The Gospel of the Twin (18 page)

“In whose name do you work this magic?” one asked.

Jesus did not respond.

“You, Jesus. Do you cast out demons or bring them amongst us?” the old man asked with a smirk.

Jesus finished what he was saying to a young woman and kissed her forehead. He turned with a smile to the old men. “Friends, in whose name do any of us do anything? Do you think I wield an unnatural power? The only power I have is the Lord himself, who moves through us all as love. Have you come to me to learn about the love of the Lord?”

Andrew, Philip, and even my brother James laughed heartily. These old men, most of whom I recognized, believed they had nothing to learn from anyone, and they surely were not interested in love. Two or three of them were among those who had threatened to kill us years before.

“We shall have none of your mockery,” said a third old man. “I remember you. Even as an insolent boy, you spoke as if you were smarter than your elders—as if you thought yourself a prophet.”

“Perhaps,” said Jesus, “you are treating me as such. Have I not told you before? This much is true: A prophet is never welcome in his homeland.”

They were so furious that they appeared frustrated and confused as to how to react—curse Jesus, slap him, or storm off? The other people nearby, old and new followers alike, shouted support for Jesus: “You are our prophet!” or, to the old men, “Go back to your caves!”

“You have brought shame to Nazareth,” the first old man said. “Your father is dead, yet you are out here putting on your show for this filth!”

Peter and Mary simultaneously leapt at the old men. The Zebedee brothers grabbed Peter's massive arms and held him back as he foamed at the mouth and growled like a mad beast. He shouted something made unintelligible by the grunting, shuffling, and pleading from James and John to contain himself. I stepped up to try to help and bumped into Mary amid the scuffle. She stumbled and fell against the old men. One of them shoved her into my arms.

“Your whore has touched me!” he yelled, turning toward Jesus and pulling at his robe as if to exhibit a stain. “I'm defiled!” He stretched out the words as if they were his dying announcement.

I saw no expression on Jesus' face as he took the man's robe into his hands near the neck. He pulled the old man's face close to his as if he were giving him a kiss, then spoke into the old man's ear. Everyone took notice and became still, trying to hear what condemnation Jesus was delivering. The old man's face widened in horror.

“No! No!” He pulled at Jesus' hands and tried to wrench himself free. His knees gave out, but Jesus held him up and continued to whisper. By the time Jesus was done, the man was weeping and trembling. The others helped the man up, but he shook them away and, with a stilted gait, staggered off into the night.

In a moment, the other old men slinked away, as befuddled as the rest of us. Jesus glanced at me with a soft smile, then at Mary. The followers looked from face to face, waiting for someone to ask the question until, finally, Andrew (I think, or perhaps it was Thaddeus) asked, “Master, what did you say to him?”

Jesus squatted, wrote something in the dirt with his finger, stood, scraped his sandal over what he had written, and began to sing: “We are the children of the light; motion and rest are the signs of the Father in us.” Like the words of his other songs, these lines were some of his favored sayings from his sermons, and after he had repeated them a few times, the crowd joined in.

James and Mary stood arm-in-arm by Jesus as the crowd sang. I returned home to check on the funeral arrangements.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Verse One

India has many religions. Most Indians believe in a multitude of gods, even more than all the Greek and Roman gods put together.

Others believe in no gods. They follow the teachings of a man named Siddhārtha, who lived long ago, perhaps about the time of the Exile. They call him the Buddha, which in their language means “awakened one.” Their language is related to Sanskrit, but I did not learn it and therefore could not read their scriptures. One of their rabbis, whom the Buddha's followers call
arhats
, knew some Greek and Aramaic, and he gave me some lessons.

They think that one survives death to return in new bodies countless times. If one leads a good life, one returns in a cleaner state, until eventually one is pure and perfected and need not return. We believe that one tries to live a long and good life. They believe, as best I can tell, that life is bad, characterized by endless suffering, and that the ultimate blessing is the cessation of life—that is, death.

As we see things, you will someday die regardless of what you do.

As they see it, you must work hard—have love for all creatures, and spend many hours in silent contemplation—to
achieve
death. Otherwise, you eternally return to this world of pain.

Despite the different notions of death—and I admit that, at times, I find their view attractive—I think that the Buddha and Jesus had some similar ideas. Both encouraged people to eschew wealth and material things. This principle lost Jesus some followers. Several times rich people asked Jesus outright what they must do to be part of the empire of God. He would try their sincerity by telling them that they must first give up all their property. He would point to his hundreds of followers and say that they had all done so. Of course, that was not quite true, because nearly all of them had been impoverished to begin with.

