Fifth Gospel (18 page)

WISE MEN, RICH MEN AND LEPERS

J
esus
walked the road that led from Nazareth to Judea with his feet moving of their own accord and his thoughts vacant in his head.

During his c
onversation with his stepmother what had lived embedded in him like a seal on wax had begun its leave-taking. This had made him feel bewildered and abandoned, and unable to think coherent thoughts. His movements too followed only a predetermined design, towards the man who would take his destiny further.

At daybreak
, a windstorm announced itself in the anger of a red sky. Soon the air had picked up the sand around him to sting his eyes. He stumbled and fell. Two men dressed in white garments with hoods over their heads and scarves over their faces came from the road ahead. They were leading an overburdened mule.

The taller man helped him up
, and said loudly over the din, ‘What’s this? Jesus of Nazareth, is that you? Where are you going alone, my son?’

Jesus looked up at him, trying to understand words that no longer made sense.
When his voice came from his mouth it sounded hollow, as if it came not from him but from the wind, ‘I am going to where people like you do not wish to direct your vision, where human pain can find the consolation that comes from what you have forgotten!’

‘Jesus of Nazareth!’ the other man shouted. ‘Do you not remember us from Engaddi?’
The man took the scarf from his face momentarily. ‘Do you see who I am?’

The shorter
man did likewise, and said, ‘I once sat with you in the grotto…do you remember?’

Jesus did not see them
clearly. He saw however, what they represented.

‘Come away from this scorching wind!’ the taller one said
, ‘The Lord is a storm come to sweep away the world.’

‘You are lost lambs!’ Jesus coughed
, walking away.

‘
We are all lost, Jesus!’ the shorter one cried, ‘It does not matter how many psalms we sing, or how many temples we build, God continues to deny us our Messiah!’

Jesus
stood in the tempest of elements and looked at them. ‘And when I become your shepherd,’ he said, ‘when you realise who I am, you will run away again and become lost, just as you ran away from me long ago.’

The men put scarves to
their mouths to ward off the dust and debris.

The shorter man said, ‘
You must come with us…you are not well. Not far from here there is a house of the order where you can rest.’

‘
Leave me be!’ he said to them. ‘I won’t go to your secluded house! You wear white and you pretend to be pure, but you are not pious men in your hearts, because in you burns a fire that has not been kindled by God but by your own ambitions. You bear the mark of the tempter! It is the tempter that has made you arrogant, so that your wool glitters with his fire!’ He put his fingers to his face. ‘But the hair of this wool you try to pull over me pricks my eyes.’

The taller man shouted, ‘
Rest assured, Jesus, it is the dust that pricks your eyes! You know we have shown the tempter the door, he has no part in what we do…you should’ve stayed with us, now look at what the world has made of you! Let us help you!’

‘
Oh what arrogance and pride! But you are only greater than others because you stand on their backs!’

They did not know how to respond
to this and he left them standing in the desert. Behind him the mule made its loud complaints, shaking its head, as the breath of Jehova carried the world away to blot out the sun.

The storm abated
, and days passed without beginning and without end.

It was night.

Fatigued and cold Jesus wandered towards a light in the distance. When he drew near to it, he saw a man sitting by a fire preparing to eat a meal. When the man looked up, he stood in a hurry, afraid, and called out to Jesus with a mustered boldness,

‘Who are you? I am alone but I have a knife
, and I shall not be afraid to use it!’

Jesus showed him his empty hands. ‘I thirst,’ he said
, knowing he must pause, for his legs would soon give out from under him.

The man came to Jesus
and helped him to a place beside the fire.

‘
Forgive me…I am constantly afraid of being robbed by thieves or killed by bandits! I see you are no thief and no bandit…come, be my guest, eat at my table. I have made soup,’ he said, showing Jesus the watery stew which he was pouring into a bowl. ‘There’s crow in it and wild mushrooms,’ he pointed out those meagre morsels with an approving eye, ‘and some other wild things I have no name for. Once, you know, I would have spat at the thought of such a meal, but now I shake with anticipation. Look at my hands how they shake. Because of the crow, I have made it boil a good long while, to kill the poison. That is what it has come to, still, thanks be to God, I have something!’ He sighed, ‘Israel mourns, Israel hungers, its people cry out in pain for deliverance, but first I must cry out for something to put into my belly! After that, a man can turn his mind to the hunger of the soul. In the meantime we are all animals…’ He looked at Jesus. ‘You need something in your belly too, I’ll wager. You look like you have eaten nothing in days. Come, it’s good you’ll see, I have let it boil long to kill the poison…’

Jesus shook his head.
‘I want only water.’

