Simon bar Jonah went back to his home late that night, glad to have his wandering brother back and not much in the mood for hearing that we was going to be following Jesus from now on. He was glad enough that Jesus had led him home, but as a prophet, wasn’t he traveling in the wrong direction, anyway? Wasn’t he supposed to be headed south to Jerusalem? He would go there, challenge the powers that be, and meet a cross for his troubles? Or he could be like that mad Yochanon whom Andrew had followed. After all, hadn’t Andrew said this fellow was a kinsman to the Baptist? The both of them might end up not crucified, but beheaded in the house of Herod. And what a strange family that was. But better to not speak of Messiahs or Herods or Rome. Better not even to speak of Jerusalem.
And again and again he heard that phrase Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of God, over and over from the mouths around him. No, no, Simon did not envy the unfortunate Zebedee who saw folk coming to his courtyard all last night and all this morning, waiting for a word from this man who, when he left the house, dressed in sparkling white.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of the father is like a man who had good seed. His enemy came by night and sowed weeds among the good seed. The man did not allow them to pull up the weeds; he said to them, 'I am afraid that you will go intending to pull up the weeds and pull up the wheat along with them.' For on the day of the harvest the weeds will be plainly visible, and they will be pulled up and burned.”
Jesus said, “Blessed is the man who has suffered and found life.”
“If anyone gives a neighbor silver or goods for safekeeping and they are stolen from the neighbor’s house, the thief, if caught, must pay back double. But if the thief is not found, the owner of the house must appear before the judges, and they must determine whether the owner of the house has laid hands on the other person’s property,” Simon read.
He adjusted the tallis that veiled his head, and stifled a yawn, telling himself that he would sit in the corner and stay out of arguments today.
He cleared his throat, looked over the room full of men with the open sky light shining on their veiled heads. He read on.
“In all cases of illegal possession of an ox, a donkey, a sheep, a garment, or any other lost property about which somebody says, ‘This is mine,’ both parties are to bring their cases before the judges.The one whom the judges declare[d] guilty must pay back double to the other.”
He raised the Torah, the heavy and expensive old scroll, and as he did, one of the fathers of the synagogue opened the ark, pushing back the diaphanous curtain, the only femininity in this room of men, their prayer shawls draped over their heads. As he marched with the great scroll above his head, they sang:
Eitz chayim hee la’machazikim ba
v’tom’che-ah m’u-shar
D’rache-ah dar’chei no-am,
v’chol n’tee-vo-teh-ah shalom!
Ha-shee-vei-nu Adonai
eilecha v’na-shuva
chadesh, chadesh yamei-nu k’kedem.
It is a tree of life for those who grasp it,
and all who uphold it are blessed.
Its ways are pleasantness,
and all its paths are peace.
Help us turn to You, and we shall return.
Renew our lives as in days of old.
There was a time when they traveled to Bethsaida for a synagogue, and the Jews of Capernaum were feeling of several minds about this fairly new one. There were some who wanted to hate the Romans, to prize their particularity, moan about an oppression that would end any day with God’s help. Most were practical, and it had been a very wealthy Gentile who loved the God of the Torah and had built this synagogue for the Jews who could never have afforded it. And it was lavish, for not only was there the great room where the sons of Israel gathered, but through the pillars, above and below were the galleries for women and for children, and yes, for the many, like the man who had built this place, who were not of Israel. If anyone thought it was unfair that the men who had built this synagogue could not sit in the midst of it, they said nothing. If no one pointed out that of the very priests, who alongside the rabbis ran the synagogue, at least three had fathers or grandfathers who had come from Italy, no one said anything.
John was of a strange mind about the synagogue. His father Zebedee was proud of it and thought it a grand place, but John felt it was too small, not in size, but in focus. Having been in Palmyra and Sidon, it was strange to be in this small place where he saw, on the other side of the wall, through the pillar, the bowed or chatting heads of women.. Now, he was surprised to see a blond head on upright shoulders. But… no, it could not be…
But already Jesus, all in white, uncovering his head and not bothering to stand could be heard:
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”
“Surely your teachings are extreme,” one said, laughing. John, however, was concentrating on Sebastian. There he was his friend in a plain tunic and cloak. He bowed to John and hooded his head with his cloak, listening, and while John listened to Jesus, his body shuddered with the memory of Sebastian, with Sebastian’s hands on his shoulder, Sebastian inside of him. It seemed so long ago.
