The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  We’re going out of Galilee. We’re going alone. I want to talk to you.

  And we left.

  Jesus didn’t join the general chatter. He strode in front of us all. Disciples straggled behind. Women and men, there were about twenty of us. I hung near his shoulder as best I could, but when the road was level, he moved at a brisk pace, his black hair streaming back from his brow, his light eyes lidded against the wind. I confess, I puffed a little.

  Jesus looked neither left nor right. His lips were white, fixed in a soundless whistle, thinking, thinking. Whatever he had to say to us, he was saving it up. I figured it must be mighty important to need its own place for the telling—and that place outside of our own country. We took the road from Capernaum southwest toward Mt. Tabor, winding up into the hills. Then, still five miles north of the mountain, Jesus cut straight west, ten miles to Sepphoris. But he didn’t enter that city either. We passed north of it and continued west. West! I had never before in my life seen the Great Sea! After Sepphoris we descended to a very rich plain, the grainfields just starting to dry for harvest, orchards and palms and fruits growing everywhere. When we came near the sea and the salt air, I saw that the land to our left was swampy. To the right it broke into rocks. On both sides there were only patchy gardens.

  And then we saw the sand dunes. Ha! My bare face grinned to feel the stinging wind, all washed with salt. My nostrils opened wide, and my skull felt light. The Great Sea! I could hear the breakers off to the south, crashing on the long beaches. And then we climbed to the breast of a dune, and there was the sea itself, everywhere north and south and west, endless as the heavens, a blue-green water so clear you’d think it was a heavier air. Ha ha! And here was the city of Ptolemais, blinding white in the sunlight! A port city. I could board the big ships there! I could be a voyager off to Egypt or to Rome!

  But the Lord did not go down into Ptolemais.

  We turned north on the road that follows the coast. Twenty-five miles to Tyre. Out of country, and going farther all the time. The people that passed us were Gentiles. We tightened our ranks in these regions. Rushed in a small clump forward. Jesus was not tempering his speed.

  Nor had he spoken more than the fifty plain words to us since we left. We were five days out by now. I worried about this pondering of his. What happened while we were gone preaching? Jesus was still young, you know. Thirty-two. Rabbis live long. They grow thin and wrinkled and grey, and I fully expected to care for my Master when his eyes dimmed and his teeth fell out. I wanted to carry his old bones on my own back. But Jesus seemed to be spending all his wisdom and all his strength right now on this fierce thinking. Like a furnace in his brain.

  John the Baptizer, my brother’s first master, had been beheaded. That happened. But I asked Jesus if he was thinking about John, and he said there was no need for that anymore.

  Then a woman began to follow us. Not a Jew. A Gentile. A screechy sort. First she ran along the side of the road, staring at Jesus; then all at once she raised a piercing cry in thick accents: “Sir! Sir! Son of David, have mercy on me.”

  I cut near her and told her to go away. Even in foreign territories people demanded his attention! He wanted to be alone. He wanted to be thinking.

  But she cried louder, “My daughter is vexed with a demon!”

  Jesus kept walking.

  I blocked her way and said, “You’re a Syrian. Your daughter’s a Syrian. We’re Jews! Accept the facts and leave us alone!”

  But the woman clawed past me and chased after Jesus, howling, making a scene. Begging!

  “Master, I’m sorry!” I called. “I can’t make the goy listen. You tell her to go home.”

  For once he listened to me. Jesus stopped and frowned at the woman. That alone should have chilled her. His words were even worse.

  “I was sent to no one but the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he said.

  Jews, just like I said.

  But this Syrian did not fall back in shame. She came to Jesus, sank to her knees and said, “Lord, help me.”

  Jesus said, “It isn’t right to take bread from the children and cast it down to the dogs.”

  Now those were harsh words! He frightened me. I don’t think I’d have been that tough on the woman.

  Yet, Jesus’ scolding didn’t break her. She said, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ tables.”

  For the first time that season I saw the expression of the Lord go soft. He smiled. He smiled: the cheeks bunched under his eyes, and he said, “Woman, great is your faith!” Then he reached and took her elbow and raised her to his level again. “Go home,” he said. “The devil has left your daughter. She is healthy and hungry and waiting for you to come home.”

  The woman was transfigured. She took to her heels and ran back the way we had come, and I was feeling happy that Jesus had smiled, but when I glanced at him, his eyes were hard again and blaring at me.

  “So, Simon,” he said. “Did I do right or wrong by the goy and her small sick Syrian whelp? What do you say the facts are now?”

  “Lord,” I said, “you always do the exactly right and perfect thing.”

  But then came this young man with a look of dopey appeal, and I wondered if we would ever get away. I had seen it often enough in the last twenty months: heal one, heal a multitude.

  This particular fellow was deaf. And he had a speech impediment. So his friends had come to speak for him. They asked Jesus to lay hands on the boy in order to heal him.

  In fact, Jesus did more than merely touch him. He led the fellow apart and put his fingers into the ear holes. He spat and touched the tongue. Then, looking up to heaven, Jesus sighed. It’s the hugeness of that sigh which I can’t forget. Jesus was not smiling. I’d say he was praying without words. I’d say he was begging heaven.

