Jesus was tranquil and courteous, ‘I had hoped to find it among the good men, but I didn’t.’
‘And where else have you looked for it?’
‘Among the pagans,’ Jesus said, ‘and the priests at Jerusalem before that.’
‘And you didn’t find it?’
‘I found temptation, but I also found that when a man flees from temptation, that is when he falls all the more into its pit.’
John smiled again to himself. This was a day full of rarities. ‘Yes… that is so,’ he agreed.
‘I had to ask myself,’ Jesus continued, ‘why must salvation come only to those who have the blood of Abraham? Why could it not come to all men?’
John thought it a novel idea.
‘Have you never asked yourself this?’ Jesus continued. ‘Here, in this seclusion the Essenes strive to be pure. They touch no money and don’t stain their hands with labour and yet, a man has to eat bread and drink water, he has to have clothes to ward off the cold and a shelter to ward off the sun, don’t you agree?’
John nodded. ‘So he must, and the Essenes, who need these things, lay the burden of sin on those who support them, those who are willing to taint themselves with worldly things for their part, and do what the Essenes will not do.’
Jesus looked out to the desert. ‘I have seen what happens to what they turn away from their gates…it goes out into the world to taunt ordinary people.’
John was attentive. ‘What have you seen?’
‘I have seen Satan, and the Devil,’ Jesus said, looking at him, ‘and when they flee from here, they tempt those that live outside all the harder.’
John was dumbstruck. His own concerns and intuitions were, through this man, made more understandable to him. He peered into the landscape, torn and abandoned. Yes, he had seen the Devil and Satan: one a hot creature that made men fall into frenzy, the other a cold creature that lived in hard thoughts and hard hearts. He had known them in his meditations, and they had tempted him. It was difficult for him to speak of these things, which defied the tongue and words, except with this man.
‘Yes…as you speak I realise that a time for seclusion is passed!’ He looked at Jesus. ‘And a time must come, when blood is of no importance…it is so near I can taste it on my tongue! Surely redemption cannot come by selfishly casting off burdens, but by shouldering the burdens of others!’
‘That means,’ Jesus told him, ‘that if we are to find redemption we cannot escape suffering.’
John looked at Jesus squarely in the eye. ‘For men like you and me, men who spend a long time looking at the same desert and wondering when He will come, this suffering cannot come soon enough!’
‘Whom do you wait for?’
‘The Messiah,’ John said, ‘whom else? I tell myself that Daniel’s prophecies are all fulfilled! Lions and beasts, war and famine, degradation and enslavement have come to us. A great supply of calamities! How much suffering will convince God that we are ready for the consolation of Israel? How much suffering before the liberator comes to relieve us?’
‘You sound angry with God.’ Jesus of Nazareth said, pointing out the obvious.
‘I have a bone to pick with him, it’s true!’ John said. ‘All my life I have fasted and waited and fasted, and denied the flesh and fasted again – does God not hear the anguish of the soul that is alone and weary and waiting for the day of the Lord to come?’
The Galilean looked thoughtful, ‘Perhaps the Lord is waiting for you to fulfil Elijah’s task.’
John measured his guile. Finding none, he said, ‘Tell me once more who you are.’
‘We are kin, I think. My mother was Mary, your mother’s cousin.’
‘My mother’s cousin…’ he said. An amazement washed over him and a sense of destiny signalled his soul to attention.
Jesus stood.
‘Wait!’ John moved to stop him. ‘What do you mean…God is waiting for me to fulfil Elijah’s task?’
‘That is not for me to say…’ Jesus answered, ‘that is something between you and your angel.’
Jesus left then and John remained, pondering these words.
By the time afternoon had gathered up the day to its bosom, John had gathered up his things to return to the seclusion of his cave to ask the question.
‘How must I fulfil Elijah’s task?’
There he sat, over twelve days and nights, until his longing for understanding had reached a feverish pitch and his devotion was poured out towards the planets and stars. Now in the darkness he heard a mysterious tone – louder, gentler, louder again, resounding harmoniously in the night. He saw his soul as a dark disc around which bloomed an effulgence of light. Ring upon ring of rainbow colours appeared to form a radiant iris around it. The colours gathered in strength and began to eclipse the darkness, revealing the violet-red orb of his inner sun.
