by John Smelcer
Whatever he was, whoever he was, the rabbi was no criminal.
I stopped passersby on the streets, asking if they had seen the spectacle the day before. Some had. Some had not. Few of those who had witnessed the spectacle knew anything about the man, only that he was a criminal of some sort.
“I think he was an escaped slave,” said some.
“I heard he was a traitor,” said others.
“He is a thief who stole from the moneychangers in the Temple,” replied one young woman who insisted her husband was present and witnessed the rabbi turn over the tables as he ran to escape.
A few said he was a blasphemer.
More than one said he was a murderer.
The stories were conflicting and incredible.
A man with four children said he had heard that the rabbi threatened to destroy the Temple.
Three people said they thought he was a Nazarene, but that was all they knew.
One said he was a prophet who had crossed Caiaphas, the high priest.
An old widow said he was a sorcerer.
But another old woman said he was a miracle worker who healed the sick and the lame, even lepers.
“He healed a man who had not walked in years.”
Seeing my doubt, she declared, “I saw it with my own eyes.”
I replied that healers were all magicians and swindlers cheating the sick and lame and weak-minded for money. They might as well be pickpockets. But the woman said the rabbi asked for no money, that he did so freely.
Her words struck me hard.
With all the different accounts of the man, I was sure I was not going to find the answer I was looking for.
But fortune was with me.
An old man pointed to a house down the lane and told me that some of the rabbi’s disciples were staying there.
“I have seen them come and go,” he said.
I thanked him profusely, pressing a coin into his palm before I set off quickly down the street.
I knocked on the door the old man had indicated.
No one came.
I knocked louder, almost pounding on it.
Finally, a man opened the door, only enough that I could see half of his face.
“What do you want?” he asked rather suspiciously.
“I’m looking for the brother of the man who was crucified yesterday.”
The man opened the door wider and glanced up and down the narrow street.
“He’s not here. You have the wrong house.”
Then he tried to close the door, but I caught it before it closed.
“Please,” I said through the crack. “I must talk to the one named James.”
“What do you want of him?”
“I was with his brother yesterday.”
The man opened the door enough to look me up and down.
“Wait here,” is all he said before he closed the door.
I stood there for a time until he came back to let me in.
“Come. Follow me,” he said, leading me up a flight of stairs to a large room in which the windows were covered, some only partially.
Sitting at a long table was the man I had seen weeping and grieving on his knees the day before.
He recognized me as well.
“Are you the one named James, brother of the rabbi who was crucified yesterday?” I asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
I could tell this man was also nervous.
“I have . . . questions,” I said.
“I am he. Sit down,” he said, motioning at a chair with a hand.
Then he turned to a boy sitting in the shadows who I had not noticed when I first entered the room.
“Bring us some wine.”
“Excuse my manners,” he said turning to the man who had opened the door and led me to the upstairs chamber. “This is Peter.”
Peter nodded and so did I.
Just then the boy brought us cups and poured wine into them.
“And this is John Mark,” said James. “He serves us and writes letters for us when we need them.”
The boy looked to be about the age of my youngest son, Rufus. He was fourteen or fifteen, perhaps even sixteen, though he was much slighter in build.
“What do you want to know?” asked James, reaching for his cup.
“I was with your brother yesterday,” I replied.
“I remember you. What is your name?”
“Simon. I am from Cyrene, though I have lived here in Judaea for many years.”
“Why have you sought me out?”
“Please, I need to know your brother’s name.”
“His name is . . . was Jesus,” replied James, correcting himself.
I whispered the name aloud.
“Jesus.”
I felt a great unburdening in doing so.
“Tell me,” said James. “How was it you carried my brother’s cross?”
I told them how my sons and I had come into Jerusalem that morning to sell wine and to find a healer for Avigail. I related how I happened to be forced to carry the heavy cross and how the centurions whipped me as if I were a convicted criminal. When I related Jesus’s desolation that his followers had all abandoned him, Peter wept.
I asked him the cause of his sorrow.
“I was a coward. I denied him three times, just as he said I would.”
When I told him that Jesus forgave him, he wept even more, hiding his face in his hands.
“Love covers a multitude of sins, even my betrayal . . . and my shame,” Peter said.
I told them how I left Jesus on Golgotha even as the centurions began to hammer the spikes into his hands and feet, because he urged me to leave for my own sake.
As I spoke, I noticed that the boy was especially attentive, fixed on my every word.
I told them how I passed two women and a young man on the way down the hill.
“Tell me, was one of the women an older woman?” asked James.
“Yes. She was with the young man.”
James and Peter looked at one another and nodded.
“The old woman was our mother,” said James.
