The Life of Jesus Christ

It was two days before Jesus returned from the hills east of the Jordan. The morning air was filled with mist, and he appeared out of it like a wraith, almost grim in his determination.
   “We must go,” he said.
   “Will we be in time? Martha’s servant said -”
   “I know what he said. Each day has twelve hours of daylight to do what must be done. It is enough.”
   “Lazarus isn’t dead then?”
   Jesus laid a hand on the top of James’s curly head. “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. I am going to wake him.”
   “If he can sleep, that’s good,” James said. “He’s getting better.”
   Jesus’ mouth twitched. “He’s dead, James. Stone, cold dead. The time has come for God to reveal his son.” He bent and lifted a bag of their provisions, and he swung the strap over his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said.
   The disciples exchanged glances.
   “He’s going to his death,” Peter said.
   “Maybe.”
   Thomas said, “Let’s go, too, then. So we can die with him.”
   Everyone looked at him.
   Judas was the first to stand.

It took two days to get to Bethany. Martha’s servant Jonathan, running ahead of Jesus and his disciples, found the house crowded with visitors and Martha alone in the back room, kneading dough for bread.
   “Jesus is coming. He’s on his way.”
   But Jesus was too late and Jonathan knew it. There were too many people to be visiting a sick man: neighboring farmers with their families and servants; friends from Jerusalem, only two miles away; a few of the leaders of the local synagogue; even one or two members of the priestly aristocracy, the Sadducees. Mourners. People there to comfort Martha and Mary on the passing of their brother. Martha was dressed in the traditional coarse sacking, and a line of smeared ash marked her forehead.
   She took a breath, pressing her hands for a moment against her sides, leaving smudges of flour. Her arms were white with it to the elbows.
   “When?” Jonathan said, his voice cracking.
   “Four days ago.”
   “Just as I found Jesus.”
   Martha’s eyes closed against the tears that threatened to fall. “How far is he?” she said.
   “Just outside town. No more than a mile now at most.”
   “Take me to him. No, the back way. Let’s avoid the crowd.”

Jesus saw her coming and stopped in the road to wait for her. The disciples fell silent. Martha walked straight to Jesus and put her arms around him, pressing her head against his chest. She began to shake, her face contorting with grief. Her first tears since Lazarus’s death wet her cheeks. “You’ve come. Thank God, you’ve come,” she said, and he stood holding her and stroking her hair.
   “Martha,” he said. “Dear Martha.”
   “Oh, Master, if you’d only been here, he wouldn’t have died.”
   He pushed her back to look into her face, now smeared with dirt and flour and ashes. “Your brother will rise again,” he said.
   She nodded, sniffling. “I know,” she said. “I know. Like all of us, he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” She stepped back, making an effort to control her grief, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands.
   “I am the resurrection,” Jesus said.
   Martha nodded, sniffing again, loudly. “Mary will want to know you’re here. I slipped out without her. Oh, Master, there’re so many people to do for.”
   Jesus smiled, faintly.
   “Jonathan here will take you to his tomb. I’ll get Mary.”

“That one.” Jonathan pointed to the stone blocking the entrance to one of a dozen caves in the hillside. “He’s in that one.”
   Jesus approached the tomb and placed a hand on the heavy stone. “Oh, Lazarus,” he said softly. “Lazarus.”
   “See how he loved him?” said the younger James to Simon the Zealot.
   Simon nodded. “He could have saved him. I know that.”
   They heard people approaching long before anyone got there. Mary appeared at the gate, frail and wan, and the mourners who followed crowded around her.
   “Mary,” Jesus said. He turned and went toward her, his own eyes moist with unshed tears.
   “Master.” She looked up into his face and fell against him. He had to catch her to keep her from falling to the ground. Her thin body jerked with her sobbing. “Lord, if you had only been here,” she said, looking up. “He wouldn’t have died. He wouldn’t have.”
   Looking past her, Jesus saw the crowd of people, pushing and craning their necks to see. His name was spoken and echoed and echoed again as those pressing from behind called for information about what was going on.
   “No, not that Jesus,” someone said.
   “Jesus, the one who opened the eyes of the blind man,” said someone else.
   “- healed Jonah Bartimaeus, the man born blind.”
   “I heard he -”
   ” - there was the cripple he healed by the pool at the Sheep’s Gate -”
   “Surely, if he had been here, he could have kept his friend from dying.”
   Jesus raised his voice. “Come through the gate one at a time. Don’t crowd. Give us room around the cave.”
   He left Mary with Martha and approached the stone over the entrance. “Can you move it?” he said to Peter. “You and Andrew together, perhaps?”
   Peter set his shoulder against the stone, but it wasn’t until Andrew joined him that he felt it give.
   “Jesus?” Martha called, tentatively. “It’s been four days since he died.”
   The stone lifted and fell to the side.
   “There’s going to be an odor,” Martha said, in some distress. “A bad one.”
   Jesus walked back to her. “Believe,” he said, softly. “Believe, and you will see God’s glory.” Peter and Andrew stood in the tomb’s entrance, the sleeves of their cloaks drawn over their faces. Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you for always hearing me.”
   “What’s he doing?” someone said.
   “Praying. He calls God Father.”
   Jesus turned back to the tomb. Jesus gestured to Peter and Andrew, and they moved aside.
   “Lazarus,” Jesus called in a loud voice. “Lazarus! Lazarus, come out.”
   Silence. No movement, not even a stir of air.
   “He’s lost his mind,” someone whispered audibly.
   “His grief has unhinged him.”
   Silence again, and not a comfortable one. The crowd shifted uneasily. Jesus did not react to the people, if indeed he was even aware of them. A clatter of stones sounded from inside the cave, and the crowd gave a collective start.
   “What is it?” said a voice, elderly and petulant. “What’s he doing?”
   There was another clatter of stones, this one followed by the sound of shuffling. A woman in the crowd have a little shriek, but was quickly silenced.
   For a time it seemed that nothing more would happen.
   Then a man staggered into the doorway, or at least something in the shape of a man.  There was a cloth over his face, and his entire body, including his arms and legs, was wrapped with strips of linen. At the sight of him, several in the crowd turned and ran blindly into those standing behind them. Others jolted forward, necks outstretched and eyes straining. Someone fell with a cry.
   As the mummified corpse shuffled toward them, blindly and awkwardly, his arms raised in front of him, a hysterical screaming broke out from somewhere in the crowd.
   “Lord?” the dead man said in a quavering voice. “Lord?”
   Pandemonium.

