The Life of Jesus Christ

When Jesus caught up to his disciples, their faces were unsmiling. He fell into step again beside Simon Peter, who drew back to keep from touching him.
    Jesus shook his head. “Peter, Peter,” he said, and Simon Peter glanced at him and away, his expression grim. Jesus looked around at the others, none of whom would meet his eyes.
    “Does none of you know the benefits of compassion?” he said.
    “Master,” said Simon Peter. “Compassion is all very well, but you have endangered us all.”
    “What about compassion for us?” Judas said. “Do you have no compassion for your friends?”
    “And what calamity has befallen you that you should be the object of compassion?”
    Judas’s lips compressed in annoyance, and they walked for a little way in silence. John, tugging at Jesus’ sleeve, said, “Is there no danger of contagion, then?”
    Jesus looked at him and sighed. “Very little, I think,” he said.
    “You don’t know?” The voice was Judas’s. “You think?” To the others, he said, “He doesn’t know whether he’s exposed himself and all of us to a slow, wasting death.”
    “There is a power loosed in the world,” Jesus said. “Wait awhile and see what —”
    “Ho!” a voice called in the distance, interrupting him. “Ho there!”
    Jesus stopped, and Judas and Simon Peter ran into him. “Hold up,” Jesus said. “Who was that?”
    “There,” said John, pointing.
    A man’s head appeared coming over a rise behind them, then his shoulders, then his torso. “Ho there,” he called again.
    Jesus turned back to meet him, his disciples straggling after him. The man broke into a run, staggering his last few steps and falling to his knees in front of Jesus.
    “Master,” he said.
    Simon Peter’s eyes had focused on his left foot, where his sandal hung by a single strap. “He’s taken the leper’s clothes,” he said.
    The man raised his eyes to Jesus, and a shock passed through Simon Peter’s body and lifted the hairs at the nape of his neck. It was the leper, his blind eye healed, and the pigment in his face miraculously restored. And, though two of the fingers still were missing from the right hand, the sores were gone.
    Jesus reached down to grip his shoulder and raise him to his feet. “Greetings, Simeon,” he said.
    “Master.”
    “You will need to find a priest to examine you and to offer the sacrifices required by Moses.”
    “Yes, yes. Of course. Please, sir. Is it permitted to know your name?”
    “Jesus, of Nazareth. But I’d like for you not to tell anyone what happened here.”
    “Jesus. Of Nazareth,” the man repeated.
    “Remember,” Jesus said. “Seek out a priest. Tell no one.”
    Simeon nodded. “Of course, of course,” he said. “Thank you. You have saved my life.”
    Jesus smiled at him. “Very likely,” he said. “Go on now.”
    Simeon leaped to his feet and, after clasping Jesus to him with reckless enthusiasm, took off running along the road ahead of them toward Bethsaida.
    “Well,” Jesus said, looking after him. “We had best get on to Bethsaida ourselves.” And he started off.
    His disciples followed, but at a distance, and they whispered among themselves.

They were still a mile outside the village when Andrew saw the crowd of people coming toward them. “Look,” he said.
    “I don’t guess Simeon kept his good news to himself; what do you think?” Jesus said.
    “Does that mean the leprosy will return to him?” John asked him.
    Jesus shook his head. “No. Secrecy was a request, not a condition.”
    “What are we going to do? If we continue on into Bethsaida, we’ll be mobbed just as we were in Capernaum.”
    “Jesus! Jesus of Nazareth,” came a chorus of voices.
    “Let’s get off the road. This way,” Jesus said. But as they left the road, the people coming from Bethsaida toward them broke into a dog-trot. There seemed to be about fifty of them.
    Jesus and his disciples angled across the broken ground toward the Sea of Galilee, already visible below them. Simon Peter said, “If we can stay ahead of the crowd for perhaps ten minutes, we can be at my boat, if by some miracle it’s still where I left it.”
    “Then I guess we’d better stay ahead of the crowd,” Jesus said. He broke into a run, gathering up his robe and his tunic to keep from tripping over them.
    “Master,” Peter called, pounding after him. “This hardly accords with the dignity of a prophet.”
