“Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal,” John mused.
He and Judas had been the first to arrive near the great city of Sebaste, Why would Jesus have them all come back together here, in the midst of the Samaritans. Surely he knew how it made them feel? Or did he? After all, did even John know how he felt? He and Magdalene had skirted through Samaria before. People passed through here all the time if they wished to take the quick way to Jerusalem. And, of course not only Samaritans lived here. There were true Jews as well. And Greeks and Arabs and the whole general mix of what filled this ancient land.
“This city is more Greek than Greece itself,” Judas declared.
“Old Herod made it so,” John said. “What he could not do in Jerusalem, he could do here, where his wife Malthace was born.”
Before it was Sebaste, it was the city of Samaria, from which the whole land took its name. Before the Greek temples went up, King Ahab had ruled here with his Jezebel, his queen, and Elijah prophesied against them. The kings of Israel had built their temple here to rival the temple in Jerusalem, and behold, even now, though not as grand as the one in Jerusalem, a great temple to the God of Israel stood still.
“Do you wonder if Jesus called us here for that very reason?”
“What do you mean?”
“John, you are clever. Why do you ask me what I mean?”
“You mean,” John said, “that having cast his judgment on the old temple, he would put his sights on another?”
“Something like that,” Judas nodded.
“I have an idea,” he said, “and what he says in th next few days will confirm it. But… I have an idea.”
They had arrived in the middle of the day, and now there came from one of the gates a man all in white with tangles of wine dark hair like the God Dionysus, John thought before realizing it was Jesus.
“How long have you been here?” he demanded.
The cousins greeted each other, embracing and then bringing Judas into their embrace.
“We arrived in the morning,” Judas said.
“But did not come into the town?”
Neither John nor Judas answered.
“Surely you did not think you would be under the curse of God? We have been in places further from Jerusalem than this. Come now. I will lead you to the tavern and we will come out a little drunker and wait for our friends.”
Before the sun was down, they were all together again, but together as they had never been before. For all of those times there had been wives, sisters, other disciples and now, for the first time, Jesus sat with his twelve apostles, and John intoned, “Twelve for the Tribes of Israel.”
“Huh?” Jesus raised an eyebrow and shook his head.
“You see,” he explained, “I never saw that.”
“I have read that time is not static,” Nathanael said. He took a ribbon from his pocket and how he’d come by it was a pretty tale, but not for here. As he tied it into a loop, he continued, “and that what will be can be before that which was.”
“What’s that? Steady now,” Peter murmured, deep in his cups.
“If that is so,” Nathanael continued, “then maybe the twelve tribes are in honor of us, and not we for them.”
For a moment, in the quiet haze of alcohol and smoke, they all gave silence to this, and then Simon Zelotes cried:
“I healed little children with a touch.”
“Andrew stretched out his hand and caused a man to walk.”
“Thomas saved a girl from the brink of death.”
“I…” Philip began, “I… asked God—in your name—to stop a storm that was battering a village. And… And he did.”
Alphaeus declared, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”
And Jesus replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”
Joy was on his face, and as he gazed up in the tavern, John thought they just might see the ceiling open up and reveal holy heaven with Satan plummeting in the arc of a falling star to the cold earth.
“ I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions, and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
At that time, in the night in a tavern in Sebaste, Jesus, full of joy, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.”
For a moment it was as if he was about to fall asleep, and then he said, sternly, audible despite the noise of the tavern.
“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
And they didn’t know what he meant. They were surprised any thing of sense had come out of their mouths. For… what was Jesus? What yet were they to say of him? And yet there was always something to say, and whatever he was, whoever he was, the people believed.
“Blessed are the eyes that see what you see,” he said, laying a long hand formally over Alphaeus’s and over Jude’s
“For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
It seemed to John as if Jesus wished to be elated, wished to remain with them in the immediate joy of what had just happened, but that he was now compelled to continue speaking.
“So do not be afraid of them. For there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, and nothing hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the housetops.
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
Now, solemnly, Jesus took his empty bowl of wine, and he filled it from the jug in the middle of the room, red drops falling on the tabletop. He lifted the large cup and drank from it, and then passed it to John who passed it to Peter, who passed it to James and all the way around the table until Alphaeus, to Jesus’s right received it and drank the last.
And while they passed the cup, the noise of the tavern seemed to lower, and the lights brightened, and as this happened, Jesus said:
“Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father in heaven.”
“I feel,” Matthew said, “as if you are telling me the most important thing I ever heard, and though I barely understand it, that which I do understand is burning my heart. Master, should we even speak such words in this place? Would that we were in a field, or on the road itself, under God’s good heaven, and not this fusty inn.”
“Even still,” Jesus said, “all the world is God’s and filled with his beauty, even this tavern, and to find the lost beauty is why I came, so for now let this setting suffice.”
Matthew nodded, and Alphaeus leaned closer to his Master.
“Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother,a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.
“Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
And John looked to Peter, and for the first time they melted into each other, truly brothers, sharing the same ghostly understanding. As they looked upon Jesus, their Jesus, they saw his face become nothing more than a thin and shining mask burning away to reveal something terrifying in its eternity. The ME and the ME and the ME he spoke become the ME of an everlasting power, the force moving through all things until even the dazzling brilliance fell away like a mask and revealed again Jesus sitting before the,.
The mouth of the Man of Nazareth speaking the Word of the Eternal One, the Eternal One dropping his mask to be the Man of Nazareth sitting before them.
And Peter said, “Master, teach us how to pray.”
In that tavern, Jesus was silent a while.
At last, he said to them, “When you pray, say:
“ ‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’ ”
A smile passed over his face, and Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Do not bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.”
“Oh, Master, what if we forget the words?”
“Then remember the essence,” Jesus said. “And give your heart to God, for he is your Father…. And your most excellent Mother.
“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
He looked on Peter, and on Matthew.
“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use… it will be measured to you.”
CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
