A.D. 30

by Ted Dekker

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you not lived with this illness for many years?”

  “Yes. Yes, but—”

  “And yet you are alive.”

  She hesitated, so I finished the thought for her.

  “So then, you will still be alive when this storm has passed. This is only the same storm we have faced all of our lives.”

  The wind moaned and the boat rocked and Sarah remained silent.

  “Is it not so?” I demanded, seeking my own reassurance.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well then,” I said. “This is the same.”

  But it was not the same. No sooner had I offered my courage than a towering swell rushed us. I saw it in my blindness as a rolling fog, a ghoul from a nightmare.

  Thunder crashed over our heads, and the sky stuttered with bright light. Then the wave threw us high and sideways, and I was certain that we would be crushed under that wall of water.

  Sarah screamed and threw herself from the seat. The water swept over the bow, nearly tearing me overboard.

  “Hold on!” Elias laughed. “It’s only the sea, toying with us! Nothing to worry—”

  But his voice was drowned out by a roar and more peals of thunder, for we had entered nature’s full fury. I was sure the boat would be smashed to splinters.

  I was already in the hull, clinging to Sarah and the beam beneath us. Saba had thrown himself over us both, to protect us.

  “God save us!” Elias cried, now in terror. “He unleashes his wrath!”

  Like a cork we bounced from wave to wave, sure to capsize at any moment.

  “Have mercy!” Elias was now alone in his plea, for the rest of us were hugging the hull, too terrified to pray. “Forgive our great and terrible sins!”

  But Elias’s god wasn’t listening.

  The wind was the greatest enemy, for it howled like a jinn, mocking us in its rage. Water rushed into the hull, soaking us all to our skin. Rain fell now in sheets.

  Above it all I heard Elias’s cries, begging for his god to save him, confessing all matter of uncleanliness. And yet the sea raged, throwing us forward and to the side and swamping us with its fury.

  The storm had come up so suddenly that I was tempted to believe the Jewish god had indeed determined to cleanse us of life itself.

  Still the storm raged. Still we clung to life in that hull. Yet now even Elias had been silenced. In his stead, I heard Stephen crying out.

  Not crying out so much as howling, I thought. Laughing.

  I lifted my head and saw the blurred image of an upright man clinging to the mast, with one hand thrust into the air.

  “Be not afraid!” he was screaming. “Have faith! This too shall pass!”

  He had lost his mind!

  But then the boat was thrown high in the air and he quickly found his sanity, collapsing to the mast’s base, hugging it tight, terrified once more.

  The boat landed with a crushing blow and I was sure we would perish in that sea.

  It is difficult to explain what happened next, for I was at the bottom of the boat, struggling to keep my face out of the water that had filled the hull.

  I remember hearing a roar louder than the storm itself, and I was thinking we had finally been overturned. But the roar passed over, rolling from one end of the sky to the other like the thunder of drums beating directly upon us.

  And then the wind was gone, as if the roar had taken it and left. The rain stopped, not slowly, but as if the clouds had never opened. We pitched, but no wave rolled under us and the boat quickly settled.

  I jerked my head up and the sight before me took my breath away. My vision was clouded, but this much I could not miss: a wall of rain and black storm clouds the size of the sky itself was fast retreating to the horizon, rolled up like a sandstorm in the desert. And in its wake, a perfect calm.

  I turned my head and saw a light fog swallow us like a soothing breath. The storm had set upon us swiftly, but the calm chased it away far more quickly, like a nightmare vanquished by waking.

  Stephen sprang to his feet, and Elias too. Then Saba. But none seemed able to speak. The gentle fog moved over the water, which was now like glass, without a wisp of wind.

  “What in the name of—”

  “Be quiet, Elias!” Stephen whispered, snatching his hand up to silence the fisherman. “Listen.”

  I could hear nothing but the gentle slap of water against our hull.

  “There!” Stephen held on to the mast with one hand and thrust the other into the fog. I heard it then, the sound of voices across the water. We were near the shore?

