The Gospel According to the Son (3 page)

10

People said, and it was true when I saw him, that the Baptist wore but one small wrapping of camel's hide to conceal his loins. He was so naked to the sun that he looked darker than any of his visitors, a thin man with a thin beard.

I had also heard how he believed that meat and wine inspire demons to live in one's body; therefore he ate nothing but wild honey and locusts, the poorest food of the poor. Yet it was said that these locusts could devour all the disbelief in the hearts of those who came to John. And the wild honey gave warmth to his voice when he spoke in the words of Isaiah: " 'The crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth.'"

Yet I had also been told that the locusts he ate kept him harsh in spirit and he would greet penitents by saying: "Generation of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"

The people would ask: "What shall we do?" And John the Baptist would answer: "Let him who has two coats give one to the man who has none." And he would always speak of the man mightier than himself who was yet to come.

Yet when I first saw his face, I wished to hide my own. For I knew that he would not be long among us. And I knew this as if I heard a beating of wings overhead.

I had joined a group of many people and so I could stare at John before he saw me and was able to watch the pilgrims as they were baptized and departed. I remained. Even in the loneliness of this place in the desert, he still could not see me, for I concealed myself in the shadow of a rock. It was only when the others were gone and the stones were hot from the sun that I came forward. To which he said, "I have waited for you."

His eyes had more light than the sky, yet they were paler than the moon. His thin beard was long. The hair that grew from his ears was matted, and so too was the hair that grew from his cheeks. A wing and a leg of a locust were caught in his beard. I wondered how this man who bathed others and washed himself many times a day could still show such leavings. Yet it was not unfitting. His face was like a ravine and small creatures would live within.

Looking at me, he said, "You are my cousin." Then he said, "I knew that you would come today."

"How can you know?"

He sighed. His breath was as lonely as the wind that passes through empty places. He said, "I have been told to wait for you, and I am tired. It is good that you are here."

I felt so near to him that I soon confessed my sinsùI had never done as much for another. I would have deemed it belittling to whatever pride I had as a man. (For my sins were too small.) I might be a master carpenter and thirty years of age, but I felt young before him, and modest and much too innocent for such a grave man. I searched to find evil in myself and came back with no more than moments I could recall of disrespect toward my mother and contests in the night with lustful thoughts. Perhaps there had been a few acts of unkindness when judging others.

"Well," he said, "you can still repent. Our sin is always more than we know." And John came behind me as I entered the water, and with the strength of a desert lion, he seized me by the nose and, with his other hand pressing upon my forehead, thrust me back into the river. Passing so quickly from air to water, I gasped first at my loss of breath and then from all the water I swallowed. Still, in this moment I saw many things, and my life was changed forever.

Was the Holiest descending toward us in the shape of a dove? And when I came up from the water, the dove was on my shoulder. I felt as if much had come back to me from all that had been lost. I was one again with myselfù a poor man, but good. And then I felt more. I had a vision of glory. The heavens opened for an instant and it was as if I saw a million, nay, a million million of souls.

I heard a voice, and it came from the heavens. It came into my ear and said: "Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee." Fear and exaltation were in me then, and in greater measure than I had ever known. I raised my face to the heavens and said, "Lord God, I am like a child."

And the Lord spoke as He had to the prophet Jeremiah. I heard: "Say not 'I am a child,' for you shall go to all the places that I shall send thee." And I felt as if His finger blessed my mouth even as the beak of the dove touched my lips. His Word came into me like the burning fire in my bones when I was twelve and sick with fever.

Now John withdrew his hand from my head and we stood in the river. Away went the dove. And John and I spoke to each other a little. I will tell of that, and soon. But when I left, I knew that I would never see him again. He began to sing as I left, but it was to the River Jordan, not to me. And the taste of that brown river was still in my mouth and the dust of the desert in my nostrils as I set out on my long march home to Nazareth.

