I was quick to protest. “But adultery, Master, applies only to man and wife. How can a single man violate the commandment, unless, like King David, he consorts with a married woman?”
Peter had to show his superior knowledge.
“Bathsheba,” he said with a smile, “was a widow.”
“Yes,” I snapped back, “and who made her a widow?”
Jesus had followed the exchange with a wisp of a smile.
“David lusted after the woman,” he said, “and soon the thought became the act.”
“With murder added as well.”
The Master frowned, for his love of David was always apparent.
“David repented, yet he still suffered the retribution of the Lord in his declining days, when the son he loved turned against him.”
I had no intention of being turned aside.
“Adultery and fornication are not the same, for the single man can fornicate as he likes without being unfaithful.”
“He is unfaithful to himself, the greatest infidelity of all.”
“But how,” I asked, “can one then love a woman, without being married?”
“Love has many expressions, Judah, and I say again that spiritual love is tenfold that of the flesh.”
I found an unexpected ally in young John.
“Master, must one remain a virgin till the wedding night?”
Jesus replied with the fond smile he reserved for the youngest of his company. “It means, dear John, that one must remain pure in one’s thoughts.”
He regarded us all gravely. “All here are chosen for other things, our energies expressed in other creations.”
“But what. Master,” said John with his guileless air, “is greater than man’s love for his brethren? Have you not told us time after time to love one another?”
“You have all been chosen for a purpose greater than self. You are instruments of a grand design, of which I, too, am an instrument. As you know more of God’s purpose, what you have turned your back on will seem a small price to pay for the light you bring the world.”
Jesus’ eyes moved from Andrew to Peter, to the sons of the Thunderer, and down the line until they fell on me. “You Twelve represent the majesty and meanness of man. No sacrifice will be too much for you, no betrayal too small. Some of you, reflecting the passion of man, will suffer in my name. Others will rejoice knowing what I tell you is true. You doubt now, as generations shall doubt until God restores his people once again and the Son of Man returns a second time with the trembling of the sky and the breaking of the earth.”
I cared not about distant earthquakes but about the nagging present. Had he himself not said: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”? He was a pragmatist himself. When the disciple Dysmas asked leave to bury his father, he made it clear that he believed in the moment. “Follow me,” said he, “and let the dead bury the dead.”
Every day in Jerusalem we went to the Temple. He sat in a familiar place, in the shadow of the colonnades in the Portico of Solomon, where he could preach to Jew and Gentile alike. He seemed to enjoy most his encounters with his adversaries, and more than once I caught a mischievous gleam in his eye when he was hoisting some petty Pharisee on a spear designed for himself. His logic was unassailable, and this nettled them greatly. For before his ministry they monopolized the field of learning and shared the adulation of the audience with no man.
He called them nit-pickers and invoked the name of the Baptist in attacking their hypocrisy. “John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you said: ‘He has a devil in him.’ Then came the Son of Man eating and drinking, and you say: ‘Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners ..;”
He used them as a sounding board, while they tried to indict him out of his own mouth. It was absurd to think they could contend with him. But they kept trying. Joel of Hebron, a rich landholder and a Pharisee, had invited the Master to sup with him. Only I of the Twelve went along, since Joel had little regard for Galileans. We entered by way of a flowered atrium and walked through a marble arch into a vast dining room teeming with servants. It almost seemed as if the wealthy Pharisee were seeking to make the Master aware of the beauty and comforts available through worldly abundance. I was surprised, as we sat down, reclining Roman style on huge pillows, that there were only the three of us. For I had half suspected a jury of some sort, of carping, caviling Pharisees. The dinner was sumptuous. Fruits and cheeses, and fish and fowl of every kind, and a roast of lamb, browned to a succulent richness. We could have fed the Twelve for a month on this fare.
The Master ate sparingly and merely touched his lips to a rare Greek wine served in golden cups. He looked past the Pharisee to the door from time to time, as if expecting somebody to come through it. I addressed myself wholeheartedly to the meal, for seldom, since I had left my own home, was I able to enjoy so elegant a repast.
Absorbed as I was, I was unaware of another presence until I felt a breath of air as a dancing form breezed lightly past me. I looked up, startled, to see the Master gazing at a scantily clad young woman gyrating seductively before our eyes. I stole a look at the Pharisee, and in his crafty eyes there was a gleam of satisfaction.
The woman was well formed, but her features were undistinctive, marred by a slight cast in one eye, an affliction which is commonly called a yetzahara. She danced with a certain animal-like vehemence, but it was obvious at a glance that dancing was not her true profession.
As she finished her dance, she swept low before the Master, and in a swift curtsy, before he could stop her, kissed his sandaled feet.
As she crouched on the floor, as if suspended, he leaned forward with a look of compassion and said gently: “God bless you, daughter, for you have been more sinned against than sinning.”
She held up her head, and her dark eyes were moist.
“Master, I have heard you speak in the street, and in my un-worthiness I have found myself drawn to you.”