    Nathaniel, breaking into a run himself, laughed out loud.
    “There’ll be nothing dignified about what will happen if they catch us,” Jesus said.
    Simon the Zealot passed Jesus and Simon Peter, his robe flying and his long legs pumping. The cries of the crowd grew louder, not quite masking the more immediate sounds of the disciples’ labored breathing and the slap of their sandals on the hard, sandy ground. They reached the shore of the lake and turned along it toward Simon Peter’s boat, now visible in the distance.
    “We’re going to make it,” Simon Peter huffed between gasps as John and James and James the younger passed him. “We’re going to make it.” And they did, piling into the boat head-first and feet first, James and John splashing into the water with Simon Peter to push off.
    When they were about twenty yards off shore, Jesus said, “Drop the anchor.”
    The crowd was gathering along the shoreline, a few splashing in but none making a serious pursuit. “The crowd’s grown. There have to be a hundred of them,” said John.
    “Men of Israel,” Jesus called, standing up in the boat and nearly upsetting it before recovering his balance. “Men of Israel, whom do you seek?”
    One of the men on shore, a young man, called, “The one who healed Simeon the leper.”
    Another said, “Jesus of Nazareth.”
    “You have found him,” Jesus said. “I am Jesus. What do you want of me?”
    The question produced a general hubbub, each man turning to his neighbor to confer. Finally, a voice rose above the rest. “Bless us, Master,” it said.
    “In what way are you in need of a blessing?”
    “I am poor,” cried a voice.
    “I’m hungry,” cried another, a woman. “I slave and struggle to keep food on the table for my son and myself, and still there is not enough.”
    “My wife is dead.”
    “Who among you is poor?” Jesus cried, holding up his arm.
    A dozen hands were raised.
    “Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus said.
    “Will you fill our purses?” There was general laughter, and Jesus smiled.
    “No, I have not the means to do that.”
    “Then what is the good of your blessing?”
    “Though I can’t fill your purses with coin, I can give you something infinitely better.” He raised a hand, palm outward. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you who hunger, for you shall be satisfied, if not physically, then spiritually, which is more important.”
    “Such cant,” Judas said in an undertone. “I’ll be surprised if they don’t stone the boat.”
    Jesus’ head turned a fraction of the way toward him, but his words, when he spoke, were addressed to the crowd. “Is there no blessing to be found in poverty and hunger? There is so much suffering: Is it all meaningless? No. Just as your arm may be strengthened by the strain of toil, just as gold is refined by fire, so your character is formed in the crucible of suffering. Without it we are all fat toads, self-satisfied, cruel, and self-indulgent.”
    “What about my wife?” called the widower. “Did sickness consume her so as to improve my character?”
    There was a scattering of laughter, but Jesus ignored it.
    “And hers, perhaps. The path to God is not an easy one. Your wife toiled, and she suffered —” He paused, almost as if listening. “And she sits today in God’s own presence, and angels minister to her needs.”
    Silence. “I miss her,” the man said at last, his voice so choked with emotion that it almost failed to carry to the boat.
    “Yes, I know. You mourn, and you will be blessed by it. Though it seems impossible, the time will come when you will again laugh.”
    “Bless me,” called another. Jesus recognized him.
    “A blessing on you, Dothan,” Jesus said. “Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you. Rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven.”
    In the following silence, Dothan looked with some embarrassment at those around him, but everyone was focused on Jesus. Someone called, “Instruct us, Rabbi,” and a chorus of voices took up the cry.
    “You want me to tell you how to live? Moses has given you the law, has he not? Why don’t you obey it?”
    He looked from face to face, but no one answered him. “Is it because the law seems cold and lifeless to you?” He pointed to a man dressed in purple linen. “Nathan,” he said.
    “Me?”
    “You. Would you have the Lord as a living, breathing presence in your life?”
    “Of course, Rabbi.”
    “Sell what you have, and give the proceeds to the poor. You heard me bless the poor. There is a dark side to the blessing: You are rich; if you cling to your riches, then you have already received all the comfort you will ever have. You are well-fed, but the day is coming when you will be hungry indeed. You laugh now, but one day you will mourn and weep.”
