The Life of Jesus Christ

They met Mary again in Magdala. The noise of the crowd alerted her. She came through a doorway, and her face lighted up when she saw Jesus. “Master,” she said, and she ran toward them, her dark hair blowing around her face and her cloak flying.
   “She is beautiful,” the younger James murmured to John, and John grinned at him.
   “She’s too old for you,” he whispered.
   “I didn’t mean,” James began in an indignant whisper, but John elbowed him to silence.
   “Are you staying long?” Mary asked Jesus.
   He was smiling at her, and he reached out with the back of his hand to touch her cheek. “Not long,” he said. “Passing through on our way to Jerusalem.”
   Her smile faltered, and he said, “Perhaps you could come with us.”
   She threw herself into his arms and began kissing his face and beard with all the enthusiasm of an ardent puppy. Laughing, he pushed her away. Several of the women of Magdala had stopped to watch. All were smiling.

They spent the night in Tiberius with Chuza and Joanna, and the next morning crossed the Jordan to the road that ran south along the river’s east bank. They camped under the stars and woke early the next day to continue their journey, Jesus walking in front with Peter on one side of him and Judas on the other.
   “What’s the plan?” Judas asked him. “Tell us what we can do to help.”
   “Go with me to Jerusalem,” Jesus said.
   “But you’ll be arrested,” Peter objected, not for the first time.
   “I think so. Arrested. Tortured. Executed.” His face was grim.
   “But why?”
   “I’m not sure why. And I may be wrong, even now. I hope I am.”
   “You’re not the only one,” Peter muttered. He quickened his  pace, wishing to avoid further conversation on the topic. As he walked, he brought each foot down hard, stinging his soles. It brought him a certain satisfaction, and he smiled grimly.

Jesus was sitting on a rock, making a lunch of dried figs and a small loaf of bread. He looked up as Salome approached, one arm hooked through that of each of her two sons. Jesus smiled. “Yes, Salome?”
   She stepped forward abruptly, releasing James and John and kneeling on the ground in front of Jesus. His eyebrows climbed his forehead.
   “Yes, Salome?”
   “My lord,” she said.
   His face worked as he tried to suppress a grin. “You want something,” he said. “What is it?”
   “Lord, my sons James and John have followed you for some time now,” she said. “Have they not served you faithfully and well?”
   Jesus looked over her head to meet James’s eyes, then John’s. “They have,” he said. “Faithfully and well.”
   “Could you ask for two better servants than these?”
   “I could not,” Jesus said.
   “Then grant it that when you come into your kingdom one of my sons may sit at your right hand and the other at your left.”
   “Do you have a preference?”
   She looked up, unsure whether or not he was taking her seriously.
   “Salome,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
   “I do. I’m not asking for them lives of opulence and sloth, only challenges worthy of them.”
   Jesus looked past her to James and John. “Are you up to facing the challenges I’m about to face? Can you drink from the cup I drink or undergo the baptism I must undergo?”
   John looked at his brother, who nodded positively. “We can,” James said, and John turned his face again to Jesus.
   Jesus raised an eyebrow.
   “We can,” John said.
   Jesus smiled. “Yes, I think you can - that you will.”
   “Then my request?” Salome quavered, still bending low before him.
   “Is, regretfully, denied.” Jesus stood, brushing the crumbs from his tunic. He took Salome’s arm and helped her to her feet. “What you ask isn’t mine to grant,” he said. “The seats to my right and left belong to those for whom my Father has prepared them.”

