The Jesus Novel. Chapter 15.
The crowds that surrounded Matthew’s house became larger, denser — and more frantic to catch sight of Jesus, to touch him, to hear him speak. The only times he could leave the house occurred early in the mornings, well before first light, when he would go out alone to walk along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, to gaze out at the torches of the fishermen far out on the water.
The crowds troubled him. They were responsive — he was, after all, performing signs that had not been seen in Israel since the days of the prophets — but the response was different in kind from what he had hoped for, from what he had expected. His call to the Kingdom, so reminiscent of John’s, was not being answered. There was, here and there, a desire to answer it — a desire for genuine repentance — but the ability to achieve it seemed entirely absent.
He often walked for miles in the early hours before dawn. He prayed, he thought — and he felt increasingly a sense of waiting. The current pattern of his ministry would not last, though what would replace it he did not yet know. Of one thing he was increas¬ingly certain: Human beings were lost. Man could not find his way back to God, even with God standing and beckoning to him.
It was on one of his early morning walks that Jesus came across Simon Peter. Peter stood by the water’s edge looking out at the glittering torches.
“Are you looking for me?” Jesus asked him.
Peter shook his head, his eyes still on the water, then he shrugged. “I knew you were out here. I’m not sure what I was looking for.”
“You miss it, sometimes, don’t you?” Jesus nodded toward the water, and Peter sighed in response. He looked down at his hands, rough and calloused, the knuckles of the fingers large with hard use, and he held them up.
“I’m a fisherman,” he said. “It’s what I’ve always done; it’s what I’m good at. I feel out of place indoors so much of the time, listening to religious talk and helping with the crowds.”
Jesus nodded. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Look at my hands. All my life I’ve been a carpenter.”
“And you miss it?”
“Sometimes. The smell and feel of the wood, the muscular fatigue of a good day’s work . . .”
“Do you ever think about going back to it?”
Jesus shook his head — a little sadly, it seemed to Peter. “I’m doing my Father’s will.”
“God’s will?”
“Yes. And there’s satisfaction in that, too.”
“What about me? Am I doing God’s will?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure of that?”
Jesus looked at him. “I am sure of that,” he said.
Peter nodded reluctantly.
Jesus put a hand on his shoulder. “You won’t be forever without the joys of fishing. Remember? I promised you that.”
“Ah, yes.” Peter chuckled, almost to himself. “I’m to be a fisher of men. Do you think it will have the same satisfactions for me?”
“I do. A man who has hunted for sailfish in the Great Sea, would he return to fishing for minnows in a shallow stream?”
Peter had never fished in the Great Sea, much less for sailfish. “Fishing for men is like hunting for sailfish in the Great Sea?”
“And more,” Jesus said. “And more.”
The crowds no longer remained in the outer courtyard. They pressed into the house. They reached out their hands to Jesus — and even to his disciples — and they picked up such small items as could be concealed easily beneath their robes, thinking to keep them as souvenirs or talismans. During the day it was impossible for Jesus to confer with his disciples alone, impossible to rest, impossible even to eat. He had added a twelfth disciple, choosing a man named Thomas out of the crowd according to some criteria known only to himself.
One day a woman standing in the midst of the press of people in the doorway called out to Andrew, the disciple standing nearest her, “There are people here to see Jesus. They say they are his brothers.”
Someone behind her shouted something.
“And his mother,” she added.
Andrew pressed toward Jesus and bent close to him to pass on the news.
Jesus straightened, and the crowd became immediately quiet. “Tell them to come in,” Jesus called to the woman in the doorway.
She passed the word back, and, beyond her, Jesus’ message echoed across the courtyard.
“They want you to come out to them,” she said at last.
Jesus shook his head. His smile was a sad one. “I can’t go to them; they must come to me.”
The answer echoed back toward Jesus’ waiting family.
“Are they coming?” Jesus asked.
There was more calling, more craning of necks. “I don’t think so,” someone said.
