Jesus’ eyes flashed. “Because you are hypocrites. You honor God with your lips, but not your hearts. And in future times you and your children will pay a bitter price for closing your hearts to salvation and the promise of eternity.”
“Words, words, words,” cried bar-Abbas.
The fickle crowd had responded to bar-Abbas, for, not being for Jesus, they were now against him.
Jesus measured them with a discerning eye. “Of whom much is expected, much is resented when the expected is not to their expectations.”
Here and there a cry rose again in the crowd: “What can one expect of a Nazarene?”
Another cried: “He calls himself the Son of David, and yet where is his father?”
Zelotes and the others bristled, but Jesus restrained them with a look.
“I know my Father, and my Father knows me. That is enough for now.”
The change in bar-Abbas was not altogether surprising. He had always shown his reservations about Jesus, not acknowledging any more authority for him than he was capable of seizing.
“Unless you show yourself to be the Messiah,” he cried, “you are no different from other men.”
How absurd, when we had all witnessed what Jesus could do. But there was a single-mindedness about bar-Abbas which, while laudable in some ways, blocked him from the truth. He was obsessed by one thought, a liberated land, or so it seemed at the time. Yet there was something about his mad frenzy that appeared almost contrived, for it should have been plain that Jesus was our only hope.
Jesus, I could see, eyed him with the contempt he usually reserved for the Temple parasites.
“The seeds of your own destruction are in you, bar-Abbas,” he cried.
The renegade flinched, and then his customary bravado asserted itself.
“And in you as well, for he who does not resist tyranny shall succumb to it.”
“You mock the Kingdom of Heaven, and it is well. For you shall never enter it but will live in the hell of your own treachery. You are not only false to me but to God. And though you gain your ends, you shall lose salvation.”
Bar-Abbas seemed like a man stunned. But shaking himself, he turned scornfully on his heel, taking Cestus and Dysmas and many others with him. “Israel,” he cried, “shall remember us long after this false prophet is forgotten.”
Others drifted off with the crowd until none was left but the Twelve.
Jesus looked around the grove solemnly.
“Will you also go away?”
Simon Peter spoke up plaintively: “Where shall we go and to whom? For you are the Anointed, the Son of the living God, with whose descent from heaven has been established eternal life.”
Jesus’ face became radiant. “Bless you, Peter, for what you said came from the living God, because it could not have come from any man. For your faith, you shall abide forever in the hearts of men. And fear not, you shall leave this earth like the Son of Man.”
And Peter rejoiced, for what was better than to do what Jesus did?
Chapter Thirteen
THE DEAD LIVE
UNLIKE THE BAPTIST, Jesus was not a simple man. His behavior was never predictable. He could show the worst sinner mercy, then with the cords of his robe flog the money changers unmercifully. He had a deep sense of his own worth. “If I care not for myself,” he said, “then I show no regard for him who sent me.”
Not once did he accommodate his views to the multitude, and whenever I brought up the subject of Rome and its tyranny he would smile and say, mysteriously, that without Rome there could be no spreading of the gospel.
“My Father sent me at a time when all roads lead to Rome, and then out of it.”
Matthew, who had become quite a scrivener, pretended to understand, but to me it was all confusing. What had the Romans to do in their black paganism with the God of Israel?
He seemed resigned that the bulk of the people did not understand his mission, and, for that matter, I could not comprehend myself why it was not possible to bring salvation and at the same time throw the Romans out of the country. How did one negate the other?
In their travels, he enjoined the Twelve to endure no insults but to put an ungrateful community behind them. “Cast not holy water to the dogs, nor pearls before the swine,” he said, reflecting his contempt for those who had eyes and would not see.
He enjoyed the good things of life and found pleasure when Martha and Mary Magdalen took turns in rubbing his weary frame with the soothing lotions they had acquired for this occasion. It made his visits to Lazarus’ home in Bethany a gala affair.
His friendship with Lazarus intrigued me, for on the surface there was not that much to commend him to the Master. They spoke frankly, however, and Lazarus expressed the views of the business people, who were more concerned with the pacification of the land than with rebellion, for in a time of chaos and confusion they could not prosper.
“My people are content,” said Lazarus, speaking of the hundreds who toiled in his many groves and wineries. “I pay them well and they work well.”
He paid Lazarus the tribute of speaking to him in the third person.
“Lazarus,” he said, “is a good man, for he knows that the laborer is worthy of his hire, and he allows his hirelings to share with him the profits that ensue from the sweat of their brows. He is an example for others, and he will one day find an easy road to heaven on the arms of the many he has helped.”
In no way did he begrudge Lazarus his success, nor was he disappointed when this friend did not leave his business to join the disciples.
“They also serve God,” said he, “who make the way easier for his servants.”
We questioned him closely when he observed that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Matthew was particularly concerned, for he could not understand how Jesus could love so much his dear friend Lazarus. And what of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who believed in him and contributed to our cause without stint? How else would we have alms for the poor (or weapons for the revolution)?
He made no distinction, said he, between people of different classes and creeds, considering only that it was more difficult for the rich to qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven, since their temptations were greater than those of the poor.
