Twenty-Four

Not long after this, the group was walking along, and Andrew was conversing with his brother, as was his custom. Out of the corner of his eye, he happened to see Judas and Thomas, who evidently asked Judas for a drink. Judas had two canteens, and handed one to Thomas, who took a large mouthful, and paused with an "Oh-my-God-what-am-I-to-do-now" look on his face, and finally, with a great effort of will spat out--a red liquid--onto the ground. He turned to Judas in fury.

"What are you trying to do?" he shrieked. "Kill me?"

"What?" said Judas. "Oh, Thomas, I am sorry! I thought it was the canteen of water! Here! Drink this!" and he handed him the other one. Thomas took a mouthful--of water, this time--and tried to rinse away the taste. He spat it out and then took a long, long drink.

"What?" asked Simon, noticing that Andrew had stopped in the middle of a sentence.

"I will wager that that was deliberate!" said Andrew, with suppressed fury.

"What was deliberate?"

"Oh, Thomas asked Judas for a drink, and instead of water, he gave him wine."

"No!"

"Indeed. I saw him spit it out, and then Judas apologized and handed him his canteen of water--as if he had mistakenly given him the wine, thinking it was the water."

"You think it was not mistaken?"

"I am convinced of it! Judas is no absent-minded fool!"

"But why would he do such a thing? He could start Thomas off to being a drunk all over again! You know how drunks are!"

"Everyone does--including Judas. That was why it had to be deliberate."

"Nonsense! It was an oversight, that is all."

"Simon, anyone who has two canteens and is asked for a drink by a drunk would be very certain to be careful that he gave him water and not wine. How could he not be?"

"No, no, you are making far too much of it."

"Well, have it your way." He was not going to get into a dispute with Simon over this. But it was just too neat. A way to play a little joke on Thomas, and test him to see if he could spit out a drink he was given. And if he took it, either to taunt him or to tell him, "You see, there is no harm in a little drink of wine now and then." Which would destroy him--and he had to know this.

But perhaps Simon was right; it seemed too malicious to be true. On the other hand, Judas was chafing under the fact that everyone believed that Jesus was the Son of God and divine, somehow, not simply a vehicle for God to work through. His disdain for their ignorance and non-acceptance of his brilliant theory would tend to make him scornful of all of them--which could very easily translate itself into playing little tricks on them such as he had just witnessed.

Still, perhaps Simon was right and he was reading too much into what could have been merely an oversight. Perhaps Andrew's scorn for him at "explaining" Jesus's miracles and claims to be God's Son as madness and delusion was coloring Andrew's view of him.

But if he was right . . .

Something else interesting happened the next day, including Judas obliquely, but mainly about John. Andrew happened to notice him looking at something off in the distance as if studying it, and when he turned to see what it was, it was Mary. There was nothing remarkable in that, in itself; Andrew enjoyed looking at her--a little more than he wished, given who she might still be. But there was a detachment about John's gaze, somehow.

She did not see him looking at her for quite some time, and when she noticed him, she looked back with a kind of "only you can save me" expression on her face--for just an instant, and then reddened and looked at the ground. And at this point, Judas passed between the two of them and broke the spell.

Was Mary attracted by Judas? Why would she not be? He was extremely handsome. But of course, the question was whether she was attracted by him as Andrew was attracted by her, and fought it off. John, however, almost acted if Judas were the one he was attracted to. But that was silly. John was no prancing effeminate.

But just then Ezra passed, and said something as if to the air. A confirmation of something he had said to John? It even sounded (Andrew could hear no words) almost like a warning. John shook his head and walked back to the encampment.

It seemed that much was going on in this little group, now that Mary had appeared among them. God grant that no damage would be done.

A different episode occurred the very next day. Andrew had decided to keep an eye on John, and noticed that he and his brother James were talking to his mother, protesting something, and clearly embarrassed almost to tears.

She all but dragged them before Jesus, and made a request of him, while the two of them studied the ground at their feet. Jesus wore an amused smile. He asked them something, and they answered, as if bravely, "We can!"

Jesus then looked at them fondly, and said, "Yes, you will drink from my cup, but second and third place in my Kingdom is not for me to give; it is for those my Father has prepared it for."

He then patted both of them on the shoulder with an "I understand" gesture, and bowed to the mother, who stomped back to her house in some dudgeon.

Andrew saw that the two were not responsible for what their mother did, but someone else apparently overheard some of the conversation, and there was angry discussion about it. Jesus once again intervened, and said, "You have heard that Gentile authorities act like masters of slaves, and the nobles let the ordinary people feel their power. That is not how it is to be with you. If anyone wants to be of the upper class, he is to become your servant, and the one who wants the top rank is to be your slave. In the same way, the Son of Man did not come to be waited on; he came to serve--" and he paused and looked out at the horizon--"and to give up his life as a ransom for many, many others."

Again. He was to "give up his life." Andrew hoped that his doing that would accomplish the salvation of the world, somehow, if not its transformation into what it should have been.

As Andrew was walking a few days later, he met Nathanael, and at the same moment saw Thomas, Mary, and--of course--Matthew engaged in earnest conversation. "Shall we?" he asked, and Nathanael nodded. They went over and Nathanael said, "May we join you?" and sat down with Andrew.

"Matthew," said Thomas, "says that the Master wants us to be holy, but does not care about our sins."

