The Life of Jesus Christ

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

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

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

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

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

Booklist, the trade journal of the American Library Association, once ran a list of novels based on the life of Jesus.  Many of them are controversial, and almost anyone can find a story to offend them.  In order of publication, the novels were:

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880) by Lew Wallace.  The subtitle is a bit misleading: The Gospel story is merely the frame for the story of Ben-Hur’s enslavement, revenge, and eventual redemption.

The Man Who Died (1929) by D.H. Lawrence.  Consistent with the sexual interests of the author of Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Jesus rises from the dead and has an affair with a priestess of Isus.

The Nazarene: A Novel Based on the Life of Christ (1939) by Sholem Asch.  Described in more detail elsewhere on this site, the book involves the soul of a Roman soldier int he body of a 20th-century Christian scholar.

King Jesus: A Novel (1946) by Robert Graves, the author of I, Claudius.

The Last Temptation of Christ (1960) by Nikos Kazantzakis.  Jesus comes down from the cross — something I longed for as a child almost everytime I saw a Jesus movie — and raises a family.

Behold the Man (1966) by Michael Moorcock.  Moorcock is a science fiction writer, and this won the Nebula Award for best science fiction novel of the year.  In it a 20th-century sceptic travels back in time only to become the center of religious fervour.  He becomes confused with the idiot son of Joseph the Carpenter and ultimately dies on the cross.

Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal (1992) by Gore Vidal.  Discussed elsewhere on this site, the book involves a time-traveling TV news crew and a Jesus who is fat and insane.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1994) by Jose Saramago.  Jesus is seduced by Mary Magdelene.

Gospel of Joseph: A Father’s Story (1994) by Gabriel Meyer.  Supposedly a translation of Joseph’s writings presented with commentary.

Gospel Of Corax (1996) by Paul Park.  Jeshua of Nazareth travels to the Himalayas with a runaway slave named Corax.

The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple (1997) by James P. Carse.  The story told from the point of view of a Samaritan woman.

The Gospel According to the Son: A Novel (1997) by Norman Mailer.  Discussed elsewhere on this site, in this book Jesus tells his own story in a musing, undramatic way.

When a demon enters a person’s body, it seems to do so through the central nervous system.  In control of that, the demon can control the person’s movements, what he says, what he sees and hears — even, perhaps, the images in his mind.  It is precisely because the nervous system is the point of attack that the symptoms of demonic possession sometimes parallel those of various nervous diseases. 
    Sometimes Jesus treated physical ailments — deafness and dumbness, seizures — as physical ailments only, and sometimes as cases of demonic possession.  We could be mistaken; he could not.  And he no more called on God to cast out demons than he did to heal the sick.  He spoke, and they obeyed.  Jesus’ commands were an irresistible force.
    There were limits to his power, however self-imposed.  Demons could not resist his most casual word.  People could.  When Jesus said, “Follow me,” he exerted no doubt a great power of attraction.  That power, though, could be resisted.  The Bible records one instance in which it was.

Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead, calmed a storm, and walked on water.  All miracles.  All displays of supernatural power.  Still the crowds called on him for a Sign.  What they meant perhaps was a sign from the heavens, where God was, to prove the source of Jesus’ power.  He had fed them with barley loaves; they wanted manna from heaven.  They wanted something spectacular, like the smoke that wreathed Sinai and the thunder and lightning and fire that accompanied the Lord when he came down to Moses. 
    Jesus was to perform such a miracle, but only three of his disciples would be there to see 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.

Early in his ministry, Jesus had revealed who he was to the Samaritan woman he met by the well in Sychar.  Many months later, he still had not told his disciples, and they, evidently, had not liked to ask. 
    Nothing in the Jewish religion had prepared them for the incarnation of God, and their Messianic expectations were not expectations that he planned to fulfill.  Ultimately, they would be faced with a new paradigm.  God was not one Person but Three.  As the parable of the sower had suggested, the Jews were not to be taken in a body into the kingdom of God; rather membership in the kingdom would depend on individual response.  As other parables suggested — the one about the great supper, and others — Gentiles would be full members in the kingdom, and the Jewish people would lose their special place.
    But Jesus began his teaching with the inner principles of the kingdom, not with its external structures.  He began with revelations of his character, his personality, and his power.  When the disciples were ready, God the Father would make the necessary revelation.