The news took little time to reach Jerusalem. By mid-afternoon, the council of the Sanhedrin was in full session.
   “We have spoken against him,” Annas said, after the debate had gone on for nearly an hour. “Denounced him in so far as we dared, yet he is still as popular as ever.”
   “Even more popular.”
   “The people don’t like us,” said a Pharisee. “They respect us, to a degree, but they have never liked us.”
   “Whereas they adore him.”
   “Exactly,” Annas said. “They adore him. Their adoration only increases with time. We try to warn him off, and he keeps preaching. We try to run him off, and he returns. Now we get reports of a man raised from the dead, raised in front of a hundred witnesses. What can we say to counteract the effect of that on the people?”
   “And whatever we say, even if it were enough to turn the people against him, what happens tomorrow when he performs his next miraculous sign?”
   “When we denounce him, we endanger only ourselves.”
   Nicodemus said, “Listen to you! Listen to all of you. What are you saying? Jesus raises men from the dead, and you ask, What effect will it have on the people? Better to ask what effect it will have on us. On the whole world. If this Jesus is raising people from the dead, then the Day of the Lord is upon us. Indeed, it is already here.”
   “Ridiculous,” Annas snarled. He bared his teeth. “You must be one of his followers.”
   “Ridiculous, you say,” said Nicodemus. “Fine. Lazarus remains dead, and Jesus is a fraud. Let’s expose him.”
   “Expose him how?” someone said.
   “Talk to those witnesses. How many people actually claim to have seen this man raised from the dead?”
   “Can we produce his corpse?” said another.
   “A relevant question,” Nicodemus said. “Can we?”
   “One thing is certain, we can’t allow Jesus to go on as before,” Annas said. The people believe in him. He’ll raise them in revolt.”
   “Then Rome will crush them and take away all we have.”
   “Take the temple away from us. Our positions.”
   “The very nation will cease to exist.”
   “Exactly,” Caiaphas boomed. “Exactly. This Jesus is a threat to the nation of Israel.”
   They looked at him.
   “Is it better for a man to die, or for a whole nation?” Caiaphas demanded.
   “What are you saying?”
   “I’m saying,” Caiaphas said. “That Jesus must die for the nation of Israel. The next time he enters the city, our guards will seize him. He’s a revolutionary. We’ll turn him over to Pilate for execution.”
   “Seize him in public? With the crowds around him?” someone objected.
   “You’ll incite the very revolution you hope to forestall.”
   “No,” Annas said. “Not in public. Not with the people around him.”
   “How then?”
   “Where does he spend his nights? In the home of this Lazarus fellow?”
   “If Lazarus is really alive.”
   “Let’s find out where Jesus spends his nights,” Annas said. “The man has friends. Surely one of them can be prevailed upon to talk.”

A few days later, during the Feast of Dedication, Jesus was again in the temple area preaching in Solomon’s Portico. Among those who were gathered about him were a number of Jews in the employ of the Sanhedrin. One of them interrupted him to say, “Why do you speak in riddles? To build suspense or for some other reason? If you are the Messiah, tell us, and tell us plainly.”
   “I have told you.”
   “No.”
   “Yes. You didn’t understand because your lack of faith prevents you from grasping even the possibility.”
   “So you are the Messiah?”
   “Not your Messiah. Some the Father has set aside for me; these are my people. I know them, and they know me.”
   The man who had challenged him was a lawyer. He said, “These people who cluster around you are sensation seekers. You are the curiosity of the moment. Tomorrow it will be someone else.”
   “Some of them are curiosity seekers, true. Others are mine. The Father has given them to me, and no one can snatch them out of my hand.”
   “What father?”
   “My Father.”
   The lawyer’s face didn’t change.
   “God,” Jesus said. “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Lord God Almighty. What He holds in His hand, no one can snatch away.”
   “You claim to be God’s son?”
   Jesus looked at him.
   “Blasphemer.” The word was a signal. Stones appeared from beneath the robes of a dozen men.
   “Blasphemer,” shouted another.
   There was a commotion in the crowd. Jonah Bartimaeus broke through to Jesus and stood beside him. The cripple he had healed by the Sheep’s Gate long ago was beside him, too, pressing close to shield him. Those with raised stones hesitated, and in the moment of hesitation Jesus spoke.
   “Cripples walk and the blind see. For which of these miracles do you stone me?”
   “For neither of them,” the lawyer said. “But for blasphemy. You, a mere man, have claimed to be God.”
   A group of temple guards were coming toward them, the tramp of their boots clearly audible.
   “You are a lawyer,” Jesus said. “Your law quotes God Himself as saying to men, ‘I tell you that you are gods; you are all sons of the Most High.’”
   It seemed to take a moment for the lawyer to recognize the quotation from the psalm of Asaph. He glanced around uneasily, realizing that most of the eyes on him were distinctly unfriendly.
   “If God Himself calls men gods, what about the one whom He set apart as His very own and sent into the world? Would you stone the son of man because he calls himself God’s son?”
   The lawyer threw his stone, but it sailed past Jesus’ head and clattered harmlessly on the tile far beyond him.
   “Do not believe me if I’m am not engaged in my Father’s redemptive work.” He laid a palm on Jonah’s back. “But even if you don’t believe me, believe in the miracles. They alone should tell you that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
   The temple guards were pushing through the crowd. “Seize him,” the lawyer said, pointing. “He must be taken before the high priest.”
   With a great deal of shoving and shouting and scuffing of feet, the crowd came together around Jesus in an impenetrable barrier. Several of the guards fell to the ground; others staggered into each other. The crowd hemmed them in so closely that their spears were of no use to them and they were unable even to draw their swords.
   “Perhaps I must be,” Jesus called to the lawyer over the heads of the crowd. “But not today. And not on your order.”
   As Jesus moved toward the gate, pushed and jostled by the very crowd that protected him, the lawyer shouted, “You can never come back. You know that. You can’t blaspheme the Lord God and show your face in here. We’ll be ready for you next time. We’ll be ready.”

The stopover in Bethany was brief. “I’m going beyond the Jordan to the area where John preached and baptized,” he told Lazarus and his sisters after recounting the events of the day. “The lawyer was right. When I appear again in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin will move against me in force. The time isn’t right for that.”
   “I thought it was right,” Lazarus said. “I thought it was why you came back.”
   Jesus smiled. “The time is close.”
   “Close.”
   “Just not quite here. I’ll know when it comes.”
   Judas said, “The time is now. You saw how the people flocked around you.”
   Jesus shook his head. “We came closer to stoning than you realize. The lawyer had half the crowd persuaded.”
   “And why? Why all that talk about being the son of God? What does it mean, anyway? ‘I and the father are one. I am in the father, and he is in me.’”
   “You really don’t understand, do you?”
   “‘My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they know me.’  Listen. Jesus. You’re my shepherd. I’m part of your flock if anyone is. I’m prepared to fight to the death for you, to spill my last drop of blood.”
   A sad smile had appeared on Jesus’ face. “And I will do the same for you,” he said.
   “No. I’m expendable. The movement needs you. If you die, the whole thing collapses.”
   “So you agree that a trip beyond the Jordan now would be advisable.”
   Judas scowled. “I don’t know. Maybe. It wouldn’t be necessary, if you left off this God-talk. Nobody understands it. The Messiah is a concept people can grasp. Even the son of man. But ‘I and the Father are one’ doesn’t mean anything to anybody.”
   Jesus’ eyes went from Judas’s face to Peter’s, to Philip’s, to Andrew’s.
   “So how long will you be gone this time?” Lazarus asked. “When can we expect you back?”
   Jesus, his eyes still on his disciples, shook his head. “We’ve got work to do,” he said. “It may be awhile.”