“It is not because they are rich that they are proscribed, but because of how they gained these riches and what they do with them.” He held out two coins, the silver shekel of Israel and the golden shekel of Rome. “See you any harm in these innocent pieces of metal? Give them to the poor, or build with them a modest home or farm or road, and they are beneficent and good.” He gave me a searching glance. “Buy with them weapons, or build vast ornate temples in the name of God, and you break God’s commandment that there shall be no other before him.”
His eyes clouded over for a moment. “Riches can free a man or make him a slave. And no man can serve two masters.”
Peter looked to Mark, his handpicked disciple, who transcribed his own observations, whatever they were, and said with a puzzled frown: “Master, would you give us an example of the deeper significance of riches and poverty, in view of what you preach?”
Jesus liked nothing better than to prove a point with one of his parables. “As you will.” He squinted slightly into the fire. “There was a certain rich man, named bar-Abbas”—we all laughed, for everyone knew that Joshua-bar-Abbas was as poor as a mouse—“who was clothed in the merchant’s purple cloak and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day. On the other hand, there was a certain beggar named Lazarus”—we again laughed at what we thought a mere jest—“who, having no place to go, camped at the rich man’s gate, because he was tired and hungry and full of sores. He was happy to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, the merchant’s dogs came and licked his sores till the pain eased. It was his only glimmer of happiness in a life of misery, but he did not once complain, for he felt that God had visited th
ese tribulations on him for a reason. Now it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by God’s angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man, who never thought of God in his devotion to riches, also died, and was buried in a grand sepulcher.
“But in death he found himself, unexpectedly, in the hell he had never known on earth. In his torment he raised up his eyes and there saw at a distance the patriarch Abraham, and clasped to Abraham’s bosom was the miserable beggar Lazarus.
“At this, bar-Abbas lifted his voice and cried: ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, whom I allowed my dogs to lick, that he may dip the tip of his finger in the water and cool my tongue, for I am sorely tormented by the flames of hell.’
“But Abraham only shook his head and said: ‘Son of Israel, remember that in your lifetime you received many good things which you did nothing with for the people, and likewise Lazarus suffered many things, through no apparent fault of his own, but now a balance is established and he is comforted and you are tormented.’”
Jesus looked up to see how we were responding to his story. I was particularly fascinated, for, as a Pharisee-bred, I had long considered the prospect of reincarnation and the evening of scores by one’s behavior from one life to another. Matthew, too, had been listening avidly, rueing the darkness that delayed his putting the Master’s words on parchment.
The Master was pleased at our interest, and continued with this tale dear to his heart.
Abraham, as it were, had even sorrier tidings for the rich man who had missed his opportunities to do good with his wealth. “And beside all this torment of hell, there is a great gulf between us, so that none can pass from heaven to hell, and neither can they pass from hell to heaven.”
The rich man asked a boon of the patriarch. “I plead. Father Abraham, that you send this Lazarus, who is now in heaven, to my father’s earthly house, for I have five brothers, and I would have him testify unto them, so that they may be spared the torment of this blazing hell.”
Abraham (whom I suspected was Jesus) shook his head vigorously. “They have Moses and the Prophets to follow from childhood. Let them listen to them while there is yet time.”
But Lazarus was only the more insistent. “Nay, Father Abraham,” he said, “for it would count more if one came to them from the dead and gave testimony, for then they would surely repent.”
“If they hear not Moses and the Prophets,” said Abraham, “neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead and spelled out their sins to them.”
No one could have escaped the full brunt of this parable save Peter. “But, Master,” he said, “why is it you made the poor man Lazarus, and the rich Joshua-bar-Abbas, when all know these roles are reversed on earth?”
“Exactly,” said Jesus, “for the unfruitful rich shall suffer the pangs of the poor, and the deserving poor the consolations of the rich in this life that extends into infinity.”
The disciple Mark, the son of a rich man who frequently befriended our cause, appeared to be troubled.
“What is it?” inquired Jesus softly, mindful always of the young.
Mark’s blue eyes were somber. “Will the rich man linger always in hell and the beggar in paradise?”
“Not so,” said Jesus, “for when the lesson is learned, when the rich man accepts the word of the Father as given by the Son, then he too shall find redemption and return to a new life.”
The important thing was to know the truth. But what was truth? Jesus spoke of it often. It was not some vague philosophical concept, but an outlook which colored every act of a man’s life. And yet truth for one man was not necessarily truth for another. The Romans thought theirs the true way. It showed in their smug smiles and swaggering walk. They had brought peace to the world, and they even had a name for it, the Pax Romana. But it was their peace, not ours.
Our truth lay in the Deliverer, theirs in whatever supported their Empire and way of life. They didn’t scratch below the surface of their own sick society to see the creeping corruption which needed only a firm prod to push them beyond the abyss. For them, Palestine was but a passageway from Egypt to Syria for troops and supplies, and the Jews were troublesome children, to be occasionally spanked into obedience.
For the Romans, Jesus didn’t exist so long as his kingdom remained a heavenly one. But he was very much aware of them.