‘Only water…!’ the man said
, peering at him with more intensity. ‘Are you a prophet? Yesterday I heard tell from a holy man of a prophet in these parts. So help me God! He was described to seem just like you! Many don’t trust prophets, they think them mad people, one foot in heaven and the other in hell…but I believe it a good thing to know a prophet who can speak to God.’

The man gave him some water, which Jesus drank with gratitude
. After that he looked at the man and said, ‘I thank you for the water…but I am not a prophet.’

‘What a shame!’ The man
’s spirit drooped. He took a thoughtful gulp of his soup. ‘If you were a prophet,’ he continued, ‘I would ask you to speak to God on my behalf…on account of the paths my soul has taken.’

Jesus was directed to an apparition that loomed large
and red over the man. ‘What are these paths? I have seen you before, a thousand years ago. You were different then!’

The man
grew fearful. ‘What do you see? Oh, dear God of Abraham, what do you see? Is it the Devil sitting on my shoulders? Is it?’ He shuddered and moaned, and shuddered again. ‘Would you send it away? It hounds me. I have given up everything, and yet it follows me! I admit that I was never a pious man. My heart was always bent on acquiring riches and high honours and I thought that I was of greater value than others. One day I had a terrible dream. I saw what had made me rich. It was not I, myself, it was a black angel with huge red wings, and I was terrified because I knew that it was the devil! I took to my heels to escape him, abandoning everything, and I have been going about for a long time, fleeing from what sits on my own shoulders.’  When he said this, his eyes clouded with tears and he seemed to be lost in a vision of his own wretchedness.

‘I have seen this spirit
that hounds you before,’ Jesus said to him, ‘at the pagan altars…it is the spirit of pride and arrogance!’

‘Yes…yes…!’ the man said
with eyes wide. ‘Pride and arrogance! Exactly! That is my weakness!’

Jesus
could not help him, he could not help anyone, not yet…something was waiting for him in the river and he had to go. He stood then and with a heart full of sorrow, left the man in his misery.

He walked day
after day, with the sun’s fingers on his brow and spent the nights huddled, trembling from cold, with his teeth chattering and only the robe his stepmother had made for him wrapped around him. On the morning of the twelfth day, when the fire-ball came out of its rocky bed he was up again, walking, and came upon the disfigured shape of a man sitting beneath a solitary tree.

Already the world was a furnace and he knew he
must have shade, but as he neared the tree the man sitting there raised his head and Jesus saw that his skin was covered in pustules that were leaking with suppurations, that his nose was a hole in his face and that the lids over his eyes were gone missing, giving him the look of a living cadaver. The leper tried in vain to cover his malignancies with a hand eaten and ravaged.

‘Go away!’ he said to Jesus. ‘I am foul! Hurry! Do
n’t come near, for the path I walk is not your path, my son. I beg you to leave while you can…!’

Jesus
sat near the man and wiped his brow with a sleeve. ‘It is hot,’ he said.

‘Yes
, yes, it is hot, but please, save yourself! Must I take upon my soul your death on top of everything else I have to bear?’

Jesus heard snakes hissing behind rocks and when he looked
at the leper he saw blue wings and a cold eye. He had seen this eye before in the faces of those Temple priests. The eye looked at him while its wings enfolded the man.

‘Tell me,
’ Jesus said to him, ‘where has the path your soul has taken, led you? I know you, I saw you thousands of years ago, but you are now changed, you are come down to earth!’

