Andrew the Friend – part 1

For the first time I have no congregation to try out my stories on, so here goes:

Palm Sunday
He kept on telling us that all would be clear on the third day. We had no idea at all what he meant. We should have done he told us in different ways at different times repeatedly, but still we did not understand. How could we, what was to happen was so far beyond our experience of life that we could not make sense of it. Even in the middle of what was going on, nothing made sense.

The last day anything made sense was the day we spent with Mary, Martha and Lazarus in Bethany. We ate and drank slept and talked just as we had always done, and if Jesus was a little distracted, we did not notice. I did not notice. When we got up that morning Jesus sent James and I to a field just outside the village. He told us that we would find a donkey and a colt there. We were to bring them back to the house. James asked the sensible question,
‘Does the owner know we are coming for his donkey or are we stealing it?’
Jesus turned a stern eye on him,
‘I have taught you that you should love your neighbour. If you love your neighbour you do not steal his donkey. If he says anything to you, just say
“The Master has need of it”, he will understand and let you take the animal.’

And he was right. The owner came storming out of his house when he saw us inexpertly trying to put a rope around the neck of the donkey – why did Jesus send two fishermen to do a farmer’s work! – but as we yelled the words Jesus had told us, the man lowered the club he was waving at us, said “Alright” and went back into his house. When we finally got the rope around its neck, the donkey came willingly, and its colt trotted by its side without us needing to put a rope on it as well.

When we got back to Lazarus’ house, the others had had a good laugh at our difficulties with the donkey. We stood around looking at the animal and began to realise that if Jesus were going to want to ride in this beast we should have borrowed a blanket to put on the animal’s back to make the ride more comfortable. Peter, as usual was the first to offer a solution. He stripped off his cloak, folded it and put it over the animal’s back, then turned and looked challengingly at the rest of us. I took my cloak of as well, and so did Matthew, and by that time the animal was well padded. But we were rather bothered. Why did Jesus want to ride into Jerusalem? Jesus walked everywhere. There was the long impatient stride when something needed doing or saying quickly or an amble as he talked and taught, but he always walked. He was occasionally offered a beast to ride by a supporter, but always turned the offer down. Why now on this short walk did he want to arrive in Jerusalem on a donkey?

Judas had long and often told us that he was waiting for Jesus to mount a big horse, wave a sword and gallop through the streets of the villages and towns raising an army to challenge the Romans. Most of the rest of us could not imagine that happening. Oh there is no doubt that Jesus could have raised an army. He was charismatic enough. He was well enough liked. People may well have laid down their lives for his cause, but his cause had never appeared to be rousting the Romans. His cause was the relationship between Yahweh and his people, and to the Romans he was supremely indifferent, it was people he was interested in, and if on occasions they were Romans or Samaritans, then that didn’t seem to matter. For all there was the possibility of a relationship with Yahweh, if they just turned to him

So we set off down the road to Jerusalem in silence, wondering what was going to happen, if anything. When we got to the bottom Jesus stopped the donkey and turned to us,
‘Go on ahead and let the people sitting at the gate know that I am coming.’
So we went on ahead, and told the people at the gate that the prophet Jesus of Nazareth was on his way. Much to our surprise the conversations stopped and the able bodied got up. Some went to tell their friends that Jesus was coming, some started to climb nearby trees, and break into gardens, and strip the palm trees of their branches, these they threw down onto the road. Children picked some of the branches up and began to wave them experimentally. Some of the less able stood and removed their cloaks and laid them down in the road, then as Jesus approached the gate the cry went up from one old man, quoting from the Psalms;
‘Hosannah to the Son of David, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’
The cry was picked up by people next to him, and the next, until in the narrow confines of the street, the echoes were bouncing off the walls, repeating ‘Hosannah’ again and again. People came out of their houses and stood, some just watched, others joined in. In one place the noise dropped for just one moment and a clear voice could be heard complaining at the noise. Jesus, who had been looking steadfastly forward and onward, turned his head and said softly, though all around heard,
‘Even if these people did not shout for me now, the very stones of these houses would shout out.’

We headed resolutely upwards through the streets until we reached the Temple Mount, there Jesus got off the donkey, and handing the reins to a nearby man, asked him to return it to its owner in Bethany. He then walked though into the Temple, sat down in the Portico, and began to teach, as if nothing different had happened.