Philip and Nathaniel, who had overheard the entire conversation, drifted away to join the other disciples. “Can you believe it?” Nathaniel said, after repeating Salome’s request and  Jesus’ response. “Those young puppies thinking they’re the greatest among us.”
   “It was their mother,” Andrew said. “You know how mothers are.”
   “And Salome is more of a mother than most,” Peter said, nodding.
   “They were right behind her,” Philip said. “You have to believe they put her up to it.”
   “He turned her down. That’s the important thing.”
   “Why did he, do you think?” Philip asked. “Who is the greatest among us?”
   Andrew looked at Peter.
   “Peter?” Philip said.
   “Jesus said his faith would be the foundation of his kingdom.”
   “Of his church,” Nathaniel said. “Didn’t he say church?”
   Philip couldn’t remember. “Is he planning to be king or high priest?”
   “Both I think,” Peter said.
   “He was just using Peter’s faith as an example,” Nathaniel said. “Because Peter was the one who first said he was the Messiah. But any of us could have said that.”
   “Perhaps,” said Andrew. “But not any of us did.”
   “So who do you think will sit at his left? You, as Peter’s brother?”
   James and John joined them, and everyone fell silent.
   “He could make worse choices,” said Peter, eventually.
   “Like who?” Judas interjected. “Like me, for instance?”
   “What are you talking about?” John asked.
   “Like you don’t know.”
   “For instance,” Peter said to Judas.
   Judas’s mouth curled in a sneer.
   “Where is Jesus, anyway?” Matthew said. “Has he gone off  again and left us?”
   After a somewhat frantic search, the younger James spotted Jesus walking along the road nearly half-a-mile ahead of them.
   “There he is,” he said, pointing.
   “Where? I don’t see him.”
   “He just went behind those trees.”
   Peter gathered his robe about his waist and took off running. Andrew, with a quick look at the others, pulled up his own robe and ran after him. They all followed, even Matthew, still rather portly, his heavy, white legs shining in the noonday sun.

They caught up to Jesus in a bunch, all of them sweating and blowing hard as they fought to catch their breaths. Jesus looked around at them in apparent amusement.
   “You went off and left us,” James said. He glanced at a small band of travelers, heading toward them along the Roman road with their families and pack animals.
   “We’ve got ground to cover,” Jesus said. “No time to spend in pointless debate.”
   The disciples looked at one another.
   “What were you talking about back there, anyway?”
   None of them answered him.
   “Rest assured that it is as difficult for a great man to enter the kingdom as it is for a rich man.”
   The north-bound caravan had pulled abreast of them. A small, piping voice interrupted Jesus, saying, “‘Scuse me.’”
   “It is, in fact,” Jesus continued. “Impossible.”
   “‘Scuse me,” came the voice again, more insistently. A boy mounted on a small donkey nudged his way past John into Jesus’ field of vision.
   “Yes, son?”
   “Are you Jesus? My daddy says you’re Jesus, the prophet.”
   Jesus smiled, his happy expression a stark contrast to the frowns of several of his disciples. A man in a worn cloak pushed toward the boy and grabbed his donkey by the bridle. “Sorry,” he murmured, bobbing his head without meeting anybody’s eyes. “Nuri, you’re making yourself a nuisance.”
   “He’s not a nuisance.” Jesus lifted the boy off the donkey and up onto his shoulders. “Nuri,” he said. “Meet Peter and Andrew and John.” He inclined his head toward each of them in turn.
   Each nodded.
   “Great men all of them,” Jesus said. “Thus all handicapped in their efforts to reach God’s kingdom.”
   The three disciples shifted their feet uncomfortably. Behind them, Judas scowled.
   “What’s handicapped?” the boy said.
   “Encumbered with impediments,” Jesus said.
   “With what?”
   Jesus laughed. “Actually, Nuri, the lesson is for them rather than you. By the way, that’s a fine donkey you’ve got there.”
   The boy nodded. “I walk most of the time,” he said. “But sometimes my feet get tired.”
   “Sometimes my feet get tired,” Jesus said. “I wish I had such a fine donkey to ride on.” He swung the boy back astride the donkey. He smiled at the boy’s father. “I’m sure you’re proud of him.”
   A tentative smile flitted briefly across the man’s face. “Yes, we are.”
   “I’m afraid your party’s leaving you,” Jesus said, pointing.
   The man started, then made off after them, tugging at the donkey’s reins. Soon the rise in the road hid him from view.