My
arhat
teacher pointed out that, in many of the stories I told him, Jesus seemed to be engaged in meditation, an important practice for the followers of the Buddha. They believe, he said, as do members of the other Indian religions, that one must turn inward to find truth and anything that one might call God. Jesus always talked about the God within, and would pray and chant himself into a trance. Perhaps when Jesus had his followers sing and chant with him, or even when they were swaying to his sermons, he lulled them into meditation too. I had not thought of that before, and it seemed to me that at times, when I was listening to Jesus, I was aware of nothing but his voice, which sounded as if it were in my own breast.

I asked the
arhat
what happens to the fully pure and perfected person after death. Is the person reborn in some other world? He said that the Buddha taught that when one reaches completion, one is neither reborn nor not reborn. The idea of rebirth no longer applies.

He illustrated by asking me to imagine an egg asking a bird what the bird's life is like. Nothing about the egg is relevant to the bird, and the bird can speak of flying, singing, eating, drinking, and breathing, but none of it would make sense to the egg. While we are bonded to life, we can have no concept of true release, and when released, we are no longer what we were before.

I have come to think that this difference between the states of bondage and release applies to other sorts of bondage—bondage to an empire, to a master, to the land, to labor, or to the sins of one's past. We seek release, but would we recognize it if it were achieved?

Verse Two

Mother was calm, even serene, during Joseph's preparation and funeral. James took charge of the arrangements, but he made gestures to involve Jesus and me. He asked us to pull some planks from one of the abandoned sheds at the edge of town and make our father a casket. This was the first time that he had called Joseph
our
father. Those sheds that once kept sheep and goats from the rain were mostly stripped and had been transformed into carts or mangers.

The more well-off citizens of Nazareth had family burial chambers where they deposited their dead loved ones but, like the other poor people, we had to use the common pits outside of town. Most simply wrapped the corpses in shrouds and deposited them, but we built Joseph a casket from that salvaged wood. When I made a joke about the wood providing shelter for one more old goat, James tried to hide a smile. After the ceremonies, I asked him about his plans.

“I am not sure, Thomas,” he said. “I could get by here. Raise a few more sheep. Do some masonry, carpentry. It depends upon what you and Jesus will do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jesus will lead these followers around the country again, right?” he said. “I can't see him simply abandoning them and telling them to return to their homes. I asked him what his mission was all about, and although I'm not clear on his answer, and he may not be clear either, he has a powerful sense of purpose. So do you, and so do all these people. I feel it, Thomas. Something important is happening here, and I feel a part of it.”

James surely saw the shock on my face. His participation in Jesus' sermon and song had indeed surprised me, and I had expected him to be embarrassed with himself later and join the old men in harassing Jesus. He had softened since our childhood, when he tormented all his half-siblings, but he was still James. Can people really change from hateful to tolerable, even genial?

“Are you saying that you want to come with us? What about your child?”

“I haven't decided.”

“And Joses and Simon?”

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, just as I had seen Jesus do so many times. “This is very difficult for me. I'm the eldest, and I know I have certain responsibilities.” Had James, who used to call the rest of us kids “Galilean bastards,” finally joined this family? He looked me straight in the eye. He trembled. “Mother needs me, too.”

I could have said that he was not the James I grew up with, that he must be in the grip of an illness, or that he was subjecting me to a cruel trick and would soon burst into derisive, mocking laughter. Instead, I saw that his reference to my mother as his own was James' way of apologizing for all those years of ridiculing us, considering us inferior to him, and calling us bastards. I hugged him. He cried and called me, “Brother.”

Verse Three

Jesus preached a few more times in Nazareth over the next two weeks. The crowd remained attentive and dedicated, but I sensed that the townspeople were growing uneasy with the strangers sleeping in their sheds and yards. The true miracle in all of this was that everyone managed to be fed when the locals could barely provide enough for their own families.

During our stay, Jesus held no meeting with the inner circle, preferring instead to spend time alone praying and contemplating. He was solemn. He looked often at the ground, squinting as if concentrating on a puzzle. His sermons were as moving as before, yet even when speaking to the crowd, he seemed to be more with his own thoughts than with the people listening to him. Something was changing about him, but I couldn't tell if it was growth or an inner retreat.

He took a few walks with Mary. Peter complained more about a woman with such a favored status and about our need for “structure,” but he kept his opinions from Jesus.

“He should use this time for training these followers,” Peter said to Andrew and me. “They need discipline. He talks about the empire of the Lord, but an empire needs an army. Thomas, you have your meals with him and Mary. Why am I not invited to sup with him? And what place does a woman have in an army?”

Before I could respond, Andrew jumped in. “I suppose you want us to purchase some swords and lances. Do some drills, learn some combat moves.”

It was dusk, and we were walking down the main road. Followers were cooking bread on flat rocks, content, I guessed, to wait as long as they needed until Jesus announced that we would move on. I was about to tell Peter that, at those meals, we were just sharing time with our family, and that Mary was helping the other women cook and clean the house, which he undoubtedly would have liked to hear, when we saw the Zebedee brothers drawing water from a well. Peter whistled to them, and they hurried to us like soldiers reporting to their commanding officer.