    Nathan’s face flushed a dark red. “I come seeking a blessing, and instead you give me a curse?”
    “The curse was yours already. I give you the chance to exchange it for a blessing.”
    “It’s not a chance, but an ultimatum.”
    “What greater prize could there be than the kingdom of heaven?”
    Nathan turned away. “Go to hell,” he muttered audibly.
    There was a silence, Jesus looking from face to face among the crowd. “I offer the blessing to each of you,” he said. “Would you be perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect? Love your enemies. Do good to them that hate you; bless them that curse you; pray for them that mistreat you. If someone slaps you, turn to him the other cheek. If someone takes your cloak, give him your tunic as well. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Treat everyone just as you would want to be treated yourself.”
    “Not our enemies, surely!”
    Jesus smiled at the one who had spoken.
    “It makes no sense, you say. Let me ask you: if you love just the people who love you, what special service have you done to God? Everyone loves those who love them, every Gentile, every tax collector, every villain. If you are good only to those who have been good to you, how are you different from anybody else? If you lend only to those who can repay you, what have you done? Even the most corrupt among us lend out money expecting to be repaid. But love your enemies; do good to them; lend without expecting to receive anything in return . . .”
    “And then what?”
    “Yes, what then?”
    “If you do these things, your reward will be great. You will be sons of the Most High God, who is Himself kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. God has given you much; it is only thus — by doing something you don’t have to do, by doing a kindness you don’t even want to do — that you can return to him something of what he has given you.”
    He talked to them for a total of less than an hour, but they were big themes for him, themes he would return to again and again. When he was done, he gestured for Simon Peter to raise anchor and head out onto the Sea of Galilee. He himself sat heavily on the bench in the bow of the boat.
    “You look tired,” John said to him.
    Jesus smiled at him. “Do I?”
    “The preaching takes energy from you just as the healing does.”
    “I think you’re right,” Jesus said. “I think I’ll take a nap.”
    “Where are we going?” Simon Peter asked. “Hadn’t you better tell us that first?”
    “Back to Capernaum? If we get there after dark, we can make our way to Levi’s house easily enough. How would you feel about a slew of houseguests, Levi?”
    “I’d be honored.” He cleared his throat, conscious of the unsmiling faces around him. “I wonder if I could go by the name Matthew from now on. You all know what my past is — I know there are some of you that can never forgive me for it —”  He deliberately avoided looking at either of the Judeans, Judas or Simon. “I’d like to make a break with the past.”
    “Why the name Matthew?”
    Levi looked at James, the son of Zebedee, who had asked the question. “It was my father’s name.”
    “Matthew, then,” Jesus said. “Very good.” He slipped out of his cloak and began to fold it. “Can someone wake me when we reach our destination?” He lay down along the bench, his arm and the folded cloak pillowing his head. The arm of the cloak he draped across his face, shielding it from the light.

James and John, Simon Peter’s old fishing partners, helped with the sail. “Those clouds are coming from the west,” James said to Simon Peter. “We’re going to be sailing right into them.”
    “We’ll make it.” The wind caught the sail, and Simon Peter leaned back on the rope to hold the slender mast upright.
    “If you say so.” Simon Peter, a good fisherman, was the best boatman on the Sea of Galilee. James had seen him cutting through waves choppy enough to have swamped him and John and Zebedee, leaning far over the side of his boat to balance his mast, his silhou¬ette visible through the lashing rain against the occasional flash of lightning as he ran ahead of the storm.
    The wind changed abruptly on them, whipping the boom across the boat so fast that it caught John in the back of the head and sent him sprawling.
    “It’s taking us out to sea,” James said as Simon Peter dropped the rope that held up the sail. The wind, though, had filled the sail and kept it from dropping. Simon Peter gripped the canvas, pulling at it, lifting himself off his feet in his effort to lower the sail.
    “Little help,” he called, and James and Andrew gripped the sail beside him. They got it down, and the waves turned the boat broadside, rolling it with each swell.