Jesus’ disciples never seemed to grasp the nature of the kingdom he was constantly telling them about.  They were expecting a messiah to throw off the yoke of Rome and restore the Davidic kingdom of old.  Even at the end, just before the Ascension, they asked, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”
    It mattered a lot to them what would be their place in the kingdom, both collectively and individually.  They argued about who would be the greatest among them, about who would sit at Jesus’ right and who at his left.  They were still arguing about it on the night before his crucifixion. 
    When Jesus asked James and John whether they could drink the cup he drank or be baptized with the baptism he was baptized with, their answer was a firm yes.  John and his mother Salome would be at Calvary to see who occupied those coveted places to Jesus’ left and right.  Though James and John didn’t drink of the cup at that time, the cup was coming for both of them.  James would be beheaded by Herod Agrippa.  John would be boiled in oil and exiled to the island of Patmos, where he would receive his apocalyptic Revelation. 
    Both were to be great in the kingdom, but it was not the sort of greatness that either could have expected.

The rest of the disciples, on waking and finding Jesus not among them, went into the nearby village of Mizpah to look for him.
   “Greetings,” called a tanner who was working on a goatskin in the doorway of his shop. “You’re back.”
   “We’re back. We’re looking for Jesus.”
   “Yes,” said a merchant from a nearby stall. “Where is he? I don’t see him with you.” He sat on a stool in the midst of his hanging meats.
   “We don’t know where he is,” said Andrew. “We’re looking for him.”
   Some women approached them from the well, while others disappeared into doorways and hurried off down the street calling for their husbands and children. “He’s back,” they were saying. “Jesus, he’s come back.”
   “Is he back?” said the tanner. “I don’t see him.”
   “No,” Philip said. “He’s not with us. We don’t know where he is.”
   “Well, if you don’t, who does?” asked the meat merchant.
   “We were hoping you did, that he -”
   “Hoping we did! But we haven’t set foot outside this village.”
   “Yes, we know,” Andrew said. “We thought perhaps he’d come into the vill -”  He broke off. A young woman, barely more than a girl, was coming toward them. She moved with the careful gait of convalescence.
   “Ah, there’s Shera,” said the tanner. “I can tell you, she won’t be forgetting your Jesus anytime soon.”
   “No, I don’t imagine . . . Hello, Shera,” Andrew said. “Good day to you.”
   “Yes,” she said, smiling, peering past them. “Jesus, where is he?”
   “We don’t know. We’ve come here looking for him.”
   “They lost him out there somewhere,” said the tanner. “If you can believe it.” He stood, then, laying aside his skin. He looked both ways down the street, as if half-expecting to see Jesus coming toward them. The meat merchant came out into the sun as well. In fact, a number of villagers were congregating about the disciples, mothers carrying their babies and herding their toddlers, fathers standing with their sons in front of them.
   “So where is Jesus?” someone asked. “Is he coming behind you?”
   “Did he come back to see Shera?”
   “My baby, she seems to be hot with fever. Could Jesus  -”
   “We don’t know where he is,” Andrew said. “We’ve come to look for him.”
   “So he’s here in Mizpah?”
   “No, not if you haven’t seen him.”
   “Then why are you here looking for him?” the tanner demanded, raising his chin belligerently.
   Andrew felt at a loss as to how to answer him.
   “And where is he?”
   A man and a woman were approaching with a boy of ten or eleven, the man carrying the boy, the woman using a blanket to shield him from the sun. As they approached the disciples, the crowd shifted to clear a path for them, and everyone quieted. The man set the boy on his feet in front of Andrew and Philip. The boy stared up at them vacantly, almost as if he didn’t see them.
   Andrew knelt. “Hello, little fellow,” he said to the boy.
   There was no response.
   “Jesus isn’t with us,” Andrew said, looking up at the boy’s parents.
   “But you, you who are his disciples, surely you can do something for him. A spirit possesses him - nearly every day it seizes him and throws him to the ground.”
