The Silence of Gethsemane

by Michel Benoît

  I questioned the Twelve:

  “What are you arguing about with them?”

  A man came forward, holding the hand of a young boy with a blank expression on his face.

  “Rabbi, I brought you my son. He has a spirit that makes him unable to speak, and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down, and he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.”

  It wasn’t unusual to come across people afflicted with this strange malady, which would unexpectedly throw them to the ground, foaming at the mouth, the whites of their eyes showing. Since the doctors seemed unable to do anything to help them, superstition had the last word: these people were possessed by one of the spirits that inhabit the Jewish subconscious. Having exhausted all other possibilities, the father had come to the rabbi of whom people spoke so highly – but in his absence…

  “I asked your disciples to cast out the spirit, but they could not do so.”

  So that was it! Their conquest of the crowds had gone to my followers’ heads, and they had decided to show off their newfound abilities. No sooner had they begun to have faith than they believed they possessed magic powers. Left to themselves they had wanted to produce evidence of these, convince the Scribes, perform healings like I did, take my place – hence succumbing to conventional beliefs, they who had never set foot in the arena to do battle with the true enemy, the Evil One… Faced with such prosaic gullibility I couldn’t contain my anger:

  “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me!”

  As he was brought over he had a fit and fell to the ground, seized with convulsions, rolling about and foaming at the mouth. I asked his father how long this had been happening, and he said that the boy, now a youth, had had it since childhood, that the spirit sometimes cast him into fire or water to kill him. In a voice bereft of hope he cried out:

  “If you can do anything, have pity on us and help us!”

  If you can… The man was questioning my self-belief, perhaps even my faith in God. For a moment I hesitated: God? Not once had I doubted him. But myself? Here, in front of my dull-witted disciples, all these wide-eyed people, the sceptical Scribes, not to mention the brutal presence of Evil and all this anguish, would I be capable of manifesting my faith in his son’s ability to be reborn? I tried to overcome my doubts:

  “If you can! Everything is possible for him who believes.”

  Immediately the father of the child cried out: “I believe; help my unbelief!”

  Never had I been so acutely conscious of the secret resilience of the Jewish people, the deep-seated relationship between its poorest, most humble members and the mystery of the Invisible as I was at that moment. This simple man had travelled much further into the depths of faith than I had. He was asking me to leave my hesitation behind, to stand beside him on the other side of doubt. Driven into a corner, the father of this boy was demanding that I act like a prophet.

  Bending down, I took the boy by the hand and lifted him up. Immediately his eyes brightened, he started breathing normally, he wiped his mouth and smiled at me.

  On the way back to their village, my disciples walked along without speaking, their eyes fixed on the ground in front of them. Eventually they asked me, shamefacedly:

  “So… why could we not cast out this spirit?”

  “Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened?”

  There was no point. As if talking to myself I just added:

  “This kind… can come out only through prayer.”

  Unable to utter another word, I suddenly felt the need to go back to the solitude of the Judaean desert, where everything had begun. But events would conspire against me.

  30

  While my popularity with the crowds didn’t go unnoticed in Galilee, word also spread beyond the region itself. A delegation who had been sent from Jerusalem with the express intention of finding me were able to do so without any difficulty. When I saw them coming I realized things were getting serious – because this time it was senior Pharisees, along with more Scribes.

  I invited them to eat with us. Without even sitting down they set about interrogating me:

  “Why do your disciples not adhere to the ancient tradition and eat with defiled hands?”

  They clearly hadn’t come all this way just to find out if my disciples washed their hands before eating. In any case, I knew that very few Pharisees set store by this ritual requirement, and that like most ordinary Jews my disciples often neglected to do it. No, their sole concern was my teaching on the Law. For the sake of some theoretical state of happiness, had I decided to free myself from the commandments, both major and minor, once and for all? If I had replaced the tradition with an ill-defined, idealistic notion of beatitude, could I still be considered a Jewish rabbi?

  Such a serious matter had to be resolved between fellow Pharisees; they would never dream of broaching the subject with laymen present. While they were vacillating, I decided to clear the air:

  “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition!”

  The crowd listened closely to every word of this fraught exchange, which went against every Pharisaic custom. The time for tact and diplomacy was well and truly over! I reminded them of Moses’s fifth commandment, which sets children helping their elderly parents above all else. Then I accused them of shamefully perverting this law, by giving sons permission to keep the goods that they were legally bound to use to support their mother and father:

  “Hypocrites! You make void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on!”

  The whispering among the crowd was a sign that what I said was true. The ordinary working people, who set great store by showing respect for elderly relatives, were unhappy about exemptions from the Law such as these. So were the dignitaries quibbling? I would show them that I was no anarchist who just opposed the Law as a matter of principle. The path to happiness demands sacrifices too, but it was the very foundation of the Law that I was planning to change.

  Calling the crowd over, I spoke to them over the Pharisees’ heads: “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile!”

  A murmur of uncertainty ran through the crowd: what was the rabbi getting at? What did this have to do with the question? Was I daring to announce that all foods were pure?