By now I was sure it was some trap. “How is this woman here?” I asked sharply.
Before the Pharisee could answer, the Master had waved my protest aside. “What matter why she is here, so long as she is here?”
She now stood up and fetched an alabaster box filled with a costly spikenard of the finest moss and laid it on the floor by his side. “This is for your comfort. Master.”
I could only speculate how she had gained the money to buy it; it was plainly a slight to the Master that he should be contaminated in this way.
I looked angrily at the Pharisee, who appeared to be enjoying himself, and sought to divert the gift to the treasury.
“I will take this expensive unguent and sell it and give the money to the poor.”
The Master shook his head. “Do not trouble this woman because she would do something for me. Do you not know, Judah, that the poor you shall always have with you, but me for only a short time?”
She began to weep, the tears streaming down her face. He sought to comfort her, but the sobbing only increased. Suddenly she kneeled, and with a graceful gesture removed his sandals and began to wash his feet with her tears. And, with the long tresses of her hair, she wiped his feet dry and commenced to anoint them with the ointment.
The Master had closed his eyes and seemed oblivious to everything but the woman’s bounty.
“You speak like a Galilean,” he said when she had risen once more to her feet and was gazing at him spellbound.
“I am from that part,” said she, “and when I was a little girl I heard stories of one like you who would deliver the people of Israel from their sins. Later I listened as you spoke of salvation from sins through penitence, and I wept for what I am.”
“And what are you,” he said gently, “but a child of God?”
Joel the Pharisee obviously felt that the Master had been found wanting. Behind his hand he leaned over and whispered in my ear: “If this Jesus of yours was a true prophet, he would surely have known that th
is woman whom he allowed to touch him, and whom he has touched, is a confirmed sinner.”
The Master, overhearing, turned to him with the same smile he had for the woman.
“I have something for you to think about, Joel of Hebron. So listen closely.”
“That I will,” said Joel good-naturedly.
“There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. The one owed this man, whom we shall call Joel, five hundred pence, the other owed him but fifty pence. Neither could pay him and so, having no other course, he forgave each their debt. Now tell me Joel”—the Master’s voice sank confidingly—“which of these two shall cherish him most?”
Joel’s brow knit in concentration. “I suppose he to whom most was forgiven.”
“Exactly, Joel. You have considered well.”
As the Pharisee preened himself, the Master’s face grew dark. “See this woman, Joel. Mark her well, for she stands as a judgment on you. I entered your house, and though you served a fine supper, you gave me no water for my feet, as is our custom. But she washed my feet with her tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head. You gave me no kiss, as is common with friends, but this woman since the time she came in has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but this woman did so with the costliest ointment.”
Joel seemed flustered, knowing that, in his desire to belittle his guest, he had neglected the simple amenities of a host.
“You have shamed yourself with this woman,” he blustered, “and now you accuse me.”
“You are your own accuser, Joel. And for this reason I say unto you that her sins, which are many, are forgiven. For she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little. You, Joel, are forgiven little.”
Joel, in his discomfiture, averted his face and turned his back on the woman he had hired for the occasion.
Without a glance for the Pharisee, she approached the Master and reverently kissed his hand.
“Go in peace,” said he. “We shall meet soon.”
“I hope so, Master, for you fill my heart with song. And it has been empty these many years.”
“I will take the devil out of you, and you shall be as an angel of the Lord.”
Before my very eyes, the woman’s face assumed the tranquillity of a saint.
I looked at her in astonishment. “Master, how did you this?”
“Judah, Judah,” he cried, “how many miracles must there be before you know that the Son of Man performs only what you and the others can do with faith in the Father?”
In truth, I had discovered in myself an ability to heal and to tranquillize the sick and troubled that I would not have suspected. I had noticed, without comprehending, that whatever healing powers I had dwindled when my mind was not completely on the person to be healed and there was no feeling of accord with nature. It was almost as if the healing gift functioned through a special channel which became stopped up when I felt no flow of energy from the surrounding atmosphere.
“Think of the living breath from the Father,” Jesus said, “and with this breath comes the living force from God’s universe.”
“Is there not a healing vibration in the atmosphere which the healer captures and then transmits to the subject?”
“You speak of mechanics, not the source, Judah. It is like treating the symptoms rather than the disease.”
The woman had listened carefully to all this, but it was obvious it was beyond her comprehension.
In her simpleness, she related only to the magnetism of the Master.
“May I follow you?” she cried, again kissing his feet.
Again he raised her.
“The time will come,” he promised, “when none will follow with a greater faith to a greater place.”
He watched her depart with a sorrowful face.
“We shall meet again soon,” he said, “never fear.”
We had pitched our camp on the Mount of Olives, far from any others, and went into the city only to pray or purchase the few provisions we required.
