More Than a Skeleton

by Paul L Maier

“That’s excellent, Mr. President!”

  “Where should they contact you?”

  “At Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Mount Scopus campus.” “Done! Good work, Jon! And thanks for . . . maybe saving our faith a second time?”

  “Vastly overstated, sir!”

  “And, Jon, do me this favor. As you can see, my private number still works. So use it, please, the moment you know one way or the other. I really want to be the first to know on this one.”

  “That’s a promise, Mr. President!”

  SIXTEEN

  After a very bumpy flight across the Atlantic facing the winds of March—headwinds, strangely, where tailwinds were the rule—Jon was back in his office at Hebrew University. No fewer than 674 e-mails awaited him, as well as a five-inch wad of letters in his snail-mail box. Fortunately, the ICO’s Richard Ferris had come to Israel on the same flight to help Jon with the correspondence load, and it was Ferris’s eagle eye that spotted a very important envelope that could otherwise have been lost or delayed in the mail deluge. He handed it to Jon, whose eyes immediately widened. He had seen that elegant handwriting before.

  This time Joshua was inviting Shannon and him to a very private gathering of “The Seventy” at a hillside resort overlooking the Sea of Galilee near Magdala. The Seventy, Jon and Shannon knew from the Gospels, was that larger group of Jesus’ disciples entrusted with mission responsibilities. Apparently, numbers seemed to have changed little across twenty centuries, in the Jesus-Joshua economy. The invitation enthralled Shannon and pleased even Jon, who was happy that the event would occur on the first weekend in April, when his schedule was free. Did Joshua somehow know that? Would he himself ever stop asking such questions? Why couldn’t he, like Shannon, simply take Joshua on his own terms and be done with it?

  Both he and Shannon knew more was at stake in this visit than in any previous. They could feel it in their very bones: things were building to a climax in the case of Joshua the Christ v. Joshua the Charlatan. Now they would have a rare chance to dialogue with the man apart from crowds and public address systems.

  But why had they been chosen? Jon wondered. Surely Joshua wasn’t trying to commission them into the larger grouping of his apostolic band, was he?

  They arrived at the hillside resort late Friday afternoon. It was a little-known retreat compound with a panoramic view of the Sea of Galilee immediately to the east. The central building was a spacious lodge, where all Joshua’s guests were assigned rooms: The Seventy, as well as a slightly larger group that included Shannon and Jon. Shannon quickly recognized other women there who had assisted in Joshua’s ministry. The amenities at the lodge stressed comfort rather than luxury, and the food likewise. The opening dinner on Friday evening was nutritious rather than gormandizing.

  Since it was the first really warm spring weekend in Galilee, Jon and Shannon were dining at a table out on the veranda. “I wonder if this food was catered or created,” he whispered.

  Without the expected smile, she replied, “Please, Jon, try to enjoy a truly spiritual event just this once without your inane comments.” Trying to make amends, he carefully steered the conversation back to their storied romance along the Sea of Galilee below, pointing out several of their most exciting sites. After two “remember when’s,” Shannon was smiling again.

  Now she pointed to Joshua, who was playing with several of the children in the group on the lawn below. The younger set seemed to love him, running up and hugging him around his legs before he made a forgivably tardy arrival at the dinner tables.

  After supper, in what could have been called an orientation session, the group gathered in the great room of the lodge. Orange tongues of flame crackled inside a huge fieldstone fireplace, since evenings were still cool in the north country.

  Joshua rose and stood next to the hearth. The man now looked more Christlike than ever, thought Jon. Blue fire seemed to blaze in his eyes. The determined, lightly bearded chin and square-cut features were the same, but his hair was longer, now almost brushing his shoulders. His usual sport shirt was partially hidden under a broad white sash draped down from his right shoulder, the white reflecting the flickering orange from the fire.

  Joshua began with the standard Trinitarian invocation: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!”

  Although he had heard and used that invocation on countless occasions, Jon shivered a bit this time with the thought that it could be the Son Himself who was offering it.

