The heat.
In those hours after Marta has come, he sat in the presence of God, under the hammer of midmorning sun until, at last, God folded him in the blinding light of trance.
All was yellow and white, the edges of an unrelenting sky touched by fire. This was a sky full of light and lacking in mercy, and when he dared to look down, desert, slopes and hills rising to the far off crags, sand more white than yellow. Was he a bird? His wings were stretched out. Yes. There he was.
He blinked and there was a tree in Eden, lush, and he was climbing it, not with feet, but with the length of his body. Beautiful, shimmering scales that shone like water. He was the ancient dragon.. He was the serpent, wings outstretched, mounting to the Tree. And there she was, hands reaching out, and there he was promising, “You will live. You will not die. You will be as God.”
She wanted to be like God, not this thing of mud, blindly following orders, told what to do, what to eat, what to think, hiding from all consequence…
The consequence? All these people writhing in the desert as he looked down on them, raised above them bronze and burning. Now the seraph is the fiery serpent, and the seraph was the many winged angel before the first Temple of God, holy, holy, holy they cried in the presence of the Lord, and Isaiah had fallen on his face. So the serpent in the garden was the serpent on the pole who saved. And this serpent was so old everyone had forgotten his beginnings. He was angelic, and the angels were the faces of the Lord, So it was all one… all one…
“What am I saying?”
That the light is the dark and the dark is the light. That if you cannot see, you must look harder. To ascend you must descend…
“Yes, all those things.”
Look, you must look.
He felt these burning wings, felt his burning body, longed to be the serpent stretched across the earth. He raised his eyes and then turned them to the right and the left to scream, seeing a man’s arms, his arms, bleeding, wrists nailed into wood, and he rose up with a shout.
In the house in Bethany he blinked into wakefulness, chest rising and falling, and his breathing calmed. The entire vision, even where he saw his arms nailed to a Roman cross, filled him with peace.
By the time he walked to Jerusalem, the family had joined him, brothers and sisters, Mary and Salome, and the disciples, whom his brothers were confused over and not entirely ready to embrace, were present along with those who had escaped John’s arrest and, as Joses called them, “various hangers on.” The crowd had entered the greater crowd coming into Jerusalem, swinging their willow beanches and their palm branches, singing:
“Have mercy, please, upon the congregation of Yeshurun,
forgive and pardon their sins,
and deliver us, God our savior!
Open the gates of heaven and
open up the storage rooms
of your bounty to us,
You will save us and not extend the quarrel;
deliver us, God our savior!”
And, suddenly, someone called out, “Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David!”
Surely the person who shouted it meant it. And now others were shouting it, and at their head Jesus was riding into the city. He rode right to the Temple itself where now he was leaving, and even as he was leaving and entering the greater city, Caiaphas was learning more of this morning’s situation.
Around him, as he left, were what Lazaros reluctantly called his disciples. Magdalene was the principal, there was no denying that. And then black haired boyish John with the almost alabaster skin and the girlish black eyebrows that belied a temper. Philip and Andrew who had been with Yochanon, and whose faces were unreadable after all the events of this day, Nathanael Bartholomew, the tall, pelican shaped philosopher, and Simon of Cana, whose eyes were still full of light from the dazzling day when Jesus had made wine. Next, James the stalwart brother of John and Simon Peter, the brother of Andrew, these two who seemed to have come along simply to look over their more volatiles siblings. Jude, who looked very much like his cousin Jesus, far more than the others cousins, even though he was Joseph’s kin, was tuning his harp as if they had not made chaos in the holiest place in Israel. And now, looking about with strange sympathy at those money changes, the handsome Matthew, and his lithe black haired brother, Alphaeus.
Thomas was walking beside Jesus and John, protective of both of them and in awe of Magdalene who was swathed in white, and they were on their way to rejoin Mary and Salome and the family who were just beginning to hear what had been done.
“My heart is full of sorrow,” Marta said to Jesus that evening while she and Joanna served the meal along with Sara, “and yet I know, when I look at you, that everything happened to lead to this day. And so I have some peace.”
They set to a meal which was quiet and serious, but joyful, and as Mary ate, Joses, her youngest came to her and whispered, “Mother… I am afraid for him.”
Mary wanted to say, “Don’t be foolish. Everything will be fine,” but she was not the kind of woman to dismiss her children’s fears or lie to them about dangers that might come, and dangers had come even today, when John was being hauled off to Herod’s prison.