  But as I strained for vision, the dull image of a boat drifted into view, not a hundred paces distant. Then another beyond it. The voices of exclamation came from there.

  And then a single voice, chuckling softly, stilling the others. I felt the hair on my neck rise, for there was something about that voice…

  “Why are you so afraid?” it said.

  The master.

  I could not mistake the voice that had spoken to me in Capernaum. It was Yeshua. And now I could just make out his form standing in the boat among huddled men.

  My heart soared with hope.

  “Do you still have no faith?” Yeshua said.

  For a long moment, only silence. But I could not contain myself after so many days in darkness.

  “Master?” My voice echoed over the water.

  There was no reply. He wasn’t responding to me. Had he not heard me?

  Stephen was not so meek. “Master!” I saw him throw himself from the boat. He landed on his belly with a mighty splash and immediately began to flail about, struggling to stay afloat.

  For a moment we all just watched, taken aback by his impulsiveness.

  Stephen twisted back for our boat, grasping at the water. “Help me!”

  “Grab the oar!” Elias cried. “He can’t swim!”

  Saba grabbed the oar and quickly unwound the tethers that secured it.

  “The oar, Stephen!” Elias cried. “Take the oar!”

  Saba thrust it out and Stephen clung to the carved blade, kicking his feet to keep his head above water. Together Elias and Saba hauled him over the side, and he sloshed back into the boat like a great landed fish.

  He immediately sprang to his feet, gasping, spinning back to the boat in the fog.

  “Master,” he called. “It is I, Stephen!”

  “I see…” Yeshua’s voice was only curious. “Stephen the brave.”

  Stephen glanced at me, and even in my blurred vision I saw him beaming. I looked across the water and saw we were drifting farther from each other, carried by momentum.

  Why had Yeshua not answered my cry?

  “I bring two for you, master! Elias can steer the boat next to yours. I bring… you can speak to them even now!”

  “You could,” Yeshua said, voice intrigued. “Wait for me in Bethsaida, my friend. I will return soon.”

  “Yes, of course. Bethsaida.”

  “Bethsaida,” Yeshua said.

  “We will wait for you in Bethsaida!”

  Then I would see Yeshua in Bethsaida. My hope surged once again.

  Stephen watched the boat as it drifted away, then turned to us, looking from one to the other.

  “You see?”

  None of us responded, yet my mind was swept away with what I had seen. Though I had felt Yeshua’s presence as if it were a power unto itself, though I had wept at his words over me, though I had watched him touch a boy’s shriveled hands and seen them made whole before my eyes—what kind of man could also command nature? Was he a god in the form of a man? And who was this Father who gave him such power? Who was this god who did not judge, as he himself had said?

  I felt light-headed. My fingers tingled with the mystery of it all.

  Stephen faced Elias. “You see?”

  The fisherman stared after the other boats. A new breeze swept away the sea of fog and carried us away from each other. Above
us the sky was blue once again. Elias was silent, for he could not make sense of what he had seen. Who could?

  “Now you must see,” Stephen said. “Take us to the shore near Bethsaida.”

  BETHSAIDA WAS east of Capernaum, a short walk inland from the sea, and after we came ashore Stephen took us there right away, before the sun set.

  When we arrived, Stephen took us to a home at the edge of the village. It was occupied by an old man named Simon whose wife had recently died. Sarah and I were permitted to sleep in a room off the courtyard, but Simon was a religious man and would not allow us to eat with the men.

  It didn’t matter. We were both silent and withdrawn, each to our own thoughts. Even Stephen was silent. I could not help but think that we were waiting for yet another storm to fall upon us.

  Was not Yeshua himself a storm? A storm of new understanding. A storm that would upend all that was known of the world.

  We waited in Simon’s home on the edge of Bethsaida for three days before Saba reminded me that nearly half of our allotted time had passed. We must make our return to Petra within a week, for it would take at least seven days to make the journey, more if we carried gold.

  But the notion of securing Herod’s agreement seemed impossible to me.

