The Life of Jesus Christ

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. 

The road to Jericho wound its way through twenty-three miles of brown, barren mountains before reaching the lush green valley of Jericho, which lay like a sprig of parsley in the bottom of a bowl. Before descending to the valley road to begin the journey, Jesus paused on the ridge overlooking Jerusalem.
    The holy city was built on two low hills divided by the Valley of the Cheesemakers, a name whose origin had been long forgotten. Facing them were the pillared porticos of the temple’s east wall and beyond it the Fortress Antonio. Most of the houses visible to the left of the temple and below it were made from whitish gray limestone cut from the surrounding hills. The streets that wound among them were empty. The entire city gleamed in the first sun of the morning, its temple, consisting of marble and white limestone, seemed to sit atop it like a crown of light, too brilliant for mortal eyes.
    James of Cana, standing with Jesus, was thinking not of Jerusalem but of the road to Jericho. Bandits preyed on travelers between the two cities, those traveling in small groups and without armed escort. They had never been a problem for Jesus and his disciples, but for James at least they were a recurring worry. He glanced up into Jesus’ face and saw that his eyes were wet, tears running down his face until they disappeared into his beard.
    “Jesus?”
    Jesus shook his head. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he murmured.
    His words attracted the attention of the other disciples as well, but Jesus seemed not to notice. “How I long to gather you to me!”
    The disciples exchanged glances, associating his apparent grief with the recent slaughter. No one spoke. After several minutes, Jesus turned away in silence. He and his disciples began their descent.

Herod Antipas was in Jerusalem for the feast. He knew there had been a riot and that Pilate had suppressed it ruthlessly, but he had had no word from Pilate, no official communication, and he was still gathering intelligence, trying to piece together what had happened.
    “What’s the latest on the body count?” he said.
    “At least ten thousand,” said an advisor. “Perhaps twice that.”
    “And how many of them were native Judeans?”
    They had no idea on that, as yet. Jerusalem had a population of 120,000, but during festivals the population swelled to twice that, extra rooms and inns filling to capacity in Jerusalem and the surrounding villages, campers covering the hillside. Many of the pilgrims were Galileans, Herod’s subjects. Many Galileans were among the slaughtered.
    The sergeant-at-arms announced the arrival of Annas and Caiaphas. Herod waved for him to show them in.
    They strode down the receiving hall’s central aisle side by side, their gaits quick with resolve and purpose. Herod leaned back in his throne, watching.
    “Your majesty,” Annas said.
    “Your majesty,” Caiaphas boomed beside him. Annas inclined his head, and Caiaphas made a more elaborate obeisance.
    “What do you want?” Herod said, sourly.
    “I assume you’ve heard,” Annas said.
    “I have. What was your part in it?”
    Annas shook his head. “To attempt to resolve the conflict: either to persuade Pilate to relent and return the funds to the temple treasury, or to persuade the people to leave off their protesting.”
    Herod made a face. “Neither, apparently, would listen to reason.”
    “You know how inflexible a mob can be, once it forms.”
    “And how inflexible a procurator can be as well,” Herod said.
    “We assume you and he weren’t acting in concert.”
    Herod frowned at them fiercely. “I wasn’t even informed until this morning,” he said. “And then not by the procurator.”
    “We are petitioning the emperor for redress,” Caiaphas said. “It’s all we can do.”
    “Thousands of your tax-paying subjects have been massacred,” Annas said. “Perhaps you should apply for redress as well.”
    Herod’s gaze was fixed.
    “Well,” Annas said.
    When Herod said nothing else, Annas turned to leave. Herod waited until they were halfway to the massive double doors. “It’s a disgrace,” he said thickly.
    Annas and Caiaphas turned toward him.
    “An absolute disgrace.”
    They waited.
    “Be assured, gentlemen. When your complaint goes to Rome, my own will accompany it.”
    Annas gave a nod. When Herod said nothing else, he motioned to Caiaphas, and together they left the chamber.

