The Silence of Gethsemane

by Michel Benoît

  I know who you are! Apart from God there was only one who knew what I had experienced in the wilderness, the person I had subsequently become, the deep inner transformation that had taken place within me and turned me into a different man – only one, the Evil One, the Enemy! He hadn’t been idle. He hadn’t lost his grip on me, and never would. He was speaking openly through the mouth of this poor wretch, he would be in every person I met, using the weakest of them to assert his authority.

  Out there, between the sky and the sand, I had already sensed it: I would have to battle against him every step of the way, face to face, bodies locked together, whether crippled or disfigured by disease. Alone among the astonished congregation, I too knew who I was up against.

  “Be silent, and come out of him!”

  Crying with a loud voice, the man fell to the floor. When they helped him to his feet he seemed calm and peaceful, more so than ever before.

  In a slight state of upheaval, the liturgy followed its course. As they sang the Psalms, everyone was wondering, “What can this mean? Teaching in a way that goes against all the conventions, followed by the healing of a man with an unclean spirit?” Followed… or would it be more accurate to say corroborated by this healing? Because in a sense, did the scene they had just witnessed not confirm the innovative nature of my first teaching?

  It was a question that even I was unable to answer. At that moment in time, I knew only one thing: that, almost against my will, the insistent inner pressure that had built up inside me while I was in the wilderness had just appeared in public.

  From now on, speaking and healing would be associated with every minute of my life. Speaking and healing: outward expressions of the silent, bitter, relentless war that I would have to wage against the Enemy.

  A war that would bring me to this quiet night in this tranquil garden in the light of a paschal moon. Now rendered speechless, bleeding from an open wound deep down inside me, the one inflicted on humanity by the Evil One.

  13

  A Jewish synagogue isn’t only a place of prayer, it is where the knesset, or community, meets. People exchange ideas, deal with various matters, settle disputes. I managed to slip away without too much trouble, since the congregation’s passion for debate meant that their attention soon shifted to other points of interest apart from my recent healing.

  Peter, Andrew and Philip wanted to get back to their families in Bethsaida as soon as possible. Feeling no desire to be left alone with my brothers and subjected to their angry remonstrances over my behaviour in the synagogue, I decided to spend the night in this small village that nestled in the north cove of the lake.

  Peter was delighted. Once he had sobered up after our visit to Cana, he had heard about the part I had played in ensuring that the wedding passed off smoothly, and discovering that I was familiar with the ways of polite society filled him with a form of infantile pride. Needless to say, the incident in the synagogue had left him dumbfounded, which, given that he had little inclination for deep thought, precluded any chance of him questioning what had really happened.

  On the way we were joined by two young men. They had also been at the synagogue in Capernaum, which they preferred to their own – perhaps because of the magnificent mosaics in the entrance hall, which they thought were wonderful. I discovered that they were brothers who often mended their nets with Peter and Andrew, despite the fact that their father, Zebedee, employed men to help fish the lake, something that elevated their status to that of a small local business. My name is John, said the younger one, and this is my brother James.

  Their names were so common in Israel that like Simon they were known by a nickname – Boanerges, or Sons of Thunder. With youthful insouciance they laughingly told me that they had also spent time with the Zealots, which was when their hot tempers had earned them this Greek-sounding sobriquet – which they found even more flattering. No doubt Zebedee had soon put a stop to these adventurous notions of theirs: having political commitment is one thing, but being two pairs of hands short on a fishing boat is another. As I listened in silence it occurred to me that I, the well-known Pharisee, was walking along the road with three former terrorists – or more likely just three young men embittered by the dead-end existence of the poor, and who would do anything to get away from it.

  None of my companions made any reference to the confrontation in the synagogue, which they had all witnessed. Later, I found out that apart from Philip they were all illiterate, something which is more commonplace than people might imagine, despite the fact that every Jewish boy is supposed to be able to make sense of a passage from the Law before he reaches adulthood. They were perfect examples of the silent Israel, in thrall to the coming of the Messiah (fanatical messianism had a firm hold among them) and the restoration of the Kingdom of David – once the Roman occupiers had finally been driven out of God’s own country by an armed uprising.

  When we got to Bethsaida, Peter told me rather shamefacedly that he was too poor even to own one of the basic, dilapidated huts that are dotted round the shore of the lake. He and his wife lived with her mother: did I mind staying in such wretched surroundings?

  Without waiting for me to reply, he led the way into a dark, dismal room. An elderly woman was lying on a bed, struck down by one of those fevers that can bring death in a matter of days. Unable to give voice to his fears, he leant over and wiped the sweat from her face, then stood up and looked at me. In his eyes burned a slightly wild look of expectation, a mute desire.

  I straight away knew what he wanted. Unlike the simpleton in the synagogue, this prostrate woman didn’t appear to be possessed by Evil. She wasn’t screaming and shouting, she posed no threat – she was just going to die.

