Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal Page 30

Part VI

Passion

Nobody's perfect.... Well, there was this one guy, but we killed him.

ANONYMOUS

Sunday

Joshua's mother and his brother James found us outside of the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, where we were waiting for Bartholomew and John, who were looking for Nathaniel and Philip to return with James and Andrew, who were off trying to find Judas and Thomas, who had been sent into the city to look for Peter and Maggie, who were looking for Thaddeus and Simon, who had been sent to look for a donkey.

"You'd think they'd have found one by now," Mary said.

According to prophecy, Joshua was supposed to enter the city on the colt of a donkey. Of course, no one was going to find one. That was the plan. Even Joshua's brother James had agreed to be part of the conspiracy. He'd gone ahead to wait inside the gate, just in case one of the disciples had missed the point and actually came back with a donkey.

About a thousand of Joshua's followers from Galilee had gathered on the road to the Golden Gate. They had lined the road with palm fronds for Joshua's entrance to the city, and they were cheering and singing hosannas all afternoon in anticipation of his triumphant entrance, but as the afternoon wore into evening, and no colt showed, the crowd gradually dispersed as everybody got hungry and went into the city to find something to eat. Only Joshua, his mother, and I were still waiting.

"I was hoping you might talk some sense into him," I said to Mary.

"I've seen this coming for a long time," Mary said. She wore her usual blue dress and shawl, and the usual light in her face seemed faded, not by age, but by grief. "Why do you think I sent for him two years ago?"

It was true, she had sent Joshua's younger brothers Judah and Jose to the synagogue at Capernaum to bring him home, claiming he was mad, but Joshua hadn't even gone outside to meet them.

"I wish you two wouldn't talk about me like I'm not here," Joshua said.

"We're trying to get used to it," I said. "If you don't like it, then give up this stupid plan to sacrifice yourself."

"What do you think we've been preparing for all of these years, Biff?"

"If I'd known it was this I wouldn't have helped. You'd still be stuck in a wine amphora in India."

He squinted to see through the gate. "Where is everyone? How hard can it be to find one simple ass?"

I looked at Joshua's mother, and although there was pain in her eyes she smiled. "Don't look at me," she said. "No one on my side of the family would ever sacrifice a straight line like that."

It was too easy, so I let it go. "They're all at Simon's house in Bethany, Josh. They aren't coming back tonight."

Joshua didn't say a word. He just climbed to his feet and walked off toward Bethany.

"There is nothing you can do to stop this from happening!" Joshua screamed at the apostles, who were gathered in the front room of Simon's house. Martha ran from the room crying when Joshua glared at her. Simon looked at the floor, as did the rest of us. "The priest and the scribes will take me, and put me on trial. They will spit on me and scourge me and then they will kill me. I will rise from the dead on the third day and walk among you again, but you cannot stop what must happen. If you love me, you will accept what I'm telling you."

Maggie got up and ran out of the house, snatching the communal purse from Judas as she went. The Zealot started to rise to go after her but I pushed him back down on his cushion. "Let her go."

We all sat there in silence, trying to think of something to do, something to say. I don't know what everyone else was thinking, but I was still trying to formulate some way for Joshua to make his point without giving his life. Martha returned to the room with wine and cups and served each of us in turn, not looking at Joshua when she filled his cup. Joshua's mother followed her back out of the room, I presumed to help her prepare supper.

In time, Maggie came back, sliding through the door and going directly to Joshua, where she sat down at his feet. She took the communal purse out of her cloak and from it she pulled a small alabaster box, the sort that was used to store the precious ointments that women used to anoint the bodies of the dead at burial. She tossed the empty purse to Judas. Without a word, she broke the seal on the box and poured the ointment on Joshua's feet, then untied her long hair and began to wipe the oil from his feet with it. The rich aroma of spices and perfume filled the room.

In an instant Judas was on his feet and across the room. He snatched the box of ointment off the floor. "The money from this could have fed hundreds of the poor."

Joshua looked up at the Zealot and there were tears in his eyes. "You'll always have the poor, Judas, but I'm only here for a short while longer. Let her be."

"But..."

