Thirty-One

They arrived in Jerusalem at evening, and went to the Gethsemani garden again, and as they traveled severally through the night by different routes (since Jesus did not want in known where the whole group was going), John was startled when a voice came out of the shadows, "Is Judas here?" It was Ezra, all but invisible.

"I think I saw him earlier. Perhaps he has arrived at the garden already."

"If so, he will not be alone, and we must wait."

"For what?"

"Bartholomew and I have resolved--but perhaps it is better that you not know. It is just that I am so enraged!"

"Enraged? At Judas? About what?"

"I should not--I cannot keep it in! That fiend! That devil! put a tarantula in Bartholomew's pouch during the night! I saw him do something to the pouch, but did not realize what it was. And then early this morning, for the first time, he condescended to notice my existence--we were traveling together--and asked me to go to Jacob's well for water. Bartholomew had not waked yet. When I came back, Judas was gone, and Bartholomew was in a panic. He had put his hand into his pouch, and felt the spider--he has a deadly fear of spiders--and almost could not speak! He must pay for this!

And dearly!"

"Did it bite him?"

"No, but it frightened him half to death!" He disappeared again, looking for Judas.

John, who knew that Nathanael was a timid soul, could imagine how he must have felt. He said nothing as Ezra left, and his rage at Judas grew. He was the devil Jesus had said. And yet Jesus was doing nothing, for some reason!

And suddenly there was Judas, walking pensively along, not ten cubits away. John dashed over and said, "Judas, did you put a tarantula in Nathanael's pouch?"

"What?" said Judas. "You have been listening to that lying slave of his?"

"He is not a liar!"

"Oh, please! One need only look at him--of course, only in the daytime. He is as black as the night."

"And what of that 'mistake' with your wine canteen with Thomas?"

"What of it? It was a mistake."

"You could have killed him!"

"Come now. Is he any the worse for it? What are you trying to accuse me of?"

"That is what I wish to find out! And brushing up against me!"

"When did I ever 'brush against' you?"

"You know you did! That night not long ago!"

"You are out of your mind."

"Now you are calling me a liar."

"Well, when you say things that are not, what am I to call you?"

"I know what I call you, what the Master himself called you--a devil!"

"What is this, little boy? You wish to pick a fight with me? Indeed? You think you are Ezra, or can fight his battles? I can handle Ezra, and I can certainly handle you!"

"If you wish a fight, I am more than willing!" He made a fist.

"Very well, strip, and let me teach you a lesson or two." Judas, with an anticipatory grin on his face, threw off his mantle and tunic, as did John, and they faced each other. John threw a punch, which Judas skillfully dodged, and then--

John suddenly found himself flat on his back on the ground. Judas threw himself on top of him, and expertly pinned him down.

"You thought it would be easy, did you not?" he panted, still grinning. John struggled to get free, but Judas held him fast, and was moving his naked body back and forth on top of him. That beautiful body! In spite of himself, he found himself becoming aroused.

"Admit it, you enjoy it!" Judas panted, as he kept moving. John struggled harder, as Judas was obviously arousing himself also upon John's body; John could feel it.

He stopped struggling for a moment, but it did not help; he was still rapidly becoming aroused, and the thought occurred to him that Judas might interpret this as acquiescence in what was going on. And so he struggled once again, harder, giving Judas more trouble in keeping him down while he worked on him. He was no longer wasting his breath making comments. This went on, it seemed forever, with both men reaching a higher and higher pitch of excitement, until finally, to John's humiliation, shame, and rage, he reached climax--and then Judas did also. He kept holding him down as the reaction began, still moving on the slippery mess on John's abdomen. John was disgusted and sick with shame, as well as weak from the reaction to all of this.

And then Judas stood up, breathing hard, and said, "Well! You seemed to have had quite a good time! I suspected as much. But I hope you have learned your lesson about challenging your elders and betters. There is a stream over there where you can wash--but I think I myself will wear my victory for a while." And he picked up his tunic and put it on over his reeking body, and donned his mantle and walked away.

John lay there for a considerable time, unable to move from the reaction, but even more from despair at the fact that he did receive pleasure from what Judas had done to him; intense pleasure.

In fury at both Judas and himself, he turned on his stomach and pounded the ground with his fist in impotent rage. "How could I have let him do that!" he whispered, and then began to sob with guilt and murderous anger.

The tears now silently streaming down his face, he sprang up, grabbed his tunic and mantle and rushed over to the stream where he washed himself off over and over again. "How could I? How could I? How could I? How could I?" He was furious with himself for allowing Judas to trip him onto his back, as well as for the pleasure he felt in what Judas was doing! How could he?"