11

It was late in the afternoon. The light upon the rocks turned to gold. And I could still hear John the Baptist as he sang. Since he knew no song, the music of his throat came forth like the voice of a ram.

I walked with strength. For now I was no longer like other men. My legs took larger strides than before. Now I knew the other man who had lived within the shell of myself, and he was better than me. I had become that man.

A great cloud came over the sky. There was a downpour. A rainbow arose from one end of the desert to touch the other, and above me was the radiance of the Lord. Soon I lay down upon the hot damp sand, and soon I heard His voice. He said: "Stand upon your feet."

When I did, He told me: "Once I spoke to the prophet Ezekiel and he saved our people in Babylon. Now these words given to Ezekiel are for you: 'Son of Man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a nation that hath rebelled against Me, even unto this very day. For they are impudent children and stiff-hearted. But you will speak My words unto them. Since they are not a people of a strange speech whose words you cannot understand but are the house of Israel, behold! I will make your face strong against their face. So fear them not.' "

Then this voice said into my ear: "Those were My words to Ezekiel. But to you I say: You are My son, and therefore you will be mightier than a prophet. Even mightier than the prophet Ezekiel."

I still had many hours to travel across land I hardly knew. Again I was full of exaltation, and again I was full of fear. I was also weary. The scrolls I had studied since childhood were not as close to me as the words of this high Lord my God, yet now that He was near, I could only fear Him. For the sound of His voice can be heard in the echo of great rocks when they fall. And I did not know how to serve a Lord who could leave boils upon the flesh of every man and beast in the land of Egypt and cast hail to blight every herb of the field, or fire in the grass until every tree was consumed. I raised my hands toward heaven as if to ask whether I was truly the one to exercise His force. And God said to me, "Since you are not yet strong, do not return to your home. Go up rather into the mountain that is there before you. Go now. In that wilderness, fast among the rocks. Drink the water that is beneath the rocks. But eat no food. Before the sun sets on the last of your days of fast, you will know why I have chosen you."

Soon I learned of His power to protect me. As I climbed, darkness fell and I had to share my ground with serpents and scorpions. Yet none came near. In the morning I climbed further and for much of the day upward on this mountain. And it was worthy of the lamentations of the prophet Isaiah, for one could say that the cormorant and the bittern possessed it.

In every direction was emptiness. On the ramparts of the rock, vultures looked down on me, side by side, every vulture with her mate. It was then I thought of how John the Baptist had asked, on saying farewell: "Did the light of the Lord appear when you were immersed?"

Even as John's eyes stared into mine, I had wondered if the million million of souls that I had seen were the face of the Lord. But to John I said only: "Is it not death and destruction to see Him?"

He replied: "For all but the Christ." Then John said: "Once the Holy Spirit came to me. He was so near that I put my hands before my eyes. But the Holy Spirit said: 'I will let you gaze upon My back/ and He allowed me to see that His back was noble, a noble back." Then John grasped my arm. "I have known since I was a child that my cousin must come after me and replace me. For my mother spoke of how your mother told her of all that had been with her." Now he kissed me on both cheeks. "I baptize with water," he said, "and can cleanse any soul who has truly repented, even as water can extinguish fire. But you will baptize with the Spirit. You will root out evil with God's mercy." And he kissed me again.

It was hard not to remember the breath of John the Baptist when he embraced me, for it was full of all that is in the odor of an exhausted man. And indeed, no matter how often one seeks water to soothe the throat, such an odor cannot be separated from the flesh. A vast fatigue speaks of all that has been lost to one's striving. Yet his skin had been honest and full of the loneliness of the desert and its rocks. And so did he also smell of the waters of the River Jordan and the heavy wisdom of its mud and silt.

12

At the summit, the rocks stood about like tombs, and the steps between were treacherous. It was midday. The heat of the sun was on me.

I sat in the shadow of a great stone and looked out on the lands of Israel, upon Galilee to the north and Judea to the south. The haze had a golden hue, and I wondered whether one could even see the spires of gold that rose above the hills of the holy city. But I did not think long on Jerusalem; living without food for a day, I was hungry.

