Judas followed his every move, observing with one eye all his miracles and his healings, while the other eye measured the man, Jesus, for the pluck of a king.
He found him wanting.
He was meek and spoke of meekness, he was mild and preached mildness; even his healings were made without majesty or regal authority. How could such a man lead a people to a renewal of the Jewish kingdom? He had envisaged a Messiah who would make fiery speeches, calling all men to arms. Not a man who spoke of turning the other cheek and of loving even those who hate you. In truth, his doings were few, dotted here and there among long intervals of silent, inward gazing. The others despaired whenever he retreated into his seclusions. For his part, Judas observed it with a growing feeling of disillusionment and impatience.
Near to the Feast of the Trumpets, Judas followed in his train to Jerusalem. It was a long, painful march and along the way Jesus taught those who came to hear him. Some listened, some walked away waving their hands at his preaching of love and tolerance and at his parables, which they did not understand. Those who listened to him were mostly a mixture of defiled Jews, Samaritans, gentiles, publicans and tax collectors - a band of ragamuffins. Such a band would not do Jesus much good. They would ruin his reputation and make true Jews reticent to support him. This became all the more obvious the closer they came to Jerusalem.
In Jerusalem itself Jesus led his band of followers to the Temple and here he spoke to the people on the steps, as was the custom in those days. His words found willing hearts in some quarters of the populace but in others it did not. The Pharisees and scribes would not accept him, they remembered him from that puzzling incident at the Temple some months ago, when he overturned the tables and cursed the moneychangers. Now, they took the opportunity to rebuke him publicly and to cut him down to size before the people.
‘We see that you teach those of mixed blood; that you eat and drink with publicans and sinners and lowly people. Why do you break the laws of Moses?’
Jesus took this in with a silent, calm serenity, and closed his eyes.
The pause lasted long. The people began to wonder if he would ever speak.
Judas had seen this strangeness before.
He had seen him keep a hundred people waiting while he bent to observe the details of some flower he found fascinating. When he caressed the trunks of trees or the long grass, or pressed soil between his fingers, it seemed to Judas that these were like gold or precious jewels to him, and yet, when he handled the parchments of the law at Nazareth, he treated those ancient and friable items as if they were so many poisonous weeds.
Judas could not understand why Jesus overlooked the rich and powerful to serve children and paupers as if they were kings. Or why when the rabbis and men of learning came to fathom the depths of his knowledge he spoke of simple things and sent them away thinking him addled. He spoke in parables concerning the most mundane things, and at other times, he spoke in a language that was clear as day, of the most complicated mysteries. When he met with zealous patriots, he said he had not come to rule. When the peaceful came to him for guidance, he said that his coming would not bring peace, but war. When the melancholic asked him for salvation from suffering, he told them there was joy in pain. When the proud and self-righteous spoke of the sins of the world, he told them that the persecuted would inherit the kingdom of heaven. When he observed the maltreatment of others, he spoke with a fiery zeal that made all men think the world would soon end. And yet, when he was abused, accused, or insulted, he stood silent, motionless, as if he had all eternity at his disposal, and did not need to answer to anyone.
This day was no different, faced with the protestations of the Pharisees, he remained with his eyes closed and his face upturned to the sun for a long time, long enough for the question to come at him again.
‘Why do you teach those of mixed blood? Why do you eat and drink with publicans, and sinners and lowly people?
When he opened his eyes, he did not regard the Pharisees, but instead, turned his gaze to the simple people who had followed him, those of whom the priests spoke. He breathed in their fragrance, as if he were standing not before a group of defiled men, but before a landscape full of wild flowers. ‘Tell me, my friends, do the righteous need repentance? Do those who are well need a physician?’
The crowds were pleased with this answer.
He considered the Pharisees now. ‘My message needs new ears. For what I bring has to enter into souls not blemished by the old ways. To give what is new to souls infected with your old ways would be like sewing a new cloth onto an old garment, and that is why I choose those who do not belong to you, for my words would soon tear them apart!’