Several days later, Jesus and his disciples were walking north along the east bank of the Jordan River through the Decapolis. They crossed into Galilee just south of the Sea of Galilee and spent the night with Chuza and Joanna in the city of Tiberius. The next day they continued north to Magdala.
    There Jesus attracted a crowd of several dozen, including Mary, who drifted up to them as they entered the city and stayed as close as possible to Jesus for the several hours they were there. In Gennesaret, on the main street of the village, they were confronted by Jairus of the Capernaum synagogue.
    “Jairus,” Jesus said. “What’s wrong?”
    Jairus’s face was pale, the cheekbones too prominent, his knuckles looking large and white in his hands. His hair stood out in all directions, and there were ashes on his face. “Jesus,” he said, gasping, clutching Jesus’ arm. “I heard you were coming.”
    “What is it, man? What’s wrong?”
    “Thank God you’re here.”
    “Are you ill? Is your wife ill?”
    “My daughter, Lila. She’s ill to the point of death. She’s dying.”
    “Of what?” Simon Peter asked. He shouldered back a couple of onlookers who had pressed too close.
    Nathaniel asked, “Has a physician seen her?”
    The crowd around them had grown, doubling from a few dozen to many dozen, and doubling again.
    “The doctors tell us there is no hope,” Jairus said, avoiding their eyes. “Her body burns with fever, and she shakes. For two days now we have been unable to wake her.” His eyes returned to Jesus. “I have seen the wonderful things you have done.”
    “And you think I can help her?”
    Jairus shook his head, then nodded. “Will you come? If you will come with me now, quickly, you can save my daughter.”
    “I will come.”
    “Quickly, then, for there is little time.”
    When they started out, the crowd started with them, buffeting Jesus and his little band of disciples this way and that, twice causing Jairus to stumble against him. The street narrowed for the length of several houses, and several of the disciples found it difficult even to breath.
    “The heat,” said James the younger to John. “I feel like I’m going to pass out.” John, himself flushed and sweaty, gripped James’s arm and pulled him on. People pressed in on them from every side, blocking their view of anything but cloaks that seemed to rise up around them.
    Quite abruptly, the whole crowd stopped, people crowding into the boys from behind and pressing them into those in front of them. They felt like they were suffocating.
    John heard Jesus say — incredibly, inexplicably — “Who touched me?”
    “What do you mean, who touched you?” Peter said, expostulating. “Who hasn’t touched you? Who hasn’t touched you, poked you, prodded you, done all but knocked you down?” As if in illustration, the constraining force that had been building in the press of people slipped suddenly and drove them forward into a wider portion of the street. Jesus’ eyes swept the faces of those nearest him.
    “I’m not talking about that,” he said. “I felt power go out of me.” His eyes settled on the face of a woman not far away, and her distress broke from her in a great wail.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was I. It was I who touched you.”
    “You, daughter?”
    “I’ve been so ill. I bleed almost all the time, and I feel so weak.”
    “The doctors —”
    “Can do nothing. I’ve been to this doctor and that one, doctors from as far away as Tiberius. I pay their fees, and I take their treatments, but none of it does me any good. I’ve heard of you, sir. I know your reputation. A holy man, they say. A prophet. One gifted with the powers of healing. I thought, if only I can but touch the hem of his cloak. I didn’t mean to bother you, sir. I had no wish to intrude. If you wish —”
    “Daughter,” he said again, and her flow of words stopped as abruptly as it had begun. “Peace, daughter,” he said. “You have believed, and your faith has made you well.”
    Her face cleared. “It has? I’m well? I won’t . . . I will no longer bleed?”
    Jesus was smiling at her, almost grinning. “No longer,” he said.
    Jairus tugged at the sleeve of Jesus’ cloak. “Please, sir. My daughter,” he said. “There’s so little time.”
    Jesus nodded. “Of course.” He took the woman’s hand and led her into the shelter of a column. With a nod and a smile of encouragement he turned, and they pressed on, leaving Gennesaret and stretching their strides as they headed along the north shore of Galilee toward Capernaum.
    The crowd that followed seemed to number in the hundreds. People were laughing and joking with one another. Children skipped, and boys threw stones at the trunks of the occasional tree along the roadway and, where the road passed close to the Sea of Galilee, sent their stones skipping over the water.
    “Everyone’s on holiday,” Andrew said in a low voice to his brother Peter.
    “Yes.”
    “The crowd is behind him as never before.”
    “For now,” Peter said.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t trust the crowds, I guess. They scare me.”
