Lead me not into temptation – part 2

‘I am beginning to understand why you are worried’ I mused ‘What else out there will be challenging him?’

‘There is the landscape itself. In some places the wilderness is pure desert; sand and sand dunes for as far as the eye can see. In the heat of the day the sun reflects off the surface and can burn your eyes. In other places there are rocky hills and dry valleys. The roads from the coast which the merchants take, snake their way through these from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, to Hebron and En Gedi, from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan. There are great wadi’s out there which for most of the year are dry, but then the spring rains come, and the water collects off the plateau and drains into them, and they fill up fast. If you are not alert, you can find a great wall of water sweeping down on you washing you away, throwing you around like a piece of flotsam. If you want water there is one wadi where there is water all year round. It is so deep that the sun never reaches the bottom, and the water flows in gentle steps, so there are always pools where you can find fresh water to drink. There are also a few oasis where you can find fresh spring water if you know where to look. Then there are the white stone hills with caves cut in them by weather and time. They provide wonderful shelter from the heat of the day and the cold of the night. I always have to remember that I might be sharing mine with other animals of Yahweh’s creation, who might not be pleased at my presence.’

‘Will Jesus eat locusts and wild honey as you do when you are in the wilderness?’

‘I expect that he will fast as he prays and begins to accept the task which Yahweh is laying in him.’

‘But what is that task?’ I asked eagerly.

‘I don’t know precisely, nor I think does he. I think that Yahweh will guide him and let it unfold.’

‘How long will he stay out in the wilderness fasting and praying?’

‘For most people thirty to forty days would be as much as the body can manage.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ I demanded

John thought again for a moment, ‘You know what it is to fast for twenty four hours at a time. The teachers of our faith regularly call for fasts through the year. Some of them make sure that every one knows that they fast one or two days a week, just to look better than the rest of us. Fasting should be something that is done in private, something that helps you subdue your body and turn to Yahweh. When you fast for longer, it takes a lot of will power to get through all of the physical discomforts. The first three days are the worst, you will feel so hungry that it will be almost painful. By the fourth day the hunger pangs die down and you just feel weak and dizzy. You have to spend more time sitting and resting. By day six or seven you will begin to feel stronger and more alert, and by the ninth or tenth day the hunger pangs will almost have gone, and will just be a vague feeling somewhere in the background of your mind. Now you will feel really good, your concentration will feel really sharp and you think that you can continue like this for ever. But of course your body is using up all its resources, and any time after about twenty-one days your body will again remind you that you need to eat again. Depending on how things are, you can keep going up to about forty days, but after that you must begin to eat again. Through all this fasting from food, you must drink. You will know yourself that it does not take many days in this heat to kill a man or beast that cannot find water.’

‘How on earth do you begin to eat again afterwards? I would want to sit down at a great feast and eat all I could.’ I said reflectively.

John smiled at me. ‘Your body shrinks so much that you can only eat little bits at a time. It takes days to recover any kind of appetite. Even then, when you remember how good you feel, how close to Yahweh you came at times during the fasting, you really don’t want to lose that. It takes an effort of will to give up food and an equal effort of will to take up food again. Fasting changes you for ever, as it changes your relationship to Yahweh for ever.’

John turned from me and looked back out across the wilderness again.

‘In many ways I envy Jesus for what he is doing, but I know that Yahweh will be challenging him to his very core. He demands only the best from us all, but what he demands from his son is beyond my imagining. He will allow Jesus to be tempted in every possible way to stray from the path he has chosen for him, and his love for Yahweh will have to be so deeply part of him, for him not to give in. He will be honed and refined by this experience as he finally becomes the person that Yahweh has created him to be, ready for the work that is to come.’

Lead me not into temptation – part 1

I had thought that after my master John the Baptiser had baptised his cousin Jesus of Nazareth, that would have pleased him. When he came up out of the water the heavens had opened, we all saw it, and a voice came from the heavens ‘This is my son, my beloved in whom I am well pleased’. It was all that we had been waiting for, God’s chosen had arrived. I thought that he would have been more excited. Part of him was certainly pleased. There was a kind of suppressed excitement about him, as if he knew a secret we did not, which I am sure he did. But there was also a profound sadness. He still continued to baptise, he still continued to preach about the coming of God’s Messiah, but when he had finished for the day, and the people had left he would sit on a rock facing the wilderness and brood.