Andrew leaned close to him again. “Maybe you ought to,” he said. “Your mother, your brothers.”
“Who is my mother?” Jesus said. “And my brothers? You are all here. Those who do the will of God are my mother and my brothers.”
“That seems rather cold,” said Judas, severely.
“Does it? My family has heard of the work I am doing, and they come to restrain me, thinking I’m not in my right mind.”
“Are you?” someone said.
Jesus’ eyes sought out the speaker. “I am here to start a new family, a spiritual family. It will of necessity disrupt some of the old ones.”
“That can’t be good,” Judas said. He spoke in a role to which the crowd had become accustomed — that of devil’s advocate.
“I have come to set brother against brother and father against son.”
Nathaniel, who of all the disciples was closest to being a scholar of the Scripture, felt a chill working along his spine. Jesus’ words echoed those of Zechariah and Enoch, of the greatest of the rabbis: He was describing the Day of the Lord. He was laying out, however obliquely, his Messianic claim.
“You are to call no man father,” Jesus was saying. “For each of you has but one father, the one in heaven, who waits for your return. Listen, God is like a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Give me my share of the inheritance now . . .”
Early the next morning, before the crowd had yet become large, a young man came into the house, going from one room to the next until he came upon Jesus.
“Joseph,” Jesus said, recognizing his brother.
“Hello, Jesus. You’ve hurt Mother, you know.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not like we brought ropes along to tie you up. All we wanted was for you to come home with us.”
“My work is here.”
“Are you sure?” Joseph looked at Judas and Simon the Zealot, whom he had seen in Cana and again in Nazareth, at Simon Peter and Andrew, at the corpulent Matthew. “Why not leave it for a short time? A rest might bring you new energy.”
“Or a new perspective?”
“Look,” Joseph said. “It’s the time of the Feast of Dedication, and the entire family’s going to Jerusalem for it. Why don’t you come with us? From all reports, you’ve been doing all kinds of wonderful things. Why waste it all on a Galilean backwater like Capernaum?”
“I agree with him there,” Judas said. “You’ve been doing great things. You should be in Jerusalem.”
Jesus glanced at him.
“Why the self-effacement?” Judas said.
Joseph, not liking the turn the conversation was taking, said, “I was thinking of a quiet celebration of the festival, all of us together as a family.”
“You go to the feast,” Jesus said. “You and mother and the rest. It is your time for feast-going. I can’t go without entering the public eye, and it’s not yet time.”
“When will it be time?” Judas said.
Joseph, looking back and forth between them, said, “Time for what? What are you planning?”
Jesus smiled, the crinkles deepening around his eyes. “Wait and see,” he said mildly. “Wait and see.”
Simon Peter woke while it was still dark. A hand was in his back, pushing at him, and he peered upward at the shadowy figure beside him. “Jesus?” he said.
“Yes. We’re leaving for Jerusalem this morning. Help me wake the others.”
“But I thought you said —”
“We’re going secretly, leaving under cover of darkness.”
“But why —”
“God wants me in Jerusalem. I don’t yet know why.”
Peter sat up, rolling his head about on his shoulders to relieve his cramped muscles. Jesus moved on.
“Andrew!” Peter said, poking at his brother with his foot. “Andrew, wake up.”
Andrew rolled onto this back and raised his head to look at him.
“We’re setting off for Jerusalem this morning. Jesus wants to get away before daylight.”
Andrew groaned.
Soon everyone was astir. Because Jesus had warned him not to wake the servants, Matthew commandeered John and James to help him gather together such provisions as he had for the trip, and he walked this way and that, giving instructions.
They left Capernaum an hour before dawn. The stars overhead blazed in the black velvet of the sky, and the cold wind cut through their layered cloaks and tunics.
“This is important; this is good,” Judas said several times. “We should be in Jerusalem.”
“What Jesus’ brother said to him made sense,” said Simon the Zealot. “There is only so much that can be done staying house-bound in Capernaum.”