This sun spoke thus:
‘John! Come closer, straighten you ears, lean them on my heart and listen. Yes…I am your angel, before I was your angel I was the angel of Buddha, but he no longer needs me since he is now transfigured so I am come to you, to tell you how you must fulfil Elijah’s task. Come, my dishevelled one…you must prepare the way for the Being of the Sun who descends to the earth. You must make the path straight for his descent. Go forth and preach the gospel of repentance. It will be like Buddha’s Sermon at Benares, for I will inspire you! You will tell all men that the ‘kingdom’ of God is at hand. Then you will plunge their dirty souls into water, to loosen them from their bodies and cause them to see that they belong not only to bones and flesh, but also to the spirit. That is how they will be reborn, in the water of life, like fish.’
‘Will I also baptise the coming one?’
‘Yes…but the Son of God is only once born! That is the secret.’
‘Oh angel!’ John anguished, leaning on that angelic being with all his might. ‘Tell me, how shall I know Him when he comes?’
‘Leave that to me! I will prise open your eyes and you will see the spirit descend. Then you will be a witness that He is the Son of God. For you are the last of the prophets…my little baptiser…and the constellation from which you have seen the sun at midnight shall remain a memory of your deed and be known forever as Aquarius.
Men will call it the region of The Waterman.’
18
BROTHERS
Yeshua’s brother Jacob was a Nazarite. After his brother’s death he had left his home and offered himself to the elders and they had welcomed him because they had hoped that one day he might take his brother’s place as the Messiah’s chosen instrument. This, however, could only be known with certainty on his thirtieth year. Until then, he was expected to enter into the strictest branch of the order of Nazarites and become an Essene.
Over the years he passed every trial and all was well, but when time came for him to ascend to the highest grade – that grade which leads the son of darkness towards ‘enlightenment’, he failed, and the elders were forced to turn him away from the sanctuary doors at Engaddi. He could remain in the outer circle and live his life in the Essene communities, but he would never partake of the ceremonial meals with the elders.
When he left Engaddi, he did not return to Nazareth, but instead journeyed through the land; a man without a reason to sustain him, like a bird without a sky.
The world was a tense, dangerous place, everywhere prophets shook their fists at the heavens, the Sicarri plotted against the Romans, and the Romans taxed the people, crucified them and caused blood to flow through the streets. The Levites, priests and rabbis were powerless and watched from their high places as if the trials of their people were none of their business. In the meantime, every faithful Jew waited for the Redeemer of Israel to come.
The sun pressed its fingers into Jacob’s head and told him of the suffering and anguish of his people and he shouted back to it:
If I was meant to take Yeshua’s place, why did you let me fail?
Yeshua would not have failed. In Yeshua
’s eyes there had always lived the seal of his ministry; the testament of his kingship had always throbbed in his heart. Did Jacob recognise such a kingship in his own mind, such a ministry in his own heart?
He did not know.
To think on Yeshua was to recall a resentment, which had long ago settled into the soil of his soul for the son of the carpenter, Jesus, the addled shepherd who could only play the flute and stare at the clouds. His brother’s affection had been reserved for Jesus alone and after his death, Jacob’s resentment had combined with his grief and had grown in him a suspicious, childish obsession, and it was this:
A bewildering change had come over Jesus, a change that could not be explained. Suddenly, the backward boy was speaking eloquently, thinking unclouded thoughts and even arguing the law with the rabbis! How had he come by such cleverness? Even Jesus’ coloured eyes had flecked with his brother’s intelligence! He had grown certain that Jesus had stolen Yeshua’s soul and taken it for his own by some strange magic.
