The Making of the Lamb

by Bear, Robert

  “If I stop talking about Scripture now, will I be able to become a rabbi when I get older?” Jesus asked.

  “Certainly you can, if you study. But even rabbis must stick to authorized interpretations.”

  “Perhaps this is God’s will. Now that Papa is ill, the time has come for me to take his place and earn a living for the family.”

  Elimelech said, “You are talking like a man now.”

  “I will stop talking about Scripture and just read from it under the rabbi’s supervision. I owe that to my parents.”

  “Explain the other point,” said Pesachya, the second Sadducee. He had been staring at Jesus and Mary with uncanny intensity.

  Elimelech sighed. “I am afraid we must insist on one more thing.” He turned to Mary. “It is something you will need to do, madam, to ensure we have a permanent solution to this problem. It is in our instructions.”

  “I will do anything to be left in peace with my family,” said Mary.

  “Your rabbi picked up a story among the villagers. They say that Jesus was conceived within you by the Spirit of God, and that you revealed your nakedness to no man.”

  “What must I do?” asked Mary.

  “You must go with us to the synagogue on the next Sabbath. We will call on you before the congregation and ask if the story is true. You will respond that it is not.”

  Mary looked over to Jesus. I will do anything to appease these men, if Jesus can stay. I don’t care what the village thinks of me. But it will not work. Sooner or later, some woman will blame me for her husband’s unfaithfulness, no one will believe anything I say, and they will stone me for adultery. My husband Joseph could die as well. Who will look after Jesus then?

  Jesus pounded a fist on the table. “If that is not the truth, then what do you think is the truth?” His voice quaked and his face turned red.

  Mary had never seen such anger in her son before.

  “We don’t care who your father is,” Elimelech replied. “Our only concern is ending this blasphemous talk about you being the son of God himself.”

  “My mother is not a liar, and she is not a whore, but that is what everyone will say about her. I agree to nothing if my mother must do this.” Jesus abruptly got up and stormed out of the house.

  Pesachya waited a moment for Mary to recover. Then he broke the silence. “You have no real choice. No one wants to put someone as young as your son on trial for blasphemy, but eventually the Sanhedrin will do so—through your king, if necessary. It’s out of our hands.”

  “We can stay in Nazareth a few more days,” said Elimelech. “We will give you both that time to think this through.”

  Mary found Jesus just outside the village, looking over the Jezreel Valley. No words were necessary. Uncle Joseph was right; the Sadducees were demanding too much. Jesus must go, and he would not return for some time. Jesus became once more as a child, upset to be leaving his mother.

  “Do not worry, my child.” Mary embraced him. “This will be an exciting voyage for you. You will come back to us with many stories.” There is no other choice. She wiped the tears from her eyes. He must not see the pain this separation brings to my heart. She could only pray that Jesus’s heavenly Father, as well as Uncle Joseph, would look after him.

  The two walked back to the house to gather the few things Jesus would take with him.

  Husband Joseph’s skin had a white pallor and his legs wobbled, but he managed to get out of bed.

  Jesus ran to him, and the two embraced.

  “I love you, my son. Respect your uncle and learn much from this trip. Be a helper, and know that I am praying for you. God will care for you.”

  Jesus softly replied, “I know he will, Papa. I shall be praying for you, too.”

  “I cannot wait to hear all your adventures.” Joseph smiled, though his sadness showed in his eyes.

  Jesus walked to the corner of the room and removed the flooring where the gifts of the three magi had been safely hidden since the time of his birth. He brought them to Mary. “You must use these to provide for yourself and Papa while I am gone.”

  “I have money saved, and those are divine gifts for you. I could never—”

  “Mother, how else can you and Papa live if he is sick and I am gone? Who knows when I will return or when Papa will be able to work again? As your son, I should be working to support the family. I cannot leave here without giving you this. If you cannot accept it for yourself, then accept it for Papa’s sake—and mine.”