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; the blind girl led by her father; the old man bent beneath the weight of his twisted back. Jesus talked to each of them. He reached out to touch them. As he moved away, the boy followed without his crutch, though limping badly. The girl was left squinting and blinking as if dazzled by a great light. The man straightened to walk erect — to walk carefully and deliberately, but erect.
    “Miracles of healing?” Simon the Zealot said to Judas.
    “They think so,” Judas said, nodding.
    Jesus held up his hands as the people crowded close, and he prayed, “Thank you, Father, for bringing your kingdom to us. Thank you for life and health and for strength of mind. Thank you for those we love, and for those who love you.” He moved into a Psalm, the transition to praise as natural to him as breathing. “Bless the Lord, oh my soul and all that is within me,” he said. “Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits.”
    He passed through the crowd, arms outstretched. “The Lord be gracious unto you and bless you. The Lord make the light of his countenance to shine upon you and bring you peace.” The blessing was one of his favorites, the blessing the Lord gave Moses to bestow on the people.
    “How shall we recognize the kingdom?” called someone, and Jesus turned toward him, his eyes seeking out his face in the crowd. He found it.
    “How shall you recognize it?” he asked rhetorically. “Listen. The kingdom of God is like seed someone scatters on the ground. He sleeps and he wakes, and the seed sprouts and grows, though he knows not how. First the stalk appears, then the head, then the full grain. And when the grain is ripe, he knows. He goes in at once with his sickle, because the harvest is come.”
    “And has the harvest come?”
    “It is coming. You ask how to recognize the kingdom.” He pointed at a mustard plant, one of the biggest any of them had ever seen. “The kingdom is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on earth. When it is sown, it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, putting forth large branches.” He walked to the plant and reached out to grasp one of the branches, pulling it down so that they could see the sparrow’s nest attached to it. “Branches large enough that the birds of the air can make nests within its shade.”