    “Look,” James said, pointing.
    Rain was sweeping toward them like a dark curtain, dimpling the surface of the waves, the shore invisible beyond it.
    “Uh oh,” someone said.
    “‘Uh oh’ is right.” Simon Peter gripped the rudder and, grimac¬ing with the strength of the effort, turned the boat into the waves. A few large, cold droplets fell about them, and then the rain was coming down in sheets, plastering their robes and tunics to their bodies and their hair to their heads. Simon Peter found it impossible to guide the boat; the best he could do was to keep it from founder¬ing. “We’ll have to ride it out.”
    “Can we ride it out?”
    A flash of lightning illuminated the clouds above them. One second passed, then two. Thunder crashed down, loudly enough that even Simon Peter flinched.
    “We’re pretty exposed out here,” he said.
    Another flash of lighting and another blast of thunder — this time only a second apart. A wave broke over the side of the boat, which kept turning against the waves despite Simon Peter’s best efforts with the rudder.
    James gestured toward Jesus, only just visible through the dark rain. “How can he sleep through this?”
    The Judeans were no sailors. “We’re going to die out here,” called Simon the Zealot, half-standing, staggering this way and that like a drunkard as he made his way toward the bow of the boat. “Master, we’re all going to die.”
    Lightning blinded them, and the thunder was simultaneous. Simon clutched at Jesus’ tunic. “Master, wake up. Wake up. Don’t you even care that we’re all about to die?”
    Jesus swung his legs off the bench, freeing his head from his cloak and making an effort to sweep the sudden deluge of water from his face as he sat up. The rain was a gray mist, obscuring the vision and numbing the ears as it drubbed against the planks of the boat. The crack of wood sounded from the back of the boat as the rudder broke off in Simon Peter’s hands.
    Jesus stood up, swaying precariously with the wild rocking of the boat, and he stepped up onto the bench on which he’d been resting. A jag of lightning touched the water, roiling and foaming about them, and it suffused the lowering clouds with light. Jesus, stretching out his arms, was silhouetted against the luminescent sky as the thunder blasted overhead and the rain beat down on their upturned faces.
    “Abba,” he shouted. “Father.” He sounded happy, even delighted. “Thanks be to you who gives to the son of man all dominion over the animals that slither and burrow and run —”  He staggered, nearly pitching overboard. “— over the fish of the sea, over the very elements themselves.”
    A wave broke over the side of the boat, half-filling it, and Jesus fell backward into the boat. “Peace,” he called out, raising an arm, laughing. “Be still.”
    “He’s gone mad.” The voice belonged to Judas, who was floundering with the others through the water in the bottom of the boat, his grasping hands seeking purchase as the waves broke over the side.
    Jesus, regaining his feet, turned toward them. “Peace,” he said to them. “Peace, be still.”
    The wild light faded from the sunken eyes of Simon the Zealot. Jesus waded through the knee-deep water and helped Judas to his feet. The boat seemed to be rocking less violently now, perhaps because of the stabilizing effect of all the water in the bottom. A golden light lit up the sky behind Jesus’ head, a calmer, steadier glow than the lightning. John and his brother James turned to see the sun shining through a rift in the clouds. Within minutes the sea was calm, even glassy, its surface undisturbed by the merest ripple.
    “Good God,” Simon Peter said, looking out on it.
    “Don’t be profane,” said Nathaniel automatically, helping Andrew and James with the daunting task of bailing out the boat.
    “I wasn’t being profane. I said God was good, and I meant it.”
    Jesus, smiling, reached out to lay a wet hand on Peter’s head in benediction. “He is good.”
    “I have to say I agreed with Judas for a minute,” Simon the Zealot said, looking at Jesus. “I thought you’d taken leave of your senses.”
    “When instead I was enjoying them to the fullest.”
    “How could you —”
    “Because I love weather.”
    “Good weather,” James said. “At least that’s what I like.”
    “Ah, but God made the rain and the lightning just as he made the wind and the sun.”
    “And too much of any will kill you as sure as drowning,” said Simon Peter.
    Jesus laughed.