  “Never forget my love is with you.” Mary embraced Jesus again. “There is danger for you here in Nazareth, and we do not know who is waiting to inform the Sadducees of your movements. You should go to Uncle Joseph now on your own. It would attract attention if I went with you, and you need to be inconspicuous as you make your way to him.”

  Joseph

  A short distance outside Nazareth, Uncle Joseph rounded a bend in the road and pulled his horse up sharply. The Sadducees and their men had laid their plans well. Up ahead, a temple guard and two of Herod’s soldiers blocked the road. Daniel was following with Jesus holding on from behind on the same horse. Joseph tried to signal for his son to stay back, but Daniel reacted too slowly, coming to a stop alongside. Joseph watched helplessly as the party ahead of them quickly mounted their own horses.

  Daniel spun his horse back toward Nazareth and galloped away.

  Joseph hesitated. Surely, other soldiers and guards would be in Nazareth by now—they had to be trapped in between. Flight was hopeless, and later the Sanhedrin and Herod would take an attempt at escape as an admission of Jesus’s guilt.

  Joseph shouted to his son to turn back again, but it was no use. Quickly he gave chase, only to see his son’s horse swerve down one of the deep ravines that sliced through the Nazareth Ridge.

  Hoping to draw the pursuers in the wrong direction, Joseph galloped past, back toward Nazareth.

  It almost worked.

  But then Joseph heard a shout from behind. Turning his head, he saw that the soldier had drawn his horse up short at the top of the ravine, alerting the temple guards that they were going the wrong way. The other two turned back quickly to give chase after the true quarry.

  Joseph trotted to the top of the ravine and watched helplessly.

  The pursuers were skilled in riding through rough terrain in pursuit of bandits. Daniel had the advantage of a head start, but the pursuers quickly closed the gap. They would capture Daniel and Jesus before the boys reached the bottom.

  The soldier was practically alongside Daniel in the narrowest part of the ravine when his horse stumbled and fell as he tried to grasp Daniel’s reins. The gap between the ravine walls was too narrow for the other two to avoid his horse, and they were going too fast to stop. The flesh of man and beast collided into a single mass of bloody gore in the all-too-narrow space as Daniel made good his escape with Jesus.

  God be praised! A miracle!

  A few hours later, as he waited by the ship, Joseph saw more soldiers approaching with the port master. Someone must have recognized him and gotten word to an agent of Caiaphas in the port. But where were his son and Jesus? Should he try to get the vessel away as soon as possible, or should he stay? The search of the vessel was just about complete, and no contraband—human or other—had been found. Joseph looked over the small crowd next to the ship and recognized a Pharisee, one of the local rabbis, in deep discussion with the port master. It would attract suspicion if the vessel failed to leave once cleared to do so. Joseph had to give the Sadducees credit for enlisting such a network of allies so quickly from the rival sect.

  Just as the search ended, Joseph saw Daniel turn a corner and make his way down the dock. Joseph wondered what his son had done with Jesus. He could not ask, as everyone on the narrow dock would hear.

  “I have posted your letter to Seculus, Papa,” Daniel said. “We can go now.”

  They had left Seculus at their last port of call, and there was no letter to him. Joseph thought about the
incident when Daniel had knelt down in front of Jesus and wondered if he should trust his crazy son, but he knew that he had no choice but to take the cue to go.

  Joseph turned to the port master and requested clearance to leave.

  “This man was seen harboring a fugitive,” the Pharisee said. “We have the report direct from our informer in Nazareth.”

  The port master stroked his beard thoughtfully, while he considered. He had the authority to hold the ship indefinitely.

  “Your information is wrong,” Joseph answered. The harbor master looks like he’s about to give in to the Pharisee. I had better make it clear there could be a price to pay. He addressed the port master: “The vessel has been searched and there is no contraband. We are about to miss the tide. If we do, I will demand damages. That is my right, under the law.”

  The port master turned to the Pharisee and puffed up his chest. “What do I care about your local matters? My only duty is to enforce the trade laws of Rome.”

