The Life of Jesus: Chapter 24
They crossed the Jordan at the Hiljah Ford. It was late afternoon, and, as they walked toward Jericho, they were squinting into the westering sun.
“It’s too late to make Bethany tonight,” Philip said to Nathaniel, who trailed with him behind the others.
Nathaniel answered without looking up. “Yes,” he said, his eyes doggedly on the road in front of him. “We can hardly count on the hospitality of Lazarus and his sisters.”
They heard the clop of hooves behind them and moved to one side of the road to make way for a small brown man mounted on a camel that was striding swiftly in a high-stepping gait.
“I hope we can rely on the hospitality of someone,” Philip said. “The land’s all desert around Jericho. I don’t think I could bear another night in the open.”
Nathaniel said, “I’m used to it.”
“Used to it! You look like that camel’s dragged you face down in the dirt all the way from Capernaum.”
“I feel like I’ve been dragged face down in the dirt all the way from Capernaum.”
“But you said -”
“I’m used to feeling like I’ve been dragged through the dirt a good many miles.”
A laugh would have required too much energy, and Philip was tired. He did manage a weak smile.
He and Nathaniel need not have worried. They spent the night in the home of a man named Zacchaeus, a short, round man who, like Levi (now Matthew) was a tax-collector. At first sight he made a humorous, even ludicrous, spectacle: He was perched on one of the spreading branches of a sycamore tree, craning his fat neck (if he could be said to have a neck), while his silk robes and his linen tunic flapped about his sandaled feet.
“Zacchaeus,” Jesus had said. “Come down out of that tree.”
“Me, sir?”
“Are you Zacchaeus?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“My friends and I have need of lodging for the night. I was hoping your house was available.”
“My house? Oh, yes, I’d be delighted . . . That is to say, I -” He was scooting along the branch, trying to reach the ground with a plump leg, and at that point he lost his balance and fell forward into the street.
Some members of the crowd laughed as the cloud of dust rose about him, but Jesus bent and helped him to his feet.
“I’m overcome by the honor of your visit,” Zacchaeus said several times. “I mean, that you would visit me. I had always heard that you were a holy man, a good man - not that I have any reason to doubt it now, in fact quite the contrary - but I never dreamed you would be willing . . . I’m not very well liked. I mean, what will people say?”
“I imagine they’ll say rather what you expect,” Jesus said. “‘He claims to be a man of God. What is he doing in the home of a tax collector?’”
“I was a tax collector,” Matthew interjected. “Until I met Jesus.”
Once they had eaten and arrangements had been made for the night, Zacchaeus returned to the subject. “Is that the requirement of righteousness? To relinquish my post?”
“No.”
Judas’s head swung toward him.
“Taxes must be collected,” Jesus said. “And someone must do it. The reason tax collectors are held in such disrepute -”
“Is that they’re flunkies of the Roman dogs who oppress us,” Judas said.
“Is that so many of them cheat people,” Jesus said.
“They collect more taxes than the government requires and grow fat on the difference.”
“You don’t see honest Jews growing fat on what little you leave them,” said Judas to Zacchaeus.
“Except perhaps the temple priests,” said Simon, his fellow Zealot. “If we can stretch a point and call them honest Jews.”
Zacchaeus’s head dropped, and he regarded his rounded paunch unhappily. “I haven’t always been strictly honest,” he said, almost reflectively, and he raised his eyes to Jesus.
“And what are you willing to do about it?”
Zacchaeus’s eyes passed over the large room, taking in the ornate furniture, the tapestries and the carvings and the accenting gems. “Not cheat in the future,” he said.
“Is it enough?”
He shook his head slowly. “It is not enough. I shall make a donation to the poor.”
Judas snorted.
“Half of my possessions.” He was on his feet, his round body almost vibrating with sudden energy. Jesus was nodding. “And if I’ve cheated anyone . . .”
“If,” Judas said.
Zacchaeus paced the floor. “If I’ve cheated anyone, I’ll return their money to them. Return to them double their money. With apologies for the mistake. No, no -” He wagged his finger. “With apologies for my thievery. And double isn’t enough. It must be three - no, four times the amount.” The commitment, if honored, was very likely to mean financial ruin, but Zacchaeus seemed oblivious to the prospect.
Jesus stood. “Today salvation has come to this house,” he said to Zacchaeus. He turned to look at the others. “That is why I am here, my whole reason for being. To seek and to save what is lost.”
His eyes came to rest on Judas, who looked away.
***
The road from Jericho to Jerusalem rose sharply as it wound through the mountains. As they left Jericho’s oasis, fed by the Fountain of Elisha just north of the city, the land became harder - not rich soil fit for agriculture but clay and rock. The road twisted and doubled back on itself. Countless streambeds, dry except in the rainy seasons, opened off it. It was in those mountains that bandits lived, their hideouts tucked away in rocky strongholds. According to the rumors circulating in Jericho, however, the most notorious of those outlaws, a man named Jesus Barabbas, had been at long last captured and was awaiting execution in Jerusalem.
At any rate, no one bothered Jesus and his disciples on their journey. It was nearly dusk on the following day when they entered the pass that opened out over the city of Jerusalem.
“It is beautiful,” John said, stopping beside Jesus.
Jesus looked down at him. “It is, isn’t it? Yet it will all be destroyed, in your lifetime.”
John’s eyes widened. “The Romans?”
Jesus’ eyes were sad. “I would save it if I could.”
“When?”
“Years, I think, but coming.”
***
They stopped in Bethany, at the home of Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary. “Here for the feast of Dedication?” Lazarus said to Jesus, seeing them on the road and coming toward them. “I knew you’d come. Just this morning, I was telling Martha you’d come.”
“I’ve come.”
