Twenty

On their way back to Galilee, they passed through Sychar once again, and the people welcomed Jesus, though he did not stay with them.

When they reached Mount Tabor, Jesus told them to wait at the foot, and climbed the mountain himself with the Rock, James, and John. Andrew wondered what this was about, and--of course--felt left out, since he was not invited to go. But this was doubtless something he would have to accustom himself to; the Rock, James, and John seemed to have become an elite team.

Conceivably, thought Andrew, this was not simple favoritism, though in John's case it seemed to be. But if Jesus selected the Twelve, not because of special talents--and, given who they were, that had to be the case--then it might be that these three, for some reason, needed special attention.

He fervently hoped that was what it was, although he could not fathom why John, of all people, would need constant watching. But then, John seemed to think that he was on the brink of disaster à la Thomas, and so there might be something there.

In any case, why should it bother him if others were preferred to him? He was big and strong--and smart--but Jesus could make anyone do anything, provided the person was willing. And Andrew was willing, and he would wager as willing as any other of the Twelve.

But he was who he was, and anyone with eyes and a brain knew it, and so others' being preferred to him did not diminish his reality in the least. It was just that it bothered him; he could not help it.

Or could he?

Was that the problem? Was that the "change in the way you are thinking" that was demanded?

Well, Jesus was constantly saying that they had to trust him and not themselves, and so he would have to leave the solution up to Jesus. Perhaps it was just that, because he was so capable, he had been trusting in himself too much.

How odd! His trusting in himself had led him to mistrust himself!

As everyone waited at the bottom of the mountain, they were not unobserved by the crowds, which began to gather, even though they could see that Jesus was not there. And the inevitable diseased and crippled persons came up to be cured.

A man came up to Nathanael, who was at the edge of the group, as usual, and said to him, "Are you the followers of Jesus of Nazareth?" and when he told him they were, he said, "May I see him? My boy has an unclean spirit, and I need his help."

Nathanael quaked. Andrew could sympathize; unclean spirits were not to be trifled with, in spite of the fact that they "were completely helpless," and someone as naturally timid as Nathanael was bound to suffer in confronting them. He answered, in a voice of trepidation, "He is not here at the moment, though we expect him fairly soon. But perhaps we can help." He obviously hoped the man would ask to wait.

"Oh, could you?" he exclaimed, and turned and his wife brought up their teen-age son, who was actually frothing at the mouth. Nathanael quaked at the sight of him; even Andrew, who was nearby, stepped back a pace or two.

The boy was struggling, looking off into space, and the father held him, while Nathanael said, "I command you, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, to leave this boy!"

Nothing happened.

Then the boy said, in a deep, rasping voice--clearly not his own--"Then where is he? He has deserted you, has he not?"

Nathanael, trying desperately to show that he was not shaking because he had not been obeyed, repeated, as forcefully as he knew how, "In Jesus's name, I command you to leave that boy on the instant!"

You command me! You!" And then he laughed a demonic laugh--and did not go out of the boy. Nathanael was all but fainting, when Jesus came up, and suddenly there was a great silence. "What is it you are busying yourselves with?" he asked.

The man answered, "Rabbi, I brought you my son, who has a demon that will not let him speak; and when it gets inside him, it tears him apart, and he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth, and goes rigid. I asked your students if they would drive it out, and they were not strong enough!" He gave a look at Nathanael, whose face was scarlet, but who looked as if he was going to faint.

"This faithless race!" exclaimed Jesus. Nathanael cowered and tried to withdraw into the background. "How long will I be among you? How long will I put up with you? Bring him to me!"

The father pulled him over, and the boy went into convulsions, and fell writhing on the ground. Jesus looked at him. "How long has he been this way?" he asked the father.

"From the time he was little!" he said. "And it often throws him into the fire, and into water to kill him! But if it is possible, please help us! Have pity on us!"

"If it is possible!" exclaimed Jesus. "Everything is possible to a believer."

"Master I believe!" cried the man. "Please help my unbelief!"

Jesus, noticing that the crowd was gathering round them, said in a calm voice, "Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you to go out of him." And the boy suddenly gave out a roar, and fell over as if dead. Jesus then took his hand, and he stood up, and he gave him to his father.

Everyone was completely stunned, and no one said a word for a long time.

Finally, Simon the Revolutionary asked, "Why could we not drive it out?"

"Because you did not believe strongly enough," answered Jesus. "Besides, that kind can only go out through fasting and prayer."

