As exhausted as he was, as hungry, Joshua preached to them. They had been waiting for us and he wouldn’t disappoint them. He climbed into one of Peter’s boats, rowed out from the shore far enough for the crowd to be able to see him, and he preached to them about the kingdom for two hours.
When he had finished, and had sent the crowd on their way, two newcomers waited among the disciples. They were both compact, strong-looking men in their mid-twenties. One was clean-shaven and wore his hair cut short, so that it formed a helmet of ringlets on his head; the other had long hair with his beard plaited and curled in the style I had seen on some Greeks. Although they wore no jewelry, and their clothes were no more fancy than my own, there was an air of wealth about them both. I thought it might have been power, but if it was, it wasn’t the self-conscious power of the Pharisees. If nothing else, they were self-assured.
The one with the long hair approached Joshua and kneeled before him. “Rabbi, we’ve heard you speak of the coming of the kingdom and we want to join you. We want to help spread the Word.”
Joshua looked at the man for a long time, smiling to himself, before he spoke. He took the man by the shoulders and lifted him. “Stand up. You are welcome, friends.”
The stranger seemed baffled. He looked back at his friend, then at me, as if I had some answer to his confusion. “This is Simon,” he said, nodding toward his friend. “My name is Judas Iscariot.”
“I know who you are,” Joshua said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
And so we became fifteen: Joshua, Maggie, and me; Bartholomew, the Cynic; Peter and Andrew, John and James, the fishermen; Matthew, the tax collector; Nathaniel of Cana, the young nitwit; Philip and Thaddeus, who had been followers of John the Baptist; Thomas the twin, who was a loony; and the Zealots, Simon the Canaanite and Judas Iscariot. Fifteen went out into Galilee to preach the Holy Ghost, the coming of the kingdom, and the good news that the Son of God had arrived.
Chapter 28
Joshua’s ministry was three years of preaching, sometimes three times a day, and although there were some high and low points, I could never remember the sermons word for word, but here’s the gist of almost every sermon I ever heard Joshua give.
You should be nice to people, even creeps.
And if you:
a) believed that Joshua was the Son of God (and)
b) he had come to save you from sin (and)
c) acknowledged the Holy Spirit within you (became as a little child, he would say)(and)
d) didn’t blaspheme the Holy Ghost (see c),
then you would:
e) live forever
f) someplace nice
g) probably heaven.
However, if you:
h) sinned (and/or)
i) were a hypocrite (and/or)
j) valued things over people (and)
k) didn’t do a, b, c, and d,
then you were:
l) fucked
Which is the message that Joshua’s father had given him so many years ago, and which seemed, at the time, succinct to the point of rudeness, but made more sense after you listened to a few hundred sermons.
That’s what he taught, that’s what we learned, that’s what we passed on to the people in the towns of Galilee. Not everybody was good at it, however, and some seemed to miss the point altogether. One day Joshua, Maggie, and I returned from preaching in Cana to find Bartholomew sitting by the synagogue at Capernaum, preaching the Gospel to a semicircle of dogs that sat around him. The dogs seemed spellbound, but then, Bart was wearing a flank steak as a hat, so I’m not sure it was his speaking skills that held their attention.
Joshua snatched the steak off of Bartholomew’s head and tossed it into the street, where a dozen dogs suddenly found their faith. “Bart, Bart, Bart,” Josh said as he shook the big man by the shoulders, “don’t give what’s holy to dogs. Don’t cast your pearls before swine. You’re wasting the Word.”
“I don’t have any pearls. I am slave to no possessions.”
“It’s a metaphor, Bart,” Joshua said, deadpan. “It means don’t give the Word to those who aren’t ready to receive it.”
“You mean like when you drowned the swine in Decapolis? They weren’t ready for it?”
Joshua looked at me for help. I shrugged.
Maggie said, “That’s exactly right, Bart. You got it.”
“Oh, why didn’t you say so?” Bart said. “Okay guys, we’re off to preach the Word in Magdala.” He climbed to his feet and led his pack of disciples toward the lake.
Joshua looked at Maggie. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
“Yes it is,” she said, then she took off to find Johanna and Susanna, two women who had joined us and were learning to preach the gospel.
“That’s not what I meant,” Joshua said to me.
“Have you ever won an argument with her?”
He shook his head.
“Then say amen and let’s go see what Peter’s wife has cooked up.”
The disciples were gathered around outside of Peter’s house, sitting on the logs we had arranged in a circle around a fire pit. They were all looking down and seemed to be caught in some glum prayer. Even Matthew was there, when he should have been at his job collecting taxes in Magdala.
“What’s wrong?” asked Joshua.
“John the Baptist is dead,” said Philip.
“What?” Joshua sat down on the log next to Peter and leaned against him.
“We just saw Bartholomew,” I said. “He didn’t say anything about it.”
“We just found out,” said Andrew. “Matthew just brought the news from Tiberius.”
It was the first time since he’d joined us that I’d seen Matthew without the light of enthusiasm in his face. He might have aged ten years in the last few hours. “Herod had him beheaded,” he said.
“I thought Herod was afraid of John,” I said. It was rumored that Herod had kept John alive because he actually believed him to be the Messiah and was afraid of the wrath of God should the holy man perish.
“It was at the request of his stepdaughter,” said Matthew. “John was killed at the behest of a teenage slut.”
“Well, jeez, if he wasn’t dead already, the irony would have killed him,” I said.
Joshua stared into the dirt before him, thinking or praying, I couldn’t tell. Finally he said, “John’s followers will be like babes in the wilderness.”
“Thirsty?” guessed Nathaniel.
“Hungry?” guessed Peter.
“Horny?” guessed Thomas.
“No, you dumbfucks, lost. They’ll be lost!” I said. “Jeez.”
Joshua stood. “Philip, Thaddeus, go to Judea, tell John’s followers that they are welcome here. Tell them that John’s work is not lost. Bring them here.”
“But master,” Judas said, “John has thousands of followers. If they come here, how will we feed them?”
“He’s new,” I explained.
The next day was the Sabbath, and in the morning as we all headed to the synagogue, an old man in fine clothes ran out of the bushes and threw himself at Joshua’s feet. “Oh, Rabbi,” he wailed, “I am the mayor of Magdala. My youngest daughter has died. People say that you can heal the sick and raise the dead, will you help me?”
Joshua looked around. A half-dozen local Pharisees watched us from different points around the village. Joshua turned to Peter. “Take the Word to the synagogue today. I am going to help this man.”