    “What just happened?” began James the younger, looking around at the others. He felt the conversatiohn had strayed far wide of the point. “Did he or didn’t he —”  He broke off. Jesus was looking at him and grinning broadly.
    “Well?” James asked him.

Love your neighbor as you love yourself, Jesus told us.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Love your enemies.  
    Jesus gave us our self-love as the model for loving others.  Why?  Because our love for ourselves is as close to perfect as anything human can be.  We may not think much of ourselves sometimes, but self-esteem is different from love.  Aristotle noted that “it is for himself most of all that each man wishes what is good.”  When great good befalls us, do we resent it?  Do we rejoice in the wrongs done to us?  Do we work to bring disease, disgrace, and financial ruin on ourselves?  No.  We do not, and the reason is that we love ourselves.  What Jesus demanded is that we devote this same kind of love to others.
    No one before Jesus had been this demanding.  Five hundred years before, Confucius had said, “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”  There was no obligation to do anything, only to refrain from doing.  We don’t have to feed the poor, but we can’t rightfully steal their food.  Aristotle said, “We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us.”  He imposed a positive obligation, but it extended only as far as our friends.  We would be obligated, under Aristotle’s standard, to feed our friends–but only our friends–if they were in need. 
  Jesus for the first time imposed an obligation that was both positive and universal.

They did a forced march north along the road that skirted the Sea of Galilee — Jesus’ disciples stealing uneasy glances at him, the boys, John and the younger James, breaking into a trot from time to time to keep up with the pace of the men, the crowd thinning and falling further and further behind.
    “That was incredible,” Simon Peter said at last, breaking the silence.
    Jesus glanced at him. “Do you mean that you don’t believe what you saw, or that you wouldn’t have believed it had you not seen it?”
    “Oh, I believe it,” Simon Peter said. “I believe it.”
    “But you wouldn’t have.”
    “No.” He shook his head.
    “And yet some will. Some will hear of it and believe, not having seen.”
    “How could they?” said the younger James.
    “It takes an extra measure of grace.”
    “How did you do it in the first place? Did that take an extra measure of grace as well?”
    “Yes. Yes. What you have witnessed is the very grace of God pouring itself out upon men.”
    James shook his head, and his curly hair bounced around his head. The other disciples pulled their cloaks more tightly about themselves and quickened their pace.
    “So where are we going?” a man said, and everyone turned to look.
    “Who are you?” said Judas.
    The man cleared his throat and waved his hands in embarrass¬ment. “My name is Thaddeus. I guess I, uh, followed you folks through the window at Capernaum.”
    “What do you want?”
    “To go with you. Where are you going, anyway?”
    Jesus waved a hand. “Gennesaret,” he said. “Magdala. Cana. Jotapata.” He started walking again, and the others followed.
    Thaddeus laughed, still sounding self-conscious. “Sounds like you’re making the grand tour.”
    “I am. Do you still want to come?”
    He shrugged. “Sure.”
    “What do you mean, sure?” Judas asked. “You don’t have anything more important to do than to go traipsing all over the countryside?”
    “Evidently not.” He smiled weakly, bobbing his head vaguely in all directions as if thereby to render himself less objectionable.
    “We’re delighted to have you, Thaddeus,” Jesus said, and he bumped Judas’s hip with his own to silence him.
    “What about me?” Levi said in his high-pitched voice. “May I come, too?”
    Everyone looked at him. Judas said, “Don’t you have any taxes to extort?”
    “I never . . .”
    “Don’t tell me you never. Just look at you! Who in Palestine has the opportunity to get fat? We’re an occupied country. Only those who curry favor with the Romans are able to prosper.”
    Levi looked down at his vast expanse of stomach, bouncing a little with every step. “Perhaps a little traipsing would do me good,” he said.
    Jesus’ hand closed on his shoulder, and Levi looked at him anxiously. “I think a long hike will do you all kinds of good,” Jesus said.
    By degrees Levi’s face relaxed into a smile of relief.