    Judas, who had been walking nearby, said, “They’ll only grow larger. It was the trip to Jerusalem. It has increased his stature among the people, just as I predicted.”
    A man was coming toward them, the dust of the roadway rising up around his feet and shrouding him in gloom. Though he walked swiftly, his head was down and his shoulders hunched as if in pain.
    As he came closer, the crowd could see that his cloak was torn, that dirt and ashes were in his hair. Jairus, on seeing him, was shaken with a fit of palsy. “Channoch,” he called out, his voice thick with grief. “No. No.”
    Channoch looked up and saw them, then put his head down and continued toward them. He stopped in front of Jairus, drawing himself upright with apparent effort. “Your daughter is dead,” he said heavily. He looked at Jesus. “No need to trouble the teacher further.”
    Jesus gripped Jairus’s arm. “Don’t give up hope,” he said.
    “She’s dead,” Jairus said. “She’s dead. If only we’d been a little sooner, I know you could have saved her.”
    “Take me to see her.”
    Jairus shook his head. “She’s dead, didn’t you hear him? She’s dead.”
    “If you had faith in me once, have faith in me still.”
    They continued on their way, but with Jairus’s head down, the trembling still in his hands.
    A sober crowd entered Capernaum. Jesus led the way, walking beside Jairus and Channoch. Behind him were his disciples, and further back the rest of the crowd. Long before they reached the house of Jairus, they could hear the weeping and wailing of his friends and family and of the professional mourners. When the mourners saw Jairus, and Jesus with him, the volume of their wailing increased by a factor of two as they goaded themselves toward an emotional frenzy.
    Jesus pushed through them, ignoring them, his lips pressed together in a firm line. He went into the house, where he found a little girl of perhaps ten or eleven lying on a wool coverlet. He felt of her forehead, found it already cooling, bent down so that his face was against her cheek. Then he straightened.
    “Let’s go outside,” he said. “Everyone.” He herded them out so that the girl was left alone.
    As he and Jairus and Jairus’s wife came out through the doorway behind the others of the household, the wailing redoubled. Jesus raised a hand to silence them.
    “Friends,” he said. “There is no call for weeping.”
    They stared at him balefully with dirt-smeared faces.
    “I have examined the little girl,” he said. “She is not dead, but only sleeping.”
    His announcement was met with a silence that stretched out for two heartbeats, then three. A woman nearby emitted a high-pitched, hysterical giggle, tried to muffle it with her hand, and failed. A gust of laughter bent her nearly double, racking her frame, and the crowd stirred uneasily. The faces turned toward Jesus were now thin-lipped and angry.
    “She is deep asleep,” Jesus said. “She needs but a call to wake her. Come,” he said, gesturing to Jairus and his wife, and to Peter and the sons of Zebedee, James and John. Others would have followed, but he held up his hand. “No,” he said. “Wait and pray.”
    And he turned and went inside with the others.
    The girl lay on the coverlet in the same position as before. No quiver of hand or cheek gave any suggestion of life. No hint of respiration moved her chest.
    She looks dead, John thought to himself, looking first at his brother James and then at Peter. And dead is dead.
    It was said by some that the spirit of a person lingered near its body for three days after death, hoping to be restored to it, but no tale was told of such a restoration ever occurring — except once, perhaps, in the days of Elijah. John, recalling that story, looked for Jesus to stretch himself out on the body of the little girl.
    He did not. He sat beside her on the edge of the bed, took up her hand in his and with his other stroked her matted hair.
    “Lila,” he called softly. “Lila.” Lila’s body remained unmoving. He tugged at her hand. “Get up now,” he said. “Get up, little one.”
    Her eyes were open, John noticed with a start. They had been closed, he would have sworn it, but suddenly they were open.
    “Here,” Jesus said, and he slipped an arm around her to help her sit up.
    She looked around at her father Jairus, then at her mother, many years her father’s junior. Both stood still as stone, as if in shock.
    “She’s very weak,” Jesus said. “She’ll need some food.”
    The mother stirred. “Yes,” she said mechanically. “Certainly.” But she made no move to obey.
    “But first,” Jesus said. “Let’s be clear on what happened here. The girl was asleep, and I awakened her.”
    “Momma?” the little girl said, uncertainly.
    Feeling came back to her mother in a rush. With a cry, she stepped forward and pulled the little girl up into her arms. “Lila,” she murmured. “Thank God. Lila.”
    Jesus stood. His eyes met those of Jairus, and he smiled, a little tiredly, as they clasped hands.
    Tears streamed down Jairus’s cheeks, but he seemed unable to speak.
    Jesus gripped his arm and, without a word, departed.