Mary squeezed Joses’s hand and kissed it, but said nothing, and even as they sat eating that meal, miles off, in the midst of the city of Jerusalem where the lavish houses were made of stone that shone gold in the sun, a litter was borne to one magnificent house made of courtyards and fountains, towers, porticos and pools, and the curtains opened to reveal Josephus Caiaphas, High Priest of Israel. With his attendants he was taken to the mikveh in his house to perform the ritual purification of the priests, and emerging from those waters, two men turned away from his nakedness, backed up and wrapped a white sheet about him, and when he had stepped from the holy place, and into the house proper, as he was dressed for supper in robes and jewels elaborate as those of a great lady, he learned from the snatches of conversation that this madman who had made a mess in the Temple had a name and a following. The following, little could be done about, but his name was:
“Jesus,” Caiaphas murmured fitting a ring onto his middle finger.
“Jesus of Nazareth.”
Joses, Yehuda, Jacob and Simon, the brothers of Jesus and sons of Mary, exchanged glances. The brothers had a secret languade and it was a language Jesus, their oldest brother had made. But they had their own language even apart from him, the language that was about Jesus, the language that said, there he goes again. It had never been stated, how could it be, but it was known that he was not quite like the four of them. There was something different.
“He’s all Mother,” their sister Rachel had said.
“He’s all Mother, and nothing of Father,” though Joseph and Jesus had always resembled a younger brother and an older brother. But that was it as well. It was not that Jesus was more loved than them, no. But the relationship the oldest child of Mary and Joseph had to his parents was… in some ways, not parental. It was almost, Tamar, their other sister has said, “as if Father wasn’t his Father at all.”
When she’d said this, their grandmother Chana sucked in her breath and slapped Tamar across the face. That was the day Joses knew their sister had come close to the truth.
“Blessed are all who fear the Lord,
who walk in obedience to him.
You will eat the fruit of your labor;
blessings and prosperity will be yours…”
They chanted around the table as Marta and Sara and Joanna removed the dishes, and John and Thomas brought out washing bowls.
”Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
around your table.
Yes, this will be the blessing
for the man who fears the Lord.”
Joses looked to his brother, who led the chanting with a raised hand and light pulsing through him, this strange and sometimes erratic brother who, on one hand, was so like him and on another entirely different.
If he was not the son of their father…? But then, what did that say for their mother?
“May the Lord bless you from Zion;
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
May you live to see your children’s children—
peace be on Israel.”
And if he was not the son of Joseph, Joses wondered, “Whose son was he?”
Joses was startled from his reverie by the entrance of a servant who whispered to Lazaros and Lazaros leaned in toward Jesus.
“Jeremiah says there’s someone at the gate to see you. An old friend.”
“An old friend?” Jesus frowned, but even frowning, he rose and turned to leave the large stone room and go to the door.
“You cannot go alone,” Lazaros scolded, and followed, John and Peter coming with him.
Joses did not rise to follow, so he did not see them leave the great room and pass into that outer courtyard then open the gate where a man, well built, stocky, but hooded against the night, stood.
“Speak your name,” Peter commanded before Jesus could speak.
But even as Peter spoke, the man threw back his hood and smiled radiantly, his pale eyes flashing in the night as he touched his moustache.
Jesus blinked several times in a surprise that removed him from the sacred being he had seemed so short a time ago, and he clasped the man’s shoulders, shaking his head in disbelief.
“As I live… As I live…” Jesus declared, squeezing him.
“Judas Iscariot.”
“Aye,” said Judas. “And I have come with someone. Someone who is cautious,” Judas shrugged. “For good reason.”
Peter had raised an eyebrow, but Jesus, feeling light and playful, said, ”Cautious one! Come out. Wherever you are. You are safe tonight in Bethany.”
“I hardly think that would have been much help,” Peter began as Thomas shrieked and ran into the night to grasp his brother’s shoulders.
“They really are a like,” John murmured, and James said, “Like… and unlike,”
But even as he spoke, another man came to the courtyard, and Thomas recognized him.
“Anijah! What are you, but—”
Anijah was a servant of Nicodemos, who had stayed at the home of Joseph of Arimathea, and now, his black robes obscuring him in the night, the young man of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemos, lowered his hood.
“Nicodemos,” Jesus said, but by then Lazaros’s curiosity had brought him into his own courtyard.
“This is awfully secretive for a visit,” Lazaros said.
But Jesus said, “A night visit.”