Everyone was cowed, and said nothing. Nathanael was trying to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible. All of the students learned that it was not inevitable that they would control demons, and none of them seemed eager to make another attempt.

But after a while, it dawned on some of them that Jesus and the three were no longer on the mountain; whatever they were doing there was over--and it became abundantly clear that something tremendous had happened up there also, from the expressions on the faces of the companions. They seemed to be in shock; they had barely even reacted to the demon.

"What happened?" everyone asked, crowding around.

"We are not to speak of it," said the Rock. "At least, not until . . . something happens which I do not understand." He looked over at Jesus with awe and a kind of terror in his eyes. No one could extract any more from him. Whatever it was they had seen, it made them aware that this man they had been so familiar with was far, far beyond anything they could have imagined. And not only the Rock, but James and John looked at Jesus with a new expression of overwhelmed awe. Had Jesus walked out of his human skin for a few moments?

Andrew was about to approach Simon, but saw the look on his face and gave it up. He knew enough about Simon to realize that when he was in that state, and had promised to keep silence, there was no moving him. So he went after Nathanael instead, who had wandered off, and might need reassurance. And he seemed to be right. When he neared, he heard Nathanael say to himself, "I am no good at this! I am a complete failure, as I have been at everything! I will simply go and relieve them of my presence!" Andrew was afraid this might happen, and was about to hurry over, when Jesus suddenly appeared beside him, and said, as if he had been there all the time, "Without even telling me?" Where had he come from?

"Master!" said Nathanael.

"Remember, I said that I did not ask for success, but that you try--or as Matthew said, that you try to try. You tried."

"Not hard enough."

"Come now. So you found out that we are not playing games here--as you suspected when you tried to cast out the demon. And you failed. But the boy is in his right mind. So what is the problem?"

"No thanks to me."

"Oh? You want thanks?"

"It was simply an expression."

"Think, Nathanael. What was the purpose here? That the boy be cured, or that you cover yourself in glory?"

"I did not mean it that way. That he be cured, of course."

"And that was accomplished. So why are you thinking of leaving?"

"Because I keep covering myself in disgrace!"

"Oh? As you did when you saved the girl from drowning?" Earlier, he had dived into the lake as a young girl fell from a boat. He arrived on time, and handed her to those in the boat, and quickly swam to shore--embarrassed, for some reason, perhaps because everyone saw him naked.

"She was in no danger. You know that!"

"She was in danger, in fact. That I know. And you did not know that she was in no danger."

"I did not think!"

"And if you had thought, and she was in danger--as she was--would you have acted fast enough so that in fact the danger was averted?"

"But I can claim no credit for that!"

"Then can you claim blame for this? Fear not. Try to try. That is all I ask. And if you fail, I am not unhappy. And I will tell you a secret. If you try and you do fail, my Father will see to it that it is better thus."

Nathanael looked at him, half with hope and half with skepticism. "Even with Samuel?"

"Even there. And you will learn this soon after I fail."

"You? You?"

"Fear not, Nathanael All will be well. Fear nothing. Now come and join us and do not be silly."

After I fail. So Andrew was right. The plan he originally had was doomed. But all would be well, even with Samuel. How could that be? Was Samuel to come back to life with Jesus? But that would be ridiculous! Thomas would have a twin brother two or three years younger than himself! No, there had to be a different meaning to this.

It was so hard to believe that all would be well!

But on the other hand, Jesus and the Father were one and the same thing; and the Father (presumably with Jesus, whatever that meant) had created the whole universe, and had absolute control over everything in it--including Samuel. And he had said all would be well even with Samuel, and that Nathanael would find it out, and so presumably, he knew what he was talking about.

We would find out the "how" in due time, and then we would all say, "Of course! How could I not have foreseen it!" But beforehand, it was like looking at the wrong side of a tapestry, all knots and ends of yarn, with only the barest glimpses that there was a pattern on the other side.

But it gave Andrew hope. He could fail. If Jesus himself could fail, and all would be well, then Andrew could fail at this nebulous project he had, and it would not matter.

And he had learned this much: He, like Nathanael, was what he was, and what people thought of him was irrelevant. Eventually, in the Kingdom--or after he died, or whenever it was that everything made sense, all that would matter would be what he was, not what he seemed to be to others.

