Herod Philip built Caesarea Philippi in the north, almost to Dan. We made our way there moving from town to town. Sometimes there were large crowds, and sometimes only a few gathered. Caesarea Philippi is quite beautiful but, like his half-brother Antipas, Philip built a pagan capital. It had no synagogue and we gave it a wide berth. We used a nearby field to meet with the folk who lived and worked there and where we pitched camp. Andrew built a small fire, and we ate our evening meal. It had been a long and busy journey. We were tired and ready to relax, to speak of other things. In the quiet that followed, Jesus swallowed the last of his meal and refilled his cup from the wineskin, being careful to add some water to it. It had not traveled well.
In the quiet that followed, I asked the question that had bothered me since that painful day on the docks in Caesarea Maritima. I guessed it would cause some trouble but I needed to know. “Master, is circumcision really necessary?”
The others looked at me, mouths agape.
“It was given to us through our father Abraham,” John said. “How can you ask such a foolish question?”
“No, no, it is a good question. I would like to hear the answer to that myself,” Thomas said and winked.
Jesus frowned. “If it were necessary, in the sense you mean, children would be born circumcised. What is important is the circumcision of the spirit.”
There was a shocked silence. I looked at John out of the corner of my eye. His face was a thundercloud. Peter’s mouth dropped open. Everyone except the Magdalan looked uncomfortable. She hid a smile. I thought, born circumcised? We were, in a way.
In this world we don’t choose who we are; we just are. And you are a Hebrew whether you like it or not.
Amelabib said that to me in Corinth, a lifetime ago. Circumcision of the spirit.
Then, he asked of no one in particular, “When you hear people speak of me, who do they say I am?”
Well, people said many things about him and not all of them were complimentary. “Some think you are a prophet like the Baptizer…or Elijah or one of the ones we read about in synagogue.”
“Some say you are the Messiah promised by Isaiah.”
“Well, then, who do
you
think I am?” he asked.
We were silent. The question hung in the air like an over-ripe pomegranate. I knew when it fell there could be a mess to clean up. I realized at that moment he had asked the single question that I, and I suspect the others, had avoided for over a year. He was the “Coming One.” We did not have to know in what way or how. We needed only to accept it and believe whatever we wanted.
Suddenly, Peter blurted out in a voice as loud as if he’d been stung, “You are the Christ. You are the Son of the living God…you are…”
Words failed him and he crumpled to his knees. Then, like lightning, the realization of what Peter said, struck us all. Each of us, as the truth sank in, followed Peter and dropped to our knees. It was like a hammer had pounded us into the ground.
***
It took me a while to identify the soft sobbing and then locate it. Mary sat apart from the rest, crying quietly into her sleeve. We had recovered from our argument about Rehab and were again on friendly terms. This strange, tarnished woman intrigued me. I sat next to her and waited. After a while, her sobbing subsided.
“Judas?”
“Yes? Is there anything I can do?”
“No, nothing. Is that why you are here?”
“I heard you weeping.”
“You were right about Rehab. We were wrong to judge her so harshly.”
What could I say? It seemed unlikely that regret over poor Rehab would cause such a volume of tears.
“She felt unworthy to be in the presence of the rabbi. She thought her sins too great.” Mary spoke as much to herself as to me. “Were her sins any greater than mine? I did with men what she does. That I was not in my right mind is no excuse. The truth…” She paused, deliberating whether I could be trusted with her story.
“I am not in a position to judge either you or Rehab,” I said. She stared at me for a long time. Finally she lowered her eyes and told me her story.
***
“I never thought of myself as different. As a young child, I had episodes when I became a different person, but my parents put that down to an overactive imagination. I would be playing with the other children and then I would assume the role of an entirely different person. They thought I invented this new person and delighted in the novelty of it. But I really did become that person. I stopped being Miriam and became Salome. Well, when you are young, you don’t know, do you? I mean, without some experience, you don’t know what is normal. I did wonder, sometimes, why the other girls couldn’t do it, too.”