   “He struggles against it,” the woman said. “Thrashing about and foaming at the mouth.”
   The man said, “When the spirit leaves him, it leaves him like this.”
   “Stupid, so much of the time. Hardly aware of what’s going on.”
   “Can you do something?”
   Andrew laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “What is your name, son?” he said, gently.
   The boy looked at him.
   “It’s Daniel,” the mother said. “Say hello, Daniel.”
   Andrew looked up at the villagers crowded around him, at their eyes, all of which seemed to be focused on him. He looked back at Daniel and cleared his throat.
   “Demon,” he said in his sternest voice. “Demon, what is your name?”
   The boy continued to look at him. As did the rest of the villagers.
   “You can’t help him, then?” the boy’s father said. He sounded resigned, too used to disappointment.
   “I’m sorry,” Andrew said, standing. The man turned away, guiding his son ahead of him.
   “They can’t help him,” said a woman in the crowd.
   “Well, who thought they could?” said someone else.
   “Look at Shera,” said the woman.
   A familiar voice spoke. “Andrew, Philip?”
   Andrew, jerking his head around in surprise, felt immediate relief.
   “It’s Jesus,” said someone. “Call to Admon. Tell him Jesus is back.” The crowd opened up as people pushed back against their neighbors to open a path between Jesus and Admon and his small family. They all fell silent.
   Admon looked at Jesus, and Jesus looked back. Finally, Admon said, “Do you think you can help my son? Your disciples couldn’t.” Daniel stood squinting up at Jesus, dazzled by the sunlight beyond him.
   Jesus looked at Andrew, at Philip, at all the rest of them. “Where is your faith?” he said. “What will you do when I am no longer with you?” He turned just in time to see Daniel’s eyes roll back into his head and Daniel fall back against his father. Carefully, Admon lowered the rigid body to the ground.
   “How long has he been like this?” Jesus said, kneeling beside him.
   “Since childhood.” The boy’s face was twitching, and his legs jerked convulsively. “The demon throws him to the ground, sometimes into the river or into the fire as if to kill him. He never leaves the house anymore unless his mother or I am with him.”
   Foam forced its way through the boy’s clamped teeth and flowed from the corners of his mouth. Those nearby noted the smell of urine as the boy voided his bladder.
   Tears were running down into Admon’s beard. “For the love of God,” he said, his voice cracking. “If there’s anything you can do, do it now.”
   “Much depends on you. Do you trust God to help if we ask him?”
   “I do,” Admon said, thickly. “Or I want to. If it isn’t enough, help me to trust more.”
   The boy was thrashing on the ground, his head cradled in his father’s lap.
   Jesus looked up. “Father,” he said. “Grant the prayers of us, your children.”
   Everyone was watching him.
   “Spirit,” he said, looking down at the boy.
   A spasm arched Daniel’s body, lifting it entirely into the air but for his heels and his head.
   “Spirit!” Jesus said. “Leave the boy and never return to him.”
   A moan escaped the boy. His body gave two powerful jerks, then went limp. Jesus knelt beside him. The boy’s head had fallen to one side, and blood mingled with the spittle that ran from his mouth.
   “He’s dead,” said someone in hushed tones. “The demon has killed him.”
   Jesus took the boy’s hand, and the boy’s eyes fluttered open. His expression was blank.
   “He’s alive, but his mind is gone,” observed the same commentator.
   “Daniel?” Jesus said. “Can you hear me, Daniel?”
   Daniel nodded.
   “He knows his name.”
   “Get up, Daniel.” Jesus slipped an arm beneath his shoulders, and, as he raised him up, the strength returned to the boy’s legs and they took his weight.

Later, when they had left the village, Andrew asked Jesus why he had not been able to drive out the demon. “I did it once before,” he said, recalling an incident in the village of Jotapata, so long ago.
   Jesus looked at him, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a wry smile. “No,” he said. “You’ve never cast out a demon.”
   “But I -”
   “God has done it when you asked him to.”
   Andrew was silent.
   “These things can be accomplished only through prayer,” Jesus said.