  “Herod Antipas may not rule Acre,” the Pharisee replied, “but there will be trouble if you knowingly allow someone to leave this port whom the Tetrarch wants detained.”

  “Herod ordered the detention of a boy of twelve. Clearly, such a boy is not on this ship.” The port master waved a hand toward the vessel. “You have no order to detain anyone else. The vessel is free to sail.” The port master walked off, ignoring the continuing entreaties of the Pharisee.

  “Set sail!” cried Joseph.

  The sails filled, and the vessel slipped away from the dock.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, he turned to his son. But before he could ask, Daniel anticipated his question: “Jesus is on the Trumpet of Gideon, bound for Cyprus. I booked his passage as the boat was leaving. We can meet him there.”

  Joseph smiled. His son might be crazy, but he was learning to find his way around a port. Daniel would have had to bluster his way through booking that passage for Jesus, even though he was hardly of age to do so. I will make a fine merchant of him yet.

  Chapter 2

  A Gift of Tongues

  Nehemiah

  Nehemiah regarded the sea with the wary eye of a seasoned sea captain. They were a few days out of Cyprus, where they had stopped to pick up Jesus. The winds had been fair. To the untrained eye, this would look like another pleasant day of mostly blue sky with broken clouds, but the lingering redness in the morning sky spelled trouble.

  Creta, over the horizon to the north, had several harbors offering safe havens, but they were all on the northern shore of that island. The sheer cliff faces along the long southern shore might as well be wolf fangs, ready to tear apart any craft unlucky enough to find that shore on the lee in a storm. No, there would be no making for land; they would have to keep their distance, so he commanded the helmsman to adjust the course away from that danger and gybe the sail. They would sail west as rapidly as possible, hopefully fast enough to get beyond the danger of the island to the north before any storm hit.

  What strange events had led to the detour to Salamis, the port for Cyprus. It almost seemed that Nehemiah’s longtime friend had smuggled Jesus out of Galilee. Joseph was always a man of honor who paid his bills on time without raising spurious questions or quibbling with feigned excuses or protestations of bad fortune. Nehemiah’s father had spoken well of the family when they first met as young men both learning their respective trades. It was no surprise to Nehemiah when he heard that the Romans had granted Joseph the Arimathean the honor of full citizenship, usually reserved to residents of Italia, and then the title of noblis decurio. But while Joseph made many friends in high places, he nurtured his friendships with the less fortunate as well.

  The crack of the yardarm against the mast interrupted the captain’s reverie. The gybe maneuver required the helmsman to turn the stern of the ship through the wind. The men had to slacken the bracing stays on the new leeward side to free the yardarm to swing back while the windward stays were tightened to support the mast. The timing was critical; in heavy wind, an unsupported mast could snap in an instant. Nehemiah was pleased that the hands stayed alert to keep the rig under control. He adjusted his balance as the ship heeled to the other side, and his thoughts returned to what Joseph was doing with the boy.

  The business with the nephew was certainly strange. Why would Joseph, of all people, set himself against the temple authorities? When he had the chance, Nehemiah went to synagogues in the isolated Jewish communities scattered around the Mediterranean, but that was the extent of his piety. Joseph, on the other hand, was devout in adhering to all the inconvenient strictures of Jewish law.

  Why is the boy such a concern? An edict of detention, evidently from King Herod Antipas himself!

  Jesus seemed so harmless, just a skinny waif. Nehemiah had first seen him playing with other children on a dock as Nehemiah’s ship sailed into Salamis to pick him up. He had seen the stronger boys push Jesus into the water, but the boy quickly emerged laughing. He had seemed so much like an even younger child, jumping across the docks and waving exuberantly to greet Joseph and Daniel once he spied them in the approaching ship.

  Nehemiah felt a slight pull on his cloak. At first he thought it was just the wind, but there it was again. Nehemiah turned to find the boy himself tugging gently.