From the Pharisees came a rumble of voices, but only one was raised higher than the others.
‘We have heard that you do not observe the fasts, and that you allow your men to eat and drink as they wish, is this true?’
Jesus nodded. ‘Why not? Why should they fast? Is it not true that in your tradition the guests at a wedding feast never fast while the bridegroom is among them? I am the bridegroom and while I am here it is a wedding celebration. My guests will eat and drink, for they are the children of the bridal chamber. But the day will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them by you and your old laws, and in those days, my followers will fast, since there will be a great sadness. While I am here, your old laws will not serve them.’
‘What do you say then, of John the Baptist!’ one Pharisee shouted. ‘What do you consider him? Old or new?’
He looked at this with a placid regard. ‘Among those men who are born from a woman,’ he said, ‘none is greater than John, that is true, he is the best of what is old among you, and yet those whose hearts are made new by my teachings, they shall be greater even than John, that is also true.’
‘Do you call yourself an initiate? Show us a sign, the sign of Jonah or the sign of Solomon, so that we may see and be contented!’
Jesus halted. Something in this had raised his ire. He looked at the Pharisees now with the fullness of his condescension. ‘You old serpents! You ask for signs and wonders because you only see with the eyes of your body! But I shall not give you signs to make your eyes contented! I am not an initiate! I am greater than the man Jonah! I am greater than Solomon, for I am not a seer! I am the subject of seeing, the subject of initiation itself, and those who have spirit eyes and ears will see and will hear me and they will be contented!’
The rabbis could say nothing, they seemed confused by his words, and this had stilled their tongues. They made to leave.
Judas said to them, ‘Wait!’
But they did not wait.
He went to Jesus and said to him, ‘Why do you not reason with them? Surely it is good to have them on our side. Teach them of your greatness! Perform some miracle to convince them!’
Jesus turned to him with a look he had seen before. A look that was quizzical and serene, and yet it pierced the heart and winkled out the truth from its opposite. ‘There are as many men who can perform miracles, Judas, as there are teachers in the world. My task is not perform miracles or to teach, it is to live and to die.’
‘But why not tell them of the mysterious things you have told us, the secrets of existence and of the kingdom of God?’
‘Would you give grass to a dog, Judas, or meat to a cow? I look at the condition of a man’s soul and I give him what he can bear, according to whether I see in him an animal, or a man. Only to my brothers do I give the fullness of my teachings.’
He led Judas and the others away then, across the forum and through the Sheep Gate. They were headed for Olivet, where they would spend the night and to do so they had to pass a place called Bethesda, the ‘House of Healing’.
Bethesda consisted of five porches, which enclosed a pool made from the waters of an intermittent spring. The bubbling up, or ‘troubling’ of this pool, was said to foreshadow healings attributed to an angel. Around it, sick people congregated and when the spring began
to swirl, the sick and afflicted scrambled to enter its waters to be healed, and for this reason every expectant eye was fixed on the pool.
Judas saw Jesus go to the most wretched man of all, a man who sat without an attendant or friend to help him to the pool. Jesus asked this man if he had the will to stand. The man said that he did. Jesus looked at him full of love and told him to take up his coverlet and to go since he was healed. When the man did as he said, all were amazed, not only because the man had been healed but also because this healing infringed upon rabbinic law, which forbade work on a Sabbath.
Judas did not know what to think.
The next day when they came again to the Temple, the Rabbis and Pharisees were gathered waiting for him. They had heard of the healing.
‘You healed a man on the Sabbath!’ one Pharisee said, pointing a dry bone of a finger at him.
‘It is true,’ said Jesus, tranquilly.
‘Did you tell him to take up his bed and to walk, knowing this to be unlawful?’