At our meal that evening, in the house of one of our followers, the question was raised as to why Jesus had wanted to come into Jerusalem on a donkey. Jesus himself said nothing for quite a while, letting us argue about the custom of throwing things in the path of an important visitor. Then someone said that Romans liked to wave palm branches when they had great triumphal processions welcoming their heroes home from battle. Jesus had not been in a battle, so that was dismissed quickly. When we had argued ourselves out, we all turned to him.
‘Who is right,?’ we asked.
‘None of you are.’ he replied ‘In the writings of the prophet Zechariah, he prophecies that Zion’s king will come victorious, riding on a donkey. Today I have fulfilled that prophecy.’
We were all silenced. We had fought no battle, won no victory, so how could he be victorious? Jesus looked at us each one by one, and seeing no spark of understanding in any of us, sighed, and turning, wrapped himself in his cloak and settled himself to sleep. We looked at each other in silence, knowing that yet again we had failed him, somehow.

Andrew the Fisherman- part 1

I am a fisherman from a family of fishermen, born in Bethsaida in Galilee, on the edge of the Sea of Galilee. My father taught me the skills of working with net and boat to catch fish in the sea, as he taught my brother Simon also. My father was taught by his father, and his father was taught by his before. For time out of mind my family has lived here on the shores of the sea, catching fish to make a living.

We also have our small plot of land given to the family when we settled here after we returned from Egypt in the time of Moses and Aaron. There we grow barley for bread and have an olive tree for oil. Our women folk help us growing vegetables like leeks and cabbages alongside herbs to flavour our food like dill, cumin and mint. When the fish come we can eat like kings with fish, bread, olives, and figs. Although a meal is always better on a baking day. If not we eat whatever bread is left over, dipping it in the cooking juices of the fish to cover the taste of the mould growing on it. Kings don’t eat mouldy bread, but we can’t afford not to. We don’t grow enough barley to throw any away, and none of us has enough time to forage further and further away from the village for fuel for the communal oven to cook the bread daily. The oven is heated about every three days and the women living around our courtyard rush to get their their barley ground and the bread risen and in the oven while it is still hot. It is not an easy life for them. I would not want to have to pound the grindstone for hours at a time to turn grain into flour, only to have husband or sons complain when they get a bit of grit in their bread.

But I am getting away from fishing. Simon and I are skilled at using the shore net. We sit on the shore of the sea, and because of the way the ground slopes down into the sea, you can see a long way out, and you can see shoals of fish swimming around. Depending on how far they are from the shore line we can either cast out our own nets, one of us remaining on the shore, the other wading out with the other end of the net and walking around the shoal back into the shore so that we have them all rounded up. Or if the fish are too far out. One of us will run back to the village of Capaernaum where we live and rouse one of the boats from there, maybe James and John bar Zebedee. They come and we work a net between the boat and the shore to catch the fish. Sometimes we will go out in the boat into the deeper areas of the sea and help our friends fish with nets between boats, or just casting from one of the boats. Different fish live in different parts of the lake, tilapia, carp and catfish. You just have to know where they are and when. That is the skill of fishing. Any fool can throw a net into the water, it takes skill to know where to throw the net.

But even skilled fishermen can have long days when we go out and catch nothing, or days of stormy weather when it is too dangerous to take the boats out. Then we eat like paupers, as we have no money to buy from the market, and the little on our land has to feed the whole family. Simon is married and has his wife and children and mother in law to support. I will marry when I have enough money saved to pay for the materials to build a house where I can take a wife to live. In the meanwhile I also live with Simon since the death of our parents.

Fishing gives you a lo of time to think. Sitting on the shore or in a boat watching and waiting for the fish, there is plenty of time without interruption. I like to think about what the Rabbi has said in the synagogue and the passage from the Torah that was read. I like to think about the conversations with the people I meet when I take fish to sell in the market. Mostly I sell to other townspeople, but sometimes we have passing merchants looking for new markets or wanting to buy our fish. Sometimes Roman soldiers come for fish for themselves or their families. They are very interesting to talk to. They come from so far away, from places I have never heard of. They talk about lands that I can only imagine from the descriptions they give me. I sit and wonder who I am, and why I am here and not there, and I wonder what it is like not to be one of Yahweh’s chosen people. I know I am one of Yahweh’s chosen people, and we are waiting for our Messiah to come and save us. The Torah is full of references to his coming, but we have no idea of the time or the place, so we wait, and I fish and think.

One day a passing merchant told me about a strange man he had met down by the river Jordan. He was gathering people around him and preaching about making a straight way in the desert for Yahweh’s chosen one. This man lived in the desert eating locusts and wild honey and was dressed in the skin of wild goats. He was taking his followers to the Jordan and dunking them in the river and proclaiming them cleansed from their sins. I was really interested, and so with Simon’s permission I set off to find this John the Baptiser.