I was horrified to think of a mother seeing her child die such a horrible death.
I went on with my story, telling them of my astonishing dream in which Jesus came to me in a paradise. I described the colorful, star-raddled sky with two suns and how the image of Jesus was ever changing, at once wounded, then perfect, and sometimes both.
They were extremely interested in this. They had many questions.
“Are you certain that is what he said?” they asked me each time I described another part of our conversation.
“Yes. I am certain. Every word.”
I told them how in the morning Avigail was healed and the welts from my lashings were gone.
“I remember seeing a centurion whip you and your shirt bloodied,” replied James. “Show me.”
I raised my shirt.
Peter and the boy came closer to inspect me.
On seeing my unblemished skin, James smiled.
“The handiwork of my brother, no doubt,” he said with tears in his eyes. “When we were boys, he healed me when a poisonous serpent bit me, and I was certain to die.”
“How did he heal you?”
“He simply blew on the place where the serpent had bit me.”
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“I do not know, but he always had such a power. He said it was from faith. With but a touch or a word I have seen him heal hundreds.”
I remembered what the old woman on the street had said. I also recalled the last words of Jesus in the vision, that my faith had healed me and my family.
Did I have faith? I wondered. Is that what I
was feeling?
“I too have witnessed many amazing things,” added Peter.
“My brother told me often that faith alone is not enough,” continued James. “He said faith must be accompanied by good works.”
I recalled him saying as much in my vision.
“This Jesus did not seem to be a criminal,” I said, after drinking wine from the cup and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “How did he come to be crucified? I have heard different accounts, none seeming true to me.”
“Even before we arrived in Jerusalem,” said James, “my brother prophesied that he would be tried and condemned and flogged and killed.”
Peter began to tell of events of recent days.
“We arrived outside Jerusalem only a few days ago. The Teacher was talking to the multitudes. There were so many that he had to preach from the Mount of Olives outside the city walls.”
“Afterward, we came into the city through the Golden Gate on the northeast side,” interrupted James. “My brother was angry with the moneychangers and the traders in the Temple. He was outraged that the house of God was used for commerce and greed. He called the place a den of robbers as he turned over the tables and spilled their coin boxes.”
On imagining the rabbi overturning the tables, my admiration for him grew. I had certainly wanted to do the same thing only the day before.
“He even threatened the destruction of the thing that stands between humanity and God,” continued James. “I’m afraid he made enemies of the high priests, who could no longer ignore my brother’s renown.”
Then Peter said, “We ate supper in this room only two nights ago. Jesus sat in that chair,” he said pointing to an empty chair. “He drank wine from the cup you are drinking from. He told us the wine was his life-blood.”
I studied the tall clay cup in my hand, noting the imperfections from its firing. The vessel was as tall as the length of my hand, the base as wide as the mouth, and it was tapered in the middle for a hand grip. Exposure to uneven heat in the kiln had made it discolored—a dull yellowish brown on one side, a glazed richer brown on the other. The smooth inside of the chalice was of a greenish hue.
This had been his, I thought. He drank from this cup.
I held it tight, suddenly experiencing the intense yearning I had felt in the vision.
“During supper that night, Jesus told us that it would be our last,” continued Peter. “He said he would soon die, and that one of us would betray him and all of us would abandon him out of fear. We strongly protested. ‘Not one of us will do that,’ we all proclaimed. Then Jesus turned to me and said that I would deny him three times. ‘Not I,’ I swore. ‘I would never abandon you.’ But I did . . . I failed him…”
Peter broke down.
James paused, respectfully. Then he began again.
“Later that night, we were resting in the garden on the other side of the Kidron beneath the light of a full moon when Temple guards came in the darkness.”
“Peter told me to flee when we saw them coming,” interrupted John Mark. “I managed to escape.”
Peter said, “He is still a boy. I did not want him to be caught by the guards. I was afraid of what they might do to him.”
James nodded in agreement before continuing.
“They arrested my brother and took him away to the Palace of Caiaphas where, we have been told, they convened a council of priests, though it was against the law to do so at that hour. They charged my brother with heresy and sedition. After sunrise, they took him to Pontius Pilate, demanding that he be executed. We were in the crowd,” he said, glancing at Peter, “concealing our faces for fear that the mob would recognize us. Pilate sentenced my brother to be crucified when Caiaphas and his priests and the jeering crowd insisted. After that, you know more than we do.”
There was one thing I did not know for certain, yet the vivid dream told me it was so.
“Did he die there?” I asked.
James and Peter looked down at the wooden table and nodded in silence.
“I thought so. I’m sorry I asked.”
And I was.
No one spoke for a while after that.