His voice was so quiet that the old men who had gathered around had to cup their ears to hear it, ‘I am the Lord of the Sabbath, if I wish to do good on a Sabbath, then I will do it. You, on the other hand, should be ashamed, for you do not care about the man’s cure or the spirit that enabled it. You think only that he took up his bed on the Sabbath.’ He looked at them and his face did not change but his voice became deeper. ‘Your rigid laws need to be broken! You see God as a God of death, but I tell you He is a God of life! You see him as hateful and disdainful, a God Who longs for revenge, but I have come to show that He is a God of love and warmth and light. He comes to bring salvation and redemption of sin to mankind; to save it from the fear that you cultivate!’
Angered, the rabbis shouted, ‘How can a man bring redemption? You cannot forgive sins! This is only for God to do!’
‘I can forgive sins because what lives in me is above the laws of the Sabbath, the laws of the Sabbath are the laws of necessity, the laws of death. But I can free a man from necessity, I have come to free him from sin, for my power does not come from dark Saturn which names your Sabbath, my power comes from the Sun and my day is Sun-day, the day of light, and life!’
After that, there was heated discussion. The priests were displeased and left to confer amongst themselves. Judas followed them to the hall of justice where, after a further scrutiny of the blind man’s evidence, they plotted against Jesus.
Backwards and forwards they disagreed on the finer points of the law. In the end, they resolved that Jesus was certainly more than a prophet, or perhaps even more than a priest, but they could not allow the people to know it. The people, that childish rabble full of lusts and desires and propensities to sin, had to be kept in their place, and such a man had a mind to set them free! Free from sin, free from the Sabbath rule! What would result, if they began to believe in a God of love? What consequences would befall Israel from evildoers if they were robbed of their fear of the pain, disease and death that God inflicted on the iniquitous? Healings and speeches were one thing, yes, but what next, the expulsion of the priests from their positions, the tearing down of the Temple, and the burning of the sacred writings of our forefathers?
Before their eyes lay the devastation of Israel and the ruination of the faith of generations and it was too great a vision to be contemplated by so small a number. They resolved, therefore, to take the matter to the full gathering of the Sanhedrin.
At that moment, Judas realised that what Jesus had done, though dangerous and foolhardy, was acceptable. For it had revealed to all men not only the hypocrisy of the priests, but also that Jesus was indeed more than John the Baptist; that he was more than a prophet or a priest. For he had spoken with a Godly authority that even the priests could not deny, and which had made them fearful!
When Judas returned to the circle in the outer suburbs of Jerusalem he went directly to Jesus and spoke to him again.
He said, ‘Jesus…you have shown me why you do not bother with the Pharisees, for they are like dogs in a manger, they do not want the truth, and yet they will prevent any other from knowing it, but now you must prepare how, and when, you will take up your rule of the kingdom of Israel from them. It is time for pruning and you must do it in a hurry, while you have many supporters who can help you cut down the dead stalks!’
Jesus penetrated him with eyes like rainbows. ‘I am not come to prune the garden, Judas, but to make it lush. You have been with me long and still you do not understand me! The kingdom comes to this world through me. It is not of this world, but it comes to save the world, it comes to save even the weeds…I have not come to rule Israel, but to serve all of humanity!’
Judas’ blood grew hot and gall was stuck like a rock in his throat. He walked away from Jesus with sparks flying from his muscles and sinews and marched full of fury and impatience into the streets of Akra.
He was thinking his wild thoughts when an old dog launched itself from an archway at him, growling and snarling for all it was worth. Before the animal could blink Judas had already felled it with a kick to the side of the head, and was leaning over to look at one eye, full of blood and surprise.
He whispered to it, ‘I will speak plain, one beast to another, next time, don’t growl before you bite!’
He looked to see if the animal had taken it in before walking off towards Jerusalem.
37
MACHAREUS
Our aggressors had constructed a gatta, a siege tower, which day after day crawled a few feet closer to the summit. Now that the French were so close, our fortress was battered day and night without pause. Our walls were strongly built but Hugh of Arcis was persistent and I knew it was only a matter of time before his shots found a breach.