Fishers of Men? – part 2

When I next met up with the others I told them about my dream. They just laughed at me. Rabbi Jesus did not. When we were walking together to the next village where he wanted to introduce himself, he took me aside and began to talk to me.

‘I enjoyed hearing about your dream. It is not exactly what I meant though. For now I just want you to watch and listen and learn, and I will ask you again a some point in the future to tell me what you think I meant.’

So I watched and I listened and learned for three years, wandering through the countryside talking to individuals, talking to groups, talking to more people than I have ever seen gathered together in one place. We met with fishermen, tax collectors and farmers over food in their houses, and in secret with important people who didn’t want others to know that they were interested in the message of Rabbi Jesus. Under his gaze we began ourselves to share the message of Yahweh under the watchful eye of the Roman authorities, and we were all increasingly being challenged by our leaders in the Sanhedrin, who sent out spies and scholars to watch Rabbi Jesus, to challenge and to try and wrong foot him. I thought they were being very unfair, as we were only teaching about Yahweh, and surely Yahweh was for us all, not just for those in authority.

When I brought my mind back to the question of ‘Fishers of Men,’ I could see that we were a bigger group moving together through the countryside. We were just the twelve of us to begin with, and gradually as Rabbi Jesus spoke about Yahweh and enthused people about having a personal relationship with him; as he healed people and released them from their fears, from having been taken over by the devil, some chose to walk with us, sometimes for days or weeks. Others stayed with us all the time. As well as the twelve of us men, there was also a group of women, a number of whom had influential husbands, and money they could use to help us buy food or pay for a bed for a night, where we were not given one, or could not safely lie out in the edges of the fields wrapped in our cloaks.

Rabbi Jesus began to send us out in pairs without him, to the villages, to preach the message he had taught us, to heal in his name. We weren’t always successful. Sometimes the Elders of a village would have us thrown out, either because they were afraid of the authorities, ours or the Romans or just because, I guess they were scared for their own authority over their people. The Yahweh I had come to know was not the Yahweh that I had been taught by the Rabbi in my village.

Then came the dreadful final days of Rabbi Jesus, his arrest by the authorities, his trial, his crucifixion, his burial in the tomb of our friend Joseph of Arimathea. Then there was the day of his resurrection and the joy of seeing him again. But he was no longer with us all of the time, and we were aimless and discouraged. We knew that Rabbi Jesus had promised us a comforter, and that we needed to return to Jerusalem in a while, but we all drifted back to our villages.

It was there that Rabbi Jesus found some of us fishing. It had been one of those nights where we had thrown our nets time after time, but caught nothing. We were so low when the pink of morning began to tip the sky. Suddenly we noticed a man on the shore waving to us and pointing at a spot not too far from where we were casually drifting. My brother who was with us frowned and said

‘I think that is Rabbi Jesus’.

He made as if to jump over the side of the boat to go to him, but I said,

‘Remember what Rabbi Jesus did before, let us throw our nets where he is gesturing, and see.’

So we threw, and gathered more fish than we could get in the boat, so my brother hung on to the net, and we rowed to the shore. Rabbi Jesus helped us pull in the net, and gathering a few of the fish skilfully prepared them and set them over the fire to cook, while we secured the boat and our nets.

When we were all sitting and eating, talking and laughing together, just as we had before, Rabbi Jesus turned to me and asked

‘Fishers of Men?’

I stopped eating and looked away to the sun rising on a new day.

‘I think that you want us to fish with words and deeds. You want us to throw a net of Yahweh’s love over his people, to protect them and bring them safely to him at the end of time. You want Yahweh to be proclaimed to all his people, and you want us to gather all who will listen and learn, and who will in their turn go out and share is message. You want us all to be gathered into Yahweh’s Kingdom, the kingdom you have taught us about and have died for. Jesus looked at me and smiled,

‘You have listened and learned well. Now go and fish for men.’

The Baptism of Jesus – part 2

By the time I looked up again, John must have waded across the river to the far bank because he was hauling himself up out onto the bank, getting rapidly to his feet, and running towards the figure walking towards us. When they met they hugged tightly, then had a rapid conversation. John soon gestured to some nearby stones, and the two of them sat down and began what turned out to be a long conversation, under the fascinated gaze of all of the people on the my side of the riverbank, both those waiting to be baptised, and those followers like me who had chosen to remain with John and listen and learn from him as we waited for the coming Messiah. Then much to our surprise, as we watched, John slid off his stone and knelt before the man making deep abeyance before him. We had never seen John bow to any man before. That was one of the things which attracted me to him and to his teaching. He was even preaching against Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea in the matter of his divorce from his wife Phasaelis, because we all knew that he really wanted to marry Herodias who was his brother Philip’s wife. Preaching against a powerful man like that was dangerous in the extreme. But here he was, kneeling like a subject before a king, and none of us had a clue who this man was.