Simon Peter had never imagined that, when he left his home in Bethsaida that Sabbath morning, months would pass before he saw it again. Walking south along the west coast of the Sea of Galilee, they went first to Gennesaret, where they stayed several nights with a woman Jesus seemed to know from somewhere, a wealthy widow named Susanna. Jesus taught at the synagogue and was well-received.
    “You ought not confine your preaching to the synagogue, Rabbi,” Susanna told him in her customarily sharp, clipped tones. “Not many women attend. Oh, I know they can attend; I know even that women are encouraged, sometimes, to attend; but the fact remains that not many of them do. You want to know where you ought to be preaching? The village well, early in the morning. You want your message to reach women and children — and you should — then that’s what you need to do.”
    Hers were the sharp opinions of an older woman, and Jesus smiled at her affectionately. “You know, Susanna, I don’t know what I’d do, sometimes, without you to tell me.”
    “Humph,” she said, not quite certain whether or not she was being made the butt of a joke. Jesus laughed. Her mouth twitched, and she smiled at him.
    He did preach one morning at the well at Gennesaret, attracting a crowd of several dozen. His words aroused interest, but no more: He refrained from healing any paralytics and from speaking to demoniacs.
    Gradually, his disciples began to relax into their role as the pupils of a celebrated teacher.

When they left Gennesaret, they continued south along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. They approached Magdala early one morning, walking along the shore where fishermen were returning from their night on the lake. Their womenfolk were there, too, cleaning fish and salting them, and their sons were mending nets. Jesus called out to people and greeted them. Some looked at him askance, without speaking; others responded with a wave of the hand and a friendly word or two. As the morning grew late, Jesus led his disciples up the hill toward the village of Magdala.
    “Do you know somebody here as well?” Simon Peter asked Jesus, who shook his head.
    “Not a soul.”
    “Susanna gave us provisions enough for the noon meal. After that we’re on our own.”
    “Not completely,” Jesus said. He nodded to the women gathered at the market stalls along the street.
    “What do you mean, not completely?” Simon Peter said.
    Jesus was looking about him, evidently enjoying the soft breeze and the sunshine. “Peter, Peter,” he said, pausing with his hands clasped behind him to take in the scent of baking bread coming from a nearby shop. “Have you learned nothing from me yet?”
    John and his brother James were walking together at the rear of the disciples. John elbowed James and nodded. “Have you been watching her? She was following us from boat to boat down by the lake. Don’t look!”
    James jerked his eyes forward. Trying not to move his mouth, he said, “How can I tell you if I noticed her if you won’t let me look?”
    “I mean look without appearing to,” John said. “Out of the corner of your eye.”
    James tried it. “Where?”
    “By the corner stall. She stopped when you looked at her. There! She’s moving again.”
    “I see her.”
    She was walking with her face turned toward them, one hand extended fearfully in front of her to ward off obstacles she might otherwise run into. “What’s that on her face?” James said.
    “Dirt, I think.” Her face was streaked with it. Her eyes, impossi¬bly wide, seemed rimmed in red. “Notice who she’s focused on.”
    “Do you think she’s a danger to him? Should we warn him?” Jesus had stopped at the well. He sat, hands braced on his thighs, and smiled cheerfully around at those crossing the square. Judas and Simon Peter drew the water, each drinking some and offering it to the others, then setting the bucket down at Jesus’ feet. Judas plopped the ladle into it so that Jesus could help himself.
    The woman scurried forward, her head ducked as if to avoid being struck by the rays of the sun, the hood of her cloak pulled halfway over her face.
    “Stop her,” James cried, and ran forward, followed by John in close pursuit.
    The woman was too quick for them. She dropped to her knees in the dirt by Jesus. Her hand closed on the ladle he was reaching for. She scooped it full of water and, looking up at him, handed him the ladle as James skidded to a halt behind her, throwing up a cloud of dust, and John ran into him.
    Jesus, in the process of taking the ladle, looked past the woman at them. “Thirsty?” he said. He extended the ladle.
    James, his face reddening, shook his head.
    “No,” John said. “We just . . . we . . .”
    Jesus smiled down at the woman. “Thank you for the drink,” he said.
    She ducked her head, nearly drawing it down into her shoulders, but she gave him a tentative smile.