  “Shalom,” the boy uttered once he saw he had the captain’s attention. “And peace in the Lord!”

  The greeting sounded a bit pretentious coming from a youth, but Jesus’s warm smile dispelled that thought quickly. “Shalom,” Nehemiah replied. “What brings you up on deck?”

  “I felt a change in the weather and the course of the ship.”

  The lad is indeed observant. Nehemiah explained how he had altered course to avoid the danger of the lee shore to the north with the threat of a storm coming.

  “But the storm will come from the south,” Jesus responded. “We cannot get past the island in time. We should be heading even further away from it as fast as we can.”

  Nehemiah looked at the boy dubiously. How could he possibly know such things? Passengers often expressed curiosity about the ways of the seas and the workings of his ship, but not even Joseph had ever presumed to offer him advice on the running of it. Wordlessly, he started to walk away. But after a few steps he turned to look back. Something about the boy piqued his curiosity. The merry look in his eyes gave him the appearance of utter childlike innocence. Yet at the same time, he bore a haunting look that betrayed an unnerving sense of confidence in his perception.

  “Be at peace, Captain. My Father will protect this ship,” said Jesus.

  No, the boy is not being impudent. He attaches himself to the Arimathean because he is away from his own father. He expects Joseph to look after him as his own father would. He must idolize the father he left at home, and now he thinks that Joseph must have some strange power from his father to protect everyone.

  Unable to think of anything to say to help the boy, the captain smiled kindly and went about his business.

  Within hours, clouds filled the sky, descended, and became an angry dark gray. While the clouds came in from the east, a freak wind hit the ship from the south, just as Jesus had predicted. The waves broke around them. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way; the southerly wind always filled in gradually.

  The unexpectedly wild wind rose up before they had a chance to reef the sail. At least initially, Nehemiah had no choice but to run with it even though it took the ship racing towards the dangerous shore to the north. With full sail, turning at all into the powerful wind was no option; a broadside blow of wind and quickly mounting wave would certainly capsize the vessel to its more immediate destruction.

  Nehemiah ordered his two hands to climb the rigging and reef the sail. He watched the two men get up there, stand on the footropes, and strain trying to no avail to pull in the cloth against the force of the wind.

  “Can we go up and help?” Daniel was already drenched from the spray. He clutched the rail to hold himself upright on
the swaying deck. Jesus was in a similar state right behind him.

  Nehemiah weighed his options. With the helmsman needed to help him control the steering oar, there was no one else left except Joseph. None of them knew the ways of the sea, but the boys stood a better chance than the older and heavier man did. “Make sure you hold on for your life; there’s no turning back if you fall in. Stay as close to the mast as you can.”

  “No!” shouted Joseph as he clumsily worked his way toward them.

  “I have no choice. We are all doomed if we don’t get that sail reefed.” Nehemiah took one hand off the steering oar for a split second and pointed to the rigging. “Go!” he shouted to the boys.

  Nehemiah felt for his friend, but the steering oar took all his attention. He caught only glimpses of the boys making their way across the swaying deck and then gingerly up the rigging. Pulling together, the four now on the yardarm slowly managed to pull in the middle section of the cracking sail. With less pressure on the steering oar, Nehemiah soon was able to pay more attention to them. At first it went well as they shifted left to bring in that portion of the sail, but with the sail still not reefed to the right, the rig was now unbalanced, and the ship began to sway even more. The captain and helmsman had to struggle harder to control the ship’s course. Nehemiah’s muscles quivered at the strain.

  He stole another glance, but that was all it took to see the mistake. The experienced men should have stepped behind and around the boys, but instead they were all moving in unison along the yardarm to the right to reef the last section. Jesus would be out the farthest with Daniel alongside him, just as the unbalanced yardarm would be swinging through the air most wildly. Even on deck, the experienced captain had difficulty holding on to the steering oar as the deck rose and fell. It had to be far worse up above. He tried shouting but was soon choking on bitter seawater. The mounting wind swallowed his words anyway.