"Let her be," Joshua said. He held out his hand and Judas slammed the alabaster box into it, then stormed out of the house. I could hear him shouting out in the street, but I couldn't make out what he was saying.

Maggie poured the rest of the oil on Joshua's head and drew patterns on his forehead with her finger. Joshua tried to take her hand but she pulled it away from him and stepped back until he dropped his hand. "A dead man can't love," she said. "Be still."

When we followed Joshua to the Temple the next morning, Maggie was nowhere to be seen.

Monday

On Monday Joshua led us through the Golden Gate into Jerusalem, but this time there were no palm fronds laid on the road and no one was singing hosannas. (Well, there was this one guy, but he was always singing hosannas at the Golden Gate. If you gave him a coin he'd stop for a while.)

"It would be nice to be able to buy a little something for breakfast," Judas said. "If the Magdalene hadn't spent all of our money."

"Joshua smells nice, though," Nathaniel said. "Don't you think Joshua smells nice?"

Sometimes you find yourself grateful for the most unlikely things. Right then, when I saw Judas grit his teeth and the vein stand out on his forehead, I said a quick prayer of thanks for Nathaniel's naïvet��.

"He does smell nice," said Bartholomew. "It makes one want to reassess one's values regarding the material comforts."

"Thank you, Bart," said Joshua.

"Yes, there's nothing like a good-smelling man," said John dreamily. Suddenly we were all very uncomfortable and there was a lot of throat-clearing and coughing and we all walked a few paces farther apart. (I haven't told you about John, have I?) Then John started to make a great and pathetic show of noticing the women as they passed. "Why, that little heifer would give a man some strong sons," John said in a booming and falsely masculine voice. "A man could surely plant some seed there, he could."

"Please shut up," James said to his brother.

"Maybe," said Philip, "you could have your mother come over and tell that woman to cleave unto you."

Everyone snickered, even Joshua. Well, everyone except James. "You see?" he said to his brother. "You see what you've started? You little nancy."

"There's a nubile wench," exclaimed John unconvincingly. He pointed to a woman who was being dragged toward the city gates by a group of Pharisees, her clothes hanging in shreds on her body (which indeed appeared to be nubile, so credit to John for working outside of his element).

"Block the road," Joshua said.

The Pharisees came up to our human blockade and stopped. "Let us pass, Rabbi," the oldest of them said. "This woman has been caught in the act of adultery this very day and we're taking her out of the city to be stoned, as is the law." The woman was young and her hair fell in dirty curls around her face. Terror had twisted her face and her eyes were rolled back in her head, but an hour ago she had probably been pretty.

Joshua crouched and began writing in the dust at his feet. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Jamal," said the leader. I watched Joshua write the man's name, then next to it a list of sins.

"Wow, Jamal," I said. "A goose? I didn't even know that was possible."

Jamal dropped the adulteress's arm and stepped back. Joshua looked up at the other man who was holding the woman. "And your name?"

"Uh, Steve," said that man.

"His name is not Steve," said another man in the crowd. "It's Jacob."

Joshua wrote "Jacob" in the dust. "No," said Jacob. He let go of the woman, pushing her toward us. Then Joshua stood up and took the stone from the man nearest him, who surrendered it easily. His attention was focused on the list of sins written in the dirt. "Now let us stone this harlot," Joshua said. "Whoever of you is without sin, cast the first stone." And he held out the stone to them. They gradually backed away. In a moment they had all gone back the way they had come and the adulteress fell to Joshua's feet and hugged his ankles. "Thank you, Rabbi. Thank you so much."

"That's okay," said Joshua. He lifted her to her feet. "Now go, and sin no more."

"You really smell good, you know that?" she said.

"Yeah, thanks. Now go."

She started off. "I should make sure she gets home okay," I said. I started off after her, but Joshua caught the back of my tunic and pulled me back. "You missed the 'sin no more' part of my instructions?"

"Look, I've already committed adultery with her in my heart, so, you know, why not enjoy it?"

"No."

"You're the one who set the standards. By those rules, even John committed adultery with her in his heart, and he doesn't even like women."

"Do too," said John.

