The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  Andrew descended the mountain thinking, Jesus is praying. He has found a lonely cove, and he is praying.

  IN THE AFTERNOON of the following day, Jesus appeared on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, south of Capernaum. Most of the disciples who had heard him preach yesterday on the mountain gathered around him again.

  It was clear from his manner that Jesus did not intend to preach today. He didn’t sit or else find an elevated position for himself. Instead, he began to walk among the crowds, sometimes laying his hand on a shoulder, sometimes gazing into an individual’s eyes.

  Neither was he offering the people pleasant greetings. He was not smiling. Jesus was thoughtful and solemn.

  He stopped before Simon and stood there so long that the big man’s cheeks blushed crimson.

  Jesus said, “Simon, you”—then he walked to James and John, the sons of Zebedee who were standing side by side. “You,” he said, “and you.”

  Andrew knew what Jesus was doing. His poor heart hammered because of the enormity of the event: Jesus was choosing those who would be bound to him hereafter, whose lives would be altogether defined by the life of this man, Jesus of Nazareth. Salt; light; the poor in spirit; the meek, the peacemakers—the persecuted! No chosen one could ever be the same again. Nor could that one choose his own way any more.

  Andrew trembled. He knew what he was watching: death.

  Jesus chose Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot.

  And the last one whom Jesus chose had also been the first: Andrew, who then ran away from the crowds and the seashore and hid himself in a small room in Capernaum and burst into tears.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Mary Magdalene

  I

  IN THOSE DAYS Jesus began to travel to the cities in Galilee and all the surrounding territory, preaching the good news of the kingdom of God. With him went the twelve disciples and certain women whom he had healed, women who had devoted their lives to Jesus no less than Simon or Andrew. Among these was Mary from Magdala. The disciples called her “Magdalene.” Wealthier women like Joanna the wife of Chuza supported the traveling group with their money and their means. Mary, poor and pale and bruised about the eyes, ministered unto Jesus otherwise, quietly serving his more personal needs, food and cleanliness, clothes and rest and music.

  She never drew attention to herself. She had no family left in Magdala. This was her family. If she couldn’t be a daughter, she could be a servant. If she couldn’t be a mother, she could be a maid. It was enough. But it was also very precious, and precious things, she had discovered, trouble the soul because they might be lost or taken away. Mary Magdalene remained small and thin and hushed. No, she would not draw attention to herself. She would not jeopardize the delicate gift that had been given her.

  After two months’ travel through the northern and middle regions of Galilee, Jesus began to move south. He bypassed Nazareth and walked five miles southeast, along the valley of Esdraelon to a town called Nain.

  Just as he and his disciples approached the city gate, they heard a public lamentation, and they saw a funeral procession emerging in slow measure. Six young men came carrying a bier, flat boards wrapped in white linen, upon which lay the body of a lad no older than they. Immediately behind them walked a woman, sobbing and stroking the body of the dead.

  Among those who stood by watching was a wide-eyed girl. Jesus knelt down beside her and whispered, “Who is that woman?”

  The child whispered back, “His mama. It’s her boy that died. It’s her only boy. And she’s a widow woman.”

  “Are you sad for her?” Jesus asked.

  The child nodded. “He was a nice boy. He loved his mama.” Her lip began to thrust out. “I am so very, very sad.”

  Jesus said, “Me, too.”

  The woman’s hair draped her face and cheeks. Her robe was torn open. Her weeping was so desolated that there was no force to it, only moaning.

  Jesus patted the little girl’s shoulder, then stood up and walked to the grieving widow.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. He reached and touched the bier in order to stop the pallbearers.

  “Please,” he said, “hold it firm and steady.”

  This interruption confused people in the procession. They leaned left and right to see what was happening, but no one complained. The man at the bier acted with an evident authority. They watched.