“No,” Jesus stood up. “It is not too much. It is only the beginning. Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.
“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
Simon bar Jonah, crept around the walls of the synagogue to sit next to his brother who was following this man.
“This is how it will be in the Kingdom of God.”
“Rabbi, what are you talking about,” one of the old men around the Moses seat said.
“Or what are you claiming?” began another.
“Israel came out of one man,” said Jesus, rising.
“God promised Abraham that he would make an old man past reproducing and a wife who was past childbearing, and made children as numerous as the dust, and so he did. But I am here to begin the New Israel.”
“What in the world?” Simon murmured to his brother.
“All will be brought into it, for Abraham was the son of Terah, but Terah was a son of Noah and all the children of Noah, all the children of Adam and Eve shall be drawn to me.”
“I cannot tell if he is mad or—”
The synagogue was massive and contained kitchens, rooms for eating together and reclining, boarding rooms for visitors and now, above them, others were gathering, women looking down, nodding their heads.
Standing before them, body swaying, Jesus told them another parable.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
And he told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough…”
“He is mad!” John heard someone say.
But Sebastian murmured, “He is wonderful.”
“…Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
At, at once, there was a great crash, and shelves fell down. John leapt up, and Andrew and Nathanael and Philip gathered around Jesus, for arguments could be violent. But into the middle of the room ran a screaming man, frothing at the mouth.
Jesus touched his friends gently and pushed them away so that he stood unguarded before a snarling boy and Simon bar Jonah thought, “Oh, that is Uriah, poor lad.”
The boy flung himself at Jesus, but as Jesus put out his hand, Uriah screamed:
“Away! Leave us! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”
While gasps and shouts went up around the synagogue and many made the sign against blasphemy, Jesus shouted: “Silence! Come out of him!”
He made a rough gesture at Uriah, and as if he had slapped the man five feet from him, Uriah was flung to the ground, twisting and snarling.
“Leave!” Jesus commanded, his face a mask of command.
Uriah rose on his knees, flung back his head and screamed, then collapsed on the floor, breathing heavily.
But Jesus was breathing heavily as well and leaned against the wall, wondering if he might collapse.
“Someone get that man,” he said, his head spinning, the ground fading under his feet.
“Wrap him in my cloak. Give him food and water.”
On the ground, Uriah was blinking and running a hand over his jaw.
“He’s well,” one murmured.
Simon went to his knees and lifted Uriah up.
“You’re back among the living, my lad. How do you feel?”
At first Uriah, covered in dirt and spit, wet with his own sweat, blinked and said nothing.
“I feel well,” he said, at last, running his hands over his face.
“I feel so sleepy, like I could sleep all day. But I feel good. For the first time. In such a long time.”
“The rabbi healed you,” Zedekiah said.
“The rabbi,” Jonah repeated.
“Where is he?” Jason demanded.
“So much. It took so much out of him.”
“But where is he?” another asked, and John, looking to Sebastian, and then looking around the synagogue, wondered where Jesus was too, and stood up, leaving the synagogue to find him.
While the others milled about the synagogue, Andrew said, “Simon, we have to find him.”
Andrew was always one to overstate the obvious and tell them that things had to be done which they had absolutely no control over, and John looked panicked as he often did. Simon lowered his prayer shawl and folded it, rising and walking through the confused crowds. He left the hall and was coming toward the ante entrance when he saw a tall woman with very long black hair, head bared like a prostitute, and a red shawl about her.
“Are you looking for Jesus?” she asked him.
“Are you his… woman?”
She didn’t look like a wife.
“I am no man’s woman,” Magdalene said, simply, “and I am looking for him too.”
There was a stairway behind her, and women were coming down it, three or four, and now John came out with Andrew, and Magdalene said, “I was wondering what was taking you so long.”