    “What is your name?” he asked her.
    James had edged around so that he could get a better look at her. When he saw her face, he was startled to see that she was young beneath the dirt, perhaps no older than he himself.
    “Mary,” the woman said.
    “My mother’s name is Mary.”
    Her smile was shy.
    “Is there anything I can do for you, Mary?” Jesus asked her.
    She shook her head with quick, birdlike movements; then, abruptly, a sob broke from her, and she fell forward over Jesus feet, her hair falling about them, her shoulders shaking in her grief.
    James started forward, but Jesus checked him with a look and a shake of his head. He laid a hand on her back and let her cry a little. When she looked up at him, her tears had cut pale tracks through the grime on her face.
    A number of women had drifted over from the stalls in the marketplace. “She ain’t right, mister,” said one of them. “Never has been.”
    A merchant, who had come over himself to see what was attracting all his customers, said, “She has a devil, sir. More than one of them, if you ask me.”
    “I didn’t ask you,” Jesus said.
    “Your feet,” Mary said. “So very dusty.”
    “I’ve come a long way.”
    “Allow me. Please.” And she ladled some of the water over his feet, washing away the worst of the dust.
    “Thank you very much,” Jesus said, gravely.
    “Wait. They’re wet.” Casting about her for a cloth and not finding one, she bent forward again and began wiping his feet on her long, dark hair. A woman in the crowd clucked disapprovingly.
    “She’s just smearing dirt back on his feet again,” James said under his breath to John, and John poked him.
    “But who is she?” James said.
    “You heard her. Her name is Mary.”
    “But that doesn’t . . .” John poked him again, and James fell silent. Jesus was helping Mary to her feet.
    “We’re about to have lunch,” he said. “I’d like for you to join us.”
    She nodded, almost imperceptibly, her eyes locked on Jesus’ face.

In Tiberius, the capital city Herod Antipas had built for himself, they spent two days and two nights at the home of Joanna and Chuza, the steward of Herod himself. Herod was absent, and Chuza was with them almost constantly, providing for meals and mended clothes, listening to Jesus and providing for his every need.
    “How do you know these people?” Simon Peter said to Jesus.
    “What people? Joanna and Chuza? I just met them at the same time you did.”
    “Then why —”
    “Why did they take us in? Remember what I said about the pearl of great price: A man will sell all that he has to possess it.”
    “But —”  Simon Peter tapered off. Jesus was a man of uncommon charisma, he thought, and that was that.

The fortress at Machaerus, on the Dead Sea, had been destroyed by Rome in subjugating the Jews and was later rebuilt by Herod the Great. Herod Antipas, his son, had a large villa there that sat atop a barren mountain on the eastern edge of the Dead Sea. Though Herod had always liked the desert oasis, Herodias hated it. Machaerus was far too isolated. On their first return to it in many months, Herod went nightly to his dungeons to visit John. More and more it seemed to Herod that John’s voice was the voice of a prophet.
    “They say you are Elijah,” Herod said to John on one such visit.
    He didn’t look like the greatest of the prophets: John’s hair and beard were matted from his captivity, and his clothing reeked of human waste. Always thin, he had become emaciated, gaunt. He was kept in a cell the size of a tomb, only just large enough to lie down in, and was permitted to leave it only when Herod wanted to talk. On such occasions, the stone was rolled back from John’s cell and John led by torchlight down a subterranean passage far from the reach of either breeze or sun.
    “I am the son of Zachariah and Elizabeth,” he said. “There are those living who watched me grow up.”
    “‘Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord,’” Herod said, quoting Malachi. “And you tell us you herald the coming of the Messiah. Wouldn’t that make you Elijah?”
    Herod sat flanked by his guards, and John stood before him, his feet planted wide. “Not in the sense you mean.”
    “Either you are Elijah or you are not,” Herod said.
    “Or I am Elijah, and I am not. Reincarnation is a concept of Eastern mysticism, not of Malachi.”
    “Ah,” Herod said. He leaned forward, and his eyes seemed to flicker in the torch-light. “I thought as much.”