  Jesus leaned over the face of the corpse. He studied it a moment, then said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”

  There came the sound of a tight sneeze. The dead lad sucked a huge chestful of air and sneezed again, rolling up into a sitting position. The bier bounced and swayed in the grip of the six bearers. Once more the lad put his hands to his nose and sneezed heartily.

  People gaped. The pallbearers trembled, nearly dropping their charge. But the dead youth was looking around with a common question in his eyes. “Mother?” he said. “Mother, where are you?”

  Jesus took the lad’s hand and pointed. “There she is”—almost unrecognizable in the dishevelment of grief and wonder. He took her hand, too, and said, “Woman, here is your son.”

  For a moment no one approached this tiny reunion. The citizens muttered to one another: “God has visited his people!”

  And Mary Magdalene, hidden among the disciples of Jesus, thought to herself, She has had her baby twice. Mary’s face flamed with gladness and admiration. Once she bore him herself, and once my rabbi bore him back to her. Ah, twice a mother! Every fiber in Mary’s being was maternal.

  JESUS STAYED FOR SEVERAL DAYS in Nain, then he continued on his way to Jerusalem where he wanted to celebrate the feast of the Passover. But rumor flies faster than people walk.

  The report of his miracle in Nain raced south through Judea and Perea and even to the fortress of Machaerus, where John the Baptizer was imprisoned.

  When he heard it, John called two of his disciples to himself and said, “But he was to baptize with fire! I know he was to keep the wheat and burn the chaff in an unquenchable fire. Yet I hear of healings and ease and what?—that he eats with sinners!”

  John the Baptizer was wasted to bone. He had but a narrow cell, a little water, and no sunlight at all. His food and his light, rather, were his visions of the kingdom of God. He survived upon his fierce anticipation of a kingdom of absolute righteousness.

  “Go to Jesus,” he said to the two disciples. “Ask him if he truly is the one to come, or should we look for another.”

  As quickly as they could, John’s men ran north on the transjordan route from Abila toward Amathus.

  The very next day they saw a huge crowd of people on the east bank of the Jordan near the mouth of the Jabbok. Such a multitude in an uninhabited place persuaded them that Jesus was there. So they turned from the road and descended into the Jordan Valley and found him in the very center of activity—like the hub of a great wheel turning. All faces, young and old, yearned toward him. And he was never still. He was never mute.

  His long black hair kept falling forward as he laid hands upon people lower than he, crippled people, children, the sick still lying on their backs—and they were healed. His smile flashed like sunlight on the sea. Or else a dark cloud crossed his brow and the crowd was hushed, like fields before a storm. By sudden barks, by spouts of verbal fire, he cast out evil spirits. He covered the eyes of the blind, and when he removed his palms he removed, too, the darkness. Blank, wandering eyes turned suddenly raw in the sunlight—seeing.

  The disciples of John pushed their way through this huge mass of people until they were close enough to be heard.

  “Jesus!” they shouted. “Jesus of Nazareth! John the Baptizer has sent us to ask you a question!”

  Jesus paused and scanned the crowd till he identified the source of these voices.

  “You’ve come from John?” he called.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve seen my cousin?” Jesus began to
wade toward them with a bright, eager expression: “How is he?”

  “Concerned,” the two men said. They did not embrace Jesus when he came near. Instead, bluntly, they said, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”

  “John the Baptizer wants to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “But tell me, is he well?”

  One of the men said, “Sir, he survives on righteousness. He feeds on his expectations of the kingdom of God. John is exactly as well as these things are—and he will not be well if he cannot believe in you. Are you the one to come?”

  The eagerness had drained from Jesus’ face. With a quiet, somber authority he said, “Tell John what you yourselves have just seen: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news preached to them. Surely, John will have read these signs in the prophets. Surely he will understand them.”

  There was a certain finality in Jesus’ tone. This would not be a light visit after all.

  John’s disciples had no response.

  Jesus said, “Go now, and tell my cousin for me: Blessed are those who take no offense in me.”

