Poisoned Honey: A Story of Mary Magdalene (27 page)

Then there was Matthew, the despicable, Roman-loving, neighbor-gouging toll collector. Not only did Yeshua and all his followers not spit at Matthew, they
ate meals
with him. So a strange young woman who was seized with visions now and then should fit right into this group. A smile tugged at my lips.

As I looked up and down the road at the little band, I felt something I hadn’t felt for years. I felt like my young self back in the days when I took it for granted that I was safe and cared for. I felt like a chick, one in a nestful. I felt at home.

Tears stung my eyes. Joanna must have noticed, because she put an arm around my shoulders as we walked. “Don’t grieve, Miryam. The sadness is behind you now. Yeshua tells us to rejoice in being together, as if we were at a wedding.”

I wiped my eyes with a corner of my scarf and smiled at her. “I am rejoicing. But I’m not used to it, so it makes me cry.”

When the sun was overhead, we paused by a creek. These streams dried up in the summer’s heat, but now they were still running, watering the oaks and bay trees in the folds of the hills. Yeshua blessed the bread and broke it, we ate, and then most of the group lay down in the shade for a rest.

I wasn’t tired, and I noticed Yeshua going off by himself. He climbed the grassy hillside for a distance and sat down under a tree. On an impulse, I stood up and followed him. I almost turned back, thinking that he might want to be alone for a while. But he could see me climbing toward him. I thought that if he didn’t want my company, he had only to frown or make a gesture.

Instead, Yeshua watched me with friendly interest. As I
came closer, he motioned to the grass nearby, and I sat down. “What is on your heart, Miryam?” he asked.

I wanted to tell him, but at the same time, I was afraid I would give the wrong answer. Speaking hesitantly, watching the rabbi for any sign of disgust or anger, I told him about my worry that the demons could reinfest me. “When you first healed me, I thought they were gone for good.
You’d
driven them out, so how could they return? But now I’m worried that they’re only awaiting their chance….” Frightened by my own words, I stopped talking.

Yeshua nodded. “I think you’re right. That’s the way of demons.”

I stared at him, horror-struck. I’d expected him to reassure me that the demons were banished forever.

Yeshua himself looked sober but not worried. He gazed into the distance as if remembering. Then he said, “Miryam … tell me about your visions.”

My throat constricted, and I was afraid to speak. What if the rabbi decided that I might infect the whole group with unclean spirits and ordered me not to follow him? At the same time, I wanted very badly to tell him about the mission that had beckoned to me since I was a child. So I began, haltingly at first, and then more easily as his face showed wonder and delight.

I told Yeshua about my vision of the mustard seed, and about the mustard seedling that Chava tore up. Encouraged by his attention, I went on to tell him about the time I stood on Mount Arbel with my father and saw the world with the eyes of my soul. And I told him how the prophet Miryam had appeared to me in a dream, and cleansed me in her well in the
mikvah
.

Yeshua’s eyes shone as he listened. He was silent for a moment, and then he said hoarsely, “Miryam, my sister. I’ve been so lonely. I’ve prayed for a companion who would understand….” He looked into my eyes, and then suddenly he laughed. “To tell the truth, I prayed for a
brother
to be my soul mate. The Lord loves a joke, doesn’t he?”

Light with relief, I laughed, too. All I cared about was that Yeshua was glad for my company.

He nodded in the direction of the creek, where the others were rousing themselves, splashing water on their faces, shaking out their cloaks. “Good, then!” said Yeshua. “It’s time to go on.”

“Wait—” I jumped to my feet, remembering his first comment on my visions. “You said I was right that
they”—I
didn’t want to name the demons—“were only waiting for their chance. You’ll protect me, won’t you?”

He gazed at me with his deep eyes. “Your own visions will protect you, if you honor them. I’m sure of that.”

I didn’t really understand what he meant, but for now, I was happy. I climbed down the slope after him.

Over the next few days, Yeshua led us from village to village in the Galilee hills. Almost every day, either walking or resting, Yeshua took time to talk with me. He explained further what he’d meant about my visions protecting me. “If you try not to use the gift, your soul will be like an empty house, and the demons will move back in. But if you choose to nurture the gift and use it for other people, you’ll be filled with
sophia
, the spirit of holy wisdom. Your soul will be like a house full of fierce angels, and the demons will flee from you.” Yeshua was so free in his own way of thinking that he freed me to say aloud my most startling ideas. The day before we reached Nazareth, I told him that the prophet Miryam had appeared to me once again, in a dream. “I’m meant to be the sister of your soul, as she was Moses’s sister,” I said. “She says you are the new Moses that everyone has been waiting for. I am to watch over you, the way Miryam of old watched over her brother Moses in the Nile River.” A further thought struck me, and I smiled. “And I actually did find you in the reeds at the water’s edge!”

“You’ll watch over me?” Yeshua gave me a teasing look.
“You
found
me
? I seem to remember finding
you
in the reeds, rolled up in a net like a poisonous fish.” Immediately his face softened into a tender expression. “The Lord did send you to me. I know that.”

Toward evening, we reached Nazareth, a large village of stone houses clustered around a stone synagogue. Yeshua stopped outside the village. On his last visit, the elders had told him in no uncertain terms never to come back. Since Joanna and I had not been with the group at that time, we were sent to find his mother, Miryam, the widow of Yosef.

As the two of us came through the village, a boy directed us to a small house on the other side of Nazareth where Yosef’s widow lived with her older stepson. The rest of the family must have been out in the fields, because the house was empty. Yeshua’s mother knelt by a cook fire in the tiny courtyard, grinding spices for a stew.

When Joanna told her that Yeshua had come to see her, Yeshua’s mother clapped her hands like a child. “I knew he’d come back for me!” She took a cloak and a sack, already packed, from a peg, and I realized that she meant to join us for good. Yeshua’s mother had a fresh, sweet look, I thought; she reminded me a bit of my grandmother.