It was, in fact, a little over three months. When the rain of the winter months had loosened the ground, Lazarus began plowing and planting, walking for long hours behind his two oxen, struggling with the single curved blade that tore farrows in the earth. First he planted his barley crop, then his wheat crop, both of which were necessary to feed his family and servants throughout the year. Early in the month of Adar, mid-February according to the Roman calendar, he was plowing his vegetable garden in preparation for planting cucumbers, garlic, onions, and leeks, when a rain-storm swept in with a cold front and soaked him to the skin. By the time he had tended to the oxen and returned to the house, his teeth were chattering and his fingers were brittle with the cold. Pneumonia set in, beginning as a fever that was soon accompanied by a painful cough. The physician who came from Jerusalem could do nothing.
   “We shouldn’t be surprised at his failure,” Lazarus told his sisters. A fit of coughing interrupted him. “Remember King Asa. ‘Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the Lord, but only from physicians.’  We must pray, Mary. Martha. Pray that the Lord will forgive me my sins and heal my body.”
   Later that same day, his clothes and his hair wet with perspiration, he said, “I would like to see Jesus once again before I die.”
   Martha had been thinking much the same thing. In fact, she had been thinking that if Jesus came, Lazarus would not die. Hadn’t he healed Peter’s mother-in-law up in Bethsaida? Hadn’t she heard reports without number of paralytics who walked, of lepers made whole? If Jesus came, everything would be all right. She sent the stableboy to Bethany Beyond-the-Jordan, where John the Baptizer had lived. “Ask after him there. If Jesus is nearby, the people will have heard of him. Tell Jesus that Lazarus, his friend, is ill, ill to the point of death. He must hurry if he is to be in time to save him.”

It took Martha’s servant two days to reach Bethany and another day to find Jesus, who was camped some distance away with his twelve disciples. When he had heard the message, Jesus sat for a long time staring moodily into the fire.
   “It’s too dangerous for him to go,” John said to his brother.
   “Perhaps there’s no need. Jesus will know how sick his friend Lazarus is.”
   “How will he know that?”
   “The same way he knows everything. Master?” James asked, turning to Jesus. “Will the sickness end in death?”
   Jesus seemed to focus on him only with difficulty. “End there? No, it will not end in death.”
   “So there is no need to return to Jerusalem.”
   “I don’t know.” Jesus stood. “I’m going to go away by myself a little while,” he said. “Wait here till I return.”
   “A little while?” Peter said when he heard Jesus had gone. “A few hours? A few days?”
   Martha’s servant said, “Lazarus was on the point of death when I left him. If Jesus is to save him, he must hurry.”
   “He can’t go,” Peter said.
   “He can,” Judas said. “It’s time, and I think he knows it; time to return to Jerusalem to challenge Rome.”
   Nobody looked happy to hear it.
   “He can do it,” Judas said. “It’s what he’s prepared for all his life.”
   Peter nodded, slowly. What, indeed, could Jesus not do? He could make bread to feed an army, and he could raise up the wounded from where they had fallen.
   And yet -
   And yet.
   He couldn’t help but feel it was going to end badly.

Jonah Bartimaeus sat on a four-legged stool in the chamber of the Sanhedrin. His eyes were closed, his head tilted backward in what was undeniably an odd angle for a seeing man. Caiaphas was on his feet, pacing. Annas sat nearby, working his lower lip with his teeth as he studied Jonah. No other members of the council were present.
   Caiaphas stopped in front of the man, leaning over him with his index finger rigidly extended. Jonah opened his eyes for a moment, squinting, then closed them again.
   “Bah,” Caiaphas said. He straightened and continued his pacing.
   “You’re overlooking the obvious,” Annas said.
   “Which is?”
   “That this isn’t the blind man who sits at the Fountain Gate.”
   “But -”
   “Yes, yes. We have witnesses who say it is.”
   “Exactly.”
   “Also witnesses who say he isn’t, that this is a look-alike. What better way to stir up the enthusiasm of the crowds, if you notice that one of your disciples bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain blind man?”
   “Jonah’s pretty well-known. For years he’s been at that same gate. Since he was a boy.”
   Annas stood, uncoiling himself. “What did you say your name was?” he asked the witness.
   The man opened his eyes. “Jonah.”
   “The son of Timaeus.”
   “Yes.”
   “Is your father alive?”
   “Yes. He lives right here in Jerusalem.”
   “Your mother?”
   Jonah closed his eyes again, as if the world of sight were too much for him to endure for more than a few moments at a time. “Yes.,” he said, his head already beginning to tilt oddly as he lost his visual point of reference. “They are old, both of them, but very much alive.”
   Annas looked at Caiaphas. “There you are,” he said to Caiaphas, as if the man Jonah had told them anything of importance.
   “Where am I?” Caiaphas said, his voice somewhat petulant.
   “Have the man’s parents brought here.”
   Caiaphas went to the door, and, while he talked with the guard, his voice rolling audibly through the council chamber, Annas stood over Jonah. , Annas’s chin rested in the crook of his hand between his thumb and forefinger. “How long have you known this Jesus?” he asked abruptly.
   Jonah’s eyes opened, though his expression was, to Annas, unpleasantly and inappropriately vague. “I met him today,” Jonah said. “I’d heard of him, of course.”
   “Ah, of course.”
   “Do you think he could be the Messiah? The one we’ve waited for?”
   “Is that what you want us to think?”
   When Jonah didn’t reply, Annas said, “Let’s try to avoid blasphemy, shall we? Tell me again what happened to you this morning.”
   “This man called Jesus -”  Jonah hesitated.
   “Yes, yes. This man called Jesus,” Annas said, moving him along.
   “He rubbed mud into my eyes and helped me to wash it out with water from the pool of Siloam.”
   “And you could see.”
   “Yes.”
   “And you couldn’t before.”
   The man shook his head. “Not from birth.”
   “You were blind from birth. Do you realize that in recorded history there is no record of sight being restored to one born blind? Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
   The door opened, and Annas whirled toward it. Nicodemus was there, and with him Joseph of Arimethea. Annas looked at Caiaphas.
   “I thought a question of this magnitude should be decided by the full council,” Caiaphas said.
   Annas turned away, rolling his eyes in exasperation. They didn’t yet know where this was leading - how best to use it or diffuse it - and his idiot son-in-law was calling in witnesses. Other members of the council began to arrive: Cephas and Talman and Baruch and Nissim. By the time the guard returned with old Timaeus and his wife, the Sanhedrin had a quorum.