Easily said, but it was still completely unsatisfactory. He wanted to ask Jesus about it, but he did not have the difficulty clear enough in his head to be able to ask him anything. Well, Jesus was constantly saying that they had to have faith. He would have to have faith that this would be resolved, somehow. If the Samuel problem could be solved, then his problem could also be.

He trusted.

"Master, I believe! Please help my unbelief!" Was not this what the father of the demoniac said? It was why it came so readily to his mind. But it was enough.

The group walked along, by themselves for a change, since the crowds realized they had gone to Judea and were not expecting them back as yet. On the way, they paused, and Jesus, who was acting as if nothing had happened on the mountain, told them, "Attend carefully to this: The Son of Man is going to be surrendered into human hands, and they will kill him; and on the third day after that, he will return to life."

Again. He was obviously serious about it, and wanted them to brace themselves so that they would not be devastated when it happened.

How could they not be?

Andrew noticed Nathanael, rather frantically trying to find someone to talk to. He went to John, but received no satisfactory answer, in spite of whatever it was that John had seen on the mountain. Andrew was hoping he would come to him, so that he could clarify his own thoughts by talking to him, but he went to Judas instead. Andrew thought it might be a good idea to see if Judas had changed his "theory" of Jesus at all, based on what he had seen with the demon.

When Nathanael asked Judas, he said, "I fear he means what he says, Bartholomew. I fear it greatly. He has not mollified the authorities, and they can be--adamant--in certain respects, especially about blasphemy. And they think he has, if not actually blasphemed, come very close. Very close."

"But what of this statement that he will return to life in three days?" Nathanael looked hopefully at him.

"Ah, well, that. I have a suspicion, Nathanael, that I would not like anyone to know of. But . . . You recall that when he drove the vendors out of the Temple he said, 'Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will rebuild it'?"

"I remember. I could not make head or tail of it."

"Nor I. But remember, he was pounding his chest with his hand when he said it. I think the 'three days' is significant; he has some kind of fixation on three days."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you see . . . Jonah was in the fish three days, was he not, and then emerged?"

"What has that to do with it?"

"What I think is this: I told you that it seems to me that the Activity that created the universe is acting through him. Well, I believe It--or 'He,' if you prefer--is possessing more and more of Jesus's mind. He has begun calling himself the Son of God, just as that fool Simon the Rock did, rather than a son of God. We are all sons of God in a sense; we are created in his image, as Genesis says. But he is beginning to think that he is a literal Son of God: God from God, so to speak."

"You are saying that he thinks, because of his power, that he is God in some sense."

"You will notice that he does not call himself the Father; but I believe he is thinking of himself as God the Son. But he is intelligent enough--intelligent enough! He is far more intelligent than any other human being!--to realize that the Judean authorities are going to consider this blasphemy. He does not, because he thinks it is true; but he knows what they think, and he does not see a way he can convince them otherwise. He thinks they will kill him."

"No!"

"I greatly fear so."

"And then he will come back to life on the third day to prove that he was right and they were wrong."

"That, Nathanael, is what I am convinced he thinks. And of course, if he is God the Son, he will do so. But--" and he did not finish the sentence.

"You think he is mistaken."

"Tragically mistaken. The Activity that is possessing him has been driving him mad."

"Unless he really is God the Son."

"Yes, but you can see, I hope, that this is absurd. God is a spirit, not something with flesh and bones."

"I see," said Nathanael.

Andrew thought as much. According to Judas, Jesus was going mad. But his theory was absurd. The demon that Andrew drove away knew things.

True, demons talked through the voice of the men they possessed, but what they said did not come from the men; the demons could think. They were persons, not "forces." And if they were persons, then whatever "possessed" the body of Jesus was also a person, not a "force."

And anyway, if Jesus was "being driven mad" by this "force" that was acting "through" him, he was mad at the very beginning. He told John at the very outset that he and the Father "were one and the same thing"--and John, as he was announcing him, in effect said the same: The "God in God's bosom," or some such expression. Certainly John was not being driven mad by the "force" that was prompting him to announce Jesus.

No, Judas had let his theory blind himself to the obvious. Jesus was not "possessed" by the Father; or if he was, the Father and he were (was?) lying.

Not to mention that he had apparently shown what he was on the mountain just now--presumably, to the people who most needed to be convinced of it. They had no doubt that the Father was not an impersonal "force."

No, the answer was that Judas was the deluded one. It had to be. The question was what Judas would now do, believing as he believed. Could he still be made to change his way of thinking? It did not seem so. And if not, he was dangerous.

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