As we watched the seated man rose and pulled John to his feet. He embraced him, and gestured him to lead on. John walked slowly back to the water, as if he were about to engage in a heavy and difficult task. At the edge of the river John watched as the man removed his mantle and hitched up his tunic and then jumped down into the water. He gave his hand to John who followed him down. They waded into the centre of the river to the deepest spot, there the man nodded again to John, who grabbed the back of his tunic, laid him back in the water until he was horizontal, with the water trying to gently float him down stream, then firmly pushed him under.

I remember the words John spoke to me when I came up out of the water at my baptism. ‘I baptise you in the name of Yahweh. Through this act of drowning and being brought back to life, all your sins have been washed away. Hold your anger, hold the enthusiasms of your youth and watch and wait with me, for the Messiah, the chosen one of Yahweh, who is coming imminently.’ I wondered what he would say to this man, who he obviously knew so well.

But he never said a word to him. As the man came up out of the water it seemed as if the sky rent open above us, and a bird like a dove came out of the tear, fluttered down and landed on the head of the man. Then a voice came echoing through the tear in the heavens

‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’.

We all stood there open mouthed, John ,the crowd on the bank and the man himself. Then the man seemed to come to himself again, turned round, clasped John’s shoulder and gave him a little shake, then he set off wading to the point on the bank where he had jumped in. He got back out, shook out his tunic, retrieved his mantle which he slung over his arm, and set off walking back towards the desert.

The crowd which had been still and silent while all this was going on suddenly seemed to find a voice, and everyone turned to their neighbours, and in twos and threes began to speculate about what had just happened. Those of us who had been sitting at the feet of John for a while, gathered in huddles, and with one voice began to ask whether we had just seen the Messiah? The only thing that made us unsure was that John was still standing in the river watching the man walk away. Surely if he was the Messiah, he would have brought him and introduced him to us so that we could begin our work together. As the man disappeared into the dust again, John seemed to come to himself, and began to wade back to us. I helped haul him back onto the bank. People swarmed around him and he was peppered with questions. He held up his hand. That is my cousin Jesus bar Joseph from Nazareth. You have seen and bear witness, he is Yahweh’s chosen one and I am not worthy to undo his shoe laces. He has gone back into the desert to prepare himself for the work ahead. He will come and find those he needs to help him fulfil his mission when he is ready.

He then turned around, and returned to the bank, sat down and just watched the far bank as if it were revealing messages from Yahweh to him. And we waited also.

The Baptism of Jesus – part 1

I told my father, I told him,

‘I am not going to stand by any longer and let them push me around. I am not going to stand and watch that fat bastard of a tax collector ride in on his large, fat horse with his clerks and their bits of paper, and take a large part of what we produce, to send to Rome, to keep the Senators and their hangers on in bread, wine and olives. Then he takes a look around our garden and picks the best of our fruit and vegetables to keep himself and his fat wife in a big house in Jerusalem, while we are almost starving because we have to either eat all our grain to keep us from starving or go without and keep some to plant next year. We keep some to plant, so we run out before the next harvest comes in, and we run out of everything else because we have not had enough to preserve and store. And I am the one who works in the heat of the mid day sun, toiling to drag crops from the soil.’

‘We’ he says

‘Alright, we are the ones who toil in the heat of the mid day sun, and he lives off the fat of the land just because he is a servant of Rome. I won’t stand for it any longer!’

‘And what are you going to do about it? One young man on his own.’

I was on a roll ‘Then there is Herod, who is supposed to be our King. He should be looking out for us. He is supposed to be a Jew, but he is only an Idumean a descendent of Esau, who just happened to convert to Judaism. He thinks more of Rome than the Romans do. He taxes us as well and uses the money to build cities like those in Italy, and palaces for himself and fortresses for his soldiers. What does he do for me, in my country, in my land?

‘Our country and our land!’

‘Alright our country. What I am going to do about it is go and learn more about this man John the Baptiser who is living out in the desert and preaching the coming of God’s Messiah. I want to be there when the Messiah comes. I want to be with him when he fights the Romans. I want to be there when we win our land back, so we can live in peace and prosperity, not under the heel of Rome.’

At this point I wound down, having run out of breath, and my father just looked at me with a look of horror on his face.

‘You can’t go and do that!’

‘Why not?’

‘The Romans will only take so much rebellious talk from us. Every time someone starts a rebellion they send in an army, people are killed, not just those who fight, but their families, friends, neighbours, villages, anyone they can punish to stop it happening again. Do you want to condemn us all with your actions?’