“Tell us again who you are,” Annas said, and Jonah told him. “And this morning you were begging as usual by the Fountain Gate?”
   “I was.”
   “Because you were blind.”
   “Yes, I was blind.”
   “And what happened this morning?”
   Jonah went over it again.
   “Where is this man now?” Annas asked him. “This Jesus - did he say where he was going?”
   Jonah shook his head, his eyes closing and his chin coming up in a way that was almost taunting.
   Caiaphas cleared his throat, and Annas turned sourly toward him.
   “He’s preaching on the temple steps,” Caiaphas said. “In the Court of Gentiles.”
   “Preaching openly, is he?” Annas said. “Well, well.”
   “He put mud in my eyes, and I washed,” Jonah said. “And now I see.”
   “You’ve made that quite clear.”
   Talman, one of Annas’s closest allies on the council, said, “One thing is clear. This man Jesus cannot be of God. He doesn’t honor the Sabbath.”
   “The miraculous restoration of sight is work within the meaning of the law?” Nicodemus queried.
   “Healing. A physician is prohibited from plying his trade on the Sabbath.”
   “This man is no physician.”
   “That doesn’t change the nature of the action.”
   “You realize you’re conceding the miracle,” Nicodemus said. “That this Jesus gave sight to one born blind.”
   “Not at all, I -”
   “Because if he didn’t perform an act of healing, he hasn’t been working within the meaning of the law.” Nicodemus turned to look at the others. “If this man is not of God, how can he give sight to one born blind?”
   “This isn’t the first miracle of healing that’s been ascribed to him,” said Joseph of Arimethea.
   “No, it isn’t,” said someone. “And that is the question we must ask ourselves: How can an obvious sinner perform such miraculous signs?”
   All eyes turned to Annas.
   “Get this man Jonah out of here,” he said. “Send in his parents.”
   The guard jerked Jonah to his feet and led him to the door. As Jonah’s parents entered the room, old Timaeus hobbling with difficulty, supporting himself on his wife’s arm, they stopped for a long moment and looked at their son. He looked back, his gaze a little vague, but clearly seeing. Tears came spontaneously to the old man’s eyes, and he shook his head.
   “Go on, go on,” the guard said, prodding him.
   “Come have a seat here in front of the room,” Annas said, indicating the stools. “Have a seat.” He hesitated, glancing at his son-in-law. “Caiaphas, it is your place to question them.”
   Annas took a seat to one side of the council chamber, and Caiaphas strode to the center of the room. “You there, your name,” he said, pointing at the witness.
   Timaeus’s tremor became worse, his head moving atop his thin, waddled neck. “Timaeus,” he said. “This is Mary, my wife.”
   “You are the parents of this man Jonah, the man you passed just now in the doorway?”
   “We are,” Timaeus said tremulously.
   “He is your son,” Caiaphas said. Annas snorted audibly, and Caiaphas turned toward him.
   “Go on, go on,” Annas said.
   Caiaphas wheeled ponderously on the couple, who sat holding hands for mutual support. “He is your son,” he said again, more loudly than before.
   Timaeus’s head bobbed as if set atop a spring. “He is. He is our son,” he croaked.
   “Your son,” Caiaphas repeated, and Annas restrained himself.
   “He is our son.”
   “Tell us, how long has he been able to see?”
   “He has never been able to see. He has been blind from birth.”
   “He was born that way,” Caiaphas said.
   “Yes.”
   “Born blind.”
   Annas stood up. “For heaven’s sake, sit down,” he said to his son-in-law, and Caiaphas went obediently to his seat, apparently glad to be rid of the responsibility of cross-examination.
   “You’re aware that your son is no longer blind,” Annas said. “He can see now.”
   “Yes.”
   “In fact, you passed him on the way into the chamber.”
   Timaeus nodded.
   “And you looked at him.”
   “Yes.”
   “And he looked back. How do you explain that? If your son was born blind, how is it that he can now see?”
   “You’re asking us? It is we who should be asking you - by what means has God accomplished this thing?”
   “What makes you think God has done anything?”
   “Who else could have done it?”
   “Perhaps a man possessed by a demon.”
   “Do demons open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf?”
   Annas looked irritably toward Nicodemus and Joseph, sitting together on the front row. “Do you confirm everything your husband Timaeus has said to us?” he asked Mary.
   “We know he is our son,” Mary said.
   “That’s not what I asked you.”
   “We know he is our son, and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He’s a grown man and can speak for himself.”
   “Get out of here,” Annas snarled. “Both of you.”

Jonah was brought back in and pointed to the stool in the front of the room. “Sit down,” Annas said. “Do you know who we are?”
   The man looked at Caiaphas. “I know he’s the high priest,” he said, pointing.
   “And I was high priest before him,” Annas said. “There are Simon, Eleasor, Ismael - high priests all of them, at one time or another. We are those appointed by God to lead his people. And of one thing we can assure you, this man Jesus is not of God. He’s crooked. Twisted. A sinner among sinners.”
   “I wouldn’t know. All I know, I was blind, and now I see.”
   “You keep saying that, but what did this man do to you? How, exactly, did he open your eyes?”
   “I’ve already told you.”
   “Tell me again.”
   “Why? Are you thinking of becoming one of his disciples?”
   Annas turned back to the rest of the council, his arms outstretched, palms up. “There you have it,” he said. “The man is a disciple of this Jesus. Even here he cannot resist the opportunity to proselytize. We can’t rely on anything he tells us.”
   “I wasn’t one of his disciples until today,” Jonah said. “I was blind, incapable of following anyone.”
   “Why would he defend him, if he were not a disciple?” Annas asked, rhetorically.
   Nicodemus spoke. “Perhaps because this man Jesus gave him his sight?”
   Annas ignored him, turning again toward Jonah. “You say you are this fellow’s disciple. Who is he? Where does he come from? We are disciples of Moses, and no one can doubt that God spoke to Moses. As for this fellow -”
   “Are you saying you don’t know where he comes from or anything about him?” Jonah interrupted, incredulous.
   “Nobody knows anything about him. The man’s a nobody, a pretentious nobody.”
   Jonah looked from one to the other of them, making an obvious effort to bring them into focus. “A nobody? He opened my eyes, I tell you. Could a nobody do that?”
   Annas leaned over him. “He could if he was in league with the devil!” Annas shouted, spittle flying from his lips. Jonah’s eyes closed, and his  head went back defensively. “He could if he was possessed by Beelzebub,” Annas shouted. He slapped the side of Jonah’s head with his open palm. “Well?” he said. “Well?”
   Jonah didn’t open his eyes. “God doesn’t listen to sinners,” he said in a low voice that was nonetheless determined. “Only to the righteous.”
   “What?”
   “God -”
   “What does God have to do with anything? It wasn’t by God’s power that this Jesus did whatever it was he did to you. What do you know about the almighty God? What do you even think you know? You were steeped in sin at your birth. You -”
   “We know he was steeped in sin because he was born blind,” Nicodemus interjected.
   “You’re an ignorant…” Annas broke off, turning toward Nicodemus as the words penetrated. He stood for a moment without speaking, his breathing plainly audible. Then he turned backto the guards, standing on either side of Jonah. “Get him out of here,” he said.