One night I sat beside him and asked him what he was thinking about.
‘The wilderness’ he replied
‘But why in particular now? It is always there. You came out from the wilderness, so you must have had plenty of time to think about it?’ I said
‘That is the problem. I remember what it is like when I first took myself off into the wilderness. Now Jesus, God’s chosen one, is there, and I am scared for him.’
‘Then tell me what it is like’ I invited him ‘So that I may understand your worry.’
He sat for a long time gathering his thoughts, then began.‘The wilderness is a place that most people look at, but don’t enter. You know yourself. You must have stood in Jerusalem and looked out toward the Dead Sea, and wondered why anyone would walk through the stony hilly landscape, devoid of everything except a very few of the smallest and hardiest of plants to reach the lowest point of Yahweh’s holy land. The sun beating down on the Dead Sea is so hot, that the water disappears leaving only salt around the edges. If you try to drink the water, you will make yourself sick. Did you know that if you walk into the sea and lie back, you will float there, even if you have never learned to swim? I did it once, just to see whether what I had been told was right. Coming out I splashed water on my face to clean it. I rather wish I hadn’t as it made my eyes sting. I had to use most of the contents of my water skin to stop the burning in my eyes.’
‘There are people that live in the wilderness,’ he continued, ‘people like me who are rebels who want to change the world, but know that speaking truth to power is a dangerous thing to do.’
I interjected ‘But how can truth be dangerous?’
‘I will not live to see an old age. I know, Yahweh has shown me in dreams and visions what my end will be, and I will submit myself to that when the time comes, but for the moment I live by going back into the wilderness, and coming out when I think the authorities have calmed down a bit. There are others, like me, who want to make changes using words, but there are also groups of men who want to make changes by force, and others who are outlaws, who will take what they want and kill anyone who stands in their way. I am no threat to them, as I have nothing they want, so they leave me alone.’
‘And you think that Jesus of Nazareth has something they want?’ I asked
‘At least he has a decent robe which they might take a fancy to!’ John said ‘It is not just the outlaws who find safety in the desert. King Herod himself built a fortress at Masada. It sits there on top of a small rocky outcrop, on the same level as the plateau that feels almost within touching distance of the wilderness, but it just where the plateau drops hundreds of feet straight down to the Dead Sea. It is almost as if the bottom dropped out of the sea and it fell down a great gash, before settling again, at the bottom of a vertical sided valley. This one outcrop of rock on the edge of the sea was left high and dry like a pimple on the valley floor. Remember Herod also built himself the fortress which he called Herodis (Herodium) after himself. He took the barren land where he had just won a great battle, used the toil of slaves to raise it up and then built on it a great palace and fortress where he could look out over the landscape and see that there was no one after him.’
John continued ‘If the men are the most dangerous things out there, then we should still not forget about the wild creatures. There are bears and leopards, vipers and cobras all of which will attack you at the least provocation, such as finding yourself too near their young. And that is not to mention packs of jackals, foxes and hyenas which would think nothing of trying to take down a man on his own if they were hungry enough. The scorpions are just mean as are the wild boars. Only the wild asses and antelopes are unlikely to cause a man problems. With no one around to help you, if you are bitten or stung or mauled, you will die.’

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 Women who saw – part 3

Mary, Martha and Jesus

When I left Martha at the entrance of the Temple, I picked up my skirts and ran to the corner of the Temple wall where the Antonia Fortress stands. I had no plan in mind to get me in to the fortress, so I just stood in the shadows looking up at the two tall, square, thick walled towers with the well guarded gateway in between, designed to keep the troops safe from rioting locals. And I waited. Eventually a patrol of soldiers returning to the fortress marched into view. The gate opened for them, and I slipped in behind one of the men. He looked round at me and gave me a wink, thinking, I presume, that I was a local prostitute coming in to see one of the soldiers. I blushed, but I would even have given myself to one of the soldiers, if I could have got my Teacher released safely. As the soldiers peeled off, I slunk away into a dark corner, and sunk down to the ground hoping no one would notice me there.