‘If John the Baptiser is right, and the Messiah is coming, we won’t loose.’

‘And better men than you have said that before, and lost their lives over it. Do you really want to loose your life over an itinerant messianic preacher?’

‘Well, anything has to be better than this! Anyway how do you know he is wrong. You have never heard him preach.’

‘No, but I have heard others preach. They are all the same, they rouse up the young men, they lead them in to danger, they die, and nothing changes. Is that what you really, really want to do with your life?’

‘Yes it is’ I said ‘ I have to do something.’ So I packed my spare robe in a square of cloth, mother gave me some bread and olives and some dried fruit for the road, and I set out to find John the Baptiser.

So that is how I came to be squatting on the banks of the river Jordan, watching John baptise a large group of men and women who had come out from the nearby village where John had been preaching. I remember that it was a hot day with a clear blue sky. The sun was becoming hotter as the day lengthened, and dipping in and out of the cold water was a good place to be, to keep cool. Myself and a friend had our tunics pulled up and tucked in, and our heads covered, so that we could haul the wet baptised back up out of the river and safely on to the bank.

Suddenly John stopped talking to the woman he was about to dip into the water, and turned round to face the opposite bank and out into the desert and the hills beyond. We all turned to look as well. At first we could see nothing, then gradually we could see a cloud of dust that seemed to be moving towards us. It slowly revealed itself to be the figure of a man walking towards us with a brisk step, raising light brown dust with every move he made. John shielded his eyes against the sun and took a good look, then his face cleared and a smile, such as I have never seen, broke on his face. He left the bewildered woman in the middle of the river, from where she had to be rescued by the man waiting patiently in the water nearby to also be baptised. I looked away from John to help the two of them up out of the water.

Nicodemus the Rabbi – part 2

I wanted to debate with Rabbi Jesus, but there had been so much informal muttering against him and his influence on the people, by men in the Sanhedrin that I dare not openly be seen with him, so I resolved to go to him at night to debate with him, teacher to teacher. I found him in the house of a friend sitting out in the garden just looking at the stars. I sat down opposite him, and he turned to look at me. I began:

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from Yahweh; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from his presence.”

I am not sure what I expected him to say, but he went, as I have often seen him do, to the real heart of the question I wanted him to answer.

“I tell you truly, no one can see the kingdom of Yahweh without being born from above.”

I never thought I had a choice about when, where and how I was born, so I asked for clarification.

“How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

Rabbi Jesus answered me,

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of Yahweh without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, 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 thought about my response to this for some while,

“How can these things be?”

He answered me again

“Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For Yahweh loves the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, he did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

There it was the answer I had been looking for, and yet these words shocked me to the core. I wanted to know by whose authority this Rabbi was preaching, teaching and healing, and he had told me. This man, this itinerant teacher from Nazareth in Galilee was claiming to be the son of Yahweh! How arrogant was that claim. Rabbi Jesus just smiled at me across the space between us. I looked at him long and hard, then pulled my head cloth over my face, got up and slipped away into the night, disappointed.

Nicodemus the Rabbi – part 1

There are some days in your life when you know everything has changed. Sometimes these events are unexpected, but sometimes they are engineered. My life changed the day I engineered an interview with Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. I had been going to hear him teach for a while, and I was intrigued. I wanted to look him in the eyes and see the truth of his statements there. I wanted his certainty that what he is teaching the crowds is true.

I have much in common with Rabbi Jesus, we both grew up in villages and began our formal studies with our village Rabbi. Unlike Rabbi Jesus, I have ended up in Jerusalem as a member of the Sanhedrin, while he is an itinerant preacher.

For all children, our education begins with our parents teaching us to pray, as it is written in the book of Deuteronomy

“Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and your gates” (Deut. 6:6-9).

From the moment I could hear, my father would pray for me and then with me. He would instruct me in how I should live my life, what my values as a ‘child of the book’ should be.

When I speak at home, I speak Aramaic, but Torah is written in Hebrew, so I began studying Hebrew with Rabbi Amos when I was about five years old. All boys in our land should study Torah. Torah is the five books of Moses; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. It has 304,805 letters in it, written on pages of parchment sewn together to make a scroll, and each page is exactly 42 lines long. The scribe who writes the scroll is very skilled, for even one mistake he makes will mean that the whole scroll will have to be destroyed and the scribe will have to begin again. It takes him about a year to complete a scroll, and they are very precious.