Madness
, I heard madness. Not like Dinah, whose madness took her within herself, but the madness you see sometimes in the streets by people whose personae shift from lamb-like to leonine in the wink of an eye. A street entertainer I once knew had such a man on a leash, and he would goad him into becoming as many as a dozen different people. The force with which the man played each part made it amazing, frightening, actually, and the leash necessary. No actor in the theater could have done what that man did. And now this woman told me she suffered the same way.
“It amused my friends, but later, as I grew older, one or two of the women inside me turned me to doing things that no decent woman should do. The demons—”
“But it is over now. That life is behind you. Your past has been forgiven.”
“Forgiven perhaps, but not forgotten. Where will I go, Judas? Who would have me?”
“I would,” I said. She gave no sign she heard. I took her hand and, this time loud enough to be heard, said “I would.”
“You? But you would be consorting with a woman who could never be accepted by any community.”
“There are some things you should know about me,” I said. And for the first time since I left my mother, I spoke of my past.
***
“Now, I am going to ask you to do as I have done.” Jesus paused and seemed to weigh his next words.
“You have listened to me for all these months. You know my words. You know what I am likely to do or say in almost any circumstance. It is time for you to go and do the same.”
We all looked at each other, unsure what he asked. Did he mean we should wander about performing miracles, preaching, and exhorting? What did he mean by
do the same
?
“I want you to go out in pairs. You will be given power. Your tongues will be loosened and your minds made clear. Seek those who need to hear the Word. If they are deaf, restore their hearing. If they are blind, restore their sight. Tell them of the good news God brings to the poor, the oppressed, and the hungry.”
While we still grappled with the significance of our new understanding about him, he declared we must share in this ministry. He caught us by surprise. We thought of ourselves only as followers. The idea that we had to do something beyond that had never occurred to us.
***
Thomas and I paired off and wandered about the countryside for nearly a week with little success. We were an unlikely pair—two doubters. We would have been better off yoked to one of the simple fishermen who did not struggle as I did with what we were about. We could preach the lessons, mind you. In fact, Thomas was quite good at it. He remembered the words and parables almost verbatim and even added some of his own from time to time. My teaching lacked fire and depth and clarity. Passable, but uninspired.
Thomas walked behind me, ranting on about the burden Jesus had laid on us and how he should have taught us how to do this or that, and on and on. I listened with half an ear. I knew from experience that no good comes from railing at the wind. Better to walk with your back to it.
The sun baked the land and dust covered our legs. As we traveled a back road toward a village I did not know existed, I saw a young girl of ten or eleven years, sitting off to one side. She reminded me of Dinah when I last saw her. However, where Dinah was fair, this girl was dark, and where Dinah was plump, she was thin. She looked like she had not eaten for weeks. I drew closer and I saw one other similarity. She had Dinah’s vacant stare. Startled by the look, I drew up so sharply that Thomas, in full stride and absorbed in his running commentary on the unfairness of our situation, almost knocked me down.
“Thomas, stop. We must do for this child.” I exclaimed, excited.
“Do? Do what for this child?”
“We must heal her…restore her to her senses.”
“What? How?”
“I have no idea, but he said we have the power. We just say the words and call it down.”
“What words? See, this is exactly what I was just talking about.”
Thomas remained reluctant to put his faith on the line, but the sight of that girl, and the memories she evoked, drove me into uncharted territory. She stared unseeing and apparently unaware of our presence. I put my hand on her shoulder and she began to tremble. I knew the sequence. I had experienced it dozens of times. Dinah would start shaking and then the screaming would begin. I took a deep breath and muttered, “Do not be afraid, it will be all right.”
Her eyes darted back and forth and locked on to mine. She calmed. Now what? I looked at Thomas but he only shrugged.
“God is with you…young woman…He wishes you to be made whole. In the name of Jesus, be restored.” I said this with as much conviction as I could muster. Not much of a speech. Jesus would have said something wonderful, or nothing at all.
