Centurion: Mark's Gospel as a Thriller (21 page)

I drop to my knees and lay my face in the dirt. "What's happening?"

It's Petra who answers me. "The people know their Scripture."

Miles laughs wildly, his face pressed against the ground. "We were wrong. We were all wrong!"

"About what?" I say, frustrated. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

Petra stands, and we follow his lead, looking ahead at the Teacher, who's now hundreds of yards in front of us. "He's finally answering us." Petra takes a huge gulp of air and tries to calm himself. Then, with a thousand-watt smile, he declares, "He intends to be our warrior king, our messiah of liberation."

"But...how do you know?"

"Prophecy," Miles says. "It's a fulfillment of the Scripture. The prophet Zechariah said, 'Rejoice greatly, O Holy City! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a colt. He will take away the chariots and the warhorses from the Holy City, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and to the ends of the earth.'"

A chill envelops my body as I understand; we're playing witness to a virgin chapter of history. The messiah will lay siege to the Holy City...in peace.

We run to catch up with the Teacher's impromptu parade, reaching them as they pass through the city gates and enter the holiest and most dangerous city on earth. We've now arrived at the point of no return. The Teacher triumphantly has entered the city, openly receiving the calls of our people, who cry out, "Deliver us! Free us, oh, messiah! Carry us home!"

The Kingdom won't stand for this. To openly identify oneself as the messiah is a crime punishable by death. The trouble officially has begun.

Just inside the gates a new commotion breaks out. I've just noticed the conspicuous absence of centurions when a child screams, "King Charles! It's
King Charles! He's come to the Holy City! Praise God forevermore! Our king comes to bless the people!"

The child's announcement sends an already excited crowd into an electric frenzy. Many, but not all, drop their palm branches and run feverishly in the direction of the child, who leads them away. "Let us bow before our true king!" they scream. "Let us pay tribute to the venerable King Charles, the only son of God!"

And like that, the magic of the Teacher's reverie is broken, the energy crashing as quickly as it was built. "Pathetic," I mutter to Jude. "These people make me sick, their eagerness to grovel before the Kingdom."

"I told you from the start," Jude says, "these poets and dreamers aren't made for war. They cut and run at the first sign of trouble. Not a spine in a single one of them."

"When do we go see the men? Are they in position?"

"Yes. They await our signal in the hills, high above the city walls. We'll meet Henrik tonight and finalize our plans."

"Good. And then I'll go to Maria. She should be here by now."

"Fine, but for the afternoon, we must stay close with the Teacher and track his every move."

"Speaking of," I say, looking around, "where'd he go?"

"To the temple!" someone answers me, rushing by. "The Teacher has gone to the Holy Temple for prayer."

I haven't been to the Holy Temple since I left for school. A magnificent cathedral of white stone and marble, it's the holiest site of our religion, the place where we meet God directly and have our sins forgiven. My parents brought me every year for the Great Festival. We came for the purity rituals, to offer sacrifices, and to celebrate. These memories are some of the fondest of my life.

I remember the first time I saw this place: the enormous columns that seemed to reach all the way to heaven, the brilliantly colored frescos, and the altar table that looked as heavy as the earth itself. All of it felt so sacred and real to me, and I gave thanks to God for his grace—for providing such a place to worship. Approaching this sacred space now brings all these memories back into my heart. I've sorely missed standing upon holy ground.

We hear it before we see it. If I were to live another thousand years and receive a thousand opportunities to predict what happens next, I never would get it right.

Not in a thousand years. Not ever. Not once.

Inside the heavy iron doors of the temple are the moneychangers, the men who sell animals for sacrifice. They've set up tables around the temple, offering their goods to any man with enough money for purchase. In the middle of these men stands the Teacher.

He's screaming at the top of his lungs, flipping over the moneychanger's tables. He's irate. His eyes burn with anger, his face as flushed as a man who hasn't breathed in more than a minute. He storms around the temple, kicking at the tables and tossing buckets of money, driving out any man doing business in this sacred place. The religious authorities holler at him, ordering for him to stop the madness, but the Teacher pays them no mind.

He wrecks the place, thrashing about until every table is destroyed. He cries, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers! You thieves!"

He keeps teaching this way—
angrily
—for another hour. I expect the religious authorities to attack him at any moment and shut him up. I've never seen anything so outlandish in my life. Here I am—prepared to murder King Charles—and I can't believe what this man is doing.

But they don't arrest him. Then I realize what's happening.

"They're afraid of him," I say to Jude. "They fear us as well. His following has reached a critical mass. They won't move on him."

"The religious authorities won't let this go unpunished," Jude says, picking at the skin on his small hands, looking completely unbothered by what's happening. "They won't allow this sacrilege during the Great Festival."