He crept off to the garden and lay down by himself, but could find no sleep. He kept reproaching himself and cursing Judas. "I hope Ezra kills him! Someone should do it. I myself will kill him if I see him again!" And as the night wore on and on, the recriminations became more and more confused and nebulous, a sort of separate person of guilt that was shouting incoherent things in his ear.

When he woke, it must have been around noon--for he did sleep finally, near dawn--everyone had left. He rose, with a raging headache, and staggered across the Kidron Brook into Jerusalem, where he supposed he would see Jesus in the Temple.

And sure enough, there he was. He went beside Andrew in the crowd around Jesus. Andrew put his arm over his shoulder and drew him to himself, as they heard Jesus say,

"--give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's," at which everyone laughed and commented, "Excellent!" "Look at their faces! They are enraged!" He looked at Andrew, who said, "They asked him if one should pay taxes to Caesar or not, and he asked for a denarius and asked whose image was on it, you see."

But while Andrew was saying this, some others dragged a woman forward, her hair askew and robes rumpled, struggling to free herself from their grasp. They stood her in front of Jesus.

"Rabbi, this woman has been arrested in the very act of adultery; and Moses in the Law has commanded us to stone her sort. What do you have to say about it?"

The crowd fell silent once again; this trap was not one he could extricate himself from by clever wordplay. If he dismissed her, he was violating the Law; but how could a man who claimed to be able to forgive sins stone a sinner? John noticed Mary Magdalene over on the other side of the crowd, with a horrified look on her face. It was as if she thought it could have been she who had been captured. But had Mary not left them a while ago? Had she gone to live somewhere in Jerusalem?

"Is that not Mary Magdalene?" he asked Andrew.

"Knew you not?" She is actually the sister of Martha and Lazarus!"

John drew in his breath. "Do they know?"

"Not yet, it seems. To them, she is just the long-lost sister returned because of Jesus."

"Dear God! What will happen when they find out?"

"That is what everyone is wondering."

Jesus, who seemed a bit nonplused by the difficulty the woman presented, kept a calm face. He sat there on the step, tracing his finger in the dust beside him, then erasing the patterns he made. "Should she be stoned or not, according to your view of God's Law?" said the accuser. Then he added with a sneer, "Do you find the answer there in the dust?"

At this, Jesus straightened up and looked him directly in the eyes. "Have some sinless one among you," he said, "be the first to throw a stone." And again he bent over and resumed writing in the dust.

But now he seemed to be writing something legible, and as he glanced up, ostensibly to see if anyone had picked up a stone, he looked at his questioner and gave the slightest nod toward what he had written--at which the man's face flamed, and he turned away. Jesus erased what was there, wrote something else, and looked up again. By this time, several people had already left, and the one whose eyes he now met did not bother to glance down at the writing, but quietly pretended that he had not even seen Jesus, and moved away also.

It did not require many glances up from what he had been doing for the crowd to become remarkably sparse; and then Jesus wrote in the ground and looked straight at John and Andrew.

"What does it say?" said Andrew to John. He could not read.

"It says, 'Rape. See me.' What could it mean?" Puzzled, they stood there as everyone else dispersed. Jesus looked at the woman, and said, "Where are they, Madame? Has no one condemned you?"

"No one, Sir," she said.

"Nor do I condemn you. Go in peace." She hurried off.

Jesus beckoned John and Andrew, who were the only ones left. "I wanted to tell you why I did not stone the woman. I could not. You see, I knew what the situation really was."

The two stood silent. "She loved a man very much, but he was married. He met her, and told her he wanted to go away with her. She wished very much to do so, but told him that she could not, for he was married, and she could not go with a married man. At this, he seized her, threw her on a couch, and raped her. In spite of herself, she experienced great pleasure in what he was doing, though she kept struggling to free herself. And it was at this point that the others came upon them and brought her to me.

"She herself felt guilty because she had experienced pleasure from the act; but all the time, she was trying to avoid and escape it. She was guilty of nothing in fact, because pleasure and pain are automatic and beyond our control. It was what she wanted and tried to do that was her true self, not what she felt. She had no need to feel guilt at all."

He looked intently at Andrew, who at first seemed to resist, and then nodded; and then he looked at John. It was as much to say, "You have no guilt whatever in what Judas did to you, no matter how you felt about it."

"Thank you, Master," said John, softly, and Andrew said, "Yes. I understand. Thank you."

"Go in peace now, and stop worrying so much." He smiled a loving smile upon them both.

Each was aware that what he had said had a special meaning for the other person, and each knew that that meaning was to remain private to the person. They looked at each other silently, and went their separate ways.

