Twenty-Six
Shortly afterward, in passing a place where Judas and, interestingly, Matthew and--of course--Mary were sitting in earnest, if not shocked, conversation. He decided to listen, to see how Judas's views had developed, if at all. Judas was saying--to Matthew; he acted as if Mary were not there--"It is unthinkable. God is not that sort of thing. Those gods do not exist and cannot exist. Our God is the only God there is, and he is a spirit, not a male in heat."
"Of course. But then, what are you driving at?"
"Simply that, since he believes that he is God--God the Son, if you will, since he does not believe he is some kind of hero like Hercules; he knows too much about God for that--he is looking for the right moment to inform people of it, and some day, he will find it, and the people . . . will kill him. He foresees it himself."
"But this is terrible! Dreadful!" said Matthew.
"It is tragic! He is without question the greatest man, and the holiest man, who ever lived. No one has ever been in closer contact with God; but the very source of his greatness is destroying him, little by little, every day. I know not what to do about it; as I said, I have not uttered a syllable of my fears until today. If I were to so much as suggest it to anyone but you, I would probably be killed myself!"
You do not want to talk about it! thought Andrew. You have already mentioned it to several people "in confidence"! You are trying to undermine our faith--and being quite convincing about it, I must say.
"I cannot believe it."
"I fear that you will not have to, and quite soon. Now that I have pointed it out to you, you will see it happen yourself. It is like one of those Greek dramas. His statements about himself are becoming wilder and wilder, as he thinks we are more and more prepared by his wonderful deeds to accept them; and eventually, he will say something no one can accept--something so outrageous that no sane person can even listen to it--and he will be denounced to the Council. I know; I am a priest myself, remember, and I know that they are already looking for something that will remove him from bothering them. His lack of meticulousness about the Sabbath does not endear himself to them, especially when he makes them look foolish for objecting to it."
"So you think that he will finally say something openly blasphemous."
"I do, because he will not think it blasphemy, because he will sincerely believe it to be true. And once he says it, they will bring him to trial, and he will be too honest to deny the charge, precisely because he believes it to be true--and believes it sincerely, since he is mad. And he will die."
"You mean he will literally be crucified?"
"I fear so. Unless--unless the Power that courses through him gives him some spectacular means of escape at the crucial moment. But in a way, that might be worse, because then he will have won the conflict with the authorities, and we will be ruled from then on by a man who is convinced that he is God. But as I say, the Power, I think, enables him to save others; but I do not think it will be effective if he turns it upon himself. You see, what I consider inevitable is that the Council will find some way to twist what he says into sedition against Rome--and this will be simple if he lets Simon the Revolutionary have his way to the least extent--and once Rome comes on the stage, then it will be out of our hands, and all the force of the whole far-flung empire will be against him. He sees this too; because after all, he is saying that he will be crucified, and we do not crucify people. Yes, you will see him hanging on a cross."
"No!"
"He has said so in so many words."
"But he keeps adding that he will come back to life on the third day afterward, like Jonah."
"Ah, well, of course, he would come back if he were really God, to prove that this is what he is. But . . ."
"No! No! No! It cannot be! You are mistaken!"
"I am sorry Matthew. You have no idea how sorry. Perhaps I should not have told you."
Matthew stared at him openmouthed for what seemed forever. Andrew thought, Oh, yes, you are sorry! Oh, no, you should not have told him! And with Mary listening in, dumbstruck!
Matthew, and of course, Mary were silent for a long time. Finally, Matthew said, in a calmer voice, "No, you are wrong, Judas. You must be. The Master would never allow him to perform miracles, if--"
"You must remember that the Master is more of a Power than a person--"
"Now that I cannot believe! That is blasphemy!"
"Have it your way," said Judas. "But you have quite a few of the Judean priesthood against you. I admit that there are many who would agree with you. The trouble is that facts are facts, and whether you believe that I am right or wrong makes very little difference to what the facts are."
"But that also goes for you, Judas. You are extremely intelligent, and you seem to have reason on your side, but what will happen will happen. Your thinking that you are right will not make you right, if you are wrong."
"If I am. Believe me, Matthew, I would be overjoyed to be proved wrong. I love the Master, and it crushes me that his own mind is betraying him into destroying himself--and so needlessly! But we have not long to wait, I think. If I am correct, very soon he will be making some claim about himself that only a madman can accept. And he will ask us to accept it with no compromise. I am no prophet, but I see everything converging on this."
Andrew thought, Overjoyed to be proved wrong! He is waiting until Jesus makes it clear who he really is, and asks people to accept him as divine, and one and the same as the Father. And Judas is preparing those he thinks he can influence to accept Jesus's statements as insanity, when they are the simple truth! He is a menace!
He went to sleep that night, wondering what to do. Jesus had to be told what was happening--but of course, Jesus knew what was happening, if he was God; and if not, then perhaps Judas was right. But no, that could not be. Sleep came only after much and much of this futile wrangling with himself.