“Someday, Judah,” he chided me, “Rome shall carry God’s message to the distant corners of the earth.”
I thought of those hard, flintlike faces under those metal helmets, the thin-lipped contempt, the unbearable arrogance, and shook my head.
“It would be so simple,” I said, “if you would raise your voice but once against the authority of Rome.”
“Someday you will understand, as will the world, that the Son of Man is sent to do God’s work and not to suit the whims of those who want a Messiah in their own image. Is not God’s will above man’s?”
He knew as well as I all the predictions of the coming which promised the delivery of the country from its adversaries. Why else had he come at this particular time, when the world was nearing the end of an age and people talked darkly of the millennium? Some said that if you walked far enough, you would fall off the earth into hell, and others said that hell was all in a man’s mind, just as was the heaven he spoke of so easily. And that all these truths would become self-evident during the reign of Israel’s new King. Why else had he usurped the Baptist’s place unless he was this ruler? We already knew about the one God. We needed no new reminders. Why else had we borne persecution and captivity, the scorn of the Gentile all these years, unless God was to redeem our suffering in the name of his messenger? He could not have come at a better time for God’s people, nor more perfectly endowed. He was not quite thirty-five, of overpowering presence, when I first met him on the banks of the Jordan, in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. There was much confusion about his birth, and some placed it in the month of Kislev, which is the Roman December. But actually it was in early Shebat, corresponding to the Roman month of March, which comes under the constellation Pisces. This was during the twenty-third year of the rule of Tiberius’ predecessor and stepfather, the corrupt Octavius Augustus, who ruled so insidiously that the Roman Senate kept conferring titles on him until he contemptuously ordered them to desist.
Many had confused the prediction of the coming of a King of Kings with the unparalleled power of Octavius, sitting like a Colossus astride the three continents. But Herod the Great knew better, or he would not have ordered the Massacre of the Innocents to keep his wicked line unbroken.
Jesus was well aware of the doubts that grew out of his delayed ministry. And yet it would not have been propitious, he said, for him to have come before the public at any other time. “The world,” he said, “has reached a crisis of insecurity, and this crisis brings forth the state of mind that influences the course of peoples and nations. It is not by chance my ministry begins with Pilate, for it shall also end with him.”
It seemed incongruous that a petty Roman procurator’s assignment to an obscure province (for the Romans) should have any bearing on the Messiah who had been Israel’s shining hope for centuries.
“Not so, Judah,” said he with a smile, “for even so you and John and Peter and Matthew and the rest have come together at this time to do in your way what Pilate does in his.”
“It is all ordained then?”
“Not in the particulars, for man, with faith in God, has the opportunity to alter his direction. There are some things he can change which help him in God’s kingdom, but others are God’s will and not subject to change.”
“How do we know which is God’s and which man’s?”
He smiled sadly. “That only the Son knows. But remember well”—he turned to John—“you and the others, that no man shall take my life, even though many shall be persecuted down the ages for this in my name, and their persecutors shall not be lightly forgiven. For God is not as merciful with the unjust as the just,
and the keys to the kingdom do not serve those who twist the teachings of the Son.”
John would have stopped him from speaking in this vein, but he silenced him with the tender glance he seemed to reserve for this son of Zebedee. “Know this, that I have the power to lay down my life, and to take it up again. And for this reason my Father shall love me, because I do freely lay down what he has given me that I may take it up again, and show man his ultimate destiny.”
Without his power to heal, I question whether Jesus would have continued to attract the crowds. There were few who could swallow the idea of an afterlife, or of rebirth, without evidence. And Jesus could offer none. Only words. And so it was that when he healed a cripple or a leper with a word, many were ready to follow him and believe whatever he told them. For how else could he work these miracles but with God’s help?
He never performed a miracle without attributing it to the Father’s power.
After he came down from the mountain, I asked how he had gone six weeks without food. His cheeks were ruddy and his breath sweet. His teeth glistened in their whiteness.
He pointed to the sky.
“It is no task for my Father to make bread out of stones. When the children of Israel hungered in the desert, did it not rain manna? And when they thirsted, the prophet Moses knocked his staff against a rock.”
I often wondered why the Pharisees questioned his miracles when they cheerfully acknowledged those of Moses and Elijah, which they knew only by repute. Even when they witnessed his healings and heard firsthand testimony as to how he made the blind see and made water into wine, they would not grant that he was sent by God. “He is of the devil,” they said, disregarding the fact that he had driven the devil out of many.
I thought perhaps it was his familiarity with the times, his newness, for no man was a prophet to his neighbor or friends or family. But Matthew, who now prided himself on being historian, found a more subtle reason for the distinction. “The prophets of old,” he said, “relied on nature to help them with their miracles. Moses tapped on a rock in the desert, and a hidden spring emerged. He led the people of Israel into the Red Sea, through the canal which all know they had in those times, and then a cataclysm closed the waters on the pursuing Egyptians. But Jesus does it all himself. With a word he quiets the wind and the waves, and he rids the sick of fevers and pestilence. In Moses’ time these were inflicted on the Egyptians directly by the Lord, who spared the people of Israel.”
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