John wandered through the immense courtyard aimlessly, pondering, almost delirious with relief. At least he had not sinned! Thank God! Though it still felt like a sin, even now. But Jesus had told him not to worry about it. Thank God!

He thought he heard Jesus's voice, and wandered in that direction. Was he not saying, "You will die in your sins"? It sounded like it.

He came up within earshot, and heard Jesus say, "If you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins!" A shock ran through John. Not, "if you do not believe what I am, but if you do not believe that I am. He was using God's name to refer to himself, and saying that we must believe in who he is: one and the same as the Father. And the night of the storm, when he walked to them on the water, did he not say, "I AM, be not afraid"

But did the people understand what he was now saying? It seemed not. It was too close to an expression that could make sense to them.

But he then said, "When you lift up the Son of Man"--and he held his arms out in the form of a cross. The form of a cross!--"you will recognize what I AM, and that I do nothing by myself and only say what the Father has taught me."

At this, some of the people turned away in disgust. "He never comes out and says he is the Prince, and keeps telling us conundrums! He is a waste of time!"

But Jesus was talking to those who remained. "--real students of mine," he was saying. "You will recognize what the truth is, and the truth will set you free." John hoped that he recognized the truth.

"We are children of Abraham," said someone in the crowd. "We have never been slaves. How can you tell us we will be set free?"

"Amen amen I tell you," said Jesus, "anyone who commits a sin is a slave; and a slave does not stay in the family forever. The Son stays in it forever. And if the Son frees you, you really will be free."

John realized that Jesus had freed him from his guilt at what happened with Judas. He did not feel free, but feelings did not count. How hard it was to believe this!

"--telling you what I saw with the Father, and you are doing what you heard from your father!"

"Our father is Abraham!" they shouted.

"If you are Abraham's children, then act like Abraham!" Jesus countered. "But no! You are trying to kill me, a person who has spoken to you of the facts he heard from God. Abraham did not do that sort of thing. No, you are doing what your real father does."

"We are not bastards!" shouted the crowd. "We have the one God for our father!"

"If God were your father, you would love me," said Jesus, "because I came from God. And I did not come of myself; he sent me. Then why can you not understand what I say? Because you cannot hear my words! You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and could not bear the truth, because the truth was not in him. And when he tells lies, he does what is natural to himself, because he is a liar, and the father of liars. And when I tell you what the truth is, you do not believe me!"

The people were making outraged cries that he was the one who had a devil. Jesus looked out over them with anger and said, "Can any one of you name one sin that I have committed? Then if I tell you what the truth is, why do you not believe it? Anyone who belongs to God can hear what God says; and so you cannot hear, because you do not belong to God!"

John was stunned by this exchange. He was certainly not going to persuade anyone by what he was saying; he was throwing out a challenge to them: believe me, or condemn yourselves to perdition! He seemed to realize that it was hopeless, but he had to make the truth clear to them.

"--men I tell you," said Jesus, "Anyone who keeps what I say will never see death!" What was that? He was promising that if they followed him, they would never die!

"Now we know you are out of your mind!" shouted someone in the crowd. "Abraham died, and so did the prophets! And you say"--he repeated Jesus's words with bitter sarcasm--"that if anyone 'keeps what you say' he will not taste death forever! Are you greater than our ancestor Abraham? Who died! Or the prophets? Who died! Just who are you making yourself out to be?" The crowd roared assent.

Jesus looked out at them and let them calm down somewhat. Then he raised his hand for silence, and said calmly, "If I were to tell you how great I am, my greatness would be nothing. But there is my Father," he pointed to the sanctuary of the Temple, "who is showing how great I am. He is the one you call your God--but you do not recognize him. But I know him. If I said I did not know him, I would be a liar like you. I do know him, because I came from him, and he sent me!"

Now he was saying that he came from God, and God sent him. But he had called himself "I AM" just a short while ago.

Then Jesus looked over them once again, and said, "And your ancestor Abraham was glad to see that my day was coming; and when he saw it come, it filled him with joy!"

"You are not even fifty years old," shouted the man who had spoken earlier, and you have 'seen Abraham!'" Everyone laughed, and Jesus, stung, broke into their cacophony with the angry retort, "Amen amen I tell you, before Abraham came into existence, I AM!"

One could hear the intake of breath as the whole crowd reacted in stunned horror. Jesus stood there in front of them for a silent moment, and then cries of "Blasphemy!" "He has blasphemed on the very steps of the Temple!" as people scurried about to find stones to throw at him.

--To throw at no one. He was not there.

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