  Then he said to the deaf man, “Ephphatha.”

  Be opened.

  Well, the young man’s ears were opened and his tongue was loosed and right away he was prattling as plainly as a rabbi.

  Jesus said, “Listen to me! You must not tell anyone what I have done for you—”

  But the fellow only laughed a loud, rude laugh and ran toward his friends all full of new words and a wagging tongue.

  “Did you see that?” he cried.

  And his friends shouted back, “That Jew does everything well! He makes deaf people hear and dumb people speak!”

  Suddenly Jesus seemed to be flying. His face was entirely shut. His stride was so swift and so long that I myself had to run to keep up, and I could maintain that only for short bursts at a time.

  WE DID NOT ENTER the city of Tyre either. In the next several days Jesus veered east again and we traveled into the region of Caesarea Philippi. So we’d gone a great half-circle through several lands and soils and geographies.

  Then one morning, suddenly, the Lord was talking again.

  We were sitting in sight of the cave where some of the source-water of the Jordan comes from. In that cave there’s a shrine where pagan people have worshiped their gods forever. But the water, you know: that’s the water that flows into the northern end of the Jordan valley, and then into the Sea of Galilee, and on and on through all our tribes and our families, past Pella and Samaria and Jericho, even into the Salt Sea forever.

  Behind us rose Mount Hermon whose snow and whose dew feeds the Jordan, too. There is where the river really begins. The mountain makes the headwater.

  We had eaten our breakfast. We were relaxing on grassy patches among some low black boulders. Basalt, you know. Jesus was sitting in the scoop of a single rock as though it were a throne.

  I truly believe that I would have forgotten this setting—or at least that I would not recall the detail—except for what Jesus did to me that day.

  Softly he said, “What do you hear about me when I am not present?”

  Instantly we all shut up, watching him. His voice had come like rain from a blue sky. He was looking at the backs of his han
ds, his fingers spread apart, and he was wearing a headband, his hair held back behind his ears. You see how all this is fixed in my memory? Every detail.

  He said, “Who do people say that the Son of man is?”

  Amazingly, my brother answered first. He never talks in a group. But the words jumped out and he gasped and then he shut up again for the rest of the day. He said, “John the Baptizer! Some say you are…John.”

  Jesus looked up at Andrew and nodded.

  Then here came the second shocker. Mary Magdalene spoke. The shy white woman agreed with my brother. “That’s what Herod Antipas thinks,” she said. “He’s afraid that you are John come back to blame him.”

  Well, then ideas and answers came pouring from all of us:

  Philip said, “Some say you’re Elijah, returning because the terrible day of the Lord is about to strike fire and burn like an oven.”

  Judas hollered, “Or Jeremiah!”

  James: “Yes! Yes! One of the old prophets raised to life again!”

  Jesus raised his hands, his eyes as bright as new coins flashing sunlight. “But who,” he said, cutting through the chatter, “who do you say that I am?”

  I answered then. I said the most natural thing there was to say. But if Andrew and Mary Magdalene had surprised me, well, I must have dumbfounded the whole company of disciples.

  I said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

  Everyone shut up. Everyone spun around and looked at Jesus. To get his reaction, I suppose.

  And this is what the Lord did: he broke into a proud smile. He beamed on me, shaking his head in wonder, and I blushed so hard my vision went red.

  “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah,” he said. “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you; but my Father who is in heaven, he revealed it to you! From now on your name shall be Peter. On this rock I am going to build my church—and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.”

  All the disciples shifted their staring from Jesus to me. Maybe to see what my reaction would be. He called me “Peter.” Stone. The Lord gave me a new name. The more I thought about it, the more my chest swelled, big as Mount Hermon.

  And here’s the next thing Jesus said to me: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

  I know about the giving of keys. Sometimes a landowner will give his chief servant the keys to his holdings. It means he trusts this servant with his own authority!

  And Jesus said to me: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven!

  Oh, my! That day is fixed in my mind forever, caves and shrines and water and black boulders and Mount Hermon. I hardly knew what Jesus meant. I was as ignorant as a child—but I was a chosen child, you see! A favorite.

  Now Jesus rose from his stony throne and began to walk down to the ancient pagan cave. He said he was thirsty. As he went, that thoughty look returned to his face, as if he felt some terrific pressure on his temples. After such a sunny smile, to see the gloom again—oh, that bothered me.

  He said, “Things are going to change now.” He heaved a sigh. We all were moving with him now toward the little spring of water. He said, “I have to go to Jerusalem. When I get there, I will suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes. I’m telling you now so that you need not be surprised when it happens. It will happen.”

  Jesus knelt down by the spring, cold from the earth. He made a cup of his hands and scooped water. Just before he started to drink, he said, “I will be killed in Jerusalem, and on the third day be raised—”

  I spoke again. I said the most natural thing there was to say.

  Well, my feelings were so hurt by Jesus’ words. Be killed? Was this the gloomy thing he’d been thinking about all the time?

  I grabbed his wrist and shouted, “No!” The water splashed from his hands. “No, God won’t allow it!” I cried.