“He’s gone back to Zebedee’s house,” Mary said. “And before long, others will realize it too.”
Simon fell in with the group saying to himself, what else was there to do today? And life had been such a crawl lately. While Andrew had been having his adventures, Simon had been living with an increasingly ill mother-in-law, an ever agitated wife, and the sea of Galilee, rich with fish, was strangely empty for him. Backtaxes there were to that son of a bitch Levi, and if there could be some escape from this by following these folk, then so be it.
They found Jesus, not disconsolate or worried as he had been after Cana, but simply sitting in the middle of the courtyard.
“I know they will come,” he said. There was a bowl of curds before him, and he was dipping a ripe peach into it, eating them.
“But I needed to rest from them before they do.”
“Word is already coming from Cana,” Philip said.
Lazaros leaned against the wall, his slender, young form rapped in a dark coat.
“Soon will be the feast of Sukkot, then we can all go back to Jerusalem and things will cool here for a time.”
“I do not know that things are meant to cool,” Jesus said. “But for the moment, I must cool.”
“Then come where they will not find you just yet,” Simon found himself saying.
“Stay at my house for the day. It is a house with its own troubles, but welcome to you, certainly. And it is nearly sundown, time for the evening meal.”
The house of Simon was nearly identical to Zebedee’s, wealthy, but with an even greater courtyard with massive pillars, cool cellars for wine and water and ice, and yet it was shabby, like a man kept it, Mary noted as she entered the house where her son had been taken a while ago. They were all there, hiding out, and poor Zebedee was getting frenzied men knocking on his door.
When Jesus had come into the house he noticed the sadness, and he was surprised that tears sprang to his eyes.
“Master!” Simon said, and he was not sure he meant it.
“Take me to her?” Jesus said.
Simon nodded.
He was leading him through the great room, toward his mother-in-law’s chambers when a ragged haired, tired looking woman said, “What in the world are you doing, Peter?”
“She calls him that,” Andrew murmured.
“He… this is Jesus. He is a teacher. He would like to see Mother.”
His voice rose like a question on the word Mother, and his wife said, “What does my mother need with teaching?”
“Please?” Peter said.
His wife said nothing, but grunted and moved aside and Jesus, all in white, entered the room where curtains were drawn and went down on his knees. Hair fanned out and veins rising in her neck, Mother lay murmuring in her sleep, and her head was hot.
“She is fevered,” Jesus murmured.
“Of course she is,” Simon’s wife said. “And soon you shall be too if you remain.”
“Please,” Jesus said, ignoring her rudeness, “fetch a cold cloth for me.”
“What do you think you have discovered that I have not?” the woman demanded, hand on hip, but now Jesus turned to her the stern gaze he’d lain on Uriah and he said, “Woman, fetch me a cold cloth.”
And so she did.
When she returned, Jesus was holding her mother’s hand and murmuring prayers—she assumed they were prayers, and without looking at Simon’s wife, he opened the wet cloth and laid it over her face, almost like one covering a corpse. Now he stretched across her, alarming Simon’s wife, and he took a great breath, and then drew in a deeper one, and now he rose, opening the shades, letting the late day in with the air of the sea of Galilee, and as Simon’s wife began to protest, to ask what he was about, she saw her mother stirring, sitting up, color in her greened flesh.
“Why is everyone so…?” she yawned. “Why is everyone so…? You all look terrible.”
“Mother, be careful.”
But the woman rose. She had seemed quite old, but she couldn’t have been much older than Jesus’s own mother, he thought, and she came to him on steady feet.
“Thank you,” she said. “I saw you in the other place. For days. I was in another place, and all there was darkness. And then you came. Thank you.”
The woman, who was not so old, clapped her hands brusquely and said, “Well, I am hungry as several horses! Now it is time to eat. I will fix us something.”
“The Sabbath is not over. Not completely,” Simon said.
“Peter, my boy, I have rested enough.”
She squeezed Jesus’s hand.
“This is a good boy? Isn’t he a good boy? You’re all good. Ada,” she said to her daughter. “Come to the kitchen with me. We will prepare supper.”