Why didn’t Jesus tell people straight out that he was God?  Why did he keep telling people who guessed at the truth not to tell anyone?  Why was he so quick to silence demons when they started to name him?
    There were perhaps two reasons.  First, the Jews of first century Palestine had a strong appreciation for the majesty God.  Any claim to Godhood, for those who did not believe, would be such a monstrous blasphemy that it would have to be dealt with.  Those who did believe would fall on their faces and never get up.  Either response would tend to keep those around Jesus from getting to know him.
    The second reason is that the Jews were not prepared theologically to understand the claim.  Jesus was not God the Father come to live among us.  He was not the Holy Spirit.  He was, or he claimed to be, God the Son, the second Person of the Trinity.  For those with no knowledge of the Trinity, those who knew only a solitary God, a claim of Godhood would be misleading or entirely meaningless.

The council of Sanhedrin met in called session. “He will capitulate,” Caiaphas said of Pilate. “A display of resolve like the one we made in Caesarea, and he will capitulate.”
    “The last display of resolve cost my father his life,” said Elionaeus, a young firebrand of the house of Boethus.
    Annas inclined his head in acknowledgment of the sacrifice. “All Israel honors him for his courage.”
    “There are times when one man must give his life for the lives of many,” Caiaphas said.
    “So what do you say, Annas?” Elionaeus said. “Will he capitulate as Caiaphas says?”
    Annas shrugged. “If we let this go unchallenged, it sets a precedent that may ultimately prove our ruin. If Pilate can raid the treasury for this purpose, then why not another — and another?”
    “Though the aqueduct is ultimately to our advantage,” said Joseph, a rich Pharisee from Arimethea, a town in the hill country of Ephraim. “And these particular funds were unsuitable for any sacred purpose because of their source.”
    “And we have another problem,” Elionaeus said. “There is one here at the festival some say is the Messiah.” He told them of the priest’s report. “Each day a mob rallies around him to hear him speak.”
    Annas frowned. “We are familiar with this Jesus,” he said. “He’s been causing quite a stir up in Galilee.”
    “And now that he’s come to Jerusalem —”
    “Yes, we must follow his career closely from this point.”
    “What’s wrong with people?” a man said. “Have they no learning? When the Messiah comes, he will appear out of nowhere.”
    “The Scriptures don’t make that as clear as we could wish,” said Annas.
    “One thing is certain — he will not come from Galilee.”
    “No,” said Nicodemus. “Not from Galilee. The Messiah will be a descendant of David, and he will come from the village of Bethlehem, which gave us David.” Nicodemus stroked his dark beard.
    “What are you saying?” Annas said, turning to him. “Do you know this man’s origins? Is he not a Galilean?”
    “His speech and his dress are those of a Galilean,” Nicodemus said.
    “If he looks like a Galilean and he talks like a Galilean . . .” The remark produced general laughter.
    “It is not our way to condemn a man without giving him a hearing,” Nicodemus. “What does he himself claim?”
    “Nicodemus,” said someone. “Are you too from Galilee?” There was more laughter.  In the holy city of Jerusalem, Galileans were not highly regarded.
    “Search the Scripture,” Annas said. “You will find that no prophet is to arise in Galilee. Still, what you say makes sense. Let us have this Jesus in for questioning. Let us ask him point blank whether he is the Messiah, as we did John.”
    “And suppose he says he is?”
    “Then we will deal with him.” Annas lips stretched into a thin smile. “We’ll have to. We’re the only Messiah the people need.”
    Elionaeus shook his head. “He’s a great favorite of the crowd. I don’t know if it’s wise to arrest him. We might provoke a riot beyond our ability to control.”
    “Perhaps he’ll come willingly,” Annas said.
    “And if he does not?”
    “Why shouldn’t he come willingly, if he is a good Jew?”