  I did not venture into the town but kept to myself, near Sarah and Saba. I did not inquire of Stephen nor ask for more than what I was offered in way of water and bread, for Simon was poor.

  In a fog I pondered my life, seeing the world as dimly with my eyes as with my heart.

  Far away, Judah suffered in the torturous grasp of the Thamud. The thought made me ill.

  Even now my powerful father wasted away without his tongue. Even now Aretas and Shaquilath protected their kingdom without care whether I lived or died. Even now Herod ate his grapes and drank his wine with a new queen who had stolen his mind.

  But even as I considered these things, the voice of the one who commanded the sea called to me in the same words he’d spoken to his disciples.

  Why are you so afraid, Maviah?

  I am afraid because I cannot see. I am afraid because I am a woman and alone. I am afraid because all who have loved me are dead. I am afraid because I am surely not who I must be.

  Do you still have no faith?

  But you see, there was my truest conflict. What was faith? And if Yeshua’s own disciples had no faith, having been with him for so long already, how could I possess it?

  So on the fourth day, I approached Stephen.

  “May I speak with you, Stephen?”

  He looked about, and I knew that he was concerned with custom, for I was a foreign woman and he a Jew.

  “With Sarah, naturally,” I said.

  “Yes! Yes, of course. We will sit there in the shade of the tree, yes?”

  So I fetched Sarah, who agreed to sit with us.

  “You will see, Maviah,” he said, seating himself. “And you, Sarah. You too will have eyes to see.”

  “My vision is ruined.”

  “Vision? It is said in our scriptures, ‘Without vision, my people perish.’ This vision is to see the world as it truly is. He will give you new vision to see the world in a new way. The true world vision.”

  Always the same with Stephen. He would wait in Bethsaida for many days just to see with this vision. And wouldn’t I? Yet I didn’t have many days.

  “Now,” he said, “tell me what concerns you.”

  “Yeshua speaks of faith… what does it mean to you?”

  He went still, as if I had knocked on a door that contained his greatest secrets. “Faith?”

  “For the Jew, what does it mean to believe?”

  “It is to trust. Not only to believe, for surely even the devil believes the truth and trembles. But to trust… that is everything!” He spoke urgently but in a soft voice, with a finger raised. “You are very wise, Maviah! This is what few understand. And you, Sarah; you must have faith. You too must believe.”

  “Do the disciples of Yeshua have so little faith, then?” I said.

  He hesitated. “You speak of the storm.”

  “Yes.”

  He thought for a moment, then answered with care. “I was raised by my uncle in Judea for many years—”

  “Nicodemus.”

  “Yes. He has always been one to think beyond the normal way of speaking. This is why he became a Pharisee, to find the truest way to God. To follow the last letter of the Law so as to find favor with God. I did not choose his path, but he taught me to think in new ways. Also, I studied with the Greeks and have traveled far. So…” He seemed reluctant to speak outright. “So perhaps I see things with a different eye.”

  “See how?”

  “With the heart,” he said. “The eyes are truly the heart and mind. As I hear the master, life is about what happens inside a man. To even think angry thoughts is no less than murder, he says. The world then is filled with murderers. And why does man get angry? Because he feels threatened or wronged. And why does he feel threatened? Because he does not believe he is safe. Why? Because he is afraid of God and so cannot trust him.”

  I followed his logic but had no concept of how to trust any god.

  “This is the work of God, the master says: to trust in the one God has sent. To trust Yeshua and his way, Maviah. To trust that you too may calm this storm!”

  “To say I believe this tree is a tree—”

  “This is not belief as Yeshua means it!” he interrupted, terribly excited. “He means to trust what these human eyes cannot see. Belief of Yeshua is not belief in Yeshua.”

  I glanced in Sarah’s direction but could not see her expression.

  “Perhaps it is better to understand faith by your fears,” he said. “Why did we fear the storm?”

  “Because it threatened us,” I said.

  “There are those who say the storm does not exist. That it is evil. That this secret knowledge will save you. This is the gnostic way, Nicodemus tells me. But they are wrong. The storm is real, but it did not threaten us. Did you not hear Yeshua ask why the others were afraid?”