The next day, Jesus and the other eleven emissaries had gone into a lonely spot, after crossing the "sea" of Galilee in a boat, because Jesus had been so--one might say "pestered"--by the crowds that he decided that they should have a little time by themselves; they would return on the morrow. But it turned out that a positively enormous throng of people had divined where they were going, and had walked around the lake from Capernaum and all the surrounding area and caught sight of them; and Jesus, unwilling to simply send them away, had gone up a hill (it was not very far from the mountain where he had delivered his initial sermon), and he spoke to them at great length, sitting there, with the people ranged below him down toward the lake.
Finally, he said to the Twelve, who were gathered round him, "It is late, and the place is deserted." He turned to Philip, who happened to be beside him. "Where will we buy enough bread to feed all these people?" He had a twinkle in his eye as he said this.
"Half a year's salary," Philip answered, "would not buy enough bread so that everyone could have even a little!" He gazed out at the crowd in dismay. Jesus wore a little smile. He looked around as if for suggestions.
Andrew said, "There is a boy here with five barley loaves and a couple of fish. But" he added as he cast a glance out at the crowd, "what good would that do with all of them?" He waved his arm indicating the multitude. But he had an inkling of what was about to happen.
"Have the people lie down to eat," said Jesus. The place was quite grassy, and so they milled about and reclined on it, spreading themselves on the field halfway down the hill.
Jesus then took the loaves of bread from the boy, raised his eyes to the sky and thanked his Father for supplying them with food. And then he tore the loaves apart and handed the pieces to the Emissaries to distribute; and did the same with the two cooked fishes. And each of the Emissaries managed to get a piece either of bread or fish or both. Andrew received a piece of bread--a rather large one--from John, and was about to return it, when he noticed that John still had a large piece; he must have been given almost a whole loaf. James the owl, with a twinkle in his usually solemn eye, gave him some fish also, and still had some to give out.
And then Andrew caught on to why the others were so little reluctant to give out what they had. He broke off a piece of bread to give to one of the people lying there--there were thousands of them--and when he looked back at what he had left, it was as big as it had been before he broke any off. As a kind of experiment, he asked the man he had just supplied with bread if he wished for fish also, and gave him fully half of what he had--and tried to pay careful attention to what was happening. But one must blink, it seemed, and then or some other time when he was not absolutely attentive, what he had broken off grew back.
Try as he might, he could not see it happen; it just happened, and he kept giving bread and fish from his little store of it, and must have fed hundreds of people with what he had. Incredible!
Everyone became more and more excited, when they saw what was happening. And of course Simon the Revolutionary was taking advantage of it saying, "You see? Your King is feeding you! With five loaves of bread and two little fish! And there are thousands of you! I have been counting. You must be five thousand men or more, not even counting the women and children! And all of you are being fed on these five loaves by your King! Or is Caesar your King? Or who is?"
And as he passed from group to group in the throng, the word "King" began to swell from the crowd like a chorus, and when finally the students came around with baskets to collect the leftovers and eventually filled twelve with what people no longer wanted, the cry of "King!" became a roar, as the people stood up, evidently to go up to Jesus and lift him on their shoulders and take him--to Jerusalem, to anywhere, they knew not; they were simply inflamed with enthusiasm.
But quickly the swell of hosannas turned into a confused, "Where is he?" and Simon began running among them, from one student to the next, asking who had seen Jesus last. The most that could be gleaned was that he had been there, but had slipped away while everyone was distracted with collecting the marvelous harvest from the five loaves. "But he cannot have gone!" screamed Simon in anguish. "It is the perfect moment! Where is he?"
Nathanael put a long hand on his shoulder and turned him around. "Obviously," he said, "he does not want to be King."
"What do you mean, 'does not want to be'? He is our King."
"Then where is he?"
"That is what I want to know!" he shouted, and broke free. He ran off into the woods at the top of the hill, where Jesus must have gone; and after a short while came back, protesting and sputtering for people to help him look for the Master. But the others said that the Master knew what he was doing, and that if he wanted to be made King, he would appear and allow himself to be proclaimed King; but if he did not, everyone here could search the whole hill, and he would be nowhere to be found.
Simon would not calm down for a considerable time, well after the crowd had thinned out a great deal, and night had begun to fall; and even then, all he did was hang sulking about the periphery of the little band of students.
They, on the other hand, were ebullient. "Did you see Philip's face," laughed John's brother James, "when the Master asked him how we were to buy bread to feed all these people?"
"Well how was I to know what he planned to do?" said Philip, evoking a roar of laughter in everyone, who continued teasing him unmercifully in their joy, while some related anecdotes about the people in the crowd, how everyone tried to find out how the bread multiplied itself--and no one, not even the students, could fathom it; there simply always was more. Like everything Jesus did, it was perfectly simple, and perfectly impossible to understand.