The mob surrounding Jesus was larger than had been reported, filling the area between the sanctuary and the elegant stone partition that barred the Gentiles. The half-dozen guards sent by Annas edged through the crowd, nervous despite their swords and helmets, well aware of the black stares they attracted. Jesus fell silent as they gained the steps.
    The guards stopped, conscious of the crowd’s attention. Some shifted uneasily from one foot to another, their movements accompanied by the clanking of arms — an alarming sound amid the quiet.
    “Yes?” Jesus asked.
    The chief guard cleared his throat.
    “Whom do you seek?”
    A low murmur worked its way through the crowd like the rumble of distant thunder. The guard’s head jerked from side to side, alert to hidden dangers.
    “Are you looking for someone?” Jesus asked.
    The guard mumbled something in a gruff voice that was too low to hear.
    “I’m Jesus of Nazareth. Have you been sent to arrest me?”
    The question seemed to produce alarm. The guard pulled his head more closely into his shoulders, and his words were lost in the renewed murmur of the crowd.
    Jesus waited expectantly. Realizing that some further action was required of him, the guard decided on retreat. He jerked his head at his men and shuffled backward off the steps. The crowd seemed denser than before as the guards pushed through it.
    “I may be with you for only a short time,” Jesus said to the crowd. “The time will come when you look for me, but you will not find me.”
    Mutters of anger and displeasure swept the crowd. The guards, reaching its fringes, were pushed this way and that before breaking clear of it.

Jesus and his disciples left the city by the Fountain Gate and climbed the west slope of the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley from the city walls. Today, on the last day of the festival of booths, the hillside was spotted with booths — temporary shelters constructed of leafy branches in commemoration of Israel’s time in the desert before entering the Promised Land. Peter, stopping and looking back over them in a kind of awe at the sheer numbers, noticed the commotion before the Place of Herod, Pilate’s Jerusalem residence. “Look, Jesus,” he said, pointing. “What do you think it is?”
    Simon and Judas came back to join them. There was a mob in the open area before the palace gates, a mob so large as to dwarf the one that had surrounded Jesus within the temple precincts. “A riot,” Simon said.
    “Pilate looted the temple treasury to help pay for his new aqueduct,” Judas said, amplifying. “There was a lot of anger in the crowd today.”
    “The people were like smoldering coals,” Simon said. “Wanting only a breeze to fan them into flame.”
    “And the Zealots have supplied it?” Jesus said.
    Judas shook his head. “They’re involved, certainly, but this is Annas’s doing. He’s hoping for another victory like that at Caesarea.”
    Jesus shook his head.
    “It’s risky, certainly, but he has little choice,” Judas said. “His control over the temple treasury is at stake.”

The demonstration before the palace gates continued to degenerate into chaos. Some in the crowd banged on iron pots, some hollow drums. Some hurled invectives, making wild and improbable speculations about Pilate’s ancestry, about his sexual practices, about his anatomy. By dusk negotiation had become impossible.
    “They leave me little choice,” Pilate said to the tribune at his side.
    “Yes.”
    “So be it, then.”
    Pilate stepped up to the wall and raised his hands. The crowd saw him and, rather to Pilate’s surprise, became quiet — still hostile, certainly, but apparently prepared to hear what he had to say.
    He hesitated, for a moment tempted to try to reason with them, but he abandoned the thought. He had tried reason. “Disperse,” he called. “In the name of the emperor, I command you to disperse.”
    It was not a command likely to have a soothing effect on the crowd, and it did not. A roar went up, deafeningly loud. How many tens of thousands packed the streets, Pilate wondered? How many women and children?
    Many. He could see that. He stood within plain sight of the crowd, his arms still upraised. Rocks bounced off the wall below him and off the battlements around him. It was the clatter of a spear that decided him.
    Pilate lowered his arms in a swift gesture.
    It was a prearranged signal. Among the sea of homespun before the gates, cloaks were thrown aside here and there, exposing steel that sparked in the torchlight. Five cohorts, half the heavy-armed infantry of the twelfth legion, were scattered among the protestors and grouped strategically. Six thousand one hundred blades slipped from their scabbards as one, each a short, well-tempered Spanish blade with a double edge, equally suited for slashing or thrusting. A few thrusts and kicks brought each cohort into its preferred formation: eight deep, a sword-length between each file of soldiers and each rank. Before the Jews realized there were enemies among them, they were boxed in against the palace walls, Roman soldiers advancing from three sides. The rocks and sticks the Jews brandished were totally ineffective against the ample bucklers, four feet in length and two and a half in breadth, against the helmets and breastplates, against the greaves protecting the soldiers legs. The Romans attacked. Jews cursed and screamed; the Romans fought silently, striking hard and jerking their blades from the falling bodies of their victims. The spray of blood speckled the shields and garments of the soldiers, soaked through the clothing of the fallen onto the stone flagging.
    In half-an-hour it was over. The few who remained alive were trying to crawl away or were groping for succor. The soldiers walked among the fallen, hacking and thrusting with their swords. At a cry from their commander, the legion reformed at one side of the square. The palace gates opened, and the soldiers went into the palace compound. The gates closed, and all was silent but for the occasional moan and the persistent dripping of blood.