  Joshua continued with an opening prayer. What struck Jon was not the idle question of whether Joshua could have been praying to himself—there was too much biblical precedent for Jesus praying to the Father—but, again, how very Christlike was that prayer. Like Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer” in the Upper Room, it was selfless, caring, comprehensive, and, above all, concerned about his followers. In almost divine cadences, Joshua implored God to renew and augment the faith in a secularizing and competitive world. It was, purely and simply, the most moving prayer Jon had ever heard. Often, especially in marathon litanies by long-winded clergy, he could hardly wait for the amen. This time he was almost sorry when it arrived.

  “I can’t believe it, Shannon,” he whispered. “I actually wish he’d gone on and on!”

  She nodded, tears in her eyes.

  Smiling, Joshua now reintroduced The Twelve. “And yes, they will remain at twelve,” he added. “Our prize renegade—whom we renamed Yudas, of course—has learned his lesson well and will not betray me.”

  Actual cheering broke out. A smiling Yudas stood up, clasped his hands over his head in appreciation, and even bowed slightly—a scene that was becoming totally surreal for Jon.

  “He’s also promised not to commit suicide,” Joshua added, with a twinkle in his eye. “And since some of you have asked, no, I will not be arrested in this, my interim return. Nor will there be a trial or crucifixion. Once was quite enough!”

  Joshua now introduced The Seventy and explained why each had decided to become his special emissary. “Still others of you,” he continued, this time looking at Shannon and Jon, “are believers, doubting believers, believing doubters, or skeptics. I have invited you to attend also, because of the special stations into which God has placed you for such a time as this. Professor Jonathan Weber over there, for example, despite his doubts, knows more about my first coming than any other scholar on earth.”

  A jet of hot blood surged into Jon’s head, less because he had been singled out and far more because Joshua now seemed to go beyond any oblique claims to identity with Jesus. That claim was now open, obvious.

  “Soon,” Joshua continued, “the purpose of my interim presence here will become clear to the entire world. After that happens, I will return to my Father, leaving you in this world as eyewitnesses to who I am and the truths I have imparted. I have chosen you for this extraordinary purpose because of your faith, your hope, your love—and your promise. You, in turn, will choose others, so that all generations to come before my final appearance at the end of time will know how God again rescued His people and His church from decline or even collapse.”

  The room was silent as a sepulcher. For most, heaven and earth had joined in a cosmic drama that had suddenly engulfed them. Jon and Shannon, holding hands so tightly that they hurt, were nearly in a trance. No one moved. No one spoke.

  Joshua walked back and forth before the fireplace, casting kinetic shadows on the floor. “Of course you are all overcome with this awesome responsibility. In fact, if you were not, you would not be instruments fit for this divine purpose. But the Holy Spirit will enlighten and inspire you as He did the early Christians. You will then succeed beyond all expectations. But now it is certainly time for your questions. Feel free to ask them. Ask anything.”

  As befitted his Peter counterpart, Shimon raised his hand immediately and asked, “Lord, in your first presence among us twenty centuries ago, the four evangelists wrote their Gospels about what you said and did. Shouldn’t
we have such a record this time also?” “Blessed are you, Shimon, for that suggestion. But I’ve already commissioned one of you twelve—Matthan or Levi, as he prefers— to do just that. In future Bibles, his will rank as the fifth Gospel, following the other four.”

  Shimon smiled and settled back in his chair. Shannon, however, looked troubled. She whispered to Jon, “Shimon doesn’t look well at all, does he, Jon? His hand is trembling.”

  “You’re right . . . and I thought he looked a little jaundiced at dinner.”

  Matthan now asked, “What about our Jewish brethren, Rabbi?

  Why are so few of them your followers? What will you do—or what can we do—to win them over so that they become Jewish-Christians or ‘completed Jews,’ as we often call ourselves?”

  Joshua shook his head sadly and said, “It is the greatest paradox in the universe. God’s own chosen people—the very apple of His eye—should have recognized His Messiah. They should have formed the very leadership among all Christians, then and now. And yet, as John’s Gospel put it, ‘He came to His own, yet His own knew Him not.’ This is the bad news, but here is the good: I have come to correct this, as you will certainly see in a short time.”