"To the Temple," Joshua said, pressing on.

"Waste of a perfectly good adulteress, if you ask me."

In the outer court of the Temple, where the women and the Gentiles were allowed to go, Joshua called us all together and began to preach the kingdom. Each time he would get started, a vendor would come by barking, "Get your doves. Get your sacrificial doves. Pure as the driven snow. Everybody needs one." Then Joshua would begin again and the next vendor would come by.

"Unleavened bread! Get your unleavened bread! Only one shekel. Piping hot matzo, just like Moses ate on the way out of Egypt, only fresher."

And a little girl who was lame was brought to Joshua and he started to heal her and ask about her faith when...

"Your denariis changed to shekels, while you wait! No amount too large or small. Drachmas to talents, talents to shekels - all your money changed while you wait."

"Do you believe that the Lord loves you?" Joshua asked the little girl.

"Bitter herbs! Get your bitter herbs!" cried a vendor.

"Dammit all!" Joshua screamed in frustration. "You're healed, child, now get out of here." He waved off the little girl, who got up and walked for the first time in her life, then he slapped a dove vendor, ripped the top off his cage of birds, and released a cloud of doves into the sky.

"This is a house of prayer! Not a den of thieves."

"Oh no, not the moneychangers," Peter whispered to me.

Joshua grabbed a long low table where men were changing a dozen currencies into shekels (the only coin allowed for commerce inside the Temple complex) and he flipped it over.

"Oh, that's it, he's fucked," Philip said. And he was. The priests took a big percentage from the moneychangers. He might have slid by before, but now he'd interfered with their income.

"Out, you vipers! Out!" Joshua had taken a coil of rope from one of the vendors and was using it as a scourge to drive the vendors and the moneychangers out of the Temple gates. Nathaniel and Thomas had joined in Joshua's tirade, kicking at the merchants as they scampered away, but the rest of us sat staring or ministered to those who had come to hear Joshua speak.

"We should stop this," I said to Peter.

"You think you could stop this?" Peter nodded to the corner of the courtyard, where at least twenty priests had come out from the Inner Temple to watch the fracas.

"He's going to bring down the wrath of the priests on all of us," Judas said. He was looking at the Temple guards, who had stopped pacing the walls and were watching the goings-on below in the courtyard. To Judas' credit, he, Simon, and a few of the others had managed to calm the small crowd of the faithful who had gathered to be blessed and healed before Joshua's tantrum.

Beyond the walls of the Temple we could see the Roman soldiers staring down from the battlements of Herod the Great's old palace, which the governor commandeered during feast weeks when he brought the legions to Jerusalem. The Romans didn't enter the Temple unless they sensed insurrection, but if they entered, Jewish blood would be spilled. Rivers of it.

"They won't come in," Peter said, a tiny note of doubt in his voice. "They can see that this is a Jewish matter. They don't care if we kill each other."

"Just watch Judas and Simon," I said. "If one of them starts with that no-master-but-God thing, the Romans will come down like an executioner's blade."

Finally, Joshua was out of breath, soaked in sweat, and barely able to swing the coil of rope he was carrying, but the Temple was clear of merchants. A large crowd had started to follow him, shouting at the vendors as Joshua drove them out of the Temple. The crowd (probably eight hundred to a thousand people) was the only thing that kept the priests from calling the guards down on Joshua right then. Josh tossed the rope aside and led the crowd back to where we had been watching in horror.

"Thieves," he said to us breathlessly as he passed. Then he went to a little girl with a withered arm who had been waiting beside Judas.

"Pretty scary, huh?" Joshua said to her.

She nodded. Joshua put his hands over her withered arm.

"Are those guys in the tall hats coming over here?"

She nodded again.

"Here, can you make this sign with your finger?"

He showed her how to stick out her middle finger. "No, not with that hand, with this one."

Joshua took his hand away from her withered arm and she wiggled her fingers. The muscle and tendons had filled out until it looked identical to her other arm.

"Now," Joshua said, "make that sign. That's good. Now show it to those guys behind me with the tall hats. That's a good girl."

"By whose authority do you perform these healings," said one of the priests, obviously the highest-ranking of the group.