The leper
was terrified. He sucked in a breath through the purple edged crater that was his mouth, and from within this cavern he emitted a strangled voice, ‘Do you see it? Oh the misery! Where is the Messiah? When will he come to release me from this dreadful thing that claws into my flesh? He came so gradually, you know. At first I thought he was the Archangel Gabriel and I adored him, but I soon realised that he was another…I realised he was the angel of death! Death itself gnaws at my bones and feeds on my flesh…look at me! Me, a learned rabbi, a powerful man in the synagogue! Now I am defiled and no one will have me near them, and I have to walk alone in desolate places like this, scarcely able to beg for what scraps people will give me at their doors.

‘
When you came I was waiting for death to tear me to pieces with his jaws…I have waited! But he wants to torture me more.’ He began weeping then into his ulcerated hands.

‘I have seen
it,’ Jesus told him, putting a hand on the man’s shoulders, ‘It is the sharpness of your dead thoughts, rabbi...these are like corpses and rotting carcasses.’

T
he man was so frightened that put both hands over his face to ward off the picture of it.

Jesus
pointed his head to the sun and bellowed an, ‘Ah!’ into that white light that blinded his eyes. ‘I am a grain of sand in the desert! What can a grain of sand do?’ he said to it.

He
got up, hot tears falling on the dirt at his feet, and went on his way.

And
like the wise men and the rich man, this leper did not see him go until he was a speck on the horizon.

A NEW SEASON

I
t
was in the fifteenth year of the rule of Tiberias, on a day when Venus stood in Aquarius, that John the Baptiser awoke feeling his muscles and sinews taut, his mind awake and alert and his heart calm.

The sun had popped up out of its desert crib to cast its fiery eye over Israel and to beat upon the brows of men and the backs of beasts. Each day he faced this sun
, standing waist deep in that freezing river, observing with an unfaltering eye the whirling tumult of dead thoughts and sins that were discharged into the river from the souls of those whom he baptised. Each day he wondered where the strength would come for his work and each day he was given the forces necessary. But this day something was altered. In himself he felt it, the nearness of the fulfilment of his task, accompanied by a strange bewilderment, since he found himself desiring to forestall it!

I
n this mood he left his hut of rushes to say his prayers to the God of Israel and to perform his ablutions before taking himself to that little bend in the river near Bethany, situated in the lower Jordan.

Large
crowds came to be baptised and he worked for hours without pause, looking into each soul to determine its measure and value, dividing the lambs from the vipers. Near the midpoint of the day the leaders of these vipers arrived at the river, a deputation of priests and Levites upon asses preceded by a retinue of guards whose swords caught the bold sunlight and reflected their sharp sting into John’s eyes. They pushed aside the crowds to allow the priests to come to the shore.

Well…well…his words had moved across the land, so that even the
Temple in Jerusalem had heard of him! He was pleased for the sake of his task.

He said to them, ‘The Masters of the ancient wisdom of the snake, the brood of vipers, the initiates of Lucifer
, have come!’

One Pharisee
said from his high position, ‘We are here on behalf of the Sanhedrin, to ask you some questions.’

‘Questions?’
the baptiser said, looking about with mockery in his eye. ‘If you come asking questions concerning laws that are written in books, you will not find anything here to satisfy you. I do not answer to laws that indicate this or that to be right or wrong. I answer only to the power that exists in every man to know right from wrong in his own heart!’

‘
Heresy!’ the Pharisee said, ‘A son of Abraham must follow the laws of Moses!’

The Baptist looked at him
with flares for eyes. ‘You make much of having Abraham for a father, but this alone does not make you worthy! Your body of flesh is like the stones at your feet, in the same way that you can pick up any of these stones and make it yours God can make any man, a child of Abraham.’

Gasps came from the priests. Rants and raves and astonishment
filled the air. ‘You dare to say that any man can be a child of Abraham? Any man can enter the lineage of the blood tree of your forebears, which is sanctified by God?’

The Baptist roared like a lion
at them, ‘Why do you call on this dying tree! God has given me the axe and I will cut it down!’ He pointed to the people and cried, ‘Israel! This tree no longer bears good fruit!’

The delegation was turned over into a rumble of voices. The guards stood at the ready with their weapons.

‘Jerusalem!’ He pointed at the delegation. ‘Your laws and your knowledge were brought to you by way of Moses, but the time of these laws is finished now! Soon, grace and truth will come into the world by way of the anointed one. He will descend to earth so that the blind sons of Israel may see Him! But only those who can hear the voice of conscience in their hearts will recognise him!’

