“You should know better,” Joshua said to Nathaniel, “you yellow-haired freak. One more time, we can’t cast the Romans out of the kingdom because the kingdom is open to all.”
And I think they were getting it, at least the two Zealots were getting it, because they looked profoundly disappointed. They’d waited their whole life for the Messiah to come along and establish the kingdom by crushing the Romans, now he was telling them in his own divine words that it wasn’t going to happen. But then Joshua started with the parables.
“The kingdom is like a wheat field with tares, you can’t pull out the tares without destroying the grain.”
Blank stares. Doubly blank from the fishermen, who didn’t know squat from farming metaphors.
“A tare is a rye grass,” Joshua explained. “It weaves its roots amid the roots of wheat or barley, and there’s no way to pull them out without ruining the crop.”
Nobody got it.
“Okay,” Joshua continued. “The children of heaven are the good people, and the tares are the bad ones. You get both. And when you’re all done, the angels pick out the wicked and burn them.”
“Not getting it,” said Peter. He shook his head, and his gray mane whipped around his face like a confused lion trying to shake off the sight of a flying wildebeest.
“How do you guys preach this stuff if you don’t understand it? Okay, try this: the kingdom of heaven is like, uh, a merchant seeking pearls.”
“Like before swine,” said Bartholomew.
“Yes! Bart! Yes! Only no swine this time, same pearls though.”
Three hours later, Joshua was still at it, and he was starting to run out of things to liken the kingdom to, his favorite, the mustard seed, having failed in three different tries.
“Okay, the kingdom is like a monkey.” Joshua was hoarse and his voice was breaking.
“How?”
“A Jewish monkey, right?”
“Is it like a monkey eating a mustard seed?”
I stood up and went to Joshua and put my arm around his shoulder. “Josh, take a break.” I led him down the beach toward the village.
He shook his head. “Those are the dumbest sons of bitches on earth.”
“They’ve become like little children, as you told them to.”
“Stupid little children,” Joshua said.
I heard light footsteps on the sand behind us and Maggie threw her arms around our necks. She kissed Joshua on the forehead, making a loud wet smacking sound, then looked as if she was going to do the same to me so I shied away.
“You two are the ninnies here. You both rail on them about their intelligence, when that doesn’t have anything to do with why they’re here. Have either one of you heard them preach? I have. Peter can heal the sick now. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen James make the lame walk. Faith isn’t an act of intelligence, it’s an act of imagination. Every time you give them a new metaphor for the kingdom they see the metaphor, a mustard seed, a field, a garden, a vineyard, it’s like pointing something out to a cat—the cat looks at your finger, not at what you’re pointing at. They don’t need to understand it, they only need to believe, and they do. They imagine the kingdom as they need it to be, they don’t need to grasp it, it’s there already, they can let it be. Imagination, not intellect.”
Maggie let go of our necks, then stood there grinning like a madwoman. Joshua looked at her, then at me.
I shrugged. “I told you she was smarter than both of us.”
“I know,” Joshua said. “I don’t know if I can stand you both being right in the same day. I need some time to think and pray.”
“Go on then,” Maggie said, waving him on. I stopped and watched my friend walk into the village, having absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do. I turned back to Maggie.
“You heard the Passover prediction?”
She nodded. “I take it you didn’t confront him.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“We need to talk him out of it. If he knows what awaits him in Jerusalem, why go? Why don’t we go into Phoenicia or Syria? He could even take the good news to Greece and be perfectly safe. They have people running all over the place preaching different ideas—look at Bartholomew and his Cynics.”
“When we were in India, we saw a festival in the city of their goddess Kali. She’s a goddess of destruction, Maggie. It was the bloodiest thing I’ve ever seen, thousands of animals slaughtered, hundreds of men beheaded. The whole world seemed slick with blood. Joshua and I saved some children from being flayed alive, but when it was over, Joshua kept saying, no more sacrifices. No more.”
Maggie looked at me as if she expected more. “So? It was horrible, what did you expect him to say?”
“He wasn’t talking to me, Maggie. He was talking to God. And I don’t think he was making a request.”
“Are you saying that he thinks his father wants to kill him for trying to change things, so he can’t avoid it because it’s the will of God?”
“No, I’m saying that he’s going to allow himself to be killed to show his father that things need to be changed. He’s not going to try to avoid it at all.”
For three months we begged, we pleaded, we reasoned, and we wept, but we could not talk Joshua out of going to Jerusalem for Passover. Joseph of Arimathea had sent word that the Pharisees and Sadducees were still plotting against Joshua, that Jakan had been speaking out against Joshua’s followers in the Court of the Gentiles, outside the Temple. But the threats only seemed to strengthen Joshua’s resolve. A couple of times Maggie and I managed to tie Joshua up and stash him in the bottom of a boat, using knots that we had learned from the sailor brothers Peter and Andrew, but both times Joshua appeared a few minutes later holding the cords that had bound him, saying things like, “Good knots, but not quite good enough, were they?”
Maggie and I worried together for days before we left for Jerusalem. “He could be wrong about the execution,” I said.
“Yes, he could be,” Maggie agreed.
“Do you think he is? Wrong about it, I mean?”
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
“I don’t see how that’s going to stop him.”
And it didn’t. The next day we left for Jerusalem. On the way we stopped to rest along the road at a town along the Jordan River called Beth Shemesh. We were sitting there, feeling somber and helpless, watching the column of pilgrims move along the riverbank, when an old woman emerged from the column and beat her way through the reclining apostles with a walking staff.
“Out of the way, I need to talk to this fellow. Move, you oaf, you need to take a bath.” She bonked Bartholomew on the head as she passed and his doggy pals nipped at her heels. “Look out there, I’m an old woman, I need to see this Joshua of Nazareth.”
“Oh no, Mother,” John wailed.
James got up to stop her and she threatened him with the staff.
“What can I help you with, Old Mother?” Joshua asked.
“I’m the wife of Zebedee, mother of these two.” She pointed her staff to James and John. “I hear that you’re going to the kingdom soon.”
“If it be so, so be it,” said Joshua.
“Well, my late husband, Zebedee, God rest his soul, left these boys a perfectly good business, and since they’ve been following you around they’ve run it into the ground.” She turned to her sons. “Into the ground!”
Joshua put his hand on her arm, but instead of the usual calm that I saw come over people when he touched them, Mrs. Zebedee pulled away and swung her staff at him, barely missing his head. “Don’t try to bamboozle me, Mr. Smooth Talker. My boys have ruined their father’s business for you, so I want your assurance that in return they get to sit on either side of the throne in the kingdom. It’s only fair. They’re good boys.” She turned to James and John. “If your father was alive it would kill him to see what you two have done.”
“But Old Mother, it’s not up to me who will sit next to the throne.”