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.”

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.

“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 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.