  As soon as the two disciples had departed, Jesus cried out to the entire crowd around him, “Be careful! Don’t find blame in what I say! Instead, remember what you saw when you went out to the wilderness to be baptized by John. Not a reed shaken by the wind. Not a man in soft raiment. No: you saw a prophet, and more than a prophet! I tell you, this is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who shall prepare your way before you.”

  Then, in a murmur so soft only those closest to him could hear it, Jesus said, “There is no one born of women greater than John—yet those who are least in the kingdom of God are greater than he.”

  Mary Magdalene heard that difficult word: The least are greater than John. She turned it over many times in her mind.

  FOUR DAYS LATER, Mary Magdalene was suffering the pains of a pure delight. In spite of herself, the woman would dash ahead of the company of disciples, then rush back and try to suppress her gladness and fail. At every turning in the road, at every new rise and horizon, Mary ran to see if Jerusalem was visible yet. Simon had told her of its walls and towers—and of the temple there. She wanted to see the high stone, stone so white it blinds a pilgrim’s eyes!

  Until she’d been healed of her rages, the woman had never been farther from Magdala than Tiberias, where the Roman air seemed more congenial. Things religious had galled Mary then. Now they delighted her.

  For the first time in her life Mary Magdalene was a child unafraid to feel glee and to show it to those around her. Today she was swift on her feet. Her legs were like wings for speed, like feathers for lightness.

  They were going mostly uphill, the beautiful hills! Spring had caused such tender greenness on the rolling landscape. It looked like the folds of a great green robe cast down on the earth. God’s robe! Look: early green figs! And look: the common people went about their business as if it meant nothing to be living in the shadow of majesty! O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!

  And there it was!

  Mary could scarcely breathe.

  They were approaching Jerusalem from the northeast. The city wall was massive left and right—not pure white, but mighty! There, in the central portion of the wall and looming over it with battlements, was the tower of the Fortress Antonia. Beyond that, but not yet visible, the temple.

  They were moving toward the Sheep Gate. By now Jesus and the disciples had been caught up in a running stream of people, many of them shepherds coming to sell their sheep at a market just inside that gate, flocks of sheep for the pilgrims and their Passover.

  But before they entered the gate, Jesus turned aside and walked toward a large stone enclosure, a mystery to Mary. It had four unequal sides of pillars and beautiful balustrades supporting a rail waist high. From the outside it looked like a large, open pavilion with roofed porches at every corner and one in the middle of the longest side. Jesus entered the middle porch. His disciples followed—Mary last of all, creeping slowly and peering around herself.

  Why, the porches gave into a reservoir! A pool as huge as a lake! With steps descending to the water. Mary leaned over and saw the steps disappear in a green gloom. Then she stood straight, aware of a universal groaning.

  All around the steps lay invalids in the dry pools of their own rags: the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. This beautiful structure contained such misery.

  Jesus walked among these people. Some turned to look. Some raised hands of begging. Some called to him. But he stopped beside an elderly man whose shins were whip-thin and twisted backward. The man gave him a glance absent of interest, then turned away.

  Jesus said, “Do you want to be healed?”

  “Ha!” The man’s laugh was sharp and sardonic. “What d’you think we’re all doing here?” he sneered.

  Jesus said again, “Do you want to be healed?”

  “Thirty-eight years I’ve been lying by this pool,” the man spat. His cheeks were sunken and creased. “Thirty-eight years, always alone and no one to help me. So when the angel troubles the water for healing, I start crawling there but someone always steps down before me. Do I want to be healed! Ha!”

  Jesus neither knelt nor touched the man nor made the slightest gesture. “Rise,” he said. “Take up your pallet, and walk.”

  All this Mary watched with the maternal benevolence that flooded her whenever she saw Jesus heal another human. She clasped her hands together and beamed as the old man drew his legs beneath himself, then rose to stand. She waited next to hear the shout of joy that always followed such a healing, but it never came. The man looked down and stomped his feet, chewing, chewing his toothless gums, testing his bones, and muttering that the left leg still felt stiff.