Yeshua’s face lit up as we approached the pile of boulders where he and the rest waited. Watching him and his mother embrace, I thought what a great joy it must be to have a son. And at the same time, what a dreadful blow it must be, to lose a son. Such a sorrow had untethered my grandmother’s mind.

We traveled on, circling back through the hills toward the lake and Capernaum. Yeshua walked beside his mother from time to time. They didn’t talk much, but she touched his arm, and he smiled at her.

Each village we passed through looked much the same: rough stone houses scattered over a hillside among terraces of grapevines and olive trees. In each, the stray dogs would rush out to bark at us as we neared the village. If the day was almost gone, there would be women at the well with their water jars.

But the character of each village was distinct, the way families will be different from one another. In one village, the elder would come out to greet Yeshua and offer hospitality. In another, the elder would send a surly nephew to warn us away. In still another, the villagers would slowly gather, neither welcoming nor rejecting but waiting to see what we would do. Almost always there was a desperate mother or father with a sick child. In that case, Yeshua stopped to pray for
healing, even if the village men were threatening him with rocks.

If the people welcomed us, whether immediately or cautiously, Yeshua gave a blessing to each person. Then he had them sit down on a hillside, and he stood in front of them to talk.

Yeshua began by gazing over the audience, whether it was twenty people or hundreds. He looked at each one of them with such fondness, as if he knew them well and was glad to be with them at last. And I saw the men and women gaze back at him like children with their father.

Although they hung on every word of Yeshua’s, I don’t think anyone understood half the things he said. It wasn’t that he spoke in Hebrew quotations, as scholars in the synagogue often did. His words were plain—but mysterious: “The kingdom of heaven is in the midst of you.”

Listening to Yeshua reminded me of when I was a child and tried looking at things upside down. His sayings turned my mind upside down: “Blessed are the poor.” “The last shall be first.” But then, when I thought about it, Yeshua’s behavior was as surprising as his words. He was courteous to the village elder, but he was just as courteous to the village idiot.

Even more startling to the villagers, I think, was the way the women in our group were treated. When we were on the road, I’d almost get used to it. Yeshua listened to women, he
talked to women; he expected us to have opinions and feelings and even valuable insight. Some of his male disciples accepted this more readily than others, but most of them followed his example.

Then we’d enter another village, and I’d see again the puzzled faces as they watched me and the other female disciples. I could almost hear their thoughts: Who are these women, that they look men straight in the eye? Who allows them to speak freely in front of men? Surely the rabbi will rebuke them for their boldness? And I’d remember how unusual, almost unheard of, it was for men to treat women as Yeshua did. The most unusual thing about it was, Yeshua seemed unaware that he was doing anything out of the ordinary.

One afternoon, as we walked another hilly stretch of road, Yeshua sought out my company. “Miryam,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about your gift for communing with the unseen world. You will be a bridge for the other disciples. They’ll need you for this.”

“You are the bridge, Rabbi!” I protested.

“Not forever,” he sighed. I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, but he went on quickly. “Let me tell you about the visions I had in the desert, before I came back to Galilee.”

A few years earlier, Yeshua said, he had been unsure
about how he should lead his life. He’d gone on a long, solitary fast in the desert, seeking an answer. For many days, he prayed for guidance and waited.

Out in the wilderness, wandering among barren outcrop-pings of rock, Yeshua had had visions of the power he could seize. “Miryam, I saw that I could be as mighty as Herod Antipas.” His voice turned grim. “I could gather an army tomorrow, march into Tiberias, and push the tyrant off his throne.”

His words called up my view of the world, years ago, from the top of Mount Arbel. I had seen the earth cut up into sections ruled by unjust governors and kings and emperors, grabbing from each other like selfish children with toys.

My heart hammered, almost choking me with excitement. “Yes!” I cried out. “You aren’t the new Moses—you are the Anointed One!” Why hadn’t I seen it before? Of course: our beloved Yeshua was
the Messiah!
Yeshua was shaking his head but I rushed on, “Not only Galilee but the whole world—you can conquer it! You can rule in peace and righteousness!”

Yeshua looked at me sorrowfully, waiting until I calmed down and closed my mouth. “Yes, Miryam, that’s what our people want. I wanted it, too, when I saw that vision. I burned to rush out, raise my army, and smash the tyrants. But
if I did sit on Antipas’s throne, what would that accomplish? What if I even overthrew the Romans and reigned as emperor?”

His tone of voice was low and soft, but it made shivers of horror run down my spine. I remembered a time I’d tried to forget, when the demons had crowned me Queen Mariamne. I remembered my drunken glee at my own power.

“In the end,” Yeshua went on, “it would only accomplish a great evil. It would turn
me
into Herod Antipas, or into Caesar. And Satan would have another worshipper.” He gazed into my eyes. “Do you see, Miryam?”

Shuddering, I nodded.

After a pause, Yeshua spoke again. “No, I’m not working for a kingdom that will rise and then fall, like Herod’s or Caesar’s. My kingdom is the kingdom of heaven on earth. For those who dwell in it, it lasts forever. Do you understand?”

I remembered the moment when I was healed, and how a world of wonders had opened to me. I nodded again.

“You do see, Miryam! You do understand! Thanks be to the Lord.” Taking me by the shoulders, Yeshua kissed me on one side of my face, then the other.

“Thanks be to the Lord!” I echoed.

Yeshua always talked with me in view of the other
disciples, and I could tell from their looks that the men wondered why he spent so much time with me. “Rabbi,” I overheard Simon saying that evening, “why do you speak privately with Miryam? What could you have to say to a woman that you couldn’t say in front of me?”