Jonah found Jesus where Caiaphas had said, in the Court of Gentiles. Jesus was talking to a crowd of nearly a hundred, and Jonah stopped at the edge of the crowd to listen. He was startled to hear Jesus call him by name.
   “Jonah Bartimaeus,” Jesus said, and many in the crowd who had heard of Jonah’s healing turned and craned their necks to see him. “The prophet Daniel said that as he looked in the night there appeared before him one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. If I told you I were that son of man, would you believe?”
   All eyes were on Jonah, who stood by himself in the midst of a small clearing. Jonah’s eyes remained fixed on Jesus. Slowly, awkwardly, he lowered himself to his knees on the tile mosaic.
   To the others, Jesus said, “I have come to bring sight to the blind and blindness to those who see.”
   “What does that mean?” a man said.
   Jesus, turning, recognized him as a rabbi, a scholar of the law.
   “What category do the rest of us fall in?” the man said. “The sighted blind or the blinded seeing?”
   “You tell me. You think the blind have no sight because they have sinned, but I tell you, it is you who see clearly who are truly in danger of the judgment.”
   Passing close by the crowd came a couple of priests herding yearling lambs toward the Bazaars of Annas. As the bleating of the animals receded, Jesus walked down through the crowd to where Jonah was still kneeling. Helping him to his feet, he said, “I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and my sheep know me, just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. It is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.” Jesus pointed back up at the Pharisee. “While the hired hand runs away,” he said.
   “Yes,” shouted a voice in the crowd, Judas. “They sell us to the Romans for their own selfish gain.” The Pharisee started, his eyes darting nervously to this man and that one.
   “He’s raving,” he said. “Are we sheep or men? Why are we listening to him?”
   “I will lay down my life for the sheep,” Jesus said. “I will lay down my life of my own accord, and I will take it up again.”
   “He’s possessed,” the Pharisee said.
   “For such has my Father promised.”
   “Get him!”  Again, it was Judas, red-faced and pointing. The crowd took a step toward the Pharisee, almost as a single organism, and the Pharisee turned and ran.
   “Stop!” Jesus said to the crowd, and in the answering silence only the sound of the Pharisee’s retreating footsteps could be heard. “Why seek him out? I will be with you for only a short time; stay with me and learn about the one who sent me. If any of you is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, from within him shall flow streams of living water.”
   He was quoting Isaiah, but to many the reference seemed cryptic, its meaning obscure. Its very obscurity, however, seemed to add to its import in the minds of his listeners.
   “Surely, he is a prophet,” said one.
   “Or the Messiah,” said another.
   “He’s a Galilean,” protested a well-dressed man. “Doesn’t Scripture tell us the Messiah will be a descendant of David, a Judean?”
   Someone pointed at him. “You’re one of them, one of the Pharisees in league with Rome.”
   The well-dressed man, his eyes widening in fear, took a step backward and began to sidle away through the crowd. He reached the edge of it and was gone.

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.

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.

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.”

It was six days later that they made camp at the foot of Mount Hermon, by one of the springs at the headwaters of the Jordan River. The previous day, they had gone into Mizpah to replenish their supplies, but, for the most part, they had been avoiding the cities and villages, keeping almost entirely to themselves. The disciples, though they discussed it much among themselves, couldn’t think what to make of it. “Has he gone into hiding then?” Judas muttered.
    “What else could he be doing so far north?”
    They built a fire that night and sat around it in a circle until nothing was left of the fire but glowing embers. “I’m tired,” Peter said, and, as he stretched, his joints popped like the knotted pine they had burned in the fire.
    “Going to bed?”
    “To sleep like the dead,” Peter said. He wrapped himself in a blanket and lay down with his head pillowed on his arm. The others were still talking when he fell asleep.

The stars were out, glinting in a sky as dark as pitch, when Jesus shook him awake. “Peter,” he whispered. “Peter.”
    Peter rolled onto his side and looked up, seeing Jesus only as a shadow already moving away from him. When he had gotten to his feet, he saw that Jesus was not alone, but that Zebedee’s boys, James and John, were with him.
    “What is it?” he whispered, sensing the secrecy of the moment. “Where are we going?”
    “Up onto the mountain to pray.”
    “That mountain?” He pointed. The snow-capped ridge of Mount Hermon was faintly luminescent against the night sky.
    “Where better? ‘My soul is cast down within me,’” Jesus said, quoting from a psalm ascribed to the sons of Korah. “‘Therefore I will think of you in the land of Jordan, on the heights of Hermon.’”
    “‘Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls,’” James said. “‘As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.’”
    Jesus and Peter looked at him.
    “Mother’s favorite,” John said.
    In the darkness, Jesus chuckled. “It seems I’ve chosen the right companions for this adventure,” he said.

They hiked long into the night, winding up the southern slope of Hermon. The mountain marked the northern-most point of Joshua’s conquests. It was a natural boundary. As Peter walked, leaning into the incline, he wondered why he had been chosen for the adventure, as Jesus had called it. His arms and his legs were heavy with fatigue, and he had no poetic associations with Mount Hermon to inspire him. To him, it was a mountain, a steep one, and increasingly cold. At first leaves crackled under his feet, then the trees thinned and disappeared, removing the last protection from a biting wind. The crickets and locusts had long since fallen silent. Still they climbed on.
    Strangely, as the cold increased and the climb became more difficult, Peter’s lethargy increased as well. It was almost with surprise that he realized they had stopped, that James and John stood beside him on the blank face of the mountain, and that Jesus had gone on ahead of them, mounting a outcropping of barren stone. Jesus was no more than a shadow against the mountain above and beyond him.
    “Father,” he said, his arms outstretched at his sides with his palms facing upward. He continued, but Peter lost the sense of what he was saying, realizing only that he was speaking ancient Hebrew rather than Aramaic. As Jesus spoke he became less shadowy and more distinct, almost as if illuminated from within. He was speaking in liquid syllables, the words themselves incomprehensible, and his clothes and his face seemed to shine with a white light.
    Peter blinked. He felt numbed, stupid with the need for sleep. He wondered in passing whether James and John were seeing what he was seeing, but he stood transfixed, unable to shift the focus of his gaze.
    Light flashed, obscuring Jesus in what might have been a ball of lightning, and Peter fell to the ground, landing on a numb shoulder, a shoulder that might have belonged to someone else for all the feeling he had in it. The light pulsed once, and Peter held up a hand to shield his face.
    There were three men on the side of the mountain rather than one. For a moment Peter thought James and John had climbed up to join Jesus, but he felt James’ hand on his arm and felt John crowding close. There were three men above them, one recognizably Jesus, but with his face and garments whiter than the snow that clung in patches to the rock around him. The other two were similarly glorified, one with a full head of white hair and a long, curly beard lying full on his chest, the other with shorter, rough-cut hair and a cloak made from camel-skin.
    “Elijah,” John breathed beside him.
    Jesus and the men with him were conversing in Hebrew, and Peter could understand no more than the isolated word or phrase. He felt himself on his feet, no more in control of his actions than if in a dream. He himself recognized the third man — or recognized rather the stone-tablets that blazed in the crook of his arm with the radiance of the sun. A golden cloud had descended on the mountain top, and the mist was filled with a flickering incandescence supernaturally reminiscent of fireflies.
    “Master,” he heard himself saying, his voice shaking with fright. “Master, it is good that we are here.” His words seemed to him nonsensical, coming out of his mouth without conscious thought. “We can build a shelter for you, a shelter for each of you. We can make camp here tonight and start down the mountain again tomorrow. We —”  His words cut off as Jesus looked at him, the gaze so piercing and direct that Peter found himself held by it, unable to breathe. The fog thickened, blinding Peter with the dancing lights and obscuring Jesus.
    Suddenly the fog was gone. Stars shone again in the night sky. Jesus, alone, was coming toward them, once more little more than a shadow in the night. The three disciples regarded him in dumb wonder.
    Jesus reached out a hand to Peter, another to John. He shifted a hand to James. “My friends,” he said. “My good friends.”
    “What did we just see?” John said. “Was that . . .” He trailed off.
    “Was that Moses and Elijah?” James said.
    “You have seen a great thing,” Jesus said.
    Peter said, “Yes, but what have we seen, exactly?”
    “Me. Me as I really am. You must not tell anyone, though, not even the rest of my disciples, until the son of man has risen from the dead.”
    “I thought you were the son of man,” Peter said.
    John said. “You summoned them, Moses and Elijah? And they came?”
    Jesus moved his head toward the path and began leading them along the path that twisted down the mountain. “They came,” he said.
    “How?”
    “Why?” Peter said.
    “They brought needed counsel,” Jesus said.
    Peter said, “Is that what the teachers of the law were referring to, when they say Elijah must come first?”
    “No. Elijah has come, and men rejected him, and they did to him as they wished.”
    “The Baptizer.”
    “John. In just the same way, men will reject me.”
    “No,” Peter said.
    “Yes. Whoever would save his life must lose it. Whoever gives up his life —”
    “Isaiah said God’s servant would be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.”
    “Yes. The day is coming when you will remember that phrase and will actually understand it.”
    “Why Moses and Elijah?” John said again. “Because they symbolize the law and the prophets?”
    Jesus laughed out loud. “Partly,” he  said. “Both are great men, especially as they are now and coming from the Father. Each is a source of valuable counsel — but just as important, each was available.”
    “What do you mean, sir?” said James, on the other side of him. “You mean both are living?”
    Jesus shook his head. “All those with God are alive. Not all can be summoned back into this world.”
    “And Moses and Elijah?”
    “Special cases. Elijah, you will remember, was taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire. Like Enoch, he walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.”
    “He didn’t die in the body.”
    “That’s right. He didn’t die in the body.”
    “And Moses?” John said. “What of Moses?”
    “What does the Torah say of his fate?”
    James said, “‘The Lord buried him in Moab, but to this day none has been able to find his grave.’”
    “Ah,” Peter said.
    They looked at him.
    “Almost all of scripture takes on new meanings when you’re around,” Peter said to Jesus.