  Offended at being accused of hypocrisy, the worthies promptly turned their backs on me and walked away, followed by some of the people. My disciples gathered round, confused.

  “Then do you also fail to understand?”

  Whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile them, because it is only passing through. What debases and destroys a person comes from deep within them – the thoughts that give rise to wounding words, which cause others to respond with malicious deeds. I explained the vicious circle of thoughts-words-deeds. It wasn’t the end result of this circle that we had to tackle, by imposing one rule after another, but the origin of it, the thoughts that come from our hearts. Our heart is a source of good as well as Evil. It is in a person’s heart that their fate is decided.

  The law of the heart! I had found the lodestar of my teaching, the key to the happiness that I promised. It wasn’t just a person’s hands or the rest of their body that had to be cleansed, but what lies within.

  They had to correct their desires, not create more rules.

  To be quite certain that they understood, I made my point clear: purifying the heart doesn’t mean that we are allowed to do whatever we like, that there is total freedom. Quite the reverse, it introduced a universal law that made far more demands than the Jewish Law – because it didn’t simply assess people’s behaviour, it got to the very root of it.

  If my disciples were to grasp the revolutionary nature of what I was suggesting, they would have to join me in my long nights of inner prayer. It was in this crucible that
I had discovered the vital role played by thoughts, and then gradually located the place where they originate.

  The Pharisees in Jerusalem had just forced me to articulate the law that went hand in hand with my Beatitudes. From now on my teaching could be summed up in two words that complemented each other: joyful and heart. I realized that this wouldn’t please those in high places. To replace the Law with a greater but unverifiable authority would undermine their position as judges, as well as the power that goes with it. No one could be expected to govern a country on the basis of its people’s state of inner purity: they weren’t mystics, they were rulers – and they would be the first to suffer the consequences of my teaching.

  It was almost the Passover, the second since I had begun my life of wandering. But before going back to Jerusalem I thought it wise to keep out of sight for a while, so I went over the border to the north and into Gentile territory.

  31

  What was once the land of the Phoenicians is now part of the Empire’s Syrian province. The population is more mixed than in Palestine, and they speak the same Aramaic from which ours originates, although theirs is corrupted by Greek – the official language used by virtually everyone.

  There are many wealthy Jewish merchants living there, who make their money from the trade between Tyr, Sidon and the Mediterranean Basin. They mixed in the same circles as my rich clients in Sepphoris, and like them were always hospitable to me. Whenever I went to their homes I advised them not to tell anyone that I was there – after the commotion by the lake and the clash with the Pharisees from Jerusalem I needed peace and quiet. Not only that, we were surrounded by Gentiles, people whom Jews avoid. But despite our efforts the rumour mill was still working, and it was almost impossible for me and my troop of disciples to go unnoticed.

  So it was that a Syrian woman came to the house. As soon as she saw me she threw herself at my feet, and begged me in Aramaic interspersed with Greek to heal her daughter, whom she had left at home. I was startled: did she really think that I would go to a Gentile house, thus making myself unclean? Did she take me for one of the quack doctors who hired themselves out? I remembered what I had resolved after healing the deranged man in the Decapolis: it had occurred to me at that point that rebirth was meant for Jews alone, not for Gentiles. I told her this quite plainly: I had been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

  Hearing her moans, my disciples gathered round, all agreeing with me: as a Jew, their rabbi should concern himself solely with Jews, the only people who had a covenant with God. But the woman kept begging, her voice grew louder and louder. Now annoyed, they started muttering among themselves that she ought to be sent away, back to the darkness of her pagan beliefs. To put an end to it I snapped at her:

  “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

  To make myself perfectly clear, I used the word kynarion, or “little dog”, an insult in vernacular Greek that Jews are familiar with because they use it as a way of expressing their contempt for Gentiles. To my surprise she didn’t retaliate, but just looked up at me, her face bathed in tears. I will never forget what she said; it still echoes in my mind tonight because it changed my life completely:

  “Yes, but even the dogs under the table eat their masters’ crumbs!”

  I was speechless with shock. Yet again a woman had shattered my male Jewish preconceptions! The Samaritan woman at the well had made me realize that I had to go back to the very source of the Ten Commandments, that by formalizing them Moses had limited people’s contact with God. And now this Gentile was telling me that God is the same for everyone, that he doesn’t have a covenant with one specific nation, but that his compassion extends throughout the world!

  And that she was ready to receive this gift from me.

  I can’t remember what I said to her. Her faith was more genuine than that of any Jew whom I had healed; she had beaten me. Nothing could withstand that: so when she got home she would find that her daughter was healed.

  All this left me gasping for breath. As a Jew I had been brought up to believe that my people had been chosen as the stewards of a Law that was more perfect than any other. I had now begun to look more deeply into this Law, to go beyond its bounds, but was I willing to stretch it to its limit, make it extend to the whole world? God was God for everyone, of course. But was the One God of Israel as much the father of the Gentiles as he was of the Jews?

  If that was true… then what of me? Did I stand in the long line of Jewish prophets, continuing their work, fulfilling the message that they had addressed to the people of Israel alone… or would this fulfilment now take on a more all-embracing dimension, one I had never considered?