"Actually, that is one of the strangest things about him, I think," said Mary, too interested in the topic to wait for Nathanael to reply. "Who would have put up with me but he? Most people I know can forgive another person, but only if they can find something to excuse what he did--in fact, we can only forgive ourselves if we can excuse our acts. In my case, I could find nothing whatever to excuse myself, once--once the mask had fallen from the sham I was living. But he had said that if I wished, I would be forgiven. Simply if I wished. Of course, before that night, I had not thought that anything I did required forgiveness, I even thought of it as virtue, because--well, for a stupid reason. But then, when I could see what I had done--and he seemed to know what I had done far better even than I--I saw that nothing could excuse it. But he forgave it without looking for an excuse. It was as if he said, 'Well, you did it, and you now wish you had not done it, and that is enough.'"

"--Provided, of course, that you do not wish to continue doing it," said Matthew.

"Of course," she said. "I wonder," she mused, "what would happen if one did something again after having been forgiven." Was she wondering, thought Andrew, if she might succumb to Judas? She looked pensive but rather frightened. "As to that," said Thomas, "you must not think that it has not happened. Some of us have been with the Master almost a year now. It is just what you would expect. Do you remember, Matthew, when John provoked the Rock almost to a fight twice in the same day, and the Rock forgave him both times, and then went up to the Master, feeling so very virtuous, and asked him, 'How many times should I forgive a person who has wronged me? As many as seven times?' obviously thinking he would hear the reply, 'Oh, once is quite sufficient'--and you should have seen his face when the Master answered, 'Oh, no, not seven times; I tell you seventy times seven! (with his characteristic nodding chop of his head)'" He laughed huge guffaws, in which Andrew, who had so far kept silent, joined. Even Nathanael chuckled.

"I wonder why that is," said Mary, pensively.

"I think I can answer that," said Nathanael, speaking for the first time. "I think he does not envy the sinner."

"He does not envy him?" said Thomas. "Come now, make at least a modicum of sense!"

"No, I am serious. Have you noticed how good people react to a sinner? They hate him and want to be sure that he is punished. Now why is that? Why should they care if someone else is doing what he should not? I think it is because they themselves would like to be doing it and getting away with it, as they see him apparently doing. But they are afraid that if they do what is forbidden, they will be punished, and so they want to make sure that he suffers for it."

"Say that again," said Matthew. "There may be something in it."

"It is total nonsense!" said Thomas, nodding twice. There was something going on between him and Nathanael.

"I think not," said Matthew. "I assume you are saying that people do not sin, not because they see it as bad in itself--or bad for them in itself, and so they would actually like to commit the sin if there were no punishment attached to it."

"Exactly," said Nathanael.

"And so they envy the sinner. . . . Hm."

"--and therefore want him punished," finished Thomas. "I must admit there might be sense in it at that. And you are claiming that the Master does not look on things in this way?" Was he calling a truce now with Nathanael?

"I would think that Mary and Matthew, of all people, would understand this," said Nathanael. "From what I gather, you two devoted your whole lives to sin--and the kind that people envy most, in fact." Andrew thought that he had a point. Making yourself rich by taking advantage of others was a sin people admired as cleverness--and of course Mary's actually making money out of people who were desperate to have sex with her was something that many women--and men, for that matter--would envy.

"--have any man she pleased, and discard him as soon as she had used him." he was saying. "And you, Matthew, how much did you overcollect on the taxes Rome asked for? Twice as much?"

"Oh, no!" said Matthew. "It was more like five times."

"And you kept the difference, of course." He turned to Mary. "And you should have seen his mansion! We went there to eat after he joined us. It is sold now, of course, and here he is, as poor as the rest of us. Are you sorry you are not rich?"

Matthew smiled. "There is something in me that still is, of course, but I see what you mean. Being rich . . . has its advantages, I suppose I could say, in some ways. But in very few ways, when it comes to that. But I certainly would do anything rather than go back to the life of scheming how to cheat others without being cheated myself, worrying about how to prevent all those who hated me from killing me--and even worse, from stealing back what I had in effect stolen from them--and all the rest of it. I had not a moment's peace or rest. Often and often, I wished that they would come and kill me and put an end to all of it. And what was all of it, in fact? A soft bed, upon which I could find no sleep, and luxurious food, which my stomach would not digest. You are right."

"Is it not the same with you, Mary?" he said.

"Oh, yes. There may be women, to be sure, who are tired of their husbands and who would have looked at me and envied me--though I am sure they would never admit it--for having a different man every night. What they do not realize is that not being able to have the same man night after night makes the whole thing a mockery and a horror. And all the perfumes and the carved wood and the rich surroundings are merely so much bait. Nothing could ever be enjoyed for what it was, least of all the act that everyone calls 'pleasure.' No, you are perfectly right; he rescued me from agony; my sin, far from being enviable, was a punishment far beyond any conceivable suffering which could be added to it."

"And you are saying," said Thomas, "that it is thus in every case. That if one really understands the sin, the sinner is to be pitied, not condemned."

"I would say that the sinner is condemned. And all the worse if he continues to think of his sin as something desirable."

"True," said Matthew. "I know some tax-collectors who think I am a fool. But what can one do? They refuse to listen, and I see the torment they daily undergo, but they in their delusion call it joy."

"That may be," said Thomas. "I do not deny that he probably sees sin as misery from which he can help us escape. How else can one explain his actions?"

"I am inclined to think, though," said Matthew, "that there is even more to it than this. I think he sees a misery even greater than the one we see, even when we are the sinners ourselves. Perhaps he sees a future for the sinner which we know not; the Pharisees say that life does not cease with death, and the life afterward might be the garbage-dump of Gehenna he speaks of about where the worm does not die and the fire is never extinguished."

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