    John moved his head, surprised as always at Herod’s apparent fascination. He had little faith that it would do him any good.
    “Elijah was the greatest of the prophets, was he not?” Herod asked. “Or perhaps that’s a matter for debate. At least we can say that he was the first of the great prophets.”
    John said nothing.
    “When Malachi says, ‘Elijah will return,’ perhaps he means that prophecy will return to God’s people. There has been no prophet in Palestine for four hundred years. Until you.”
    John’s face remained impassive.
    “Well? What do you say to that?”
    “So I am a prophet. Do you mean to release me then?”
    Herod shrugged, his face contorting in irritation. “I mean, what do you think of my theory?”
    “Because if you’re not going to release me, then this prophet is prepared to return to his cell.”
    A scowl tightened Herod’s mouth.
    “And when you return to your villa —”  John paused.
    “Yes?” Herod said. “Yes?”
    “You might consider the consequences of holding a prophet of the Lord God prisoner in your dungeons.” His voice crackled for a moment with its old authority.
    Herod’s eyes widened.
    “Especially a prophet foretold of old.”
    “Are you threatening me?” But his voice quavered.
    John only smiled, thinly, the fire fading from his gaze. He turned and stood facing the door until a guard moved to open it.

After Tiberius, Jesus and his disciples left the shore of the Sea of Galilee and struck off into the interior, stopping for a time at Cana, where James’s parents, Alpheus and Mary, put them up, and for a time in Jotapata. They returned to Bethsaida by a circuitous route, skirting the northwest border of Galilee and stopping in Baca, in Meron, in Gischala and Thella. They were on the road some miles north of Bethsaida when Andrew dropped back and gripped Jesus’ arm. “Listen,” he said. “Do you hear it?”
    It was a bell, ringing monotonously somewhere up ahead.
    “It’s getting closer.”
    “A leper,” Philip said. “Unclean.”
    Jesus turned toward him with a pained expression. “Which of the men made in God’s image would you call unclean?” he said.
    Philip retreated to walk again beside Nathaniel. As the leper came into view, ringing his bell and wearing the required placard, Philip muttered, “Well, that man,” in a voice too low for anyone but Nathaniel to hear. The leper’s threadbare robe was torn in places, showing the tunic beneath, and he was dragging one sandal, its strap broken and hanging, the foot bleeding, leaving dark smears on the surface of the dirt road.
    When the leper saw Jesus and his disciples coming toward him, he left the road and stopped in the brush to one side of it, waiting for them to pass. The hand that held the bell was missing two fingers; the places where they had been were unhealed sores. The pigment had come out of his skin in splotches, making his face, with its single, yellowed tooth, a mask of horror.
    Simon Peter, Philip, and the others crowded forward, quickening their pace even as Jesus hung back.
    The leper lifted his bell again and let it fall so that the clapper hit the side with a muffled ding. “Unclean,” the leper said in a hoarse voice.
    Jesus approached him, stopping when he was only a pace away. The man regarded him with his one good eye, the other being stained a milky white. “Do not endanger yourself. There is no point.”
    Jesus inclined his head. “No point in compassion?” he said. “No point in simple human contact?”
    The leper shook his head. “Not for me,” he said. “Never again for me.”
    Jesus held out a hand to him, palm up, and the leper drew back reflexively.
    “It’s all right,” Jesus said, leaving his hand extended. “It’s all right.”
    The leper met his eyes and, after a moment, reached out slowly to clasp Jesus’ hand in his own three-fingered claw. Jesus smiled encouragement, and the leper returned his smile uncertainly, exposing the yellowed tooth.
    “What is your name, sir?” Jesus asked him.
    “Simeon.”
    “The Lord bless you, Simeon. May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; may the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and grant you peace.”
    “Thank you, sir.” There were tears on his face.
    “You’re welcome, Simeon.” Jesus smiled, then turned back toward the road.
    “Oh, Simeon,” he said, turning back. “Don’t mention this  to anyone.”
    Simeon shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that, sir. They would shun you, too.”
    “God’s speed to you, Simeon.” And he left him there beside the road.