“After what happened in the Temple today,” Nicodemos said, “after the arrest of John, a night visit seemed best.”
Jesus nodded. If the others were judging, he was not.
“I am troubled,” Nikodemos said, frankly. “Walk with me, Master, and unburden my mind.
Jesus nodded, taking Judas by the shoulder.
“I will return. And we will discuss… Oh, everything.
“But for now,” he turned to Nicodemos, “Let us walk.”
They walked through the olive trees growing down the great slope of the town. Those trees were permanently bent against a breeze that was not here this day, and at the base of the hills ran a rivulet which winked its way to the Jordan that had rang with the voice of John but rang it it no longer.
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. The water and the wine, the things we heard of in Capernaum. Your… the words you speak, the fire that burns in us, in Joseph and I… in many who heard you today. No one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus nodded, and they continued walking amidst the trees. Gently now, a breeze picked up and Jesus went to the stones near the water and sat down on one.
“Was there a question?” he asked, “somewhere in your statement?”
“Today… in the Temple,” Nicodemos began, “the things you said… Master they were disruptive. They did not make you friends. Surely you know this. They were like the words of John, and his works. Not like the words you spoke in Joseph’s house, not like what we heard in Arimathea.”
“I am more myself,” Jesus said, “than I have ever been.”
“Then as yourself, tell me, I pray, what you are about and what road you are on.”
“The road to the kingdom of God,” Jesus replied, as he tore a long strip of bark from a sycamore, and holding it like a leaf of papyrus, began to break it. “I am on the road to the kingdom of God. I am on the road to rebirth.”
Sitting beside Jesus, Nikodemos said, “How does such a one as I walk on that road?”
“Amen,” Jesus said, “truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
This sounded more like the Jesus he had heard in Arimathea and so Nikodemos asked, wishing to get to the heart of his parable, “How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
“You’re hardly old,” Jesus said. “And you are not that stupid. Amen, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”
There he was, speaking like he was that first time. But now, somehow Nikodemos undertood that he had hoped all things would happen in a calm, in courtyards over whispered conversation, on the rooftops in hushed voices, almost, possibly, impractically. How Greek! But Jesus had taken a cord to the moneychangers in the Temple, and loosed the animals and made his life a danger and now, as a breeze picked up, he said,
“You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
“I want to understand you, Master,” Nikodemos said. “Sometimes I almost do. But sometimes I feel like you are somewhere in the distance, far off, living down a spiral at the end of a riddle.”
Jesus turned to him with a humorous look now, and raised one long, hooked finger.
“I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world.”
“There it is. You are like a conch shell. All the way down that shell is the meat.”
“Then you must struggle for the meat,” Jesus said. “The shell is the road. Go down the road.”
“The road is traveled, but the shell is broken.”
“They are the same.”
“Must I break you?”
“Can you?” Jesus said.
“Can I?” Nikodemos asked.
“You may have to. But in the end, the birth of the Spirit must still occur.
“How can this be?” Nikodemos asked.
“You are one of the teachers of Israel,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Verily I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.”
“The more you speak, the more confused I am.”
“You are confused because you are expecting,” Jesus said. “At the end of your expectations, I am. I…. I dreamed it. I saw it. I saw it on the road when Mother and I stood before three dying men. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
Nicodemos, scratching his beard, felt like he had come to hear something that made him more at ease with the events of the day. The first time he’d heard Jesus, he had thought how profound this man was. But now he was speaking the strangest words, words which would make little sense, or blasphemous sense if they were spoken in the Temple, heard in the Hall of Hewn Stones. But at the same time he was filled with the knowledge of their truth, like sensing some cold river rushing in the earth beneath his feet.
So he said, “Master, Speak.”
“How shall I say it that you can know it?” Jesus pondered. “How can I…?
“Listen, what if I were to say it thus: God so loved the world that he gave it his Son. Whoever believes in him will not die, but live forever. Shall not perish but have eternal life. The fire, the fire, the winnowing fan is not the thing. It is not the matter. It is not the point. God did not send his Son into this world to condemn it, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already. They are condemned because they refuse God’s Son. Herein lies the judgment, light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. See John taken away, see men hanging from crosses, see the glee we take in revenge and the love we have for our own harsh words.