To begin with my friends and I learnt from Rabbi Amos how the letters sounded, then to write them. Some of my friends found it really difficult. There are no gaps between the words, and there are a series of marks under the letters which tell you how to pronounce each word. Sometimes scholars can’t even agree on the marks, so the pronunciations can vary, take the word for God ‘JHWH’. Depending on how the marks are made, this can be pronounced Yahweh or Jehovah. I could carry on, but this isn’t one of my lessons with my students. I started reading Torah as soon as I could, and began memorising it as well. I lived for my lessons, I lived to read Torah, I lived to learn more. As soon as I could, I moved up to study with the older boys. Usually boys would begin the study of the Mishnah, the oral laws of our people at the age of ten, but although I cannot remember at exactly what age I began to study Mishnah, it was younger than 10. No matter how precocious we were, Rabbi Amos would not let me, or anyone else fulfil Mitsvoth until at least the day of our 13^th birthdays. On my 13^th birthday, which was luckily Shabbat, I stood up in the synagogue and read from the beginning of the Torah scroll. I was finally a man and an adult in my community. Then Rabbi Amos allowed me to study the Talmud or rather the Gemara, the commentary and Rabbinical analysis of the Mishnah.

Although I can read and write Hebrew, a lot of our scholarship is passed on from a Rabbi to his pupils orally. We learn what past Rabbi’s have taught and debated, and we are encouraged to learn their responses to the questions Torah asks of us. As we learn we debate, and as we debate we learn. Then we go out and try to live what we have learnt through our debates. I am very good at debating, so good that when elections for the Sanhedrin came up in the nearest town sending a teacher to the Sanhedrin, I was elected to represent my town as one of the 71 members of the Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin is the ruling council of the Israelites, and even now, with Rome ruling over us, the council has a lot of power. In Torah, Moses and the Israelites were commanded by Yahweh to establish courts of judges, who were given authority over the people of Israel. They were commanded by Yahweh to obey every word the judges instructed and every law they established. As a member of the Sanhedrin I am a religious leader, a teacher and a Judge of the nation of Israel.

Since Herod rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin has had a room in which we meet daily to deliberate on the cases brought before us. It is called the Hall of the Hewn Stones. There is a great semicircular bench on which the majority of us sit facing the Nasi, or President, who is usually the High Priest. At the moment that is Joseph Ciaiphas, who is the son-in-law of the former High Priest, Ananus ben Seth, who likes to keep control over his sons and son-in-law still, and likes to keep interfering in the affairs of state. When Ananus retired, his son Eleazar ben Ananus became High Priest, then after him Caiaphas was elected. When he retires Ananus will probably engineer one or other of his other sons Jonathan, Theophilis, Matthias and Ananus to become High Priest. Its the same with all those Sadducees, they think just because they are of aristocratic lineage they are a cut above the rest of us. I have as much if not more scholarship than they, and at least I do try to live out what I preach and teach, which is more than I can say for them. But enough about the Sadducees.

As well as the Nasi, there is the Av Beit Din, the chief of the court, and 69 general members, of which I am one. There are two clerks to the court to make a record of our debates and our judgments, and there are benches for students to come and listen to our debates and to learn from us. We convene every day except Shabbat and major festivals, so there is little opportunity to return home to my village and my family.

When Rabbi Jesus began to preach in the villages around Jerusalem, I would go out to listen to him, when I could take time out from sessions of the Sanhedrin. There was something about him that I found very attractive. I think the first thing that really struck me was his joy, not in the law or the words of Torah, but in Yahweh. I try to keep to the letter of the law, I try to live Torah, but Jesus advocates that we should live our lives for Yahweh. He calls him Abba, Father, and teaches that he loves us like a father. I had never before understood what it meant to be loved by Yahweh until Jesus said those words. Now I want, I want so much to be loved by Yahweh.

The other thing that really struck me about being a Pharisee, is that I have studied Torah for as long as I can remember. I have tried to live it for as long as I can remember. I have dedicated my life to this, almost to the exclusion of all else. As a Pharisee I teach that this is what we must all do in order to be perfect followers of Yahweh. Yet I know that if I were working out in the fields every day sweating under the mid day sun, dragging crops from the ground and fruit from the trees, I could not live Torah as I have the leisure to do as a teacher. I have become more uncomfortable the older I have got, that in making all these laws and expecting people to keep them, and condemning them when they cannot keep them, we are making it far too hard, harder than Yahweh intended, for everyone to become close to him. Jesus does not make lots of laws. He reiterates two simple laws for his followers to keep that they should ‘love Yahweh, and their neighbours as themselves’ Not easy if done properly, but easier than I make it.