Little was happening in the court which was lit by the light of a dozen flickering torches. There was the odd soldier crossing from one side to another and disappearing through doors. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by moving, so I think that I must have dozed for a minute, because I came too suddenly, as a great cheer went up among a group of soldiers coming through one of the doors into the courtyard, dragging a man tied to a rope, behind them. When he raised his face, and the moon shone full on it, I knew that it was the Teacher they had there. I got up, and started to move forwards, but more soldiers poured out of another door carrying various things in their arms.
‘Let’s play the Kings Game’ someone shouted,
and a great roar went up. The next few hours were the longest of my life. I seemed to be trapped in a nightmare from which I couldn’t wake up. Images kept floating before my eyes; the scratches etched by long use into the paving slabs of the courtyard; the dice falling and tumbling onto the pavement; the whips coming down again and again onto the Teacher’s back and shoulders; the cruel words and taunts spewing from the lips of the soldiers; the red, red cloak that soaked up the Teacher’s blood, and the crown of thorns, which one soldier won the right to jam down on the Teacher’s head, so that the thorns pierced his skin and blood poured down his face. Finally the mock sceptre they forced into his hand and the mock bowing and scraping they did before him, as if they believed him a king.

If he had once cried out in pain, or once showed the agony he must have been in, I told myself that I would have run to him and taken the consequences, but he was stoic, looking almost bored, as if he had withdrawn somewhere deep within himself. The only time I heard him make any kind of sound, was just as the sun began to rise, and a group of soldiers disappeared for a while and returned carrying the crossbar of a cross which they lashed to his outstretched arms, across his bloodied shoulders. Then I heard him sigh, as if he knew that this signalled the end.

I left as soldiers were being ordered up and sent out in groups to line the streets on the way to Golgotha, the place of the skull. Again slipping out with a group of

The woman who bled – part 1

(Mark 5:21-34)

The Woman who bled

I saw him coming down the road. The sun was behind his head, so that his face was in shadow and it looked as if he had a halo. His brown sandal clad feet scuffed the dry, white road as he walked, raising a cloud of white dust so that it looked as if he was walking on a cloud. There must have been other people around him to have been raising such a cloud of dust, but I could not have told you whether there were 2 or 200. All I saw was him, the man I most sincerely hoped would be my saviour. I had planned this moment for weeks, after I had begun to hear stories about the miraculous healings he had performed. I knew that after all this time, I needed a miracle, and I hoped, with what little capacity for hope I had left, that this time the stories would be true, and I could be healed. I had walked for several hours to be here, to wait, to hope. As he came closer I put out my hand to stop him, but I was swept aside by the mass of bodies around him. When I regained my balance, I stood rooted to the spot, staring down the road at the crowd now hiding him from view.

Despair threatened to overcome me, but suddenly anger took its place. I had come here to be healed, and I was not going to be swept away again like a nobody, I am somebody. I began to run, and to push my way forward through the crowd. I used my elbows, my hands, anything to get people to move. I got sworn at several times, and pushed back again, but anger held me upright and pushed me forward. Then there he was again; just his back this time. I put my hand out again and touched the back of his robe, meaning to get him to turn around and look at me, but when my hand touched his robe, it was as if a bolt of lightening had hit me. I stumbled and would have fallen if the crowd, pressed close against me, had not held me upright. As it was shock rooted me to the spot, and the crowd passed around me like the sea around a rock. When I emerged from the back of the crowd, I finally sank to my knees in the middle of the road too overcome to do anything else.

As I knelt in the middle of the road, settling dust beginning to cover me from tip to toe, I closed my eyes and my mind emptied. Gradually I began to be filled again, with the sound of insects chirruping in the bushes just off the road, the singing of birds in the trees. I could hear a donkey neighing and camels grumbling to each other. There was the sound of people talking in the distance, and the bangs and clatters of village life, which seemed so near that I could have reached out and touched them. I felt the dust settle on my hands and face, and the sun beat down, hot on the back of my robes. A donkey must have wondered up, because it started to make some exploratory nibbles of my headdress. I opened my eyes and looked up into a pair of patient brown eyes, ringed with impossibly long lashes. We eyed each other for a long minute, then the donkey tossed his head and began to wonder off. I looked around me, at the bright, vivid colours of the trees against the sky, the exotic flowers nestled in the nearby bushes, the white of the road, and for the first time in many years I rejoiced that I was alive and that I was healthy.

