“But here’s the thing,” he told them as they were all sitting around the fire.
The women had gone to bed, even Magdalene, or maybe they sensed that this was a time for men.
“Here is the thing the thing. You think I know what I’m doing, but I don’t.”
Jesus passed the smoking conifer to John, who inhaled.
“I don’t now what I am about from day to day. And I am not sure what will happen in Jerusalem, or what will happen tomorrow for that matter.”
John waited for him to say what he knew he wanted to say, and then finally he said, “And I do not understand the use of turning water to wine if I cannot turn crosses into roses and save men from death. I confess, it is hard to see what good there is that can be done in this world.”
“Master, you’ve already done much good,” Alphaeus said.
“Now I sound like a fool,” Jesus said.
He laid a hand on Alphaeus’s knee.
“I did not mean to be that man running about asking others for approval. Asking them if I was doing a good thing or not, or if I was effective. It’s vulgar even thinking about it. But there is so much to do, and we have hardly begun. And when I say we, I mean we. For it can never simply be about me. And… it cannot be about parlor tricks and miracles.”
“Listen to me,” Philip said, a little sharply.
“Those men on those crosses shook you yesterday, and that’s right. They should have. They shook me so bad I could not even be near them. And you felt… Powerless, I imagine. Unable to save them. But the things you have done—if you call them small you call the people you have done them for small. A wedding feast saved, a man freed from his demons, the lame walking, a paralyzed man with his limbs restored. How is any of that small?”
“Dying men abandoned by their families,” John said, “who we were family to in the end… That is no small thing.”
Alphaeus looked to John as if he was afraid to talk, and John said, “Speak, brother.”
Alphaeus took a breath.
“Look, I do not say these things lightly. I’ve kept so many of them deep in my heart. Matthew knows. I…when I was a boy, a little boy, things were done to me that made me feel… like I was the evil that did them. I felt dirty and ashamed and I think I’ve been dirty and ashamed my whole life. And then you looked at me. You came into our house, and I’ve felt like a man ever since. The morning after you all left I wept and wept like a little child, and the day you came and told us to follow you I was so glad! So glad. Because I didn’t know how I could go back to the life I’d had before. So, though you wear no crown, and ride no white horse, though no armies are at your back, if you say this is the Kingdom of God, then my God, I believe it.”
Thomas stood up and he disappeared for a while then came back with a ewer of water.
He stood over Jesus and raising it, poured some on his head to the amazement of the others.
As he poured, Thomas murmured:
“Barukh atah Adonay Eloheynu melekh ha-olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al ha-t’vilah.”
He poured a second time, the water spiling down through the curls of Jesus’s hair onto his shoulders and his chest.
And now he poured the third time, soaking the master, murmurning:
“Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonay Eloheynu, Adonay ekhad.”
The others sat about the fire, not sure of what they had witnessed, and Thomas went away, and then returned with another ewer, and he handed it Jesus whose hair and robes were all soaked, and after he had handed it to him, he stripped and stood naked in the firelight, and then he knelt before him.
Jesus rose, pouring the water over him three times, and speaking the words Thomas has spoken to him.
“Blessed are you, Eternal God, ruler of the universe, who sanctifies us through mitzvot and has enjoined us concerning immersion.
“Blessed is the Eternal, the God of all creation, who has blessed me with life, sustained me, and enabled me to reach this moment.
“Hear, o Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
Thomas rose soaked, looking to the night sky but, by now, John and Alphaeus left and returned wth two ewers each, and Alphaeus was taking off his clothing and kneeling for the baptism as well.
“Blessed are you, Eternal God, ruler of the universe, who sanctifies us through mitzvoth, and has enjoined us concerning immersion.”
And then Nathanael and Philip, Andrew and Zelotes. Lazaros and Nicodemos thought against it, feeling this was not for them, this was something else, wondering if they even should have been here. Peter had felt the same, the hanging back. But when Matthew, the bitter old tax collector, solemnly removed his cap and his expensive red cloak, undid his sash and removed his sandals, slowly took off all things until he stood naked and knelt in the pool of water that had accumulated in the courtyard, and nearly kneeling on all fours before Jesus, he bowed his head to the triple pouring of the water, Peter knew this was for him, and soon knelt naked beside Matthew. Lazaros and Nicodemos retreated, for this was beyond them, and whatever was happening tonight with Jesus and these men, they were not quite part of it. Jesus, soaked from Thomas, and soaked more from the continuous pouring of the water, removed his own robe and then his breechclout so that he was as naked as the rest. His cousins, Jude and James had helped him strip.
Jude was always a hanger on, a lover of songs and adventures, but also of cynicism, and suddenly he felt like fool, him and his harp, his green cloak and his fine robe. Nearly dry, fully clothed, he felt like a fool around these others, these naked newborn men. He knew what James was thinking, James who was not his own cousin, but like him, was a cousin of this strange rabbi.
Until now he has been my cousin and only my cousin. Until now he has been the strange one, and I have not wanted to look on, not wanted to be a part of, not admitted a thing to myself. I have turned my head until now. I have been afraid to believe… anything.
James was thinking of a day long ago in a shed.
“No, no. Let me show you.”
Sitting beside his brother and taking up his tunic, he showed his brother what boys did to pleasure themselves, knowing John wanted to touch him, and when John tried, James lightly pushed his little brother’s hand away, and kept attending to himself until his mouth opened as his neck arched and finally, he groaned as he shot his seed, erupting across the shed floor
And he had said, “It’s natural. It’s the most natural thing in the world.”