The Bethlehem Caravansary – part 3

Caravansary

 

As we were leaving the tent, I noticed the husband of Mary standing nearby, so I went up to him to enquire about his wife and child. His face just lit up, and he told us that Mary was doing well, and that it was a little boy they had called Jesus. We congratulated him, and would have moved on, but he stopped us with one hand, and started to apologise for the noise made by the shepherds. I had forgotten them. What was the bit about the angels, I asked him, as I remembered? He looked embarrassed and said that they told them that they had been in their fields minding their sheep, when the heavens seemed to open and a choir of angels sang ‘Glory to God in the highest, and, Peace to his people on earth.’ Then the angels told them that a baby had been born in Bethlehem, who was God’s son. So they had left their sheep, to come and find him. They had been so overjoyed that they had wanted to tell everyone there and then. I remembered that bit. I also vaguely remembered the bright light. I didn’t want to be rude to this man, but I couldn’t really believe that the son of God had been born in Bethlehem in my stable.

I was so busy for the next two or three days, as the majority of our visitors set off back home, with supplies of bread and water to keep them going. I didn’t have time to go and check up on Mary, Joseph and Jesus. When I did, I was smitten with the lovely woman and her adorable baby. All babies are cute, but there was something about this one. I still wasn’t sure about the son of God bit, until a few weeks later, when a group of travellers from Arabia knocked on our door asking for a room and stabling for their camels. They then asked me whether I knew of a baby having been born in the town a few weeks ago. Something made me ask them why. They told me that they had been on the road for many months, following a star, to find a baby who would be king. I knew then that they were talking about Mary and Jesus, still in our stable, just waiting for them both to be strong enough to manage the week long walk back home to Nazareth. I sent the travellers on their way to the stable, their arms loaded with gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. When they came back they told us that they had laid their gifts before the baby, Jesus, and had spent a long time talking with Mary and Joseph. Early the next morning Mary and Joseph stopped by the caravansary as they were on their way. They thanked us, and left us some of the gold, as payment for their stay.

All these things happened when Quirinius was governor of Syria, and had just been put in charge of the new Roman Province of Judea. He could not have known the many bitter things that would come out of, what was for the Romans, a regular event. The first bitter thing was for us in Bethlehem. Herod sent soldiers to find the baby born to be king, having learnt about him from the Arabians. Many of the townspeople who had heard the shepherds and seen the exotic travellers told the soldiers that the family had left to go home, and were no longer in Bethlehem, but the soldiers chose not to believe them, and took revenge by killing all the baby boys in the town aged under two years. It has scarred the people, and the town, and left us all with a hatred of Herod. The second thing was that one Judas of Gamala became zealous to draw the people to revolt because of the census, among other things. Some of our young men who has shouted against the census, and seen their siblings killed, did join his zealot movement which started a series of violent wars which brought much destruction on our people.

I don’t know what to think about Jesus of Nazareth. When he was born the angels sang for joy, and I believe what the shepherds told us about the angels, many times over the years, even though they are not usually the most reliable of witnesses. There was something about them that had changed, through what they had seen. Bethlehem’s Rabbi’s had told us over the years, that the Messiah would come to save his people, but the first thing that happened to us was that a lot of our sons were killed instead of him. That is not saving us. It was only a little over three years ago that we began to hear stories of the Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, how he was preaching about the kingdom of God, performing miracles and healing the sick. The more stories I heard, the more I began to believe that this was the same Jesus I had seen born here in Bethlehem, all those years ago. Jesus is not such a common name. Then I heard of his triumphal entry in to Jerusalem, the king being welcomed to his capital city, and there it was, the promise to save our people. I waited with bated breath to see what would happen next. But this was followed by the dreadful news that he had been arrested and crucified. How could this happen to a man sent by God? What had gone wrong with God’s plan? Were we ever going to be saved? Then there was the news that he had been seen again, alive, or resurrected, and I really didn’t know what to make of that. The final piece of news that came flying to Bethlehem, along with the merchants, was that this Jesus had ascended into heaven, and that something had happened to his followers, who were now preaching the good news of Jesus all over the country. I look forward to one of them coming here to Bethlehem, so that I can find out what all this means, and whether God’s chosen people are going to be saved as he has promised, and to tell them about his birth in my stable here in Bethlehem.

Trinity – part 2

Eventually they came up with a plan, a really big plan, a generous plan. So over the edge of time, where creation and God meet, a woman was met by an angel. She was asked whether she would carry God within her, and give birth to him, just like any other human baby. For God’s sake, and for our sake she said ‘yes’. God was so excited by the plan that Ruach was sent out almost nightly to rehearse angels, or check that the shepherds were in the right place. The Wise Men were set off right on queue, and with dreams and visions Ruach made sure everyone knew exactly what their role in this great story for humankind was going to be. On the day of the birth of God’s son everything went to plan, and God was so excited when the angel chorus broke the barrier between human time and God’s infinity, the light of heaven shone on the earth and illuminated the baby, that God named Jesus. There in a manger in a crude stable among oxen and sheep, and a single donkey, that part of God in whose image we are all created came to earth and began to dwell among us.