  “They were afraid because the storm was about to crush them,” I said. “We were all afraid.”

  Stephen lifted his finger, blurry in my sight. “Exactly! But only because we did not trust the Father to keep us safe as he sees fit. Our trust was in the boat instead! We put our trust in wood and pitch and flesh and blood and wind and water, and so the storm has dominion over us. Don’t you see? We must let this world go and see no threat. This is what it means to believe in Yeshua!”

  “The danger is real, not imagined! What you suggest is madness!”

  “Madness!” he cried, delighted. “Of course the storm is real. In the eyes of children who trust their Father, there is no threat. No grievance against the storm. With faith, Maviah, you can see that nothing threatens you. Then you will fear no storm—you will master it. Only when you trust the Father can you let go of your fear and all grievance. This is why Yeshua told those in the boat that they had no faith, surely.”

  The teaching seemed too much now, for I was drowning already.

  Stephen continued. “When the religious man argues with great passion, desperate to be right, does he not secretly harbor a grievance against the one who threatens his knowledge? This too is fear, but Yeshua does not argue in this way. There is no threat in the storm of words—his Father keeps him safe! This is his way.”

  “You speak as though letting go of grievance is nothing more than letting a stone fall from the hand.”

  “Ah… but this is the meaning of forgiveness, is it not? To let go. To forgive the world.” He swept his hand through the air. “All of it! To let go of all blame.”

  The first hints of a greater meaning registered in my mind.

  “And do you forgive?” I asked.

  He stilled for a moment, caught off guard. Then he settled back down and sighed.

  “Me? I am only a common man who thinks about these things. I cannot say that I believe any more th
an the others or I too would calm the storm. But I believe I am learning.” Stephen leaned forward. “Do you know he has promised that all who follow him will do as he does and greater?”

  “And do they?”

  “Not yet.” He sat back. “Perhaps because no one truly trusts. Many are called but few are chosen, he says. Narrow is the gate. Yet there are those who want to trust in him fully. Peter, James, John, Sons of Thunder. The others as well. And some close to me in Bethany—Philip, Lazarus, and his sisters Mary and Martha. We all seek to know this way. As must you. And you, Sarah.”

  I could not doubt his sincerity, but how was it possible to hold no grievance and find no threat in the world? Such a person would indeed rule the heart with great power.

  I blinked. The kingdom of heaven, within.

  “When you listen to Yeshua, listen for what he tells you not to put your faith in,” Stephen said, cutting my thoughts short. “Will a husband give you security? No! Will food save you from suffering? No! Will wealth save you from death? No! Nothing on earth will offer you salvation from the storms of this age or the next. Rather give what you have to the poor, for to give is to receive in his kingdom.”

  “My kingdom is not of this earth,” I said quietly.

  “Yes! Yes! Yet among and within us now! Where did you hear this?”

  “He said it.”

  “Then you know! If you search your heart and find any grievance, even against the Romans, it exposes your lack of faith in the Father, who abides in the heart, for this is the kingdom of heaven as well. But believe in him and his way and you will be saved, because nothing that happens in this world threatens you. Let go of this world to master it. Seek his kingdom first and all will be added—or not, it doesn’t matter. Do you see?”

  Only with the dimmest vision, I thought.

  “Yeshua says always: be anxious for nothing. And what is anxiousness but what the Greeks say? It is merizo, ‘to divide,’ and nous, ‘the mind.’ To have a divided mind, torn between security and fear. But we will only be anxious until we release all that we believe will save us, even knowledge, for faith, not knowledge, saves. This then is true salvation from all of life’s suffering in this age and the next.”

  He grinned, nearly ecstatic.

  “This is his meaning when he teaches that no one can serve two masters. There are two masters calling for your attention in every hour: the kingdom of this world symbolized by money, and the kingdom of heaven, which is spirit. Both are here—within and among us. You must choose to see the kingdom of heaven and abide. Until you forget and serve the other once again.”