  “But how will you do that, Lord?” Matthan inquired.

  “Trust God. Trust me.”

  Jon had no intention whatever of intruding into the discussion, but he could not restrain himself. His hand shot up. When Joshua nodded, with a slight smile, Jon asked, “Far and away, the greatest challenge to Christianity today is Islam. Now, since—”

  “No, Jon. The greatest challenge to Christianity today is to reach out with the good news of salvation to over three billion people on earth who are pagan or have no religious beliefs whatever. Islam, with a billion believers, is the second greatest challenge to our faith. But please continue . . .”

  “Correct indeed! Yet Islam—and its massive birthrate—continues to narrow the statistical gap between itself and the two billion Christians. How should Christians respond to this challenge?”

  “As with all other challenges: not with bigotry or self-righteousness, but with love and logic. So often in your religious discussions here on earth, ‘sweet reasonableness’ is overlooked and fanaticism takes its place. Remember how I told you, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind’? Whatever happened to the ‘mind’ part of that?”

  “Exactly!” Jon exclaimed, since it mirrored his own thinking. “Now, please, might you apply that to our dialogue with Muslims?” “Certainly. In all such discussions, which argument do they raise most often in opposing the faith?”

  “That our Scriptures have been corrupted through recopying across the centuries.”

  “Indeed. Yet this is absolutely incorrect! The Dead Sea Scrolls version of Isaiah, for example, is almost exactly the same as the version in the Masoretic text twelve centuries later! With reason and gentleness, then, point out to your Islamic brother or sister that the most authoritative information about events in the first century must certainly come from first-century sources, not seventh-century derivative works like the Qur’an.”

  Jon nodded enthusiastically, along with the others.

  “You might also add that the miracles I performed were truly such. Those credited to their prophet have a legendary quality, such as the moon splitting in two and its halves falling on either side of Mecca.”

  Shannon suddenly raised her hand, and Joshua recognized her with a warm smile. “But what, Lord, should be done about all the Arab-Israeli hostilities?” she asked.

  “Another great paradox!” Joshua replied. “Here, in this holiest of lands, not even a thimbleful of blood should ever have been shed. Yet sin and pride have taken their seats at the negotiation tables, rather than statesmanship and conciliation. Both Arabs and Israelis have often preferred the treacherous path of fanaticism that leads to violence and the ditches of despair. Both sides know the true path to peace, how to walk that path, and how to maintain that path. I’ll have much more to say to the world about this shortly.”

  “Including the problem of terrorism?”

  “Especially including terrorism.”

  There seemed to be no end to the questions—queries regarding means of defending the faith, public moral issues, further probing into the end times, and a dozen other topics. They easily spilled over into the Saturday sessions the next day.

  After a morning coffee break, Jon decided to venture, indirectly, a question regarding the Sepphoris mosaic, the most nagging and unresolved issue on his mental horizon. In a frame of reference that theoretically mirrored Shannon’s new faith, he asked, “I wonder if you’d be kind enough to tell us more about your so-called ‘hidden years’ two thousand years ago, the time you spent growing up in Nazareth? And why do we have so little information in the Gospels about your youth?”

  “To answer your second question first, the four Gospels comprised one scroll each. Obviously, scrolls were expensive in those days, since they were copied by hand, and they had only very limited space. Mark and John felt that they had to proceed immediately to my adult ministry, but all believers are grateful that Matthew and Luke thought to tell of the Nativity as well.” He went on to relate entrancing episodes of his boyhood life in Nazareth two millennia ago, anecdotes that involved Joseph, Mary, his four half brothers, and two half sisters.

  Still he had not mentioned Sepphoris. Jon probed further, “Did you and your foster father, Joseph, ever get to Sepphoris?”

  “Of course we did!” He laughed. “Sepphoris was almost a second home for us, since we helped rebuild the city after the Romans destroyed it. Archaeologists will be digging there again this summer.” “What parts of the city did you help reconstruct?”