In Bethsaida, they went first to the home of Leah, Peter’s mother-in-law, and found Salome there and also Mary of Cana, James’s mother. Salome, on learning that they were bound for Jerusalem, insisted on coming.
   “Me, too,” Leah said. “I don’t have anything to keep me here, and, from the look of you, you could use someone handy with a needle and thread.”
   “And I can cook,” Salome said. “Better than either of my boys, if you’re relying on them for that.” She cast a hard look to where James stood with his brother John.
   Jesus smiled. “It’s hard to say just whom we’re relying on for that,” he said.
   “No fresh meat, I’ll wager,” she said.
   “Very little.”
   “Fresh fruit, vegetables? What do you men know about preparing those?”
   “Not much.”
   “I’m coming then,” she said. A statement, not a question.
   “Alpheus is here in Bethsaida,” Mary said. “We’ll travel with you, too.”
   “You may find the road harder than you imagine,” Jesus said.
   “Likely enough. Likely enough we all will,” Salome said.

The group split between Salome’s house that night and Leah’s. All were glad to be in out of the weather. It was the first night any of them had passed in warmth in many days. The next morning, they set off south along the lake shore, most of Bethsaida following. A couple of hours of walking brought them to Capernaum.
   Jesus stopped at the well for water, greeting children by name, tousling heads, lifting toddlers high into the air while their mothers smiled proudly. People called to him, asking him to come into their homes to eat, but he and his disciples ate in the home of Jairus. The townspeople crowded into the doorway and looked in at the windows.
   Jairus had a guest, a young man wearing a purple robe and a silk tunic. Over dinner, the man said to Jesus, “Good teacher -”
   “Good?” Jesus said, interrupting him.
   “They say so.”
   “Only God is good.”
   “I have heard you speak. You talk about the life which is eternal.”
   Jesus nodded, refilling his goblet from the clay jug. “Yes, always,” he said. “I offer the life which is eternal.”
   The man cleared his throat. “I understand what you mean, of course,” he said. “Though I’m not entirely comfortable with that way of expressing it.”
   “I mean it in just the way that makes you uncomfortable.”
   The man sipped from his own goblet, eyeing Jesus over the goblet’s rim. “Be that as it may,” he said at last. “I’m interested in this eternal life. I want to know what I must do to procure it.”
   “What you must do?”
   “Yes, exactly.”
   “You know the commandments,” Jesus said. “Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal -”
   “Yes, yes.”
   “Do not give false testimony -”
   “I have done none of those things, going as far back as I remember.”
   “Honor your father and mother.”
   “I do.”
   “Good.”
   “Does that mean I have eternal life?”
   Jesus met his gaze. “Do you?”
   “I don’t know.”
   “You are a wealthy man as the world reckons it,” Jesus said. He indicated the purple robe, the rings glittering on the young man’s fingers.
   The man nodded. “God is good.”
   “He is. But of what lasting worth are earthly treasures? Moths destroy fine clothing. Animals die. Iron rusts.”
   “Thieves steal,” the man said.
   “Thieves steal. Your wealth is temporal, and yet your whole life is wrapped up in it. It distracts you from those things which are eternal.”
   The man sighed, making a helpless gesture with his hands. “It can be a burden.”
   Jesus leaned toward him across the table. “Be free of it. You can be, you know. You can be rich in the things of heaven, can be already deep into the waters of eternity.”
   The man was nodding, his mouth pursed thoughtfully. 
   “Sell all that you have and give the proceeds to the poor,” Jesus said. “Come with me now to Jerusalem.”
   The man’s breath caught. He seemed to have stopped breathing. The gazes of the two were riveted together.
   “Do it,” Jesus said.
   The man’s mouth opened. For a moment he gaped soundlessly. “I can’t,” he gurgled, sounding as if he were strangling.
   “You can.”
   “I’m not like these men.”  He indicated Jesus’ disciples. “These others who follow you. I have a certain position.”
   Jesus sat back, exhaling noisily. “Ah, well,” he said.
   “Wealth to an extent I think you fail to comprehend.”
   Jesus nodded, his lips compressed in a fine line.
   “Surely there is another way for those like myself to participate in the kingdom.”
   “For those like yourself there is no other way.”
   “It would mean giving up everything I have.”
   Jesus said nothing.