"No master - " Simon began to shout but he was cut off by a vicious blow to the solar plexus from Peter, who then pushed the Zealot to the ground and sat on him while furiously whispering in his ear. Andrew had come up behind Judas and seemed to be delivering a similar lecture without benefit of the body blow.

Josh took a little boy from his mother's arms and held him. The boy's legs waved in the air as if they had no bones at all. Without looking away from the boy, Joshua said, "By what authority did John baptize?"

The priests looked around among themselves. The crowd moved in closer. We were in Judea, John's territory. The priests knew better than to challenge John's authority under God in front of a crowd this size, but they certainly weren't going to confirm it for Joshua's sake, either. "We can't say at this time," said the priest.

"Then I can't say either," said Joshua. He stood the little boy on his feet and held him steady as the boy's legs took his full weight, probably for the first time ever. The boy wobbled like a newborn colt and Joshua caught him and laughed. He took the boy's shoulders and helped him walk back to his mother, then he turned on the priests and looked at them for the first time.

"You would test me? Test me. Ask me what you will, you vipers, but I will heal these people and they shall know the word of God in spite of you."

Philip had moved up behind me during this speech and he whispered, "Can't you knock him out or something with your methods from the East? We have to get him out of here before he says any more."

"I think we're too late, John," I said. "Just don't let the crowd disperse. Go out into the city and bring more. The crowd is his only protection now. And find Joseph of Arimathea too. He might be able to help if this gets out of hand."

"This isn't out of hand?"

"You know what I mean."

The inquisition went on for two hours, with the priests concocting every verbal trap they could think of, and Joshua wiggling out sometimes, and blundering through at others. I looked for some way to get Joshua out of the Temple without him being arrested, but the more I looked, the more I noticed that the guards had moved down off the walls and were hovering around the gates to the courtyard.

Meanwhile the chief priest droned on: "A man dies and leaves no sons, but his wife marries his brother, who has three sons by his first wife...[and on] The three of them leave Jericho and head south, going three point three furlongs per hour, but they are leading two donkeys, which can carry two...[and on] So the Sabbath ends, and they are able to resume, adding on the thousand steps allowed under the law...and the wind is blowing southwest at two furlongs per hour...[and on] How much water will be required for the journey? Give your answer in firkins."

"Five," Joshua said, as soon as they stopped speaking. And all were amazed.

The crowd roared. A woman shouted, "Surely he is the Messiah."

"The Son of God has come," said another.

"You guys aren't helping," I shouted back at them.

"You didn't show your work, you didn't show your work," chanted the youngest of the priests.

Judas and Matthew had been scratching out the problem on the paving stones of the courtyard as the priest recited, but they had long since lost track. They looked up and shook their heads.

"Five," Joshua repeated.

The priests looked around among themselves. "That's right, but that doesn't give you authority to heal in the Temple."

"In three days, there will be no Temple, for I'll destroy it, and you nest of vipers with it. And three days after that, a new Temple shall be built in honor of my father."

And then I grabbed him around the chest and started dragging him toward the gate. The other apostles followed the plan and moved around us in a wedge. Beyond that, the crowd pressed in. Hundreds moved along with us.

"Wait, I'm not done!" Joshua yelled.

"Yes you are."

"Surely the true king of Israel has come to bring forth the kingdom," one woman shouted.

Peter smacked her on the back of the head. "Stop helping."

By the sheer mass of the crowd we were able to get Joshua out of the Temple and through the streets to Joseph of Arimathea's house.

Joseph let us in and led us to the upper room, which had a high arched stone ceiling, rich carpets on the floors and walls, piles of cushions, and a long low table for dining. "You're safe here, but I don't know for how long. They've already called a meeting of the Sanhedrin."

"But we just left the Temple," I said. "How?"

"You should have let them take me," Joshua said.

"The table will be set for the Passover feast of the Essenes," Joseph said. "Stay here for supper."

"Celebrate the Passover early? Why?" John asked. "Why celebrate with the Essenes?"

Joseph looked away from Joshua when he answered. "Because at the Essenes' feast, they don't kill a lamb."