  Who was I? Who am I?

  I set these questions aside until later – if we were going to be in Jerusalem in time for the Passover, we had to set off immediately. I decided to go along the left bank of the Jordan and stay in Gentile territory. Still in a state of shock, I didn’t feel able to face the Pharisees and crowds of Jews in Galilee. Surprised to see me so troubled, my disciples walked either side of me without speaking.

  Ever since we left the Jordan, I hadn’t had a chance to talk to them at length. Permanently surrounded by crowds thirsting for miracles, increasingly under observation by the authorities, just having them with me was enough. They were able to see, hear and scrutinize everything I said and did. When I left John the Baptist I didn’t have a particular plan in mind, it was only gradually, during the course of my various encounters, that I became aware how unique my message was. But them? Knowing their background, I suspected that their motives (especially those of the former activists) were likely to be mainly political – to drive out the Roman occupiers, seize power and create a position for themselves. So they must have also been wondering, not only what part I played in Jewish society, but who I really was.

  When we stopped for a rest, I decided that I had to be clear in my mind about this, so I asked them: “What do people say about me? Who do they think I am?”

  Their answer was an indication of their state of confusion:

  “For some you are John the Baptist. For others, Elijah, and for others still, one of the prophets who has returned from the dead…”

  This was no surprise. For some unknown reason, despite centuries of official teaching the ordinary Jewish people still hold to their irrational belief in a form of reincarnation, which serves to allay their fear of death more than the doctrine of resurrection expounded by the Pharisees. The fact that people were saying that the headless John the Baptist, or one of the prophets of old, lived on in me didn’t surprise me in the least. But those who had known the Baptist, who had been with me constantly since I had moved on from his teaching, what did they really think? I had to know.

  It was Peter who stepped forward:

  “You are the Messiah!”

  So that was it! John the Baptist, Elijah and Jeremiah had only been prophets, they had never harboured political ambitions. The Jewish people, on the other hand, were consumed with the idea of the coming Messiah, who would lead them in wresting back power from the Gentiles and restoring the Kingdom of David. Hadn’t the Zealots’ idol, Judas of Galilee, declared himself to be the Messiah at the beginning of the century, before embarking on a Jewish rebellion that would end in a fruitless bloodbath? We had been living together for over a year – didn’t the dazzling sight of the crowds that gathered round me fuel the fervent messianic dreams of the Barjona, the Boanerges brothers and Iscariot?

  But when they eventually realized that I had no intention of leading any kind of liberation movement, would they desert me? Or worse, would they slip away and join the ranks of my opponents?

  You are the Messiah! I sternly ordered them never to refer to me as the Messiah – never, not to anyone! And I reminded them that the prophets had all been persecuted. If I continued to follow the call of the wilderness then I couldn’t expect to be crowned as a political Messiah, but to suffer the same fate as those who
came before me, to be subjected to physical pain.

  Peter’s reaction was as stern as my warning to them. He took me aside and began to rebuke me: yes, maybe other people had failed, but you won’t, please God you won’t! The healings, the ecstatic crowds, a teaching that even unsettled the authorities in Jerusalem… Was I going to give all that up because of some fanciful notion that I had been called to suffer? Didn’t that mean I was just a damp squib?

  All of a sudden it was as if I was back in the wilderness, face to face with the Enemy who had done everything in his power to turn me away from the path I had to follow. The Evil One was putting words into Peter’s mouth in order to tempt me again, to try and destroy me by holding out the promise of worldly power. Drawing myself up, I turned to him and exclaimed, as forcefully as before:

  “Get behind me, Satan!”

  I thought he would pack up and leave immediately, bitterly offended by this insult – the worst that any Jew could direct at another – taking the Eleven with him. But, perhaps in thrall to my authority, he just hung his head and went back to the others, who hadn’t moved from where they were standing.

  But from then on as we travelled the length and breadth of Galilee or Judaea, they didn’t walk at my side as they had before. They followed behind in a small group, talking among themselves – leaving me to go on ahead by myself, taking them along a road that led they knew not where.

  32

  The sight of Jerusalem brought me little joy. The Judaean came to meet me and urged me to be careful: since the events in Galilee, some of the Pharisees – those who opposed me – had made formal complaints to the Sanhedrin. My friend, a fellow Nazarene who like me no longer offered sacrifices in the Temple, made me promise not to put in an appearance on the esplanade, which was where all the debates, as well as all the trouble, took place. I would be able to have some peace and quiet at Lazarus’s house in Bethany.

  Knowing I was there, the women who supported us practically or financially came to see me nearly every day. There were wealthy Galileans or dignitaries’ wives such as Joanna, who was married to Chuza (Herod’s steward), all of them under the leadership of someone called Mary – who had vowed me her undying gratitude ever since I had healed her of a host of different ailments in Magdala, her home village. Mary Magdalene was one of those who would sometimes come with us from town to town, organizing our food and accommodation with total disregard for what people might say. These women were open to my teaching in a way that my disciples and men in general were not. They were especially eager to hear parables, and I gladly started using these realistic allegories again in order to tell them about rebirth and inner purity.