  “We built part of the theater, several mosaic sidewalks, and—oh yes, the synagogue, of course.” He paused, grinned, and continued, “I even put my stamp, so to speak, at one corner of the synagogue floor. I laid a little mosaic that summarized my future in the fewest words possible. It read: Yeshua dies, but lives. He leaves, but returns— twice David to the Star, meaning, of course, this return of mine two thousand years later.”

  Even though John and Shannon had worked with that hypothesis, they were now electrified to learn that it was true.

  Joshua stopped, looked quizzically at Jon, and said, “It’s interesting that your questions led me back to that mosaic. Has it been rediscovered?”

  There it was, thought Jon, his heart racing—a genuine error on Joshua’s part. If he were Jesus, he should have known it had been discovered!

  A slight tremble in his voice, he asked, “Please don’t think this impertinent, sir, but don’t you know whether or not it has been rediscovered?”

  Joshua thought for a moment, head downward, the thumb and forefinger of his right hand slightly pinching the ridge of his upper nose. Then he said, “Yes, of course. My mosaic has been rediscovered, and you had a major role in interpreting it. But now, lest you doubt divine omniscience here, Jon, I should remind you of an important statement in Christology that you once studied in dog-matics and even included in your book. You wrote, ‘During His earthly ministry, Jesus did not always or fully use His divine powers.’ Nor do I here, and for good reason. Even though I certainly could, I do not pry into private matters, for example.”

  Jon nodded and raised both hands in surrender, ashamed that he had not thought of the answer himself, yet astonished that Joshua could quote his own words so precisely and apply them so well.

  “Had enough, Jon?” Shannon whispered. “Or do you want to go on asking silly questions and making a fool of yourself? And embarrass us both in the process?”

  “You don’t have to put it that way, Shannon,” he muttered, with a little bite.

  Questions by the dozens followed, in what was clearly the most extraordinary Q and A opportunity in history. Hands in the room were still shooting up when Joshua announced, “That’s enough for now, my dear friends. Don’t you think it’s time for lunch?” />
  Jon and Shannon returned to a table on the outside veranda because of its commanding view of the Sea of Galilee, even though the sky now seemed to be darkening. Joshua wandered among the diners, exchanging pleasant small talk at each table. Between soup and salad, he stopped at Jon and Shannon’s. A little tongue-tied after his previous dialogue with Joshua, Jon let Shannon have the first word.

  “Thank you!” she exclaimed, beaming at Joshua. “Thank you so much for including us in this . . . incredibly distinguished group!” “I, in turn, thank you and the other women for your help and support in our great mission,” he replied.

  “This is a magnificent spot,” Jon observed. “Now I can understand why . . . Jesus chose to move here from Nazareth. I doubt if it’s changed much since His day.”

  “It hasn’t,” replied Joshua, smiling. “If your American developers owned this area, the lake would probably be surrounded with hotels. But do enjoy your lunch.” He moved to another table.

  The moment he left, Shannon looked tenderly at her husband and said, “I’m sorry for what I said back inside there, Jon. Forgive me?”

  He smiled and reached over to squeeze her hand.

  Dessert arrived. “Aha!” said Jon. “Raspberries and angel food cake. How very appropriate! But no, Shannon, I won’t make any dumb comments about whether or not Joshua brought the angel food along with him from any celestial bakeries.”

  “Fine restraint on your part, Jon! Angel food also happens to be made of egg whites: very healthy!”

  By now the sky had turned ominously black, and a nasty squall blew in from the Mediterranean. Rain and hail started pelting the veranda, and everyone scurried inside, plates in hand, to finish dessert. Some minutes later, Joshua reappeared in the great room.

  Opening the sliding glass doors to the veranda, he stepped out on the deck, faced the Sea of Galilee, and held up both arms. “Shalom! Peace!” he commanded loudly. “Be calm! ”

  Gusts of wind continued to plaster paper napkins onto the wooden railings of the deck.