“From now on you will see men longing for their messiah and he will be a dragon of fire and blood to strike down their enemies, like God of old, The God who struck down Korah and Uzza and called for the death of the Amalekites and he Amorites, because the God we made in our foul image is as twisted as us and loves all of our twisted prayers. But now is the time of light. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”
And Nikodemos, who had understood so little when he arrived, felt as if he now understood less. And yet it did trouble him. The night was dark, and the journey back into the city and into Joseph’s townhouse was long, and it seemed as if one of his companions, this Judas, would not be coming back with him. And yet Nikodemos did not mind. At this moment, in the night, despite his lack of understanding, nothing troubled him.
“The last time I saw you—”
“We were in the hills near Mount Sirion,” Judas laughed, flashing his teeth.
“That was…”
“There are no words for it,” Judas said. “I knew, you know. I knew something. I knew that wasn’t the last I would see of you, that you were no ordinary man. And now all of Jerusalem is buzzing with what you did today.”
“All?”
“Yes, in fact I dare say you might want to get a little distance between yourself and the Sanhedrin as soon as possible.”
Jesus pulled his beard.
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
Judas shook his head knowingly.
“I didn’t think you could.
“Only…”
“Yes?”
“I know about Yochanon. We all know about Yochanon. And I imagine what you did was… that it had something to do with that. But you were before him, You were you before he was ever preaching, and what he was doing is done. Do not be Yochanon. You have such a light. Do not waste it railing on about the bedroom habits of the Herods. Do not waste your life poking your finger in the eyes of the Sanhedrin.”
“Then what do you think I’m here for?”
‘To bring to this land that never knew it what we knew in those mountains.”
“I looked around and I saw those people beleiving that God wants them to spend the little money they have on slaughtering overpriced animals that the prists eat anyway, what a racket, to be sold meat so that priest can butcher it and keep it for themselves. When I see all the foolishness, all the poverty, men dying on crosses—”
In the midst of their brisk walk, Judas caught his hand.
“Show them Eshmun. Show them Adonis. Show them what they have never seen and what is whispered in the mysteries and in the depths of the temples. Show them the holy and beautiful son who reveals himself as God.”
And then Judas said, “But, of course, I am not really giving you this idea. I am only seeing what you were doing in the first place.”
“You are reminding me,” Jesus said.
Beside Jesus, the shorter man with thick bow legs asked, “Where in hell are we going?”
He pointed up. Because they were already on it, all he could do was point up.
“Going to a garden on the Mount of Olives. It is my place of rest. From there I can see everything.”
“Where did he go?” Nathanael wondered.
“…He was a friend, of sorts,” John was telling his mother and Mary.
“When you sent Jude and Jesus to bring me back from Palmyra, we met him.”
John had never told his mother of going even further, to Sidon, and certainly never told her of the temple of Eshmun and the experiences they’d had there.
“After we departed for the south, he and Jesus traveled together for some time
“And then Jesus went on his own travels, and where those travels were none of us knows.”
Marta nodded.
“Those are often the most important travels.”
“The most sacred,” Magdalene agreed, nodding to her sister’s words, “are the ones we make in the dark.
Mary said nothing. She only nodded in complete agreement, and from where he sat, Joses, feeling sleep fall upon him thought, “But of course you would agree, Mother, your whole life is wrapped in darkness.”
John went up to bed, but Nathanael went walking. Matthew had thought of going to find Jesus, but Nathanael said he would instead. He didn’t even know where his master would be. He simply followed the path out of the city that led to where he would be, that led somewhere up into the heights of Mount Olivet. Once he was there, amidst the night silvered leaves, he nearly forgot his purpose. This was a place of peace and solitude, but so near the great city, dotted with houses and olive presses, and he arrived in a garden and when he arrived he knew why he was glad John had not come, and why he had told Matthew, who so clearly loved the Master, to remain behind. And he realized why he had chosen to come instead.
Nathanael was a man who loved women, but he was a man, and he understood men’s needs. To him, his couplings with barmaids and widows and prostitutes was a sacred thing. More transformations took place in bed than he had ever known in the Temple and certainly in the shul. He followed the stifled sounds in the night dark garden, and when he came nearer, and his eyes adjusted to that Judas, this new man, with his wide, massive, almost humped back, face lowering and then rising to reveal eyes and mouth wide open as his shoulders rowed and his buttocks clenched and unclenched in the night, he was not scandalized by their shouts, or their moans or their curses or, moments later, the sound of breaking orgasm. He was not scandalized, but honored, and shaken to his depths to see Jesus, crushed beneath him, face pressed to the pile of clothes, gripping them as Judas fucked him.