Jesus and his disciples were in Bethany, in the home of Lazarus and his sisters. Mary, the younger sister, sat on the ground by Jesus’ feet, gazing up at him with widened eyes.
    “The priests sent the temple guards to arrest you?” she said. “What happened?”
    James the elder, the son of Zebedee, answered her, giving a rather humorous account of the mumbling guards and their subsequent retreat. Mary laughed, and her eyes flashed in the firelight, and James felt a warm glow at being the focus of her attention.
    “They were that afraid of the crowd,” she said wonderingly, unused to the idea of armed men being afraid of anything.
    “They were afraid of Jesus as much as the crowd,” said Simon the Zealot. “They are Jews. Even they have heard about the signs Jesus has done. They ask themselves, ‘When the Messiah comes, will he do more signs than these?’  They wonder about him.”
    A new voice cut into the conversation, a woman’s, high-pitched and irritable. “Lord, there are many here to cook for, and my sister sits idle.”
    Jesus looked up and met the eyes of Martha, a tall, spare woman with a pale, thin mouth. “Idle, Martha?”
    “She has left me to do all the work by myself, though I  told her I would need her to help me.”
    Jesus smiled at Martha, his expression sympathetic. “Ah, Martha,” he said. “You are a worrier.”
    “Be that as it may, Lord, I have a meal to prepare, and my sister sits at your feet doing nothing.”
    “Perhaps you would do well to imitate her example.”
    “But the dinner . . .”
    “The dinner will be prepared.”
    “How?” Martha asked. “And when? By whom?”
    Jesus got to his feet and went over to her, grasping her arm and drawing her back to where he had been sitting. “Take my stool,” he said. “Here.”
    “Lord —”
    “Martha, you are distracted by many things, when at the moment, you need focus on only one.” He sat cross-legged on the ground beside Mary.
    James was on his feet. “Lord,” he said. “Take my place.” And he indicated his stool.
    Jesus smiled and shook his head. “Sit,” he said. “Sit. But the offer becomes you. All of you, if you are invited to a wedding feast, do not choose for yourself a seat of honor, because others more distinguished than yourself may be invited. Think of the disgrace when your host comes to you, and he says, ‘Give up your place to this person and move lower on the table.’  If instead you sit down at the lowest place, you allow your host to say, ‘Friend, move higher,’ and you will be honored in the presence of all.”
    “That is his way,” Judas said to Simon in a low voice. “He goes off into a parable on the slightest provocation.”
    “He seeks the teaching moment,” said Simon.
    “Even at the cost of an abrupt change of subject.”
    Judas watched Jesus’ face, which seemed curiously mobile in the shifting light of the fire. He nodded to himself. “Yet,” he said. “His manner adds much to his air of authority.”
    There were shouts on the path below the house, and Jesus broke off in his teaching. Soon a traveler came into view, flushed and disheveled. “There’s been a battle,” he said. “Not a battle. A massacre. Tens of thousands dead before the palace gates.”
    His news stunned them, sickened them.
    Nobody that night had any supper.

The apostle Paul noted that married people are necessarily anxious about worldly affairs, and for that reason he preferred that everyone remain as Paul himself was, unmarried, free to devote himself to the affairs of the Lord.  Even the unmarried, though, have to work for a living, perhaps at some mundane job that seems far removed from any high and holy purpose.  Even the unmarried have to worry about clothing and shelter and food.  Paul himself was a tentmaker.
    As human beings, we pursue educations, plan our careers, plant gardens, brush our teeth, sleep, raise children…These are life’s routines; there is no escaping them.  As important as these things are, though, they are not the most important things.  The busyness of everyday living can be a distraction from what is most important.  We can be engaged in our highest calling and seem completely idle. 
    Our highest calling is to contemplate Jesus Christ.