afraid that our mere presence in the city represented a threat.

  Julius reassured us, saying we were not alone in setting out at this time. A dozen or so ships lay at anchor in Caesarea, most of them laden with amphorae of wine and olive oil, bags of figs and dates and nuts, woolen goods, marble, silver, and iron ore. This would be the last shipment of the year for most, and I did recall hearing of even later sailings. Roman navies, indeed, depended on the wisdom of Fortuna, the goddess of luck.

  Yet the season was out of sorts.

  Not even Caesarea’s legendary breakwater could hold back the surge of the sea, which foamed in pilings around the docks and bristled in the rocks. The air smelled of salt and rotting fish, with a sharpness that worried me as I watched other prisoners boarding. Twenty or more of them marched aboard in close formation under heavy guard. The crew stood to o
ne side, warily. Everyone looked to Julius as an authority—our fine imperial escort, with his straight black hair and eyes like ebony. And a centurion no less! Perhaps all was well if a centurion was about to board this ship.

  Luke didn’t like what he saw of the other prisoners. “Murderers, thieves,” he said.

  I had spent months, even years, among men like this in a variety of prisons, and I found this characterization painful. Many had looked at me askance, assuming that this vicious criminal named Paul deserved whatever he got. I always pitied a prisoner, whatever the case against him. He was so alone, even in the midst of a crowded cell.

  “All prisoners are God’s own,” I said to Luke.

  Julius smiled warmly at this, beginning our unspoken collusion.

  I had noticed from the outset that our guardian and escort treated us as equals. He accepted without question that Luke and Aristarchus would accompany me to Rome, and refused to let anyone tie or chain me, saying I could come and go as I pleased, as long as I boarded the ship when asked to do so.

  “An ill wind blows,” said Luke, raising a wet finger in the air.

  “What do you think, Aristarchus?” I asked.

  He drew a long breath, puzzling his brow. “I have no opinion, as I know nothing of the sea,” he said. “The waters seem happy enough.”

  “I assure you,” I said, “they are without feeling.”

  In general, Aristarchus impressed me with his devout habits and sincerity. He prayed fervently each morning and night, and sang loudly in our meetings. As I explained to Luke, God needed every hand in these fervid and unpredictable final days. We could tolerate his empty comments, which were probably a result of fear, not genuine stupidity. I said that he might, in due course, surprise us all.

  Later than expected, with several unexplained delays, we boarded and set sail, heading toward Sidon. It proved a tranquil enough passage, surprising the pilot and captain with a brisk tail wind that seemed to lift and push at the same time. Even Luke relaxed, standing at the bow rail, his chin forward. At one point, he lifted his arms.