He was there one moment, and then he was gone, having stepped between Peter and Andrew to disappear from view. The disciples turned to follow him, and the crowd surged after, all but carrying them forward.
    Jesus had gone up the hill, seeking out a large open space. When Peter and Andrew entered the clearing, he was there above them, seated next to Philip on a rock, using a hand to shade his eyes from the midday sun.
    “Where is Judas?” Jesus said. “Judas! Do we have money enough in the purse to feed all these people?”
    “There are thousands of them,” Philip answered in a low voice as Judas shook his head.
    “Two hundred denarii would still be insufficient,” Judas said.
    “I take it, then, that we have accumulated something less than two hundred denarii?”
    “Master, that would be six month’s wages.”
    The crowd spread out across the clearing, spreading cloaks here and there on the grass to sit on. A few boys climbed up onto the twisted branches of the scrub oaks in search of a good view. A few sat on rocks and on the trunks of fallen trees. Still others remained standing.
    “Pity them, Philip. They are like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus sighed, already sounding tired. “Go out among them and try to seat them in groups of fifty,” he said. “Count them, if you can, to see how many there are.”
    As Andrew approached, Jesus said to him, “These people have travelled a long way without eating. Let’s see what we have among ourselves to give them.”
    Andrew shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Scarcely enough for ourselves.”
    Jesus looked at him.
    “It would be better to send them out into the surrounding villages to scour for food.”
    “See what we have,” Jesus said.
    The rest of the disciples came and sat near him. Jesus for his part sat looking around himself, making eye-contact with this one and that one and smiling. Philip and Andrew passed among the people, Philip pointing and moving his lips as he counted to himself, Andrew leaning down here and there to whisper to someone.
    “What’s happening?” Peter asked Jesus in a low voice. “What’s going on? Andrew asked me if any of us had brought any food.”
    “Had you?”
    Peter shook his head. “If we had, it wouldn’t matter. This crowd would devour it instantly, and everyone would still be hungry.”
    Andrew was climbing back up the hill, and with him was a small boy. The boy stopped in front of Jesus and held up a small cloth sack.
    “What’s this?” Jesus said, smiling, reaching down and lifting the boy to his knee. “What’s your name?”
    “Thaddeus,” the boy said. He had dark, curly hair and a dimple in one cheek when he smiled.
    “Thaddeus,” Jesus repeated. “What an important sounding name. Do you see that fellow right there? His name is Thaddeus, too. Do you think you might grow up to be like him someday?”
    Thaddeus smiled at the boy, showing a missing tooth. The boy nodded, but looked doubtful.
    “Thaddeus has five small bread loaves in that sack,” Andrew said. “Five loaves and two fish.”
    “They’re barley loaves,” the boy said. “My mother made them.”
    “Then I’m sure they’re excellent loaves,” Jesus said. “Where is your mother? Did she come with you?”
    He shook his head, his dark eyes solemn. “My uncle brought me, my Uncle Levi.” The man the boy indicated was on his feet near the edge of the crowd. His expression suggested that he was concerned that his nephew was making a nuisance of himself with the great rabbi but was more concerned about making a nuisance of himself by coming up to inquire. When Jesus looked at him and nodded, Levi bobbed his head and took a step forward before coming to a stop again.
    “His name is Levi,” Jesus said to Thaddeus, pointing out Matthew.
    “The fat man?”
    Jesus’ smile broadened. “He’s much thinner now than when I met him. I worry sometimes that the wind will catch him and carry him away.”
    Thaddeus laughed and clapped his small hands.
    “Perhaps we should tie a string to him, so we won’t lose him if that should happen. Do you think we should?”
    The boy nodded.
    “Actually, he likes to be called Matthew, in honor of his father.”
    The boy whispered something in Jesus’ ear.
    “Is he? Is he really?” Jesus said, in a slightly louder whisper than the boy had used. “Did you know that’s my name in Hebrew?”
    The boy whispered something else, and a shadow crossed Jesus’ face. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. “I know you miss him.”
    The boy nodded.
    “How about your father’s father? Is he still living?”
    The boy shook his head.
    “So your father has gone to be with his father, just as someday you will go to be with both of them. And both of them are with God.”
    The boy flung his arms about Jesus’ neck, and Jesus stood with him, stroking his back. “And with the great Joshua himself,” Jesus said. “Joshua son of Nun, who led Israel home again, and who is now of course with his own father.” Jesus held the boy away from him to look into the small, tear-streaked face. “That would be old Nun himself,” Jesus said.
    Andrew was left holding the boy’s sack — a small sack — and he looked from time to time down into it, not having the least idea what he should do with it. Jesus, noticing him, set little Thaddeus on the rock where he himself had been sitting. Philip came up then, panting. “Five thousand,” he said. “I can’t say exactly, but I think five thousand men, plus all the women and children.”
    Jesus took the sack from Andrew, giving him a wink of encouragement — though in truth the wink left Andrew more bewildered than encouraged. Jesus sat again on the rock beside Thaddeus. He smiled at the boy. “Five barley loaves and two fish,” he said.
    The boy nodded.
    “All you brought with you to eat today.”
    Again he nodded.
    “But you’re willing to give it to me to help feed all these people.”
    Thaddeus’s head turned, and his gaze swept out over the crowd. When his head turned back again to Jesus, his eyes were wide.
    Jesus gave him a wink, too, and the boy smiled. “Do you think it’s enough?” Jesus said, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial tone.
    The boy shook his head solemnly.
    “Suppose I told you it was more than enough.”
    Immediately the boy began nodding, and Jesus laughed. He reached out to tousle the boy’s hair. “The first rule of plenty,” Jesus said. “Put all you have at the service of God. Will you remember that? Even when it doesn’t seem to be nearly enough.”
    He stepped up onto the rock. “Fellow Jews,” he said, addressing the crowd. “Sons of Abraham. We have a boy among us named Thaddeus who has graciously offered to share his lunch with us.” Jesus held up the sack. “He has five barley loaves — made by his mother — and with them two small fish. Did she say what kind of fish they were, Thaddeus?”
    He shook his head.
    “Perch,” Andrew said, and Jesus looked at him. “They’re perch,” Andrew repeated.
    “Five barley loaves and two small perch. Is anybody hungry?”
    Several looked at each other, but none responded. Jesus pointed to a man near the front, one with the barrel-shaped body of the well-to-do. “You sir, you look like a man in need of sustenance.”
    There was general laughter.
    “Could I interest you in half a barley loaf and perhaps a bit of fish?”
    There was more laughter. Several hands reached out to slap the man on his back and his shoulders. The man looked around and, in response to all the smiling faces, began smiling himself. He bobbed his head and, turning again toward Jesus, shrugged his beefy shoulders.
    “First we must thank our father in heaven, from whom comes every good thing.” Reaching one hand upward, Jesus prayed, “Thank you, Father, for this gift from your bounty. Bless it to our nourishment, bless us to your service. May your kingdom grow and grow until all humanity can take shade in its branches.”
    He looked out again over the people. “Amen?” he said.
    “Amen.” In unison. Heads nodding firmly. Jesus took each of the loaves out of Thaddeus’s little bag, and he tore it in half. He did likewise with the fish, dropping the fragments back in again and handing the bag to Andrew.
    Andrew took the bag and looked at him.
    “Go and distribute the food among the people,” Jesus said.
    Andrew hesitated. He shrugged then and went to the group nearest them. Kneeling down, he held open the bag.
    “No, thank you. Martha packed us some food,” the man said, nodding at his wife.
    Andrew offered the bag to the next man. Who reached in and took half a loaf. Who reached in again for a bit of fish.
    His wife swatted his hand. “Look how many,” she said, jerking her head. But when he pulled out his hand again, he clutched a piece of the salted perch.
    “Many thanks,” he said. “Many thanks.” His wife, despite her objections, reached in for a bit of bread. The family next to them took food as well.
    As did the next.
    And the next.
    Andrew, moving like a sleepwalker, not daring to look in the bag, not daring even to feel of the bag to see what might be in it, moved down the line, offering it to everyone. Not everyone needed food. A surprising number had brought their own, and they were spreading their food out around them and offering it to their neighbors.
    When Andrew got to the second group of fifty, someone actually put fish into the bag. Then someone gave him a basket. “Here, empty it into this,” he said, but Andrew didn’t dare.
    Judas was standing next to Philip. “What do you think?” he said. Andrew had moved to the third group. He still had the bag, and now the basket was full as well.
    Nathaniel and Matthew and Peter were already out in the crowd, each with a basket of his own. “It’s a miracle,” Philip said, watching.
    “Yes, but what kind of miracle?”
    “Pardon?”
    “Is he multiplying fishes, or is he getting a bunch of stingy Galileans to share their food?”
    Philip ignored the implied criticism of his native province. “I’m needed.” He broke away from Judas and went out into the crowd. Someone handed him a basket full of food. He looked into it curiously, but saw nothing but bread and fish — more specifically, nothing but salted perch and barley loaves. It was indeed a miracle. Philip took it to the group farthest from Jesus and began distributing food.