I normally supervised the buying, for I held the purse strings, but I did not like shopping in the Temple stalls. The prices were exorbitant, for the pilgrims would pay anything to say they had made their purchase in the seat of God’s worship. Since I held the money closely, the others conformed to my wishes as well. One day I had gone for provisions in the Street of the Cheesemakers, as it again gave me the opportunity to converse with the Amharetzin and sound out volunteers for the time of the rising. I had purchased some goat cheese, which stood up well in the warm weather, and a quantity of dried figs and dates, the Master’s favorite fare. The other disciples had meanwhile fanned out in the poor quarter of the city for additional supplies.
As I headed for the Temple, where the Master had been holding court earlier, I noticed a disheveled, distraught-looking woman of forty or so who stopped me in the cobblestoned lane.
“Sir,” said she, “know you anything of a teacher they call Joshua, who they say can accomplish all kinds of wonders?”
“I know of such a man,” I said noncommittally.
She gave me a harried look and pushed back the hair from her eyes.
“Is it true what they say of him?”
The Master had enjoined us to be cautious, for all I knew, though it didn’t seem likely, she could be a Roman spy. They had their people everywhere.
“What do they say?” I shortened my steps to her pace.
“That he can heal the sick and turn water to wine.” She gave me a sharp, probing glance. “Some even whisper that he is the Promised One of Israel, sent to deliver us from the pagan invader.”
The thought again struck me that she might be an agent of Pilate’s, for it was rare in Israel for a woman to accost a stranger in public so boldly.
“You are a Galilean,” I said, sparring a little.
“Why say you that?”
“I have friends who are Galileans,” I said with a secret smile, “and you speak with the same curious sibilance as they.”
“I have been in Jerusalem since I was widowed and prided myself I had no accent.”
She had been distracted for the moment, but the worried frown soon reappeared.
“I look for my daughter, and I thought this man of miracles might be able to help me. They say he can even help the dying.”
“How long is she missing?” I inquired as we moved along at a snail’s pace toward the Temple.
“Some seven years.” She then proceeded to enlighten me with a garrulousness that caused me to reconsider my earlier judgment. No spy could prattle so much about so little.
“My husband and I sought to wed our daughter to a young man not of her choosing. She fled on the eve of the wedding, and we have not seen her since.”
Why was it that anybody would so afflict their own flesh and blood?
She hesitated for a moment, then said with a frankness that some oddly reserve for strangers:
“She was precocious beyond her years, and we feared for her chastity. For she was attractive to men much older, though she suffered from a minor affliction.”
How strange a coincidence, that both this woman and the Master were so deeply concerned with woman’s virtue.
“How old was your daughter?”
“Fourteen, old enough to be wed.”
Her story recalled the young woman healed by Jesus only a few nights before. She, too, was a Galilean, and would have been of the daughter’s age. But of course this was straining coincidence. Yet, just as he helped the one, he could help others. I was sure he could do anything. And now that my suspicions had subsided with her jabbering, I wondered how the woman came to speak of the Messiah.
“Years ago I had a dream,” said she with a faraway look that almost made her attractive. “In that dream, I saw the Anointed One of Israel, the Deliverer for whom my people have so long prayed.”
“But you are a Galilean.”
“And so was he, a stalwart young Galilean, with bronze hair and blu
e eyes, and the lean, supple strength of ten.”
I started in spite of myself, but said with a smile: “What do Galileans have to do with Israel’s fondest hope?”
“I am Judean, from my mother’s side, and so was he.”
“Judean on both sides.” I spoke under my breath.
How incongruous that the rough land of Galilee, so blemished in its blood and aspirations, should figure so prominently in the advent of the Messiah. Jesus said life’s mysteries were hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed to the simple and the uninitiated, and he may well have been right in choosing the Galileans on this ground. What better reason was there?
This woman was of Galilee, but, still, she could dream, a dream I had seen in the eyes of many women as they gazed on this man apart. Perhaps it was he that she had seen. We were in strange times, when coming events cast long shadows before them. Who knew but that it was a portent given the uninstructed and denied the cynical and sophisticated?
“And this dream you had?” I said with mounting interest.
“It was the strangest thing. I saw him bending over and blessing a young woman. And this woman, from what I could see of her face, was my own daughter.”
“Why should your daughter be with the Messiah?”
“I don’t know. That has always puzzled me. But the dream was so vivid that I never doubted it. Alas, it never materialized.”
It was obviously nothing, a silly woman’s mirage, born of Israel’s abiding desire for her savior.
And yet I felt drawn to ask: “And what happened to this man of your dreams? Did he ever materialize?”
“I thought I saw him once, in a synagogue in Magdala. He came from Nazareth, and he preached while I stood next to his mother in the loft upstairs. She looked barely old enough to be his sister.”
“And her name?”
“It was Miriam or Mary, Hebrew or Aramaic, as you will.” She sighed. “I must have been mistaken. For that was ten years ago, when he could have been little more than twenty, and I have not seen or heard of him since. Surely, had he been the Messiah he would now be known throughout the land.”
I, Judas Page 21