Annoyed, I leave Jude and move about the frenzied scene, angling myself as close to the religious authorities as possible. I confirm Jude's suspicion. They want the Teacher dead, and they're prepared to petition the Kingdom in order to get it done. One of them, a man with a gray beard who looks like the leader, says, "We can't allow this fraud to disrupt the Great Festival. With King Charles in the Holy City, there will be harsh penalties if our people don't behave. Something must be done about this—and now. We can't afford to wait.
King Charles will have the temple shut down, and the Great Festival will be ruined. Then we'll have to answer to God for the malaise."

I slink away from the religious authorities and draw close again to the Teacher, who continues to teach amid the rubble he's created. As usual the crowd is spellbound, seemingly unaware or without care that the Teacher has made a mess of their sacred temple.

The Teacher looks as tired as ever. As soon as I return to listening to him, he finishes and motions that the time has come to depart. On our way out, Gray Beard, says, "By what authority are you doing these things?"

The Teacher stops walking, turns, and says, "I'll ask you one question. Answer me, and I'll tell you by what authority I do these things." Gray Beard nods. "Did the ministry of the Baptist, my mentor, come from heaven, or was it of human origin? Answer me."

The religious authorities huddle among themselves and argue with one another, saying, "If we say, "From heaven,' he will say, 'Why then did you not believe him?'"

"Why are they afraid to say 'of human origin'?" I ask Jude.

"Because they know the Baptist was a prophet and their governor had him killed."

Finally Gray Beard says, "We don't know."

The Teacher grins before calmly walking over to the lone chair still standing upright and kicks it hard. The chair screeches wildly across the marble floor, careening to the feet of the religious authorities, who jump out of the way. "Then neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things." With that he exits the temple.

This gives me a knot in my stomach, and I tell Jude, "We'd better move quickly, before he gets us all killed."

Outside the Holy Temple, we discover the Teacher isn't ready to call it a day.

"Lord have mercy," Jude says. "We'll all die tonight if he keeps this madness up."

"Shut up, Jude," Petra orders. "The Teacher knows what he's doing. We must trust him, now more than ever. Don't be such a coward."

The people who departed to pay tribute to King Charles have returned. The destruction of the temple has created fresh buzz over the Teacher and his
presence in the Holy City. The students help him climb atop a granite obelisk where he addresses the newly invigorated crowd. "I have one more story for the evening," he says. "Let those with ears listen."

The crowd falls quiet, save for one lone voice that cries out, "Give us truth, Teacher! We've come for salvation! Show us the way to God!"

"A man planted a vineyard," the Teacher begins, "put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect his share of the produce of the vineyard. But they seized him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed." The people hiss in response. The Teacher shrugs. "He sent another slave to them. This one they beat over the head and insulted." The crowd boos and hisses even louder. "Then he sent another, and that one they killed. So it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. He had one man left, a beloved son."

A little girl sitting near the Teacher calls out, "Did he send his son to the tenants?"

The Teacher smiles for the first time since he sat atop the colt. "Yes, for he thought the tenants would respect his son."

"Did they?" the child asks.

The Teacher says, "The tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come. Let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard."

The girl jumps to her feet in protest. "What will the owner of the vineyard do?"

Looking directly at the religious authorities, the Teacher says, "He'll come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'?"

Again the religious authorities explode in anger, understanding fully that the Teacher is speaking against them. Many of them openly discuss stoning him right here and right now, but Gray Beard knows better. "Should we kill him, the people will revolt against us, and we'll all be dead." Then, breaking away from his own, he approaches the Teacher and says, "Young teacher, I see you're sincere and show deference to no one, for you don't regard people with
partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Tell us then, is it lawful for our people to pay taxes to King Charles?"

"Why are you putting me to this test?" the Teacher asks. He waits for an answer, but one doesn't come. "Never mind. Bring me a World coin, and let me see it."

I reach for a coin in my own pocket and toss it to the Teacher. Catching it in his hand, he says, "Whose head is this on the coin? Who is this man?"

"King Charles," I answer loudly for all to hear.

Miles, who stands near me, says, "This is it—he's going to whip up a rebellion. Get ready, boys. Our time has come!"

The Teacher lifts the coin high in the air and turns himself in a full circle, regarding the crowd who's come to listen. "Give to the king the things that are his...and give to God the things that are God's."

"What?" Petra says, breathless and crestfallen. "No...what is he saying?"

A discontented murmur shoots through the crowd. Sensing a turn in the momentum, Gray Beard says, "One more question, Teacher! Which commandment in Scripture is the first of all?"

Without skipping a beat, the Teacher says, "The first is, 'Hear, O People: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

After that no one dares ask the Teacher any more questions.

I don't even care, because the Teacher's words have struck a chord deep within me. It was this teaching, "To love others as we love ourselves," that stole my love from me. Maria believes this supposedly wise virtue, and because of it, she left me to care for Alejandro.

And here I find myself...in the Holy City, on the brink of a war, alone.

I blame no one but the Teacher for it.

e meet Henrik beneath the cover of darkness. The Holy City is a marvelously intricate metropolis with hundreds of high-rises, diverse neighborhoods, and plenty of dark alleys where men can meet for stealthy conversation—even when the city is filled to capacity, as it is now.