There were twelve baskets of food left over. Jesus sat on the rock before the crowd, one of the baskets between him and the boy Thaddeus, enjoying bread and salted perch as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on.
    “You’re the Messiah, aren’t you?” the boy said, looking up into his face.
    “Who is the Messiah?” Jesus asked him. “What will he do when he comes?”
    “He’s to be a son of David,” the boy said, speaking slowly, as if by rote. “A son of David who will throw off the yoke of the Romans and restore God’s people to greatness.”
    “Then I am not the Messiah.”
    Thaddeus looked hurt and sad, and Jesus placed a hand against the boy’s chest. “The kingdom of God is here; it is among us,” he said. “Peace with God and with each other does not depend on political arrangements. Do you understand?”
    The boy looked as if he were trying very hard to. The conversation of the crowd, growing louder, suggested that others also were grappling with the Messianic question. “Is this not the one who is to come?” they were saying. “He can even make bread to feed his armies.”
    “It is surely the Prophet.”
    “He who is to come into the world.”
    Jesus gestured for James the younger. “Stay with Thaddeus until his uncle finds him,” Jesus said.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Up into the mountain to pray. Wait for me until dark, then if I am not back, sail for Capernaum without me.”
    The crowd, louder now, more vocal, was on its feet. “King Jesus,” a Judean voice shouted from somewhere in the crowd.
    “King Jesus,” a voice echoed.
    Faces were flushed. Hands were raised. As one the crowd cried, “King Jesus, lord and savior.” The crowd surged forward, and James glanced nervously toward Jesus.
    But Jesus was gone.
    James pulled Thaddeus close as the crowd pressed around them. In response, Thaddeus put his arms around James and pressed his chubby cheek into his cloak.

Before Jesus proclaimed that he was the bread of life, he performed the only miracle found in all four gospels.  The miracle was feeding five thousand (plus women and children) with five barley loaves and two salted fish.  Jesus did not multiply the loaves, which would have been miraculous enough.  Rather, he fed the five thousand with five loaves without multiplying the loaves — and when all had had their fill, what was left was still the same five loaves.  “They gathered them up,” John tells us, “and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves.”  Earlier miracles had shown Jesus’ power; this one suggests something unexpected about time and space.
    Later, at the Last Supper, he would break bread and say to his disciples, “This is my body,” when, of course, his body was sitting right there in front of them, holding the bread.  Again, something unexpected, though it was foreshadowed with the five thousand by the Sea of Galilee.  “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever,” Jesus said to those he had fed with barley loaves.  When we participate in the Lord’s Supper, we share — somehow — in that same promise.