“We’ve been collecting candles all year to light up the house. Got a new lamp there, too.”
“I see you have.”
“We’ll have the whole place lit up, come the twenty-fifth, and for each of the eight days following.”
Some three hundred sixty years ago, Alexander the Great had conquered Palestine. In the years after his death, the Greeks’ treatment of the Jews had grown more and more liberal, first under the Ptolemy dynasty, then under the Selucids. Eventually, the Jews were granted a charter to govern themselves by their own constitution, the Torah. Then Antiochus Epiphanes came to power in Syria. Insistent that everyone adopt Greek ways and worship Greek gods, he made it a capital offense even to possess a copy of the Torah. On the temple altar, an altar to Zeus had been erected, and a statue. On the twenty-fifth of the month, a pig was sacrificed on that altar. Judah revolted.
Three years later - to the day - having beaten the Syrians in several decisive battles, Judas Maccabeus reclaimed Jerusalem. He found priests who had remained faithful to the service of Yahweh, tore down the altar to Zeus and purified and rededicated the temple in a celebration that lasted eight days. Then Judas and his brothers and all the assembly of Israel determined that every year at that season the days of the dedication of the altar should be observed with gladness and joy for eight days, beginning with the twenty-fifth day of the month of Chislev. So said the history of the Maccabees. The Feast of Dedication did not have the importance of the Passover, nor of Pentecost, nor of the Festival of Booths, all of which required the males of Israel to travel to the temple in Jerusalem, but it was a feast, and one Lazarus was pleased to celebrate with his friend Jesus and his followers.
On the next day, the Sabbath. Jesus and his disciples went into Jerusalem. They were entering the city by the Fountain Gate, and by the gate sat a man with a coarse blanket laid out in front of him for alms. “Please, sirs,” said the man, raising his head at the sound of their approach. “I can hear that there are a great many of you. Surely some among you can spare a few coins.”
Judas dropped some coins from the common purse onto the man’s blanket. “How long have you been blind?” he asked.
“Thank you, sir. I was born blind. All my life I have known only darkness.” His pupils were so large that they seemed to bleed into the milky irises.
“Why does God allow such misery?” Andrew said, looking down at him with sympathy.
“His sins, or his parents’,” Peter said, glancing at Jesus. If the beggar heard him, he made no sign.
Jesus squatted in front of the man. “Do you believe that?” he asked. “That your sin or your parents’ caused you to be born blind?”
The man shrugged. There was a spastic movement of his lips, not a smile. “What else can I believe?” he said. “God is good. Would he allow such infirmity to strike the innocent?”
Jesus looked up at his disciples, at Peter and Andrew. “There are many reasons for suffering,” he said. “Man is fallen, and with him all creation. Some are born blind in order than their spiritual sight not be blinded. You were born blind in order that God might reveal a mighty work.” He licked his finger and touched it to one of the man’s eyes. “My name is Jesus. I am the light of the world.” He touched his finger to the man’s other eye.
The man was blinking. Squinting. Turning his head. “I can see,” he said.
The disciples looked at one another.
“Not well, not clearly, but I can see something. Shapes,” he said, looking from one to another of them, following a passer-by with his eyes. His gaze was filled with wonder. “People? They must be people unless trees can walk.”
Jesus spat in the dirt and stirred up some mud with his finger. With his thumb, he rubbed a little of the mud into each of the man’s eyes.
“No, I’m blind again,” the man said.
“I’ve smeared some mud into your eyes. You must go and wash it out there in the pool of Siloam.” He helped him to his feet and led him into the city, sitting with him on the retaining wall of the city’s reservoir, guiding his hand down into the water.
The man put his cupped hand to his eyes, and, as he scrubbed, dirt ran down his cheeks and into his beard. He blinked, then leaned over the pool to scoop up more water, water dribbling off his face and back into the pool. When the man had blinked it away, he became utterly still.
“That’s me, isn’t it?” he said. “My reflection in the pool.”
Jesus’ reflection appeared beside his own. “That’s you,” he said. “What do you think of yourself?”
The man shook his head, still watching himself. “I don’t know. Ask me a week or a month from now.”
Jesus laughed. A crowd of about a dozen had joined the disciples. The man’s eyes became unfocused as his wandering gaze took in unfathomable splashes of light and color.
“Can I live like this?” he said, his voice bordering on panic. “With the world spinning around me and everything rushing in?” He blinked, almost blindly, trying to clear his eyes of the water that still ran down from his hairline, to clear his eyes of their tears. “Can I live like this?”
“Jonah?” said a man pushing his way to the front of the crowd. “Jonah, what’s wrong? What are you doing there?”
“Saul?” Jonah said, standing at the sound of the familiar voice.
“What is it?” Saul said, grasping him by both arms. “What’s the matter?”
Jonah moved his head, squinting, trying to make some sense of the swirl of light. He reached out blindly and touched his brother-in-law’s face. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right, I can see.”
Saul looked around at the crowd for an explanation of this madness. Andrew, looking around with him, realized with a start that Jesus was no longer with them.
“I can, I really can,” Jonah said, almost hysterically. “Your hair,” he said, touching it. “Your face.” His gaze shifted. “That man is holding up an arm.”
Andrew dropped it, having pulled Peter to him. “Jesus. Have you seen Jesus?” he asked.
Peter’s head was up, his eyes scanning the crowd. “No. Somehow he slipped away.”
“Probably went on to the temple,” James said at Peter’s elbow.
Peter nodded. “We’d better get along ourselves.” He focused for a moment on Jonah and the bewildered Saul. “A man named Jesus gave him his sight,” he said, laying a calloused hand on the back of each of them. “Jesus of Nazareth. He’s gone now. We’re going to find him.”
Peter, followed by the others, pushed away through the still-gathering crowd.