  Jesus had already begun to walk to the porch door. Mary followed, confused by the man’s reaction to his healing.

  “Wait! Wait!” A cry behind her: “What do you think you’re doing?”

  An angry cry! Mary shrank with guilt and fear.

  “Man, you can’t do that! This is the Sabbath!”

  Mary crept to a pillar and looked backward and saw five men wearing the broad phylacteries of Pharisees. They had surrounded the cripple whom Jesus had just healed. They were yanking at the rolled pallet in his arms, while he with gristly strength was hanging on to it.

  “Sinner!” the Pharisees snapped. “The Mishnah forbids you to carry your bed on the Sabbath.”

  “Well,” said the fierce old man, “tell it to him! That’s the one who told me to take it up.”

  Him, of course, was Jesus, just leaving the portico.

  Mary’s heart twisted within her. So dear to her were the mercies of her master that she simply assumed the whole world likewise honored and praised him. But these Pharisees were retracting their lips in an obvious hatred. “Jesus of Nazareth!” they hissed. “How often has he flouted Sabbath law? Someone should kill that calf before it becomes a bull.”

  Kill? Did they say kill the calf? Mary began to tremble. Perhaps she had misunderstood them. Who could hate Jesus? For all the bad people in the world, why would anyone hate Jesus? And how could they talk of murder? Dangerous! Say it, do it! The word is the door to the deed. Oh, this was dangerous! Mary knew by experience the thrill one feels just to think of killing. One could do anything then! Kill? The horrible memory swelled in Mary.

  She fled from the pool. She ran to Jesus as fast as she could go. She caught up to him just as he was walking through the Sheep Gate into Jerusalem. She put herself immediately behind his left side. She did not grab him. She had no right to presume. Nevertheless, she soon found that her forehead was pressed against the back of his shoulder, so closely did she follow; and she could smell the scent of his hair; and she was not crying. No, she didn’t cry. But neither did she see Jerusalem upon her first entering in, the white stones, the dressed stones, the golden stones of the temple of the Lord.

  I
I

  AFTER THE PASSOVER Jesus and his people traveled north again, taking a route through Samaria since he would with equal passion speak to Samaritans as to Jews. They spent a night in Sychar, where the citizens received the entire company with gladness and hospitality and a noisy faith.

  They ate meat that night, unusual in the diet of common folk and itinerants because it was so expensive and people did better to shear a sheep than eat it. But the Samaritans of this place had met Jesus nearly a year ago and had placed a sacred trust in him ever since then. His returning gave them the perfect reason for a party.

  Moreover, there was a woman here whose affection for Jesus was so grandly dramatic that none could not laugh and dance within the sphere of her jubilation.

  “You!” she bellowed the moment she noticed him coming toward the city. “It’s you!” she cried, and she started to run.

  She was a human of formidable proportion. She was a globe, an earth, a maker of her own weather.

  Jesus stopped, half raising his arms in helplessness. The disciples shrank backward. It looked like the convergence of worlds!

  The woman came layered in paints, green at the eyes, rouge on the cheeks, henna in her hair, orange henna on the palms of her hands.

  “Yoo-hoo! Teacher! Master!” She waved her great arms over her head, gathering speed. Jesus stood completely alone. His eyes grew large. His jaw sagged.

  “Oh, Lord, it’s so long since I’ve seen you!”

  Just a year ago this same woman was known as an eater of men. Every husband she had married died. Five of them. And none dared to be the sixth. Therefore, the man she lived with wouldn’t marry her, and the people of Sychar wouldn’t talk to her.

  But one day Jesus of Nazareth appeared at the city well, and in spite of everything—her race, her reputation, her outrageous size and dress and behavior—he talked with her as though she, too, were a daughter of the kingdom. Then she it was who trumpeted to the city the marvel of this man, she who brought believers to him by her own massive transformation and her booming green-and-red-and-henna witness: Come and see a man who told me all that I ever did! Can this be the Messiah?