Mary and her daughters had come in through the side to join Ada and Ahinoam in the cooking. Joses had his arms crossed over his chest, observing as always, and Simon was demanding to see his brother, shouting loudly over all the others so that now Joanna and some of the others were whispering through the crowd, and while Jesus was teaching, he was interrupted by the whisper:
“Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” Magdalene assumed he knew why. Nazareth wasn;t far and the world of villages was a small one. The general displeasure coming out of Nazareth especially out of the house of Joseph, was well known and this, coupled with the visit of John’s disciples and the men in black infuriating him with their stupidity culminated in the sarcastic roar or:
“My brothers are here? My brothers are here? My brothers are here!”
He climbed, unsteadily, with the help of Magdalene, onto the stone lip of the covered well and cried out:
“My brothers are here! My brother are here! Are my brothers here? Is my family here! Brothers, come out!”
“Oh, shit,” Joses murmured in the corner, but the others came, and even as they were approaching, Jesus, his white robe beige with the dirt of the day, hanging askew from his shoulders, he cried out, pointing at them:
“Who are my mother and my brothers?”
And then, as often happened, the surprise rage calmed it self, and he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here… Right here, are my mother… and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother…” He turned to Joanna, “and my sister.”
His eyes fell on Magdalene, and she almost lowered hers, but did not, as he added,
“And my mother.”
But the moment of quiet was instantly broken, as Jesus raised in voice and wailed in the direction of the Pharisees in their black robes and the men who came to argue day after day:
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum,” he said, pointing at Jairus, one of the heads of the synagogue, a descendant of the very Nahum for whom the town was named, “ will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will be cast into Hell! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”
But, as long as the day was the day, and as long as the men who had come up from Jerusalem were again, he said more, for he was filled with a fury. The fury, many of those men said, was from the devil. Even now, beside Nikodemos, Nikanor of Chuzan declared: “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”
So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to in parables, in a voice most deadly that Joses remembered from childhood, so sweet, so kind.
“How,” he began, “can Satan drive out Satan?”
Nikanor said nothing. None of them did, and Jesus continued:
“If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.
“Truly I tell you,” he continued, his voice rising again as some men swatted his words away in irrititation and some made to spit at the floor, “men may be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.
“Oh!” he lifted his face to the skylight, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.”
His hands were stretched out now like a madman, or like a prophet, yes, like a prophet, and he declared, “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
The tension in the house had cleared, for many of those who had brought it were gone, and Mary and her daughters had come out into the wide courtyard now. Jesus no longer looked mad. He looked more than calm. He looked calming. Mary had the very strange feeling, not for the last time, that her son was the mother and she the child, that he was capable of all things, and his hands were spread open as he spoke.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
“The things he said!” Simon said.
Joses was quiet while the other brothers nodded in agreement, dipping their bread in the spicy lamb stew, and when Mary said nothing, Judas said, “Well, at least you should be a little upset, Mother.”
“Who are you?” she said, “to tell me when to be upset and when not to be?”
She dipped her bread in the sauce and stirred it around until, from where John was eating, it seemed that she had forgotten she even held the morsel.
“You have no idea of the things that upset me.”
“Here, you sit,” James said to his cousins, “your feelings hurt over something Jesus said, or didn’t say to you, because you were stupid enough and angry enough to think you could drag him back to Nazareth, and what you were supposed to be was concerned for his safety. Which,” he looked at his aunt, “I assume Mary still is.”
Mary said nothing to this, and Judas Iscariot said, “We are all worried for his safety. And ours as well.”
He shook his head.
“But these are like the last days. These are the grandest days. What he said was true. The lame walk, the blind see. Water becomes wine. The sun dances in the sky. So even though the men from Jerusalem descend like black crows, even though Yochanon is still in prison, I cannot help but rejoice. Every day we wake up in joy.”
Jesus was not with them, though. After speaking, he had wrapped his great mantle about himself and gone walking out of the town. They had thought he might have gone to the home of the Alphaeus family, but Matthew and Levi said he wasn’t there either. For once, John did not follow after him, assuming his need for loneliness. It was Magdalene, all in white who, finding him on the edge of the shore, in the breezes that swept from the lake, walked beside him as day turned to night.
“I am exhausted by anger,” he said to her at last. “And wearied by unbelief.”
Their feet padded along the hard packed wet sand.
“And confusion,” he added. “And… are they not right? Should not the Christ come in fire and water and rage? Storm into Jerusalem as I did that day? Not be here, with these riddles… and parlor tricks by the water of Galilee?”
“If you want to feel sorry for yourself I’m not here for that,” Magdalene said. “And if you are who you say you are, you don’t need me to remind you of it.”
“What if I do?” he said, stopping so that his feet sank into the sand and made little pools. “What if, this day, your particular brand of tough love is…”
“Unhelpful?”
“Most unhelpful.”
“Look at me,” Magdalene said.
He did.
“When has there ever been a Messiah before?”
“Every crowned king was a messiah—”
“Don’t be technical and don’t be obtuse.”
“The prophets spoke of a priest king and of a warrior king, and I am neither.”
“We all know the prophets speak in clarity of things they see in a haze, and put in God’s mouth their own desires. Even Yochanon. Especially Yochanon.”
“There was never a Christ. Until now. You cannot get it wrong. Whatever you do, this is what the Christ does. We all stood by the water when the voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son.’ We were there. And whatever Yochanon said you would be, whatever people were getting ready for, when he saw you, he said nothing about warriors, kings or priests. He said behold the Lamb of God.”