That I was healthy? Why had that come into my mind? I hadn’t been healthy for years! Before I had time to examine those thoughts, I became aware that some of the crowd who had moved off down the road, were now returning, and with a sound like an angry swarm of bees. Before I had time to do more than get myself to my feet they were upon me. ‘The Master wants to speak to you.’ ‘Come.’ Rough hands grabbed me, and began to drag me down the road to where the rest of the crowd had turned and were watching what was happening to me. Just as I got to the front of the crowd, it parted to reveal The Master, Jesus of Nazareth, I had only a moment to register that he looked absolutely exhausted, when the men holding me threw me at his feet.

As I tilted my face to look up at him in some bewilderment, I saw a look of anger cross his face. He crouched down in front of me and held out his hand. As he stood up, he pulled me to my feet. Ignoring everyone else, he led me to a nearby tree, where he sat down in the shade with his back against the trunk, and gestured to me to come and sit next to him. The crowd looked at him like a flock of lost sheep. He smiled gently at them now, and asked whether someone could get us water. He then asked the crowd to make the most of the other trees nearby, while water was being fetched. Then he turned to me.
‘Well?’ he said.
I just looked at him. I had no idea what he wanted me to say.
‘You touched me, and power went from me. What is the problem with you?’
I looked at him horrified, it was such a delicate problem, I couldn’t talk to him about it, but he just kept looking seriously at me.
‘You wanted my help, so start at the beginning’ he suggested.
I quickly made up my mind, marshalled my thoughts and began.

‘When I became a woman soon after my 12th birthday, my parents were delighted. My father already had his eye on Matthew, a potter in our village. The arrangements were made, and a year later we were married. I think it was the happiest day of my life. For several years things went well, but I did not get pregnant. I got a bit worried, but Matthew didn’t seem to mind, he said we had plenty of time ahead of us. As time passed my monthly bleeding became longer and longer, and every time I performed the Hefsek Taharah, the bedikah cloth I used to check whether there was still blood, always showed some. I could no longer begin to count the seven clean days before I could go to the Mikvah to undertake the ceremony of ritual purification before my husband could come to me again. We went to the Rabbi to check that we were doing things right, but we were, so for several years now Matthew has been my husband in name only. We have tried everything. I went to the wise woman in the village who gave me some foul tasting liquid made from crushed leaves of some sort, to drink. The Physicians in the towns are fine if you have a cut or a broken limb, which they can bind up and sooth with healing herbs, but if anything goes wrong with the body or the mind, then they shrug their shoulders, and say it is God’s will whether you will be healed or not.’

Jesus the Sower – part 2

Ancient Israelite winepress

In addition to our fields, over many generations we have terraced the sides of the hills, and we grow our grapes there, facing the sun. Many families have used the rocks that they have had to remove to plant the vines, to build a wall around their plot, and sometimes even a little house where they can store tools, or where they can come in the evenings to tend the vines and eat and drink their evening meal. In places families have got together and have hollowed out the rocks into large flat tank with a run off spout. When the grapes are ready they are put in the tank, and then they are trampled to get all the juice out. The juice is then siphoned off into wine skins to store and mature.

Jesus works Joseph’s ancestral lands. As he is also the village carpenter, he has to hire in workers to do much of the routine work. He is known as a generous employer, and the men waiting in the market place, ready to hire themselves out for the day, are always happy to work for him, and work hard for him. Nathan has chastised Jesus on more than one occasion for paying more than other men, but Jesus just says that these labourers have to live and feed their families. Why should he get rich, while these men and their families starve? It went round the town one day that Jesus had paid a whole day’s wages to all of the men he had employed that day, even those who had not started work until the 11^th hour. No wonder all of those who began work at daybreak and worked through the heat of the day were really angry. He nearly started a rebellion!