This had lived in him as a child, but as an adult he had buried these suspicions, jealousies and hatreds deep below his thoughts, concentrating on his destiny and his work with the Essenes. But now, on his journeys, when he took refuge at inns and khans, these feelings began to surface again. For in these places Jacob found himself taken for another man, a man from Nazareth who had sat with the innkeepers and with the poor and the lowly – a man who had made such an impression on them that at times, when the firelight was soft and the conversation turned mellow, he seemed to be among them. Jacob had been full of misery to learn the man’s name – Jesus.
To add to his woes, when he finally returned to his home, he learned that the Essene elders had begun to train their eyes on his stepbrother, and had invited him to Engaddi on his own terms! And so his deep-seated spite drove him to visit his stepbrother, to have it out with him.
The home of Jesus was simple but skilfully built. It was set away from other houses, amongst a grove of olive trees, with a small garden and a place for the animals and for work. This day, Jesus was in the carpenter’s workshop and Jacob stood a long time watching him from behind a tree, trying to find the courage to confront him.
Watching Jesus busy with his work reminded Jacob of a life grown distant to his mind. And as he watched the angle of Jesus’ head, half-turned to the light of the morning sun, began to play a trick of his eyes. Jesus’ face began to grow about it the likeness of Davidic descent, and Jacob was taken aback by it – for was this not a reflection of his dead brother? His mind told him it could not be so, he was falling once again into the delusions of his childhood, and yet…and yet…his heart could not deny what his eyes were seeing!
A pain tore his soul from its hiding hole, so that it stood before him, perfectly clear and visible to his eyes. He saw himself as a despised creature, full of snakes and vipers in his heart. He understood the reason for his failure at Engaddi – he had not managed to purify his diseased soul!
He left without a word to Jesus, and made his way to the Nazarite caves in Judea where he hoped to burn away his earthly failings and self-loathing through a regime of fasting and solitude.
He spent long months living in these caves, grappling with himself, and yet he did not find himself altered. Finally, defeated and on his way to Jerusalem again word reached him of a man who was baptising for the remission of sins. He was baptising in that place where an arm of the Jordan formed a bend in the river and created a clear, still pool. Crowds were gathered on the riverbank, men and women, even children, stood listening to the words of the baptiser. The baptiser was broad-made and tall. He wore a garment of camel hair over his chest and a girdle of skin about his loins and stood waist deep in the water. His eyes were dark and troubled, his hair was auburn, long and unkempt but when he spoke his voice was full of authority, an authority beyond the world and its men.
He told the people that the kingdom in the heavens was approaching the earth. He spoke of the Messiah who would soon come to redeem the errors of men. He said he would be able to recognise Him when he came, and so would all those who made pure their souls and repented their sins.
After that, men wearing only loincloths clambered towards the water to enter the cool depths of the river. They were completely immersed in the water and when they surfaced Jacob saw them gasp like newborns. And when they walked past him, he saw the edifying and majestic inner change apparent on their faces.
Jacob, loaded with a consciousness of his sins, heard the call of the river. He heard the murmur of pleasure and the cry of sorrow; the thunder of righteousness and the shame of wrongdoing. He heard the laments of mourning and the sighing for lost dreams. He heard stories of envy, murder, adultery and false witness. He heard of heresies, robberies and lusts. The river, for its part, chorused and harmonised these deaths and rebirths until all sin was turned to its opposite.
In his heart Jacob felt an urgent pull to join his voice to the river’s voice, to immerse his failings in the healing waters and to surface again free from them; free from the festering and the spoilt deeps inside him. This was the redemption he had been seeking! Perhaps, free of his jealousy and covetousness he might find the path to his destiny?
He stood before the river’s rim. The crowds were near gone. The sun, in its lowering path watched over the pastured lands, and the haze of afternoon began to fall over the trees. He removed his only garment and moved towards the water in his loincloth. The river was chilly. He stepped into its coolness and let it gather around his knees, then his thighs, until he was waist deep. It made him shiver. He felt alive.
He paused before John the Baptist, and trembling, asked, ‘You say you can recognise the Messiah?’
The other man answered, ‘I have put my soul at the disposal of an angel, and he has not opened my eyes yet…so He is not yet come.’
