The sun had long since set. There was enough chill in the air, I didn’t look out of place with my cloak flipped over my head. At the Sanhedrin, we talked often about the reports of people healed by an itinerant preacher, Jesus of Nazareth. Was he from God or a worker of the dark arts? He says he’s the Son of Man, the same name as the great prophet Ezekiel. Men claiming they are the Messiah rise up for a time, but then are put down by the Romans. They stink of violence.
Would this Jesus be the same? But he said the poor in spirit would inherit the kingdom of God. He said we were blessed if we mourned. He claimed Isaiah’s prophesy that the lame would walk, the blind would see has been fulfilled. I’d heard about how he healed a man paralyzed, lowered through a roof. He’d cleansed lepers who came to the temple. A demon possessed woman, who hissed at me when I walked by, is now in her right mind. This Jesus smells like peace, a hard non violent peace.
It was so quiet I could hear my footsteps on the street. I dropped some coins in the hands of a man who’d been born blind from birth. I gave him a worn blanket and thought if only this Jesus could return his sight.
Jesus was smaller and plainer than I imagined, and fit. His fingers were short and stubby, chipped from hard work. For a rabbi he was built like a man who works with wood and stone. “No one can do signs you do unless God is with him,” I said. I wanted him to know I believed him.
“Unless someone is born again, he can’t see the kingdom of God,” he said, abruptly.
How did he know my greatest longing is to see the kingdom come? And not me alone, but my wife, the rabbis I teach with, the blind man, all of us. We want better lives for our children. This isn’t how I thought the kingdom would come. I thought we’d see the Messiah gallop down from the sky on a flaming horse, slaying his enemies and gathering his friends from the four winds. I thought we’d be invited to a feast, not to the messy business of blood and water and feces.
I was stunned. “But teacher, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb?”
A look of condescending patience came over his face. I smelled the lamps smoking, the garlic and onions on his breath. “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, that which is born of Spirit is spirit.
“The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it and you hear its sounds, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
I saw the wind catching leaves, making them circle like the Romans’ horses in training, and tossing them into the air, and away. He was right we didn’t know where the wind blew. It could change by the minute. “But how, how could this be?” I asked. How could wind and the people of God following his laws be so unpredictable?
“Aren’t you a teacher of Israel and you don’t know this?” he asked, his eyes a little kinder. It stung but he kept speaking in riddles that I could not parse. Would I ever understand?
When he said, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only son.” I saw Abraham laying Isaac on the wood, his knife an inch away from his son’s throat to slit it. I have never understood the cruelty of this story. How could God be so cruel he asked Abraham our father to lay his son on wood, butcher him after it took so long for Sarah to conceive the promised child? But here God was saying he was like Abraham, giving his own son. How could God give us his son? That’s love beyond the stars. But the Psalmist said his mercy reaches to the heavens.
He interrupted my thoughts on the stars. His words, his breath, the strength in his arms, punched me in the chest. I took a deep breath. “As Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life,” he said.
Snake? Those hissing vipers, he called us a brood of vipers, the cobras swaying to a flute, their throats flared out flat, their bite a killer. He called himself a bronze serpent lifted on a petard. The serpent that spoke to Eve and deceived her, that enticed us to take on the knowledge of good and evil that we were never supposed to know, at least not then. The bronze version of serpents that brought God’s stinger because we complained?
When the Greeks spoke to him in the temple. He said it again. “When I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.” I was stunned by the word all because there were so many of us. And he didn’t just mean the chosen people. He meant all of us—the Romans, the Egyptians, the Scythians, the Ethiopians, the Chinese, the barbarians. It was beyond comprehension. His eyes glittered with joy. I thought of our talk, how he said he would be lifted up like Moses’ serpent, wrapped in bronze around a petard. Lifted up. The cruel Roman torture. The cross. But the people only had to look to be healed. He said whoever believed in him would not be lost but have the life of the age to come.
But it was terrifying to see him writhe with pain on the cross. His silence. Forgive me but I saw the twisted serpents like Moses forged and put on a stake in the wilderness like he said I’d see. My people have been writhing in pain from the venom. All they had to do was look and the pain was over. Forgive me. I saw the terrible swaying cobras in the market that swayed to the piper’s music.
I’d been in the crowd that shouted, “Crucify him.” I didn’t make them to stop. I felt the swelling of feeling, like a giant wave rising higher. Until we drowned, until everyone shouted, “Crucify him.” We were chanting, “Crucify Him.” A millstone pulled me into the sea. I couldn’t breathe. “Crucify him.” Sweat plastered my hair. The soldiers lead him from our sight. He had the dignity of the oaks of Mamre. I heard a great silence. I heard the cat o nine tails landing on flesh. Jesus grunted in pain.
A giant beast swallowed me. “Canst thou tame the leviathan?” God said to Job. I saw wide open jaws, huge teeth. The water pushed me into the beast. I was closed in the living darkness. I heard the beast’s heart throb.
I followed the crowd who followed him when they lead him to the Skull. I felt the muscles of the great beast rippling through the water, through the chaos. I couldn’t breathe for the guilt of what I’d done. I’d gone along. I’d condemned him to writhe, bloody, fly ridden. And so terribly lonely.
He’d said, “Before Abraham was I am.” He touched his mouth to ours to breathe life in our nostrils, to breathe breath and look what we’d done. We’d hammered him to a tree because we were not supposed to eat the apple, but we did, because we wanted to be like him, glorious and radiant, whose words hawked and spat out the stars, only he became like us, flesh and bone and death.
He cried, “Father forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” Forgive? How could he? Then he was gone.
I saw the spear. Blood and water poured out, a river, that widened and flowed down the mountain. Would trees for healing sprout? The centurion said, “Surely this was the son of God.” What have we done? What have I done? Crucify him.
The beast’s bone and muscle closed around me. My skin burned from the acid of its belly. I could not breathe. I was terrified by this slow death. Then. Then I saw this glint of the spear the soldier used, shooting up through the beast’s heart, up through his flesh. Somehow the Son of God was beside me. I felt his presence like the air running along the fields, making grass look like sheep running through it. The wind blows where it will. The great beast opened those fearsome jaws, puked me onto the land.
I ran. I tell you I ran to Pilate. Joseph of Arimathea ran with me. I didn’t care if he killed me because I’d already died. There wasn’t much time before the sun set and Sabbath started. “May I have Jesus body?” Joseph asked. We stood there dumb as he called his centurion. We shifted from foot to foot. The sun would be falling soon. Is he dead? The Centurion, pale and shaken. He looked like he’d been starved. Like he’s touched the Ark of the Covenant and survived the horror of God’s presence. “Yes he is dead.”
The centurion repeated as if in prayer, “Yes he is the son of God.” My throat closed. I could not weep. Joseph said, “I have a tomb we can lay him in. He carried white linen in a bag.” We bought spices in the market and laid it in a cart pulled by a donkey.
Mary Magdalene, the woman who hissed at me, the woman he healed, watched with the other Mary. Their sobs tore at my resolve. The centurion helped us pull the nails out of his hands and feet. We heard the wood scream against the iron. We laid him, oh so carefully in the back of the cart. His body cooling. Dreadfully cooling.
Jonathan Pegeau’s video: The Leviathan in Scripture, Ouroboros Symbolism inspired much of this.
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