  I took her by the wrist and helped her to sit up. Startled, she got to her feet and just stood there, swaying slightly. Then without a word of thanks she walked out of the room. A moment later we heard her bustling round the fire, wielding kitchen implements and getting the menfolk’s supper ready as she had always done.

  The room went quiet. The silence lasted for almost the whole meal, as if the Barjona and the Boanerges brothers, who had once contemplated armed insurrection, now felt helpless in the presence of the man who was quietly eating supper with them, dipping his hand in the same dish.

  They couldn’t begin to make sense of the day’s events. Yet they had witnessed them with their own eyes.

  When I went and stood on the doorstep, I immediately saw that the womenfolk had done their duty: word had spread from house to house with the speed of female gossip. From every direction came the halt and lame, with the same crazed look of hope in their eyes. Once again the Evil One in them was saying nothing, but I knew that it is he who lies at the root of all disunity – after all, aren’t disease and disability simply the result of a body estranged from itself?

  Most of them went away healed. Exhausted by my day’s work, I collapsed on a pile of straw in a lean-to that had been quickly tidied up for me to use.

  I hardly slept. In the middle of the night I got up and quietly left the village, heading in no particular direction.

  Once I got to the far side of an olive grove I sat down, as I had in the wilderness. How far away it seemed, that joyous time when I had come so close to being in harmony with God and the cosmos! More than sleep, more than anything else at that moment I needed to find silence again. Then I might be able to give some thought to recent events, try to analyse them. But for now I had to stop thinking. To simply be God’s vessel, like water reflects the far-distant stars.

  To listen to the silence.

  The sun was coming up when I heard Peter’s heavy footsteps, felt the breath of his hoarse voice on the back of my neck.

  “What are you doing here, Rabbi? Everyone’s looking for you!”

  Yes. But I am looking for the One who speaks without words.

  I struggled to my feet. Without saying a word, I walked back to the lake.

  Towards the people who would consume me with the
ir expectations, while others tried to destroy me.

  14

  There was an important decision to be made, one that I didn’t feel quite able to take. Whether to go back to Capernaum, to the workshop, to my brothers’ suspicions and my mother’s silent reproofs? To the shocked astonishment of my fellow Pharisees, the incomprehension of an ordinary village hemmed in by inherited traditions? I no longer felt able to cope with it. Yet among the confusion, one thing was certain: what I had experienced with John the Baptist and in the furnace of the wilderness had changed me completely. Living under foreign occupation, humiliated, subjugated by a class of priests and theologians who locked the country away in the past – while everything around us was in a state of effervescence – I couldn’t huddle up in the comfortable existence of a small-time carpenter from the lakeside any more. Like every Jew I was a son of Elijah. What I had learnt from John the Baptist, from the intuitions that came to me in the wilderness, had awoken the prophet in me. I could conceal it from myself no longer.

  Healings? They follow in the footsteps of every prophet. Besides, any number of healers from Egypt or Syria could be found wandering our streets and high roads. I had never had time to study medicine, and magic (which some healers used) fills all Jews with horror. So would I be just one more mountebank in a land already weighed down by sorrows? I knew from the outset that healings could only ever be a partial response to John’s call. It wasn’t only the sufferings of a few isolated individuals that had to be eased, there was an entire nation waiting to be healed. Only the word could do this – the word of God, with which he created the world and which was alone able to recreate it.

  So this was what I decided: for an unspecified period of time I would become one of the wandering preachers who are still very much part of the tradition in Israel. My wealthy friends would support me financially. I decided to travel south in easy stages, taking things as they came. Did my chance companions – Peter and Andrew and Philip, Zebedee’s sons – want to come with me? That was up to them. It wasn’t me who chose them, but they who had come to me. By not going back to the workshop I would be abandoning my family again, a second rift more drastic than the first – and this time I couldn’t use making an initiatory visit to John the Baptist as an excuse.

  I was drawn southwards by two men: by the Baptist of course, my first master, the one who lit the vital spark in me. But also the mysterious Judaean, whose thoughtful silences had won me over.

  When I told the five Galileans that I was heading for Jerusalem and the mouth of the Jordan, they simply rolled up their coats, slung them over their shoulders and stood at my side. A great feeling of warmth flooded through me: now I was about to leave my closest kin, would these men – with whom I had nothing in common, not social background, education, past life, not even a sense of calling – become a new family for me?

  We stopped off at synagogues inland, where there was never any lack of people discussing their business or the Law. With my Pharisee’s coat, my long hair, my liking for the Nazarenes, as well as rumours of the healings at Capernaum that had already reached them, I always found the kind of audience I preferred – ordinary working people eager to hear good news of any kind.

  Having learnt from experience, this time I just repeated John the Baptist’s teachings verbatim: “Convert!” Because of this, people assumed that I was one of his disciples or a Nazarene, which suited me perfectly. I wasn’t quite ready to preach the real good news.

  Along the way, I helped a few paralysed people to stand on their feet, although they may have simply been exhausted. But it was while we were still in Galilee that I performed a healing whose every detail is still etched in my memory, because it exemplified those that were to come later.