And several times he’d done that before John,and done more, and in the end, when John could no longer simply watch, but rose, knelt before his brother’s erection and begins to suck him, James never said stop or don’t do this. He only succumbed to the intense pleasure which became a growl through gritted teeth. When he finally opened his mouth to shout and pressed John’s head full down on him, John gagged, and the boy’s cheeks ballooned. Semen filled his mouth and spilled down his chin.
Only in the aftermath did James says, “We can’t do this again.”
What a transgression! Or was the transgression forbidding his brother to ever speak of what they’d done, walking way and pretending such things had never happened. And despite that, had the shame not been with him every day?
John looked up at him. James was weeping now, and John, eyes like an eagle, or like an angel, obviously knew what the hell those tears were all about. They had fished naked side by side, and all this time there was the unspoken rule, do not look at me, do not touch me, not like that, not after what happened. But it was John who stripped James naked until he stood trembling and hugging himself, and John, his little brother who embraced him like a lion, and when he went to his knees, it was John, in his white robe stained with the days travels, who poured the water over him. By then Jude was naked too. How beautiful he was, round and brown of limb, lovely black hair all down him, face so full of peace. As Jesus baptized him, the water soaked his black hair, splashed from his shoulders, down his back, spilled over his his full, round buttocks like a water fall,
John stripped naked and lay on the water, spread out like a cross, and felt the water splash his he head, his back and buttocks, his thighs and go back up again. In the courtyard he lay like that, and the others knelt.
The air was charged with a power and suddenly, though Jon did not raise his face from the went flagstones, he sensed a new presence, and he felt no fear, no shame. It smelled of myrrh, and he though of the old stories, the legends that said God was not one, but two, the stormy Father, and the eternal Mother, and that when Solomon’s Temple had been destroyed, the mother, the Shekinah, had left the Temple and wandered with her wandering people. He felt as if the very Goddess herself had arrived in the courtyard.
And when he looked up, behold, Magdalene, and she was in a sheer gown, so sheer it may have been made from a dream, and he saw her hips, her breasts, the triangle above her thighs like the images of Asherah one still found, and that his mother possessed, and she carried an alabaster cup with a dark jewel in it and she stood before Jesus, and he knelt to her and she poured it on his nead and it was glistening oil, and then she knelt, and he poured it on her, and now he moved about the court, deliberately pouring oil over them, and the place smelled of frankincense. It smelled like a temple and at last, John nearly shuddered, feeling the slickness of the oil on his head, down his back. He lay twitching in the water, not daring to think, knowing this was not the place for thought, but the land of rebirth, and whatever they had all been when they had entered this place, they were now changed.
Lazaros WAS MILDLY ashamed while they traveled south, and he said so to Nicodemos.
“We were there. We were all together. We were all the same. And then that Thomas came out with that water. And something happened, and I couldn’t stay and now, look at them. They are all different. There is something between them, And we are not a part of it.”
“Brother,” Nicodemos told him, “I do not think it is anything. Or rather, I think it is something, but the something is not what you think it was. A master must have his disciples, a Messiah his devotees. And we are not those. Not yet. It is no bad thing not to be ready.”
Already, the group had accumulated many people as they journeyed to Jerusalem. After leaving Sepphoris, they had been joined by Jesus’s borthers and sisters and their children Now the party consisted of Nicodemos and his people and others from Arimathea as well. And as they traveled still more joined.
Mary clasped hands with a woman she had known thirty years. In traveling to the same festivals, passing the same towns, one very often met with old friends they’d known along the way.
“Why do I feel as if we are marching into the very kingdom of God?” Thomas demanded of Jesus, smiling his bright smile.
“Because every day we are,” Jesus said, throwing one arm over Thomas and the other over Matthew.
This morning, as they were leaving, and while things did not seem completely settled, Jesus had placed the edge of his mantle on Thomas and said, “Follow me.”
Thomas had only nodded, gone back, got his small bag of possessions, and followed.
Behind them, Alphaeus clasped John’s hand and began to whistle a tune and Jude struck his harp and sang:
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.”
Even shortly after they’d had left Capernaum, folk had been following them, waiting for some teaching, and he always had a word. Whatever he did, new passed from village to village so that the day before there had been twenty or so assembled, waiting for some word, and as he walked along the road it was no longer possibly to ignore that there were some who were as concerned or more concerned with a word from him than the trip to Jerusalem. And so he had stopped to teach, and now, without the trepidation that had come before, even to heal.
It had begun outside of Nathanael’s Nain, when a man bandaged and wounded from leprosy came to Jesus and, though the others had backed away, even making the sign against evil, he had stretched himself out before Jesus, begging, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
For the first time his companions saw in Jesus’s face a rage that made them never ever thinking of backing away from anything he put his hands to, and almost violently, he had seized the man, crying, “I am willing.”
In the same voice with which he had driven the demon from Uriah, he said, “Be clean!”
And as he spoke they all saw, clearly, the wounds healing, the body straightening, upright, digits restored, flesh growing to health before them.
But this was not Capernaum, and there was a part of Jesus that thought, it is too late to hide things there, but like in Cana we may… Perhaps... control them.
“See that you don’t tell this to anyone,” Jesus had told the rejoicing man who nodded solemnly, though he could barely keep a straight face.
“Go, show yourself to the village priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”
Grinning from ear to ear, still dirty from his time of exile, the leper, restored, two eyes two nostrils whole ears and mouth, nodded rapidly and ran off. But the day was not over before he was talking freely, spreading the news.
“Well, what on earth was he going to do?” Mary wondered. “He couldn’t very well say, ‘I was a leper in the morning and then suddenly I wasn’t.’”
But from that night until when they had entered Arimathea, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