It is important to all of us that we should get the maximum amount of crops off our land. We need them to feed our families. Things would be a lot easier for us were it not for the crippling taxes that we have to pay. First the Roman tax collectors come around and inspect our crops and take a hefty percentage, which varies from year to year, and appears to be at the whim of the tax collector. This is to be sent to Rome to feed the citizens there. Then they add on a bit for themselves. I have never yet seen a thin tax collector. Then the tax collectors from Herod’s Jewish authorities come around and take their cut, and a bit for themselves, and then there is the one shekel, which is about four days wages, that every Jewish adult male has to pay for the upkeep of the Temple. There are some years when the crop is not particularly heavy, when we end up starving or nearly starving because so much of the food we grew to feed ourselves has gone to feed someone else. The tax collectors are less likely to take the fruit and vegetables we grow on the plots of land beside our houses, as they would have to go straight to market and be sold, unless they were for immediate consumption. Of course if it is a bad year, they will look anywhere and everywhere to get the money they want, and if we starve, they just don’t care.

Jesus looked moodily at the plants growing along the edge of his field. “We had such a bad harvest last year that I really needed to get the best crop possible this year. I kept just enough seed to cover my field, and we are really having to ration what we eat until the wheat harvest comes in.” He sat back on his heels. “Well look at the birds. They haven’t ploughed or sown, and still God is feeding them, through me. They won’t starve this year. If I get labourers to pull out the thorns, then these plants at the edges might produce at least some crop, but it is going to cost me. Look at those plants growing over there where the path started to be widened this year, because we found so many stones. The seeds which are in among those stones will just wither in the sun because stone does not hold water. Oh well. I will just have to trust that God will send water and sunshine in enough abundance to feed not only me and mine, but the labourers who will help get this crop in and the birds, the tax collectors, the Sanhedrin and the citizens of Rome as well. What a big responsibility I have on my shoulders! ”

Jesus the Sower – part 1

Galilee landscape

Matthew 13:3-8

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown”.

When I came across Jesus that day, he was crouched down at the edge of his field of wheat staring moodily at the plants growing there. When he saw me, he looked up. “Every year this happens. Every year I try to get all of the seed on the good soil, and every year I waste some of it by being careless. These plants will never grow and produce wheat that we can eat.” I looked down at the poor plants growing at the edge of his portion of land, and pulled a face. I had to agree with him. As a carpenter he was very skilled, but when he went out to sow seeds, he seemed to go into a trance, and far too much of his seed ended up on the path or in patches of thorns.

Most people in Nazareth have land to work. Even those of us who have a craft need to grow at least some of our own food. Most of the villagers own our own land, land that has been in our families since the time of Joshua. Some of those few who do not own land work for their relatives and a few hire themselves out as labourers to earn a wage to buy food. I am told that this is not the case outside of Galilee. In much of the country a few rich landowners, many of them Romans or part of King Herod’s court, or members of the Sanhedrin own the land and have tenant farmers. We are very lucky here. The land around Nazareth, is very fertile. Most of us will grow wheat to make into bread, barley to feed our animals, or if times are hard we will eat it ourselves. Importantly we grow flax to make linen, for which we are famous across the land.

Nathan and I share a plough with Jesus, and a couple of other families. As Jesus is the village carpenter, our plough is always in good working order. We borrow oxen and hitch them to the plough, then we plough in rows across the land. Where there are thistles or thorns, we dig them out with a mattock. When the plough moves on to the next piece of land, we need to sow the seeds. We all keep seed from the last crop we harvested. We spend hours going through them searching the best and fattest from what we have grown, to give us the best crop next year. To sow, we put the seeds into a basket strung around the neck on a leather thong, and then step out to sow the seed; right foot forward, broadcast to the left, left foot forward, broadcast to the right, right foot, left hand, left hand, right foot, up and down the plot until the soil is evenly scattered with seeds. It is hypnotic work, and it is not at all surprising that some, more than any of us would like, ends up where it does not or cannot grow.