Dusk came, and perhaps half of the five thousand had drifted away, going home to Capernaum or Bethsaida or into one of the nearer villages in search of lodging. Those that remained eyed the disciples sullenly. Questions had been asked and gone unanswered. Where was Jesus? Didn’t he want to be their king?
    The disciples had no answers. Even Judas, who had kept the enthusiasm going as long as he could, had lapsed into an irritable silence.
    The twelve were huddled around Peter’s boat. “It’s dusk, should we go?” James the elder said. “He said we should go.”
    “Look,” Peter said, gesturing. “Do you want to go out in that?” The wind had risen over the course of the day, and foam topped the waves.
    “I think I’d rather go out in that than stay here with them,” James said, indicating the crowd.
    “I’m with James,” Matthew said.
    “You’re not a boatman,” Peter said.
    “I’m not giving an opinion, merely stating a preference.”
    “Where the devil is he?” Judas said. “He had them eating out of his hand. Literally. He had the crowd with him, and now he’s lost it. He’ll never be able to reclaim it.”
    “Don’t discount Jesus,” Peter said.
    “I’m not discounting him. He’s the most charismatic leader to arise in Israel since the time of the Maccabees. They led a revolt that threw off the Greeks, and Jesus could do the same with the Romans.”
    “If he will,” Matthew said.
    “Why wouldn’t he?” Judas said. “He’s an Israelite, the same as the rest of us. Why wouldn’t he, if he could?”
    “Are you saying he couldn’t?”
    “No. I’m saying he had this crowd ready to make him king by acclamation and to follow him into battle. To die for him, if necessary. And he disappeared.”
    “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Peter said. “Do we leave, or do we wait for him?”
    “He told us to leave,” Andrew said.
    “It will mean miles of rowing.”
    Andrew shrugged. Rowing was nothing new to him.
    “Okay, we leave,” Peter said.
    Judas scowled. “I’m not ready to leave. Let’s put it to a vote.”
    Peter shook his head. “Andrew and I are taking the boat back to Capernaum. Stay if you want, or come with us.”
    James and John helped Peter and Andrew push the boat out into the water. Several of the others waded after them.
    “Where are you going?” called someone in the crowd. “Look, they’re leaving us. They’re going off and leaving us in this wilderness.”
    Judas and Simon and all of the others entered the water and waded as quickly as they could toward Peter’s boat.

Soon the land was out of sight, and clouds obscured the stars. The wind grew stronger, and it blew squarely against them. The sails were useless, and even Simon Peter and Andrew rowing together could make very little progress. The waves lifted the boat and turned it, and it was hard to be sure of their way.
    “What now?” Matthew shouted over the sound of the wind and the waves. “Do we wait it out?”
    “Can’t,” Peter said, gasping between pulls on a creaking oar. “If we stop moving forward, the waves will swamp us.”
    Matthew looked grim, his mouth tightening as he squinted into the wind.
    “You wanted to do this,” Peter said.
    “As you said, I’m no boatman.”
    “Sure, blame the boatmen.”
    They all took turns at the oars, James and John, Nathaniel and Philip, Judas and Simon — even Matthew. By the time a gray line marked the horizon in the east, all were exhausted.
    “Look,” said Simon the Zealot in a low voice to the younger James. “Look — is it a ghost, do you think?”
    Or the fog?” James pulled his cloak more closely about him and shivered.
    “You don’t see the shape of a man in the fog?”
    “Maybe. Of course it can’t be.”
    “Keep your eyes on it, boy. There’s something not right about it.”
    “It’s Jesus!”  It was John, standing up in the front of the boat and rocking it precariously.
    “Jesus,” breathed Andrew, pausing at his oar to look.
    There was no question now that it was a man coming toward them, walking on the water. “It’s a ghost,” Simon said hoarsely. “A ghost.” And what but a spirit could walk abroad on such a night? Wading through the surf as if walking along the shoreline, the waves breaking against its body.
    Andrew slipped an oar from its oarlock and pushed the oar down into the sea, testing its depth. The oar did not touch bottom.
    “It’s just standing there.”
    And it was. At this distance the face seemed sad, but it could have been angry or even expressionless. Or not a face at all.
    “Master?” Peter called. He too was standing in the boat. “Master, is it you?”
    The spirit lifted a hand.
    “If it is you, speak to me and I’ll come to you.”
    They couldn’t quite make out the response, if in fact there was one.
    Peter, straining to hear, cupped a hand behind his ear.
    “Come,” came the voice, all but lost in the sound of the sea.
    Peter swung a leg over the side of the boat.
    “No, wait.” Andrew clutched for the sleeve of his robe, but he missed. Peter slipped over the side. For an eerie moment, it seemed that he, too, moved over the surface of the water, as ghostly a figure as the other.
    “Look,” James said. “He’s —”
    But he wasn’t. Peter had slipped beneath the waves and was gone.
    “Turn the boat,” Andrew cried. “Turn it! James, John — take the oars.”
    Peter had surfaced, treading water. He disappeared from view again as a wave broke over his head, but fought his way back to the surface, where he spluttered and looked around blindly.
    “Jesus,” he called, and struck off into the fog, swimming strongly.
    “Peter!” Andrew cried. James and John were beside him, peering into the mist. They could no longer see Peter, neither him nor the spirit or apparition or whatever it was. The dark waves were topped with foam, and they stretched endlessly toward the gray horizon. “Peter!”
    Nothing.
    Andrew pushed past James, nearly upsetting the boat. Grasping both oars, he began turning the boat.
    “Wait, I’ll help.”
    But Andrew was stroking blindly, his face wet with tears or water, his head down. He grunted with each pull of the oars. “Pull,” he told himself. “Pull.”
    His oars left the water as the sea lifted the boat. There was a jolt, and he fell from his seat.
    Peter tumbled headfirst into the boat, clothes and hair streaming water. Jesus was sitting on the starboard side, swinging his legs into the boat.
    “Master?” Andrew said.
    Jesus stood in the middle of the boat, knees bent as he worked to keep his balance. “Hello,” he said. “Greetings to all of you.”
    His cloak and tunic were soaked below the waist and dripping water from the waves that had been breaking against him. James the younger laid a hand on his shoulder.
    “It’s dry,” he said.
    Andrew fell gibbering into the bottom of the boat at Jesus’ feet.