   “Everything I am.”
   Jesus gave him a shrug of his shoulders. “We speak of eternal life, and you quibble over cost.”
   “It’s my life.”
   “Those who seek to preserve their lives will find only deadness.”
   The man shivered. “Excuse me,” he said, putting his hands on the table as if to rise.
   “You don’t believe me,” Jesus said.
   “It’s not that.” The man pushed back from the table. “It’s just that I have to go. I have an appointment.” As he stepped away from the table, he knocked over a stool that stood nearby. “Excuse me,” he said to Jairus, bowing. “Many pardons.” He bumped into Jairus’s servant. “Clumsy of me,” he said. And he passed through the door and pushed his way into the crowd.
   When he was gone, all eyes turned back to Jesus. He shook his head. “It is so hard for the rich to enter God’s kingdom,” he said.
   “But -,” Jairus protested.
   “But surely wealth is a sign of God’s favor,” said another guest.
   “No. Wealth is a stumbling block. What is the largest animal found in Palestine? Jairus? That’s right, a camel. What’s the smallest opening you can imagine?”
   Jairus shrugged. “The eye of a needle.”
   “I tell you,” Jesus said, nodding. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
   “But . . . You’re saying it’s impossible.”
   “If the rich can’t get in . . .,” someone began.
   Jesus finished the thought. “Then no one can? You’re right. By your own efforts, it’s impossible. Remember, though, that for God all things are possible, and God is acting in the present age to draw all men to himself.”
   Jairus eyes had grown wide. It seemed to all present that he trembled at the very edge of some momentous understanding. Then the light in his eyes faded.
   Jesus laid a hand on that of Jairus. “Good friend,” he said. “Thank you for the meal and the hospitality.”
***
When they were on the road, Peter said to Jesus, “We gave up everything we had to follow you.”
   “Yes.”
   “Though like the man said, for a lot of us it wasn’t much.”
   Jesus laughed. “I tell you, Peter, whatever you have given up, you’ll get back a hundredfold.”
   “In the age to come,” Peter said.
   “In this age,” Jesus said. “And in the age to come, eternal life.”
   Peter remained troubled.
   “What is it?”
   “I don’t see how we are to achieve these things.”
   “You’re not.”
   “Yes, but the demands are impossible. We can’t just not murder; God wants our emotions. We can’t just stay away from married women. God wants our thoughts and our fantasies. Tithing isn’t enough . . .”
   “God wants it all,” John concluded.
   “God’s demands are so great that they leave a man with nothing.”
   “Assuming we could meet his demands in the first place” John said. “When we’re with you and caught up in what you’re doing and what you’re saying, we have trouble enough. And the strong emotions don’t last, or we forget. Our old habits are back on us almost at once.”
   Jesus was nodding.
   “Well?” Peter said.
   “Yes, something more is needed.”
   “What?”
   “It’s why we’re going to Jerusalem,” Jesus said. “To find it.”

Anne Rice’s second installment in her series Christ the Lord is out.  It covers the period before Jesus’ baptism, when he is dealing with the efforts of his family to get him to marry and settle down, to the miracle at Cana.  Already, the reviews are appearing, for example at the blog site Challies Dot Com, which is critical of some of the book’s theology.  Though the review is closely reasoned, I am reminded of my reaction to similar criticisms of my own novel — “I look forward to reading your Jesus novel to see how you handle the passage.”  Which is not to say that either my story or Anne Rice’s is free from error — or that my pastor’s sermon last Sunday was free from error.  We do the best we can, and in each attempt our vision seems a little clearer.
     What interested me about The Road to Cana was its first-person point of view, Jesus’ own.  She did this is her first Jesus novel, but in Out of Egypt, Jesus in only seven, and it seems not quite so presumptious.  I only occasionally gave Jesus some interior monologue (for example, at the beginning of Chapter 8), and I ended up editing and re-editing those scenes. 
     Anne Rice is good at presenting scenes dramatically — unlike Norman Mailer in his first-person Gospel According to the Son — and has some striking imagery.  For example, when Satan appears to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, he looks just like Jesus himself, only much better dressed.  The novel is thought-provoking and engaging — and not for everyone.