“This may be where it all comes together,” Judas said. “This could be a real beginning.”
James the younger, disturbed by their talk, quickened his pace in order to catch up with John and Peter, who were walking with Jesus.
“Your teeth are chattering,” Jesus observed when James joined them. “Keep up a good pace and move your arms back and forth.” He demonstrated as he walked.
“I would,” James said through his clicking teeth. “But my arms seem to be frozen in place against my sides.”
“It will warm up at daybreak,” Peter said. “Just keep moving.”
James nodded bravely, but the ground was hard and unyielding and almost unbearably cold through the soles of his leather sandals.
They passed through Magdala at mid-morning, and the woman Mary glided out from one of the shops to fall into step beside Jesus. More than one of the disciples failed to recognize her; James, who did, was a little staggered by the change in her appearance. Her dark hair was clean, and it shone in the cold morning sun. Her dress was neat. Her eyes were no longer shadowed, but bright and clear.
“What happened?” James said to John, pulling him aside.
“I imagine it comes of talking to Jesus. That often seems to cause a change in people.”
“Is she coming with us?”
John glanced at Mary, who, beyond her first, shy greeting, had said nothing to Jesus, but who kept glancing up at him in apparent awe as they walked.
“I wouldn’t mind,” he said. “She’s pretty to look at.”
James looked at her, too, surprised, almost, by the delicacy of her profile, by her soft, clear skin, by the flush of cold in her cheek. “She is, isn’t she?” he said.
Mary didn’t accompany them far beyond the borders of Magdala. They stopped for the night in Tiberius, the city of Herod Antipas, at the home of Herod’s steward, Chuza, and his wife Joanna, where lights shone in the windows.
After long knocking, footsteps sounded in the interior of the house, and Chuza pulled open the door himself, holding up a lantern to see their faces.
His own face was a shock, smeared with black ashes. “It’s John,” he said, recognizing Jesus. “The Baptizer. Herod has executed him.”
They talked long into the night. At some time during the third watch, when all the travelers had gone to bed but Jesus and Simon Peter, Chuza said to Jesus, “Master, I have no wish to offend you.”
“Speak freely,” Jesus said.
“I was with John before he died. His last words were of you.”
“And his words troubled you.” A statement, not a question.
“He said to ask you, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or are we to wait for another?’”
A look of pain entered Jesus’ eyes. He sighed. “It is not the first time I’ve had word of John’s question. Didn’t he get my answer?”
“It has not been easy for John’s disciples to reach him. Nor can I now take him back an answer.”
“Now he has his answer. I am sorry he could not have had it when he faced his death.”
“He had heard you no longer baptized,” Chuza said, making John’s question his own.
“That I drank wine and ate rich food?”
“Yes. And that neither you nor your disciples kept the fast days, nor did you wash your hands as the law prescribed.”
Jesus exhaled noisily. He suddenly looked very tired.
“Master?” Chuza said.
“Have you not witnessed the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy?”
Chuza’s expression was blank.
Jesus began in a low voice that seemed to gain strength as he spoke. “And on that day,” he said. “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. On that day the lame shall leap like the deer, and the tongues of the speechless shall sing for joy.”
It was a familiar prophecy, one charged with emotion, and Chuza’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“Haven’t these signs been done in your presence?” Jesus said. “Don’t the blind see and the lame walk?”
“Master?” said Peter, and Jesus turned to him. “It is said that John taught his disciples to pray.”
“Yes?”
“Being with you has made me more and more aware of God’s presence. I can feel him poking at me and prodding me. I’d like to know what to say to him.”
Jesus smiled. “Say to him what’s on your mind. If something’s troubling you, deal with it openly in God’s presence.”
“Yes, but —”
“You need a model.”
“Yes.”
“Pray with me then.” The focus of Jesus’ gaze shifted, and he seemed to see beyond the walls of the room. “Father,” he said. “Our Father who art in heaven . . .”