“What,” Jesus demanded, “in the absolute fuck is a lamb of God?”
“I believe that if we continue to be patient and follow you, then you will show us. So you need to believe that if you are patient, God will show you.”
“You are home,” Mary said when Jesus came to the roof top,. She was sitting with Rachel and Anne, with Ahinoam and Ada.
Magdalene came up beside him, and they all looked over the pier to the flat crystal of he Sea of Galilee stretching before them in the night.
“Mother, I love you,” Jesus said.
Mary laughed.
“And I you, my troublesome son.”
“Were you offended? Today?”
“Did you not say blessed is she who takes no offense in me?”
“Did I?” he shook his head. “I say so many things. No one is writing them down.”
“Someone will write them down,” Rachel shook her head.
“And get the them wrong, no doubt,” Ada said.
“To answer your question,” said Mary.”No.
“However you spoke it, whatever you spoke when you said those words, my heart was like…. Like a wall that cracked open as a flower blossomed through it.
“When I carried you, those months, the first time I was a mother, and when you came into the world… that whole time is difficult to speak of, sweet and bitter and strange and holy. It was full of a pain and joy and… a wonder I have never spoken of, or spoken of very little. To be your mother was no small thing. It is no small thing. Until this moment you had followers…”
“Now you have family,” Magdalene said.
“There could be no other way to make a new Israel.”
“What is all this talk of a new Israel?” Rachel said beside her sister.
“Come and see,” Jesus said, half bemused, a little amused.
“You told Nikodemos that he must be born again,” Magdalene said, “but is it truly that we must… bear you again?”
Mary Magdalene rose, and when she went down into the house, Rachel wondered, “What is she about?”
“I have learned to not question her,” her sister Anne said.
And a little while later, Magdalene came up the stair followed in silence by Joanna, and Magdalene placed before them, white in the night, the alabaster cup Jesus had seen from the night when she had poured oil on him. The red stone in its belly was black in the evening, and Joanna poured wine in it, and then Magdalene raised the cup, and the words she murmured were barely audible.
“Blessed are you, Mother of all creation, through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink.”
Jesus bowed his head and murmured with the rest of them: “Blessed be She forever.”
Magdalene lowered the chalice to him, and he drank first and drank deeply, and then he passed it to her. She drank, and passed to Mary, and Mary passed it to her daughters, and in the night, under the stars they downed the drink.
Rachel looked at Jesus, her mouth and chest still burning with the wine. His face was shining in the night and he looked like one of those Greek gods on the floor mosaics of fancy houses. She trembled.
“Who are you?” Rachel demanded.
Jesus smiled faintly at his little sister and repeated:
“Come and see.”
Far out on the water, the fishing boats were sailing toward the middle, and the autumn winds were building. The beach stretched before them, curving like a great crescent, and waves washing up onto hard packed sand.
“I need the water of a bath,” John said. “And I need the bed.”
“I could sleep for days,” Jesus said in the midst of a yawn, and turned away from the lake. They set out on the main street, passing the great synagogue, now a scene of so many battles. It held rooms for visitors and traveling rabbis, but Jesus sensed there was no longer room for him. Thomas had said, “We are coming toward a crisis,” and Jesus thought that was a little dramatic, but certainly things were not as free and easy as they had been so short a time ago.
No, he thought, as they walkd through the merely symbolic town gate, traveling toward the large house of the Alphaeus family, from the very beginning there had been some opposition, and how could there not be? He was coming to bring about a new world.
Matthew had been the most enthusiastic about ridding himself of all he had, but this was impractical, and so he and his brother James Alphaeus had simply opened their home to all of the followers of Jesus. There was a growing number of disciples, of people traveling from as far as Syria up north and Perea, south of Judea, and here was a place for them to stay. Here, in the courtyards where whores and tax collectors had thrown great parties and done all manner of things, whores and tax collectors still were—what a scandal. But now no woman had to make a living on her back, and they cared for the many children who found their way here, or for their own children.
The great house was like a gentle beehive, and Matthew went about with Alphaeus, who had always wanted to nurture someone or something, attending to the many visitors as well as those who came and never left.
In silence, John and Jesus came through the door, and in silence Judas, rocking a child to sleep, greeted them. Jesus shut the door behind him and Judas, sniffing Jesus, mouthed to John the word, “Bath.”
He went up the stairs with the sleeping child, and then came back down, and they moved toward the center of the house where the baths were. Over them, Jesus murmured the prayer of blessing and they stripped. Climbing down into the pools of warm water and sighing as the water rose to their necks, dozing in the water in the darkened room, spreading out their fingers, stretching their limbs, and unbending their tired bodies.
In time they found soap and sponge and strigil and scrubbed themselves and each other, splashing about lazily in midnight waters before, finally, Jesus rose, the water falling from his shoulders and down his body, and he wrapped a mantle clean and white as a new day about himself. He reached down to the bench and put on his copper bracelet and saw John’s beside it.
And now John and Judas were coming out, content to dry in the air of the bath house while Jesus took an ivory comb and oil through his tangles of hair. In silence they all left the bath house, John and Judas nude behind him, and climbed the steps of the house to the luxury that Matthew had given Jesus, a prophet’s room, his own room, away from all others, away from prying eyes and endless visitors. There he let his mantle fall to the floor. There he wrapped one arm about Judas, and one about John, and they both kiss him. Barely visible in the last of the moonlight, the kiss which begins short, lengthened, intensified, and their hands rose and fell, and Jesus drew them down into the blackness of the bed where, laughing in each others arms, they delighted each other until, together, they fall into sleep.