Each of our plots of land on the flat valley floor are marked by a path of stones around them. As we are ploughing, stones are brought to the surface, and it is the job of the children going behind and before the ploughman to pick up the stones and carry them to the path and add them to it. It saves breaking the plough. Sometimes if the stones are big the plough has to stop while they are removed. Once the sowing is done, the land must be ploughed again, crosswise to bury the seeds to stop them from being blown away or eaten by the birds. To finish off the children pull branches of trees up and down the land to level the soil off.

Jesus the Sewer – part 2

Clothes in biblical times

They love nothing better than to go and watch him work, and if they get to help man the bellows, or help build a fire to hold the crucible, then they are in seventh heaven. Jonathan was no exception. He did have more excuse than many, as his friend Jesus was often sent to help, when Joseph and Simeon were making something together. If I told him once, I told him a thousand times that if he was going to go into the workshop, he had to take off his simlāh, his heavy woolen over tunic and gird up his kethōneth into his belt, so that as little material as possible got holes burnt in it. Sometimes he remembered, mostly he didn’t until he got hot, when he would take it off and throw it into a corner of the smithy where it would still get showered in sparks.

It got to a point that his simlah was almost more holes than material. I really needed to weave him a new one, but I didn’t want to make a new one for it to rapidly look as holey as the old one. He was promised that if it didn’t get any more holes in it for a month, I would start on a new one for him. For a while it seemed as if he had kept his promise, but then I noticed that there were parts of the simlah that I was never being allowed to see, so one day I just grabbed Jonathan and turned him around. I was delighted to see that there were apparently no new burn holes in the back. I was astonished to see a crudely placed patch of brilliantly coloured new material near the hem, that appeared to be barely hanging on to the surrounding material.

I turned Jonathan around and gave him my best mother-wants-to-know-all look. He managed to keep my eye defiantly for quite a while before a blush appeared and he dropped his eyes. I find silence works much better than words when you want a confession! It appeared that contrary to my instructions, Jonathan had gone to the forge in his simlah, and had as usual taken it off and thrown it into a dirty corner, where as usual a spark had burned a little hole in it. It appears that my threat not to make a new one if the current simlah appeared holey again, was now taken very seriously by Jonathan and Jesus, who was with him at the time. After a quick discussion Jesus took Jonathan home with him, and cut a piece out of his own new simlah, and having borrowed a needle and thread from Mary’s needle case, he did his first bit of sewing, and patched Jonathan’s simlah for him, but they hadn’t really taken into account the differences in colour. After another hurried discussion, they headed to the village well, where they apparently tried to wash Jonathan’s simlah, lots of times, to make the colour fade quickly. All they had managed to do was make the patch shrink in the wash and almost pull it off the original material. The only remaining thing Jonathan could think of doing was try and hide the whole sorry mess from me!

I had a great deal of difficulty in stopping myself from laughing. I would love to have seen Jesus sewing the patch on. I would love to have seen Mary’s face when she found the hole in Jesus’ simlah. I would really like to have seen them washing the simlah over and over again, and then seen their faces as the material dried and the patch, still bright and shiny shrunk and almost pulled itself off the simlah, after all they had done.

Jonathan did get a new simlah, but in between the time I found out about the repair and when I finished the new one, I took the old one away from him. He was forced to go around in just his kethōneth. It is a garment which covers everything, but it is only the poor who go around without one, unless one is working doing manual labour when the simlah gets in the way. Jonathan found himself being pointed at and laughed at. It was a bitter lesson that he learned; that ones belongings need to be looked after properly. Mary turned a hem on Jesus simlah, so it was too short. He got laughed at as well. I think that neither of them will ever forget the lesson they have been taught by the problem of the patched simlah.

Jesus the Sewer – part 1

Clothes in biblical times

(Matthew 9:16 – ‘And no one puts a patch of unfinished cloth on an old torn garment, because the patch will weaken the garment and the tear will be made worse)

In Nazareth, the market square is the place where people come to shop for things they cannot make or grow for themselves. Nathan’s and my basket weaving workshop faces onto the square, with Joseph’s carpenter’s shop next door. Around the rest of the square there is Ezra the Mat maker and Joash the Potter. We all live in simple houses we have built ourselves, with help from our families and friends. The walls of the houses are made from mud bricks, just as our ancestors made generations ago for Pharaoh, in Egypt. Inside the houses we have just a single room, with a platform about 18 inches high covering one half. Our animals; sheep, goats, donkey and chickens live in the lower part of the house at night, so that we can watch over them and protect them. Around the walls are a few niches where we can burn rush lights, but mostly we go to bed when it is dark and get up when it is light. During the cold months the whole family sleep in the house on mats with just our cloaks pulled around us. In the summer we climb up onto the roof via the staircase on the side of the house, and sleep there under an awning, or just under the stars.