Looking out the window, I noted that the day was getting late.
“I have to go,” I said, standing up from my chair. “It is a long journey home.”
Peter and James stood.
“Thank you for being with my brother at his end,” said James. “You helped him.”
“He said as much. May I keep this?” I asked, holding up the earthen cup that Jesus had used. “I can pay for it.”
“Keep it,” said James, “to remember my brother and what you shared with him.”
I thanked him for the gift.
“I’m sorry about the loss of your brother,” I said, as I clasped James’s hand in friendship.
His eyes filled with tears. He nodded without speaking.
I also thanked Peter before I left.
As I walked down the stairs, clutching the cup, the boy named John Mark called down to me.
“Tell me again the names of your sons?”
“Alexander and Rufus,” I replied without turning around.
“You said you come from Cyrene?”
“Yes,” I replied as I opened the door to leave.
Once outside, I made my way through the crowded streets. Every face I passed, every face that looked at me without seeing, I wondered if that person had stood idly by and watched indifferently or with spite as Jesus struggled with his cross. I wondered if his death mattered to them, one way or the other. For my part, I would never be able to see Jerusalem the same way as before.
I was tired when I found the road that would take me home. As I trudged along, thinking and questioning, my feet aching, I noticed that I hadn’t had one of my debilitating headaches since the day before, since I had helped Jesus.
The headaches never came back.
I was exhausted when I finally reached home, having twice traveled back and forth to the city. The sun was low, perched on the cusp of the far hills. As always, I touched the mezuzah before passing through the door.
“Father!” yelled Avigail when she saw me.
She ran to me and hugged me around the waist.
“I missed you, Father,” she said happily. “I am so glad you are home.”
I bent down and kissed her head.
“And I missed you, Little One.”
Rachel came over and hugged me and kissed me on the cheek.
“I am glad you are home, too” she said with a smile.
“Where are our sons?” I asked.
“They went to help Jacob dig a new well. I told them to return before sundown. They should be home soon for supper.”
“They are good boys,” I said.
I could smell supper cooking in the pot over the hearth.
“It smells delicious,” I said. “I am famished.”
Rachel kissed me.
“You must be exhausted. I will rub your tired feet before bed.”
“Yes, I am very tired.”
We ate as soon as my sons returned. Rachel instructed them to wash their hands first. I asked my sons about the work on the goat house.
“We laid three courses of stones, instead of the two you asked of us,” boasted Alexander. “It will soon be ready for a door and the crossbeam to support the roof.”
“All that and you still went to help Jacob?” I said, marveling at my sons’ industry and good will and remembering what Jesus had said about helping others. “I am proud of you both.”
But I knew that Alexander had another reason for going to Jacob’s farm.
“And how was Nessa?” I asked.
Alexander blushed.
As we sat around the small table, eating a thick stew and sharing bread, I related to my family what I had
learned from James and Peter.
“Did you learn the man’s name?” asked Alexander.
“His name was Jesus.”
My children repeated the name aloud.
Jesus.
I told them that he was a holy man and no criminal. I told them of his many miracles, including how he had healed the welts on my back.
I told my wife that my headaches were gone.
She smiled and squeezed my hand.
I said to Avigail, “It was he who healed you. You must never forget him.”
“But how?” asked Rufus. “He never met Avigail.”
“I believe it was when Avigail kissed my hand covered with his blood.”
And then I showed them the cup.
His cup.
I told them what had been told to me, how he drank wine from it the very night he was arrested.
My family passed the cup around the table, each holding it with awe.
“Careful,” I warned. “Do not drop it.”
After supper, while my family readied for bed, I went out to see the goat house. In the darkness, I ran a hand across the stones. The boys had done a fine job.
Because I was so tired, I fell asleep quickly that night. But no sooner had I closed my eyes, it seemed, than I began to dream of the magnificent fruit tree turning into the cross. At first the cross was dripping with blood, his blood. I tried to catch it in the cup, his cup. But then blood poured from it like a torrent, threatening to drown me. I held my hands up against the flood and closed my eyes and mouth. I could not breathe. Suddenly, it stopped. I opened my eyes. The blood was gone. The cross glowed as if the sun shone upon it. No. It shone as if the sun was inside it, as if the cross was the sun.
Sometime around midnight, I awoke with the deep realization of what the cross was and what it was demanding of me.
It was God’s mercy.
I got up and shook my sons.
“Wake up,” I whispered. “Get dressed.”
“Where are we going?” asked Alexander, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
Avigail stirred in her little bed, but did not wake.
“Back to Jerusalem,” I said with a finger to my lips. “Go and hitch the donkey to the cart and fill it with straw.”