Jesus grew up in an earthly home, and lived a human life. Ruach would visit and though dreams and visions keep the Godly an essential part of the boy and man. He slept and ate and drank. He was ill, and healthy; he ran and he walked; he was happy and sad, he was elated and tired; he was naughty and good, obedient and disobedient, he was at all times human, and at all times divine, showing those around him by example that it was possible to live a life fully of the presence of God, while living and working as a carpenter in a small town called Nazareth in Galilee, among the descendants of Abram, the nation of the Israelites, in their promised land.

But living a life that was so full of God brought out the jealous in some human beings. As Jesus moved among his people, and with the help of Ruach taught and healed, travelled and lived the God life, some men conspired to kill and crush and remove God from the face of the earth. And God let them, and Jesus lived it, and died it. For there was one more thing to be shown to us poor human beings, and that is the generosity of God. The generosity that forgave us for our parts in the death of Jesus on the cross, and the overwhelming generosity that brought him back to life on the third day.

Ruach had a special role in this post resurrection story, which began at Pentecost, when with wind and flame she brought the Godly to the followers of Jesus and all those who believed in him and his message; those who were willing to try to live the Godly life; those who were prepared to receive the freely given life force of God, which she had to offer. And Ruach has remained in time and beyond time, willing and leading; guiding and filling human beings to overflowing with the presence of God; Creator, Redeemer and life giving force, wherever they are in space and time, whenever they ask and are willing to receive.

But all this is just a story, made up of human words. If I could paint a picture of God in words, God would not be God. If in being filled with Ruach, the spirit of God enables me to see, as St Paul puts it ‘through a glass darkly’. If re-enacting week by week the final meal of Jesus we can all feel and understand a small fragment of what God has to offer us, then this story, and these words have done their job.

Trinity – part 1

At the edge of our expanding universe, our time locked realm meets the timeless place of God. As the Big Bang happened and time was created, God already was. At the centre of God is order, so atom by atom, order and form, time and space began to be created from the chaos of beginning. But it was not enough, so Ruach, the creative force of God, identified, and began to move over the chaos and breath a gentle wind of love into it. In the warmth of her gentle creative breath the pieces began to drop into place one by one, earth and sky, water and air, nature; flora and fauna. Ruach made all things, and God saw that it was just as it should be. It was not just ordered, but beautiful, and its creation filled God with joy.

But there was one thing that God found difficult to deal with, and that was the last thing that Ruach had created, humankind. When she had asked God whether all was complete, God had looked sad, for there was nothing in all of creation that had even the faintest chance of understanding what God and Ruach had done together. Ruach thought for a long time, then created two creatures in the image of God, which delighted God and filled them with so much pride, that something could glimpse the wonderful workings of the Universe, and the God who together had created it. God named the first of humankind A’dam and Eve, Man and Woman.

God set humankind in a beautiful garden where they could be perfectly themselves. God would come and be with them, and walk and talk with them in the garden. The garden was their home, where they could live their lives as they had been created to live. There was just one thing that God said they could not do, and that was that they must not eat of the fruit from the tree of knowledge in the centre of the garden. But one time when God arrived for his walk, he could not find A’dam and Eve. Eventually after looking for a long time he found them hidden and covered. He realised then, that they had done the one thing they had been asked not to. They had eaten the forbidden fruit. God was so angry that he threw them out of the garden to manage on their own with the rest of creation. They were separated from God, but not from his attention.

God watched from afar the things that humankind got up to. How they forgot the Godlike qualities they possessed. In the end, even the God who had created them faded from their memories as well. God became unutterably sad. Eventually, searching through time, he found one human being called Abram, whom he felt would listen and learn from him. So in a cave in the mountains, tired and weary from many months travelling, Abram met and listened to God.

What God had to say changed Abram’s life, along with his descendants, for God promised them land and generations beyond number, if they would remember him, and worship only him. So God looked after the nation of Abram’s descendants, the Israelites, and when they forgot their side of the promise, to worship only God, Ruach went to those, whose job was to prophecy to the rest of the people, to keep them on the path which God had set for them. In dreams, in words, in visions and actions God hoped and Ruach tried, to keep the Israelites faithful. Again and again humankind forgot or ignored God, and eventually God’s patience ran out. God and Ruach withdrew to their place beyond time to think again about what they could do for rebellious humankind.