  In our country, many people suffer from a skin disease that makes them repulsive to look at, objects of dread, the most unclean of the unclean, whom people refuse to have contact with or even go near. When one of these hideous individuals approached me, my companions moved away in horror, but I let him come. Amazed, he fell at my feet.

  “If you choose, you can make me clean…”

  He was in such anguish, this man whose illness banished him from his family, his local community and the synagogue for ever! He was one of Israel’s living dead, whom no one could touch without being infected by his impurity; the very symbol – and the result – of the fetters that bind an entire people in the name of the Law which it was my responsibility to teach, a fact of which my title of rabbi acted as a constant reminder to everyone I met.

  As I bent down to him my stomach churned: the fire that was kindled in the wilderness, the molten lava that had been smouldering ever since… In full view of the horrified passers-by I reached out and touched him, in their eyes becoming as impure as he was. But people had to realize that I wasn’t just another healer, that this man’s hopes and longings had suddenly come face to face with God’s creative power. The poor wretch had appealed against his pitiful condition – I was simply there to help him offer up that cry, to make its powerful voice heard, so he could be living proof that no appeal addressed to God, even the most incoherent, would go unanswered as long as it came from the depths of your soul.

  By touching him in public view I proved that he had already been purified by the power of his plea, and could no longer infect anyone. It was only fitting that my act should be accompanied by words that would give it its full meaning. Thinking carefully before I spoke, I didn’t say: “I make you clean”, which would have implied that I was a magician like all the rest. I helped him to his feet.

  “I do choose. Be made clean!”

  Immediately the disease left him.

  And, so that all those standing nearby would realize what had happened, that by using the words “be made clean” I was referring to the source of the healing – because in our language the use of the passive form is a way of describing an act of God without using his name – I went on:

  “Go to the Temple. Show yourself to the priests and offer the sacrifice that the Law commands. This will be a testimony to them.”

  In Israel, even when God himself acts this must still be attested to by the clergy.

  A word, a healing. On that day I knew I would always allow the sick to come to me, however deformed they might be, however much they stank. Because healing is the word that best conveys what I had sensed within me when I was alone in the wilderness.

  15

  The first Passover since my stay by the Jordan was almost upon us, and my companions were eager to get to Jerusalem. Perhaps I was haunted by thoughts of my mother, because I wanted to stop off in Capernaum to see her. This woman was worthy of a son’s respect.

  I stayed with a client who was also a friend, in his simple little house with its roof made of branches held together by clay. As soon as people discovered I was there it was overrun by a crowd of onlookers, blocking the doorway and overflowing into the street outside. Word of my recent healings had spread though the lanes and alleyways like wildfire. Crushed by the mob, I answered their questions, knowing I had no hope of satisfying the curiosity of these people, who were consumed by a desire for marvels that sprung from feelings of helpless confusion.

  Then from outside came the sound of angry protests, followed by shouting. The next moment pieces of wood and rubble began falling into the room – people were smashing the roof, while my host held up his hands to heaven, saying they were destroying his house.

  To no avail. A hole appeared through which I could see the sky, and then through it came a stretcher, with a paralytic strapped to it.

  No explanation was needed: I understood immediately. Like their paralysed friend, the four men who were lowering him through the roof with ropes felt empowered to break into the house by a sense of urgency that went beyond respect for private property. Yet again, a desire that was strong enough to break through walls, hopes that had once seemed distant yet which were now suddenly in their midst, had materialized for all to see. This man was appealing against a
rupture within himself, which had manifested itself in his illness, and he too had already been healed by the power of his plea – all I had to do was bear witness to it. Looking him in the eye, I told him what he needed to hear: that he had already done what he had to do in order to be reunited with God and himself.

  “My son” (a term of affection we use to show fellow feeling), “your sins are forgiven.”

  At the very mention of this word, several Scribes in the room all stiffened.

  “Who are you to forgive sins, when this is for God alone to accomplish!”

  Blinded by suspicions, they had missed what I actually said – on no account would I have claimed to possess the divine power of forgiveness, which would have been an act of blasphemy. Again weighing my words and using the passive voice, as is usual in our language, I had referred to God without using his name: not “I forgive you”, but “you are forgiven”. By their deafness the Scribes simply revealed the decision that had long been coming to a head in them, that from now on they would regard me as a bitter adversary, not just a colleague who was quite within his rights to interpret the Law.

  I didn’t reply. It was impossible to have a discussion with these people, the roof of their convictions was firmly sealed against any form of explanation. I turned to the man and told him to stand up, to take his bed and go home.

  At my own house, I bowed down before my mother. She didn’t say a word – her son wasn’t the same since he left the nest.

  Without further ado we made our way to Jerusalem. With the Passover approaching, the city was clogged with the usual horde of pilgrims. On the Temple esplanade there was a constant traffic of livestock being taken for ritual slaughter, among all the moneychangers who were offering their best rates – because animals bought to sacrifice to the God of Israel had to be paid for in Temple currency, which was the only one accepted there. So these travelling bankers made a vast profit.