They sailed into Capernaum on a glassy sea. Jesus felt subdued. Despite the high experiences of multiplying food and walking on water, he was troubled. It was not possible to usher in God’s kingdom by acclamation: The experience with the five thousand had confirmed it. His ministry was at a turning point.
    “Let’s stock up for a journey,” Jesus said.
    “Another preaching tour?” Matthew asked, in his mind already cataloging the provisions they would need.
    “No, I think we need to get off to ourselves for a while. We’ll go north along the Jordan, maybe as far north as Caesarea Philippi.”
    “We’ll be leaving Galilee then,” said Matthew. “I assume you have no friends in Caesarea Philippi on whom we can rely?”
    Jesus grinned at him and reached out to prod his stomach. When he had turned away, Matthew said to the younger James, “I think a direct answer would have been more helpful.”
    “I think he’ll be happy if you do the best you can.”
    “Yes, but will it be enough?”
    James shrugged.
    “Yes, I know. The salted perch and the barley loaves. We do the best we can, and we leave the results to him. I’m not comfortable living that way. Too much letting go.”
    “What a relief if we could let go.”
    “How can we? How can we dare?”

The crowd caught them before they got away, some straggling into town on foot, others arriving by boat, some passing fishermen having agreed to carry them.
    They were not surprised to see Peter and the rest of the disciples; they had, after all, watched them depart by boat before them. They were astonished to see Jesus.
    “How did you get here?” asked one of the more daring among them. “Did you walk all night?”
    “Why are you so interested?” Jesus responded. When he got no answer, he said, “Because I was able to feed you? Don’t focus so much on filling your bellies. The food you eat passes through the system and is gone. Focus instead on spiritual food, food that will nourish you forever.”
    “What spiritual food? Where will we get it?”
    Jesus shook his head. “Did you get nothing out of the events of yesterday other than a free meal? As the Father sent manna from heaven in the days of Moses, so he now offers the true bread of heaven.”
    The confusion in their faces did not clear up.
    “I am the bread of heaven,” Jesus said. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Later, on the long hike north, Simon the Zealot asked him, “Why do you speak so often in riddles and parables? Why not say straight out what you mean?”
    “What I am teaching can’t be grasped that way,” Jesus said. “I’m trying to give people the feel of a place, of a person.” When Simon didn’t say anything, Jesus said, “Think of the way I begin my stories. ‘The kingdom of heaven is like . . .’  ‘God is a father who . . .’  Over and over, story after story.”
    They walked for a while in silence. The other disciples had moved closer, wanting to hear what it was that Jesus was saying. Finally, Simon said, “Aren’t you afraid people will be confused? That they won’t get the point of your story?”
    And Jesus sighed. “Many will not get it.”
    “Then why not be more direct?”
    “It wouldn’t help them. Those who can understand will pursue the tale to its meaning, asking whatever questions they need to. Those who cannot understand — the things of heaven are already closed to them.”
    “That seems harsh.”
    “It is the justice of heaven, and its mercy. Those who ask will receive what they ask for. Those who knock will have the door opened to them. In the end, everyone will receive what he chooses.”
    “So those who seek God —”
    “Will find him. None of you have children, but can you imagine a child asking his father for bread and his father giving him a stone? Or a child asking his father for fish and receiving a snake?”
    A reluctant smile twisted Simon’s features. “Another of your parables,” he said.
    “And its meaning?”
    “If we, who are evil, give good things to our children . . .” He hesitated.
    “Yes?”
    “Then God who is in heaven also will give good things to those who ask him.”
    Jesus’ smile was radiant.

Some days later they were camping in the region of Caesarea Philippi. Nathaniel and Philip built the fire, and all sat around it talking. Twilight came and deepened into night. A companionable silence descended on the gathering.
    “Does anyone know what we’re doing here?” Jesus said.
    “Retreat and regroup,” said Judas. Jesus answered him with a smile.
    “Yes,” he said.
    “Why is it necessary? Only days ago, you had the crowd behind you as no one ever has.”
    Jesus shook his head. “The crowd was excited. I was, for a moment, the focus of fevered imaginations.”
    “What do you want from them?”
    “Recognition. Recognition of who I am.”
    “They recognize you for who you are.”
    “No.”
    “Yes.”
    “Who then do they say I am?”
    His question brought silence.
    “Anyone?”
    “Some say Elijah,” Matthew said, diffidently.
    “Some say John, the Baptizer,” said the younger James.
    “I’ve heard Jeremiah.”
    The silence returned.
    “And you?” Jesus said. “You who have followed me over hundreds of miles, who have heard me speak in village after village, who have seen me do sign after sign? Who do you say I am?”
    “You are the Messiah.”
    Jesus’ eyes turned toward Peter. “And when you say the Messiah,” he said, “what do you mean by it?”
    “I mean you.”
    “Yes?”
    “I don’t understand it all, but you’re defining the term for us every day. You are the one who was to come, the one everybody’s been expecting.”
    Jesus looked at him for a long moment. “You’ve been blessed, Simon Bar-Jonah,” he said. “The spirit speaks through you. It is appropriate that I call you Peter, for you are the first stone, the cornerstone, of my new church.”
    Peter’s eyes began to water as he returned Jesus’ gaze.
    Jesus looked around at the others. “Other stones will be added to it. Peter is the first.”
    Tears ran down Peter’s face and into his beard. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, standing and turning away, embarrassed by his tears.
    Jesus stood with him and reached out a hand.