Jacob took this in. He was not the awaited one. He was surprised to find relief flooding his heart! He crossed his hands over his chest as he had seen others do and the Baptiser immersed him into the water. He held his breath. An instant stretched to eternity, an eternity fashioned an instant. Full of fear, fear and panic and fear again he held to his heart, for harder tests had he withstood. Finally, he let go his dread of death and allowed the water to drown him.
He was dying and in this dying something began to prise open the eyes of his soul, to reveal not the form-dwindling water, but something else – the weaving of his life in picture forms. Everything lay around him: his accomplishments and his many imperfections; his desires, his passions and his weaknesses; all of his vices and his transgressions; all the defilement of this life’s journey and the dust of his misplaced hopes and dreams.
All the content of his life was added to the river’s many voices and by way of the stream’s sacrifice, these remnants floated away from him, leaving him clean. Now, a vision of profound beauty was granted him, so great and so mighty as to cause him to feel the very ground of his being shaken with love.
He saw, in his mind’s eye, a man carrying a lamb on his shoulder.
Of a sudden he was lifted out of the water and he gasped for breath. He felt life enter into the dead parts of his soul. He heard a voice,
‘Arise, you have seen the good shepherd!’
Jacob knew that his wound was healed and so his pain was eased. He had found harmony in the stream of his life, for in the river’s stream he had found his salvation.
In this peace there was a species of loneliness. The world had grown alien to him and he would never again return to his former life. He would not remain a member of his family but would always be like a man in the wilderness, a solitary soul.
Such was the price of a new life, and a new name.
19
PETITION
Herod Antipas travelled the road from Callirrhoe like a child in search of a new experience. He was on his way to meet the man hailed as a prophet, a new Elijah. This was John bar Zacharias, whom they called the Baptiser.
Yesterday, a courier had l
eft his camp with a message for John – Herod Antipas would give him an audience. This morning had come the ascetic’s answer: the baptiser would not see him at Ainon but at the place of baptism, some distance from it. So it was to this place that the small caravan now travelled.
Accompanying Herod on this journey was his soon-to-be bride, Herodias, and her daughter, Salome. Looking to Herodias now, sitting as she was beside him in their carriage, he felt a thrill at the base of his spine – she mesmerised him. She was a well of dark water, a soulless abyss and a bottomless chasm. She was spellbinding.
Some time ago while in Jerusalem visiting his half brother Philip, Herod had taken a fancy to Herodias, then Philip’s wife. Herodias was not only his sister-in-law but also consanguineously, his niece, since she was the daughter of another half brother, Aristobulus. Upon seeing her Herod had desired her despite her being an ugly thing to behold, and this had quite amused him, it amused him still! He looked at her now. Her hair was black and thinly woven and her forehead was carved low over mud coloured eyes that were rounded and strangely askew. She seemed to be all head, all shoulders, all chest; as if the upper part of her were put together with the lower from mismatched portions. And yet…and yet…what eyes! The first time he had seen those eyes they had seized him with their claws, and had thrust into his mind the content of an awesome knowledge, an elemental and infernal vigour, and an appetite that worked like a lightning strike into his apathetic limbs.
Thrilled and exhilarated, he convinced Herodias to divorce his brother, but his vacant mind had not foreseen the chagrin of his Arab wife, Phasaelis. In truth before he could do away with her, the woman had escaped from his clutches and made for the bosom of her angry father, who now threatened war. To add to this unfortunate turn of events, he found the council of priests at Jerusalem obdurate on the subject of his intended divorce and marriage. How could they ratify a marriage of uncle and niece?
Not one for exerting himself unduly, he would have given up on the entire idea had he not become enamoured of a certain other advantage. He cast a glance at Herodias’ daughter, Salome, a child of sixteen. All the characteristics that had assumed a misshapen proportion in her mother had combined differently in the daughter so that her black eyes were clear and deep and shaped like almonds, and her hair was the colour of a raven’s neck and fell in thick looms over the fine curvature of her pale form, over the perfect proportion of her breasts, over the rounded belly shaped in a design to nourish the eye of desire.
Fifth Gospel: A Novel (Rosicrucian Quartet) Paperback Page 11