Skirmish after skirmish had left many wounded, and these were taken to rooms set apart for them. My fellow perfects and I gave those who desired it the convenenza, which unlike the consolamentum could be administered even to those who could no longer speak. I worked long hours without rest, and yet I did not feel weary.
In truth, of late I had discovered in myself a boundless vigour. Even Raymon, my socio, God bless him, had seen it, and had been puzzled at the spring in my step, at the lilt in my voice and my ability to climb to the end of the spiral stairs, without being seized by breathlessness.
He told me he had seen the light in the room at the top of the keep, and asked, ‘How can you be so full awake in the day, when you seem to spend night after night without sleep, pairé?’
I wanted to tell him I was becoming full to the brim with knowledge and that it surged through my blood. I wanted to tell him this knowledge caused me to feel a peculiar love and warmth for everything and everyone. I wanted to say that I might appear an old man in the autumn of my days, but that in my soul I was renewed–reborn and that it was all due to a beautiful apparition, or girl, or whatever she was!
But I did not tell him any of these things.
Christmas came and went without fighting on either side. We, like the Catholics, celebrated the rituals of our faith; we blessed the bread and sang our songs and joined together in a communal meal. But when I looked around at my fellow perfects, bishops and the deacons of our faith, I knew that not one of them had a true understanding of the birth of Jesus, nor of the man, Jesus of Nazareth. They still saw him like a stone, over which one might step to find the Christ.
It was a cheerless existence, to be so alone and yet surrounded by so many. I knew now what Lea had meant when she said that to know a person one must first love him. How many here truly knew me? I felt like a forgery and so whenever the credentes fell to their knees to kiss my hand, I did not feel worthy of their veneration and I told Lea how I felt when next I saw her.
She was looking at the fire and did not respond or even turn her face to me. I felt I should say something else, ‘I know now what you meant that first night we met, when I told you I was a perfect. How I could have dared to call myself that, I do not know!’
She looked at me evenly
. ‘These men who stop you and fall at your feet, they do not see your soul, pairé, they see the spirit. The spirit is always perfect, do you see?’
I did not know what to say and she did not wait to for me to find my words, she began to tell her Gospel again. This time she spoke of the fortress of Machareus.
She said the name was Greek and that it meant sword. She said it was named thus by the Hasmonean King, Alexander Jannai because it occupied a narrow, craggy ridge that had once been thrown upwards, like a sword of bile, from out of the belly of the Moabite mountain range.
I could see that fortress with my mind’s eye, a giant of stone sitting upon the shoulders of cliffs and screes. It was situated, she told me, at the extreme southern end of Herod’s tetrarchy of Perea, and defended his borders with his Arabian counterparts. I wondered if it might not have been a little like ours, with walls that reached dizzying heights. I asked her if its storehouses and arsenals were large enough to stockpile weaponry and food to outlast long, protracted sieges.
‘Machareus was not a fortress like yours, pairé. To onlookers, it was an evil hound looking out a devil’s terrain: boulders and splintered rocks, ancient grottos and hot and cold sulphurous springs. From it one could see the cloud-topped summit where the Archangel Michael battled with Satan, and in the valleys below it, giant trees grew, whose fruits were used for casting spells and whose roots when powdered and drunk, were said to bestow power over the souls of men. Around about, caves penetrated deep, some to the centre of the earth itself, from whence had bubbled those terrible forces that so long ago had caused the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Such a place,’ she said, ‘was well suited as the primary home of Herod Antipas, and his demonic wife.’
‡
Herod had moved here after his illegal marriage, leaving his beloved palace at Tiberias for fear of war with his ex-wife’s father, Aretas. But he did not much like Machareus, for it was cold and dry and subject to violent winds and storms. Herodias, on the other hand, thoroughly approved of the stronghold, inspiring the vapours of death, blown upwards by the restless winds, as if these were the freshest breezes.
Fifth Gospel: A Novel (Rosicrucian Quartet) Paperback Page 21