The
rabbis, priests, and Levites talked in an excited fashion among themselves shaking their heads and distorting their countenances. They could not agree. Meanwhile in the crowds, a man called out to John,

‘But how shall we become good men? What is this voice you speak of that is in the heart?’

John the Baptiser answered, ‘Do you not shrink to see others cold or hungry? Do you, who have much, not hear a voice that tells you to help those who have little? This voice speaks tenderly in the wilderness of your soul, and it will say to you - he who has two coats, let him share with him who has none and he who has meat, let him do likewise.’

Then a publican called out, ‘But what of our livelihood?  We
have to earn a living from the sale of shelter and food! What will you have us do? Give men a bed, and a bowl of soup for free, to be good?’

‘Listen t
o the voice. It will say:
Do not ask for more than is rightfully yours.
’

The soldiers
who were Herod’s men and had come with the priests and Levites, asked him, ‘How can we soldiers be good men if we must use a sword and accuse others for our wages?’

John the Baptist told them, ‘
The voice will say: do not do violence to any man and do not accuse another falsely. What you do must be good and right, if you are to take to yourself your wages and be content.’

‘Who are you?’ Another Pharisee called out, ‘Are you the
Messiah?’

John knew these questions needed to be asked
, to prevent confusion in the people’s minds, and so he answered, ‘Listen to me…all of you. Know that I am
not
the Christ. He shall come after me!’

‘Do you say that you are Elijah, then?’ Another priest said.

John shook his head, ‘I am sent in the
spirit
of Elijah.’

‘But it is said that a prophet will come before the
Messiah comes. Are you not that prophet?’

‘I have told you…do not look at me, look for that other who will come!’

‘Who do you say that you are? We must return to tell those who have sent us, the council of great men at the Sanhedrin,’ that same Pharisee said.

‘Tell them that I am the voice of the soul
, crying in solitude, cut off from the likes of those who hold fast to the blood of Abraham. I am the free voice without a folk who seeks Him who comes to sustain me!’

‘Why do you preach repentance and baptise
, and make pure men, if you are not a prophet, or Elijah, or the Messiah?’ a Levite gave back.

‘I baptise with water, but there stands one among you that you do not recognise
. He has the forces derived from a higher source than mine! He is mightier than me for I am not worthy to stoop down to unloosen even the laces of his sandals. I baptise you with water. I do this in preparation for Him who will baptise men not with water, but with the Holy Spirit fire!’

‘Is he here?’

John’s heart was full with joy, ‘I feel he is among us!’

The priests looked about them.

Each man searched his neighbour.

‘Where is he?’ they asked.

‘You shall not see Him until He makes himself known to you.’

The priests
mocked him and said he was a madman. They told the crowds that no man should believe such lies and with their dispositions proud, gathered to them the reins of their animals and took themselves and their soldiers from the shores of the river. But two members of the Sanhedrin remained behind and sat among the crowds. John sensed that these men had been touched by his words.

After that, h
e continued with his work until the sun reached its zenith, and the crowds began, as was their custom, to disperse for the midday meal. Now standing alone in the chilling water, he saw a man step forward and come to the edge of the river.

He
put a hand up over his eyes to see, for the sun’s rays were shimmering on the surface of the river, blinding him.

He recognised
the man’s form and the contours of his face. How bright did the sun shine at that moment! As if its body were leaning over to touch the river! John squinted, and still he could not see and yet he did see. This was a man he knew, and yet it was not simply that he saw a man he knew, for this man, whom he had met at Qumran, seemed not to be there at all, but in his place was a soul that he recognised in its essential foundations. It was as if he were looking at his own reflection, a part of himself, long lost and forgotten. Did this soul that came towards him not seem like the youngest and purest soul in the world? And was this not the opposite of his own soul, which felt to him ancient, cracked, and used up, like an old jug emptied of its contents?

His heart near burst with the mighty
impression this thought created and his eyes filled with tears. He let go his staff into the water for he knew that the day he had longed for had arrived, and it had brought to him the reason for his very existence.