“They'll tell you,” Peter said. He turned to James and John. “What preparations do our people need?”

James and John glanced at each other. James raised an eyebrow. John ground his jaws from side to side like a cow chewing cud. I wondered what they were communicating.

“We need to refine our goal,” James said. He looked down and kicked at the dirt.

“More involvement from the others,” John said. His eyes darted from me to Andrew as if looking for a signal. “They are dedicated to Jesus, but they need to know what is expected of them.”

An easy answer!
I thought. We all needed to know that.

Peter slapped James and then John on the shoulder. “Ha! See?
They
understand. Discipline, training—that's what you do with the dedicated.”

Andrew rolled his eyes. “They didn't say that.”

Peter ignored him and again addressed James and John. “What place do women have in our new empire?”

“Women should . . .” James and John began in unison. They emitted half-hearted chuckles. They didn't look like twins, and I didn't know who was older, but they acted more like twins are expected to behave than Jesus and I ever did.

Peter finished for them. “Women should listen to their masters.”

“Isn't that what everyone with a master should do?” asked Phillip. I hadn't noticed that he'd joined the group. I looked around to see another dozen or more people standing nearby. Three or four were women, and I thought of asking for their opinions, but guessed they would probably not speak their minds.

“Yes,” Peter said. “But one can answer to many masters, like foot soldiers follow orders from many officers. We need that kind of structure!”

Peter was a bore, but he intimidated me. When one of the women who'd crept up to listen said, “Here he comes,”I was struggling with whether I should challenge him to say something clearer and more sensible. The woman said it in almost in a whisper, as if she were worried we'd be in trouble if Jesus heard us, although I may have also heard her giggle. All in the group turned to see Jesus and Mary, arm-in-arm, coming toward us from about a hundred cubits up the road, and I wondered if this other woman may have hoped that Jesus would chastise Peter for his opinion of women. Peter's view was, in fact, quite common, even among women, but those of us close to him knew that his remarks had little to do with women in general and everything to do with Mary.

Jesus and Mary both smiled at us as if greeting old friends for the first time in years. I suspected they had come to realize something, had made a decision, or at least had some good news to share. What could the good news be? We'd gotten a rich sponsor, perhaps, who'd keep us fed on lamb and dates?

“Friends! Friends!” Mary said. She took my and Peter's hands and lifted them over her head and passed under as if she were doing an initiation dance. She was gleeful, and her joy was contagious. Maybe she sensed the tension in the group and just wanted to diffuse it. Whether or not she intended to cheer us, others followed her in the dance. They skipped and twirled and laughed. Mary sang something, and although some tried to sing with her, most laughed so much that I could hardly hear the song. More followers, who had probably begun to settle in for the night, came to investigate and joined in on the elation. Perhaps everyone restless from sitting in Nazareth for these two weeks would have danced and laughed about anything. They held hands in a living chain and twisted their hips and pranced and threw back their laughing heads.

I joined in at the end of the line and saw Jesus leap into the middle. The line snaked down the road and between three or four houses and back to where Mary had started it. Some Nazarenes joined in, and some watched from their front doors. Those who didn't dance smiled and appeared to enjoy the parade.

When the dancing finally ended, Jesus and Mary went through the crowd laughing and speaking with people. They stopped where I stood with Andrew, and Mary hugged us both before she and Jesus continued through the crowd.

“What do you think that was about?” Andrew asked me.

“It was certainly odd, but it was better than just waiting here and wondering what to do.”

“And better than listening to Peter complain,” Andrew said.

I looked around and made sure Peter was nowhere near. I hadn't seen him since the dance had begun. “I'll ask Jesus tomorrow. Now let's enjoy the happiness while it's still here.”

Verse Four

The next morning, as we sat down to breakfast with the rest of the family, I asked Jesus what had happened the night before.

“Seeing how happy Mary was,” I said, “I thought for a moment that you had some good news for us. Maybe news about the plan.”

He wrinkled his brow as he picked up a piece of bread and stared at it. One would have thought that Jesus didn't recognize what he held. “Tomorrow we start for Judea.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as if he had previously informed us all of this. “We'll be in Jerusalem for Passover.”

Of course we'll be there in time for Passover
, I thought; it was three weeks away. This had to mean that he planned to meander around the region, visiting many towns.

Jesus passed the bread around. “James, you are going with us, right? Don't worry, Thomas. Sarah and Mother can take care of each other.”

Had Jesus discussed this with James?

Mother smiled. I thought she would have feared our traveling to Jerusalem, especially during the holy week, when the prefect Pilate himself would be present, controlling the crowds with a bevy of soldiers. We had all heard stories about his ruthlessness in rounding up and executing any suspected troublemakers.