There are two houses on the market square which are built in stone. The biggest belongs to Marco the Merchant. His house is not only built of stone, but it has a wooden door with metal hinges and a metal bolt. Our door is wood with leather hinges and a wooden bar to keep it closed. Marco has his goods to protect, which he keeps in two wooden chests. Pretty materials and jewels from foreign lands. Exotic spices and herbs from the East and the money he makes from trading these things all across the length and breadth of the country.

The other stone house belongs to Simeon the Smith. His workshop is opposite that of Joseph, as the two of them collaborate on many items. The door of Marco’s house was made by the two of them. Every plough that ploughs the land outside the village, which grows the crops we all feed on, was made by them. Every knife has a metal blade and a wooden handle, every spade that digs and every hoe that we use to weed between our crops is made by them.

Smithing is a magical art. Lumps of dark heavy stone are delivered to the back of Simeon’s house. He heats it up until the rock itself melts then out pours molten metal. He heats and cools, hammers and shapes and makes for us perfectly crafted metal items. Sometimes lumps of special metals; gold and silver are delivered to him, and he fashions bracelets with coloured stones he has picked up and shaped. His work is dangerous as well as clever. He gets burned by the sparks which fly from his fires and scorched by the heat of the flames – and he is the idol of all of the older boys in the village.

The House of the Potter – part 2

Household pottery

One day, not long before he departed to begin his ministry, I saw Jesus sitting watching Joash work as I was passing by to get water from the well. He had obviously been doing something strenuous in his workshop as he was just in his kethonneth, which he had girded out of the way. He held a pottery beaker in his hand, and he was gulping down water as if his life depended on it. On my way back from the well with my jar of water, I sat down beside him, and offered to fill his beaker again, which he gratefully accepted. Neither of us said anything as we watched Joash skillfully turn the potters wheel with his feet and gently with his hands cause a beautiful small amphora to rise from the lump of clay. As we watched he stretched the clay to its fullest limit, and suddenly something happened and the thin sides of the amphora began to wobble, and then collapse. Joash straightened up, and stretched his back, then began to pound on the clay to produce a lump again. He added a bit more clay, wetted the whole lot with more water, and began again to make an amphora rise from the lump.

Beside me Jesus began to softly quote from Torah:

“This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord. ‘Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.’ So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, ‘Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?’ declares the Lord. ‘Like the clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.’

When he had finished he turned to me. “That is from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. I remember the Rabbi teaching me those verses. I think that they are some of the most beautiful written in the books of the prophets. I am always reminded of it when I take the time to sit here and watch Joash work. In my workshop I create tools and practical items like doors. If I make a mistake then either I have to begin again or the mistake remains. The customer might not see the mistake, but I know that it is there. Joash, if he makes a mistake, gathers everything back up again, and has another go. Jeremiah says that God is continually making and remaking us, until we are made in his image, then and only then are we ready to be brought before God, and fired in the heat of his love for us. Soon, very soon, I shall need to go, and begin my part in the remaking of God’s people, and I shall remember Joash and his pots.”

Jesus got up to go, ‘I had better go and start finding some wood for Joash. He has a lot of pots of all shapes and sizes drying in the sun, so he must be about ready to make a kiln and fire them all. It will be a good place to get rid of all my mistakes’. He gave me a hand to pull me to my feet.

‘Don’t tell mother yet about what I said about leaving. She knows that I have to leave, to be about my father’s business. I don’t want her to worry until I know the time is right.’

I looked into his face, and saw there something I had not seen before, a determination, and something more I could not define, maybe a bit of sadness, but then he smiled, and again he was just Mary’s son, the carpenter of Nazareth.