  On account of my feelings, I was gripping him with all my strength. But he started to pry my fingers from his wrist. He had terrible power in his hands.

  I blustered on. Surely he knew that I was arguing out of love for him! “O Lord,” I said, “this can never happen to you!”

  He was standing, holding me at the forearm, his eyes like white hammers. No smile, no pride any more: anger!

  He said to me, “Get behind me, Satan.”

  Ah, my heart failed. Another name! A vile and hateful name!

  He did to me what he said to me: he began to drag me bodily away from his face, pushing me back behind him.

  He said, “You are a hindrance to me. You care for the things of this world more than the things of God!”

  He let me go. I was suddenly so weak that I slumped down to the ground.

  No, but I do care for the things of God! And I love you, Lord Jesus! This is so confusing. One minute I’m Peter, the next minute I’m Satan, but I didn’t change! How can plain love cause such outrage in the Lord?

  I huddled on the ground. I couldn’t say another word. I was afraid of Jesus then.

  He ripped off the headband and shook out his hair and said to the rest of the disciples, “If you want to come after me, you’ve got to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me. Those who wish to save their lives will lose them. Those who lose their lives for my sake will find them.”

  Jesus spoke with force. He said, “If someone is ashamed of me and of my words, the Son of man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”

  I felt worse and worse. I rolled on my side and covered my face because the tears were coming. Does Jesus think I am ashamed of him?

  Then he cried in a loud voice, “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of human authority, and they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised.”

  The second time he said it!

  Oh, Lord Jesus, do you think I’m ashamed of your words? Are these the words you think I’m ashamed of?

  “I tell you truly,” Jesus said, “some of you here shall not taste death till you see the Son of man in power and in his kingdom.”

  He knelt down again and cupped his hands and drank. A long, long drink. He must have been very dry.

  Just watching that common gesture made me feel guilty and alone.

  IV

  FOR FIVE DAYS Jesus didn’t talk to me. Neither did I talk to the others. I kept my distance.

  But on the morning of the sixth day he found me eating my breakfast alone. James and John were hovering behind him—as if they were afraid of me. What an odd thought! It can’t have been true.

  “Come with me,” Jesus said. “I have something to show the three of you.”

  I got up and followed.

  We walked to Mount Hermon. By midday we were climbing the mountain itself.

  Finally Jesus showed us a cleft in some rock and asked us to wait there while he went on alone.

  “To pray,” he said.

  We waited. We settled down between the halves of stone and watched as Jesus climbed farther up the side of Hermon. He’d found a narrow ledge, a steep one. His left side was against the sheer rock, his right side naked to the spaces and the plains below.

  John whispered in my ear, “Simon, why are you mad at us? Did we insult you?”

  This was a shocker. “I’m not mad at you,” I said.

  “Every day you go off by yourself, glowering.”

  “I don’t glower!”

  John shrugged. “When I greet you, you start working your fists like you’re going to hit me.”

  “No, no,” I said. “It’s me. It’s my mood that’s the problem.”

  “You’re not thinking of leaving Jesus? Like you left John the Baptizer?”

  “Oh, John, no!” I was horrified. Had I seemed such an enemy these last days? But I thought everyone was mad at me! “Where else could I go?” I said. “No one has the words of eternal life except Jesus.”r />
  Jesus: he had ascended to a shelf of rock that jutted over the emptiness. O Lord, did you, too, think that I would leave you?

  He had raised his eyes and his hands to the sky. He was praying. He looked like a wax candle set in a niche. He looked like a white statue standing in an alcove cut in the wall of the mountain. Far above us!

  Jesus, believe me! No matter what happens, I will never, never leave you!

  All at once it seemed to me that his head caught fire! No, not fire: glory! A pure white radiance blazed all around the Lord’s head, and his face shined like the sun, and his clothes grew brighter and brighter—whiter than any fuller on earth could make them!

  I jumped up, my whole body exploding with gladness!

  Oh, what a sight the Lord was granting us. I knew it as soon as I saw it: this was his true majesty!

  John cried, “Who is that? Who’s that with him?”

  James bellowed, “Moses! Oh, John, that’s Moses of old! Can’t you see the flaming veil over his face?”

  But there were two men with Jesus, one on either side, talking and nodding as if the three had known each other all their lives.

  Jesus! Jesus, who else has come to honor you?

  And I heard it said: Elijah.

  So I shouted to James and John, “That other man is the prophet Elijah!”

  And I ran out from our cleft in stone, and I started roaring as loud as I could: “Master! Master! It’s good to be here! Let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah—”

  Immediately a thunderclap knocked me backward. I hit the ground with my shoulders. I saw a dazzling cloud come and cover the whole mountain, and from that cloud like thunder there fell a mighty voice, saying, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!

  I was stunned. Everything went dark. The thunder rolled itself up and went quiet. I felt as if I were in the silence under the sea, hardly able to breathe.

  But then I felt something like feathers on my cheek. I opened my eyes and saw Jesus standing over me, Jesus alone.

  “Come,” he said. He was smiling. His eyes were both common and kind. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, lifting me by my hand. “It’s time to go down the mountain again.”