Yet I also knew why the Lord had sent me to the summit of this mountain. For it was not enough to be His son and cousin to John the Baptist. I had to pass through trials, and the first test must be not to eat. Even as I said to myself, "I will take no food until sundown," the Lord replied.

I did not see Him, nor did I feel His presence other than His voice (which was in my ear), but He said: "You will fast until I tell you to eat."

So I was without food for that day and the next. And by the fifth day, when the pangs of my stomach had given way to a solemn emptiness of spirit, I felt weak and no longer knew if I had the strength to climb down from this mountain. So I said aloud, "How long, O Lord?" and He replied, "Long. It will be long."

Since I was not there to dispute Him but to follow His will, fasting grew easier. I shielded myself from the sun and came to love the taste of water and the wisdom that is found in the shade of large rocks (until they grow too cold at night for any wisdom). And the air of night was cold. No plants grew on the summit of this mountain. Which was just as well. For there were hours when I could have chewed on their thorns.

In the second week, I had visions of King David and knew that he had committed a great sin. I could not recall the offense, but I did remember that he had been punished, and on his death the Lord had appeared to the son of David, King Solomon, and asked: "What shall I give thee?"

And Solomon replied: "O Lord my God, I know not how to go out nor to come in, and Thy servant is in the midst of Thy people, a great people that cannot be numbered nor counted. Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart that I may discern between good and bad."

And I recalled how this speech had so pleased the Lord that He said to Solomon: "Because thou hast not asked for a long life nor for riches nor begged for the death of thine enemies but asked for discernment in judgment, then, behold, I have given thee a wise and understanding heart."

And God gave Solomon all that he had not asked for, both riches and honors, until there were no kings as great as Solomon in those days.

But now the voice of the Lord was saying to me: "Solomon did not keep My Commandments. Solomon spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. All people came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, in that he exceeded all the kings of the earth. And these kings brought him silver, ivory, apes, and pea-cocks. But," said the Lord to my ear, "King Solomon loved many strange women: the daughter of Pharaoh and the women of the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Sedonians, and the Hittites, whereas I had said unto the children of Israel, 'Ye shall not go in to them. For surely they will turn your heart toward their gods.' But Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and when Solomon was old, his heart was not perfect with Me. I had given him too many gifts. So," said the Lord, "I will not give you riches. And you will never tarry with a woman, or you shall lose the Lord."

He had given me Solomon's sins on which to meditate, and that was an advantage not given to Solomon. I, being without food, had no desire for a woman, nor did I feel at odds with the Lord's decision. My fast continued.

The prophets were often with me in these weeks: Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah and Daniel and Ezekiel. I could recall their words as if they were my own. Before long, I had a dream that made me one with the prophet Elijah, and in this dream I had contests with the prophets of Baal. More than forty such pagan prophets had come to my mountain to sacrifice a bullock, but first they destroyed the Lord's altar on the summit. Then they lacerated themselves with knives to show their devotion to Baal. Blood spurted from the wounds of these prophets and they cried aloud, yet the god Baal could not speak.

Seeing that Baal was silent in my presence, I put twelve large stones on end, to stand for the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel, after which I restored the altar of the Lord. Then I dug a trench around the stones and put wood on the altar and cut the bullock into pieces, laying the raw flesh upon the wood. And then I poured four barrels of water on the sacrifice until this water ran into the trench.

And the fire of the Lord blazed through the meat of the bullock and the sopping wood and the wet stones and licked up all the water that was in the trench. And I beheaded these forty prophets of Baal with a sword, and only then did I awake.

Now it came to me that I was not Elijah but only dreaming of the scroll of Elijah, and the dream had been there to tell me that my fast must continue for forty days and forty nights. For if I did not change my ways or the people of Israel did not change theirs, then all of us were in danger of God's final judgment.