It was the next day before Judas mustered the courage to ask his question. “It is good that you state frankly that you are the Messiah,” he began.
    “I state it frankly to you, the twelve,” Jesus said.
    “But —”
    “The time is not yet right to tell others. They would not understand.”
    “But given that you are the Messiah —”
    “Yes? Given that I am the Messiah foretold of old . . .”
    “What’s the plan? What’s our strategy from here?”
    “Our goal?” Jesus asked him.
    “Oh, you’ve stated the goal plainly enough.”
    “Have I?”
    “To establish God’s kingdom.”
    “And what does that mean?” When Judas didn’t answer immediately, Jesus said, “You can be sure of one thing: it won’t be the kingdom you’ve been expecting. Or even the kingdom I expected, in the beginning.”
    “What do you mean? What did you expect?” Peter asked, drawing abreast of Jesus and Judas on the road. John also crowded close, as did his brother James.
    “I expected the people to respond to me.”
    “They have responded.”
    Jesus shook his head. “No. They’re responding to someone they think can lead them against Rome.”
    “You can do that,” Judas said.
    “I could, perhaps, but I won’t. I made that decision long ago.”
    “You did? When? Where?”
    “In the desert hills north of Jericho, shortly before we met. John was preaching then, by the river Jordan: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’  I came announcing that the kingdom had arrived, and I expected repentance — real change of heart, Judas, not a declaration of political allegiance — and joy. Instead, I found rejection.”
    “Only by the religious establishment, the scribes and Pharisees. The people accept you.”
    “No, Judas. The people are prepared to accept a leader who will return Israel to greatness.”
    “Because they need such a leader.”
    “What they need is reconciliation to God. He gave Moses the law, but who can approach even that rough approximation of righteousness? And who does not feel the guilt, the burden of their sin? I thought they would accept me joyfully, but now I think they will not.”
    “What will they do?” Peter said.
    “Reject me.”
    “What does that mean?” Judas said. “Reject you how?”
    “I don’t know. But I think that when I return again to Jerusalem . . .”
    “Yes?” Judas prompted.
    “I think the temple guards will arrest me —”
    “The people will riot. They won’t allow it.”
    Jesus looked at him. “I think the Jewish leaders will arrest me and turn me over to the Romans to torture me and kill me.”
    “No,” Peter said.
    “You’ll fail?” John said on the other side of him. “You’ll fail?”
    Jesus turned toward him. “No, John. I won’t fail.”
    “No, you won’t,” Peter said. “You must not. We’ll keep you out of Jerusalem.”
    “How, if that’s my destiny?”
    “We won’t allow it. God won’t.”
    They had just crested a rise in the road, and at the top of the next rise were three crosses silhouetted against the sky. Jesus saw them and stopped. A shadow seemed to pass over him, and he shivered as if from cold.
    “No,” Peter said, following his gaze. “It won’t happen.”
    Jesus looked at him.
    “It can’t,” Peter said.
    “The words of Satan,” Jesus said. “Long ago.”
    “Satan! What are you talking about? Have you conversed with Satan?”
    “And fought with him. I’ve called you a rock, Peter. See to it that you are a building block and not a stumbling block. Do not try to interfere with the task God has set for me.”
    “When will all this happen?” It was John, his voice quavering.
    “I don’t know,” Jesus said. “I must find out.” He started again along the road, toward the crosses looming above them, and his disciples followed.

Jesus left the premises immediately, leading his disciples quickly toward the lake. Only a fraction of those who had followed him to the house of Jairus followed now. Simon Peter’s boat was there in Capernaum, drawn up on the shore. At Jesus’ direction, Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John got it into the water, and all the disciples waded out to it, the mucky lake bottom tugging at their sandals.
    There was a good easterly breeze, and, as Peter and Andrew hoisted the sail, the wind caught it and drove them quickly out into the lake. Along the shore a score of people stood looking after them, their hands empty and at their sides, their faces at that distance no more than blank ovals.
    Dusk came quickly, but the moon was full and myriad stars glittered high in a sky of black velvet. “Where to, Master?” Simon Peter asked him.
    “The opposite shore? Just away. I’m tired.”
    “Away it is,” Peter said. They ran before the wind all the way across the Sea of Galilee and early in the third watch pulled up on the desolate eastern shore, where cocoa-colored mountains thrust their foothills into the sea.
    Half the disciples had fallen asleep during the journey, slumped against the side of the boat, and they roused themselves only enough to stagger onto the shore and to fling themselves down on the hard ground.

It was about midday when the crowd began arriving, first in groups of two or three, then in groups of as many as twenty.
    “Where are they coming from?” Philip asked Andrew in some alarm. “Is there no escaping them?”
    Andrew shook his head. “Jairus’s daughter. They think he’s raised her from the dead.”
    “Didn’t he?”
    “Ask Peter,” Andrew said with a shake of his head. “I wasn’t there.”
    Andrew was right about the reason the crowd had followed them. The sight of Lila had electrified them. “Just who is this man anyway?” someone asked, and the answer led to a debate over whether Jesus was in fact Elijah, or was even John the Baptizer, supernaturally restored to life.
    “I’ve heard that Herod himself has heard of Jesus and fears him, thinking he is John returned to haunt him.”
    “John never performed miracles like these.”
    They argued and debated, but always, lurking in the recesses of everybody’s mind, was the question few dared voice: Could this at last be the long-awaited Messiah?
    They had set off in pursuit of Jesus, and in search of answers to their many questions.

Though the disciples tried to protect Jesus, people kept slipping past them. Among the first to find Jesus was a woman whose arm was drawn up twisted and useless at her side.
    He was just finishing his morning ablutions, washing his hands and face in a bowl of water he had filled at the nearby stream. He looked at her as he flicked water from his hands and wiped his face on the edge of his cloak. “Well, daughter,” he said. “You have come a long way.”
    She nodded, apparently too breathless to speak.
    “Did you walk all night?”
    Again she nodded. Andrew, stopping near Jesus, wondered if she could speak.
    “How long has your arm been this way?” Jesus asked, as he reached out for it.
    She jerked back, alarmed, then, with apparent effort, allowed him to touch it. He took the hand and drew the arm out straight.
    “Since last year,” she said, speaking in so low a whisper that Andrew barely caught it. “Last year,” she repeated. “At about this time.”
    Jesus’ face drew up in sympathy, and he stroked the arm. “Go easy on it,” he said. “The arm is still very weak.”
    He lowered it gently to her side, and it hung there, wasted still but relaxed and straight. Andrew’s eyes went to Jesus, searching out his face, but he read only compassion there, nothing else — no evidence of divinity, no conscious awareness of power.
    The throng soon surrounded them. There were thousands of them, more even than had followed them to Capernaum. Most amazing of all were the lame and damaged among them: the boy hopping along on his single crutch