We waited. Had I done something wrong? Why didn’t he give us the right words? Then the girl smiled and kissed my hand. Her eyes were clear. I had done it, well not I, exactly, but it worked. I looked at Thomas. He beamed and shuffled his feet in a little victory dance.
Mary and I formed a conspiracy. The others wondered about us, but our relationship never progressed beyond the innocent keeping of secrets. I regretted it, but at the same time, rejoiced in the acquisition of something I had never truly had before—a friend.
I could not keep the writing from her.
“Can you trust those men?” she asked.
“It is not a matter of trust,” I said. “They may or may not be what they seem, but if they aren’t, why ask for the truth? That is all I write. What can they possibly do if they are only in possession of the truth?”
She looked doubtful. It was her nature. Women are far less trusting than men in matters of the world. In matters of faith, the reverse is true. Women are naturally spiritual and men must be drubbed into belief.
“
Cui bono
?” I asked, in about the only Latin I knew, “Who benefits? They gain nothing from associating with us. Incur risks, in fact. Besides, they could get everything I write from dozens of sources. The Master’s reputation is common knowledge. I only provide an eyewitness and, I suppose, an authentic source.”
“But,” she said, and I knew I was about to receive a woman’s logic. “If that is so, why are they asking you to write at all? It seems very strange to me they would go to all that trouble…”
Women, I thought, worry about the wrong things. She should be thinking about the benefit to us, not having dark doubts about a few Pharisees who could help, and certainly not hurt us.
“
Cui bono
?” I repeated. “We do.”
I don’t think she believed me, she but conceded that when it came to knowing how the world worked, I was the acknowledged expert.
***
Once, when we neared Bethsaida, Jesus stopped and turned to the masses following us. There would be no relief until he spoke to them. We were in an area where the ground rose up from the sea. Throngs of people—men, women, and children—covered the hillsides. The wind blew in from the sea so his words carried back to the farthest listeners. He taught them about the kingdom. He told them of the blessings and the warnings. He preached as I never heard him preach before and they listened, eyes bright, mouths open as if to swallow his words.
The sun was low on the horizon when he finished. We waited, expecting the crowds to disperse, but they lingered, reluctant, it seemed, to miss anything that might yet come. Philip clutched at the rough fabric of his cloak and asked, “What are we to do with these people?”
“Send them away. It is late and we must move on,” John said, alternately squinting at the setting sun and frowning at the milling throng.
Jesus said, “Feed them. It is time.”
Philip looked this way and that as if unsure what to do next. I could count and estimate numbers better than anyone else, and yet even I could not guess how many were camped on that hillside. Thousands? It could easily be five thousand, more if the women and children were counted. Philip hurried over to me.
“How much money do we have?”
“What do you need money for?”
“To buy food. He wants to feed all these people and we must buy food.”
“Where, exactly, do you plan to make such a purchase?”
We were at least an hour’s journey from the closest place where food in sufficient quantities could be purchased. Philip looked around helplessly and threw up his hands.
He and Andrew scoured the area and found a few fish and some loaves of bread, which they presented to Jesus, half expecting him to rebuke them for their foolishness. But he did not. Instead, he held one of the loaves above his head and the crowd quieted. He said a blessing and broke the bread. There was an audible stirring in the crowd. Jesus repeated the blessing with the remaining loaves and fish. The crowd buzzed with excitement. Some cheered. He placed some of the fish and bread into each of twelve baskets and directed us to pass them around. Every person in turn dipped into the basket and took a small morsel and passed it along. People began to sing. A few danced on the hillside.
Later, as the crowd drifted away, Jesus asked Peter and James to gather up whatever had been left behind. We stared at him in wonder. How many crumbs could possibly be left over from two or three fish and some loaves? They returned from the hillside with all twelve baskets filled. I stood and gaped at them. Jesus walked past me and as he did so, he clapped me on the back, grinning as broadly as I had ever seen him.
“Where…how?” I stammered.
“Stones, Judas, don’t you remember? They are from your stones.”