Chapter 12: Preparing to Travel

               
5th Gospel--Told by Jesus' Beloved Apostle

               
A Novel by Richard Jewell

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Book I: Early Years
Part Two–Young Man
                                      

Jesus and John stayed in Heliopolis, with occasional visits to the great library in Alexandria, for almost a year. Because Jesus was an initiate of the third degree, he was in a different class than John. They still managed to see each other frequently.

After this year, an Essene messenger came to Heliopolis to recall Jesus. John, said the messenger, was to stay and progress through his degrees and studies.

It was what John wanted. Though he would have liked to be with Jesus, the idea of traveling did not appeal to him. Jesus, they both knew, soon would be going to the Far East. John was happy with Egypt and his studies.

The two, now seventeen and in the first full bloom of their manhood, parted company sadly but in good humor. Jesus made the long trip by donkey with the Essene messenger to Galilee and Nazareth.

He rode down the dusty street of his hometown at twilight, waving to those who recognized him and stopping to talk with a few neighbors. They were all impressed that he had traveled as far as Egypt to study. Everyone believed it was his destiny to be a great Doctor of the laws, perhaps the finest that Galilee, a region of unassuming farmers, had ever produced.

The first thing he heard when he stopped outside his yellow and tan brick home was the crying of a baby.

He paused, confused. He knew his brother James was much too old to cry like that. Then he remembered. He had a baby sister. The Essene who had come to get him in Egypt had told him. But it had not seemed real until now.

Confidently and quietly he walked through the door and into the family room where he surprised his father.

“Jesus!” Joseph exclaimed. He jerked up from the book roll he was studying as he sat on his old reading mat.

“Hello, Poppa!” Jesus smiled.

They met each other halfway across the room and embraced.

Mary came hurrying out of the bedroom to see what was going on. She saw Jesus and wordlessly ran to him.

Even as Jesus hugged her, he could see she was tired and pale. Both of his parents looked much older than he remembered them. It bothered him.

He drew back from his mother’s embrace, and suddenly he was very aware of looking down upon her. She seemed much shorter, compared to his own increasing height. In fact, the whole room seemed, as he looked around, much smaller. He looked down at his mother questioningly.

“Yes, Jesus.” She smiled in understanding. Her face was wet with tears. “You have grown even more!”

“It’s good to be home, Momma.” He wanted to wipe her tears with his fingers, but he was still dusty from traveling.

“Where is my sister?” he asked.

“She is in the bedroom with Josi,” Mary told him. “Come.”

She led him across the cool floor to the goatskin door.

Inside the small bedroom, Josi turned around. The baby was in her arms. In spite of this, she ran to Jesus and awkwardly pressed against him, standing on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his cheek.

“Oh Jesus,” she exclaimed, “You’re home! Do you know how long we’ve been expecting you? Ever since the Essene messenger went to get you, two months ago, practically!”

Jesus stared down at the little bundle of unruly black hair and wrinkled, dark face Josi was holding. The baby was getting ready to cry again. Then she looked at Jesus. Her eyes opened wide. She blinked three times.

Jesus bent more closely to her.

She grabbed his nose and pulled it as hard as she could.

Jesus smiled and wrinkled his forehead in pain. “Ouch!” he said when she finally pulled loose.

“Do you know her name?” Josi asked. She laid her hand on Jesus’ arm.

Jesus shook his head.

“It is Ruth,” Josi told him.

“After the Ruth of the ancient books,” Mary said, coming up beside them. “Ruth who was King David’s ancestor and ours.” Joseph was just behind them, his head near the ceiling of the small room. He was still a hand span taller than Jesus.

“She is strong,” Jesus said.

“You won’t say she is beautiful?” Josi asked. She laughed. “Of course not. But someday she will be!”

“James is behind the house playing,” Joseph said.

“Go see him alone,” Mary suggested. “He gets embarrassed when we make a big fuss over him.”

Jesus kissed his mother’s cheek. “Shall I bring him in for supper?” he asked.

She nodded. “Now that we are all here, we can eat together for the first time in a year.”

Jesus walked to the cleared sot of sparse grass behind the house. In this yard were simple wooden toys Joseph had made with his carpenter’s tools, with which Jesus himself had once played. James was riding a little log-and-branch horse with a painted face. His five-year-old eyes were intent on his game.

The thin, muscular boy looked up at the person intruding on him. He saw a tall, handsome man with golden-red hair and intense, deep-set eyes. Suddenly he realized it was his brother. He scrambled off the log horse and ran to him across the rocky ground.

Jesus picked him up as James barreled into him.

“You are home!” James yelled. He hugged his big brother.

“What have you been doing while I was gone?” Jesus asked him.

James’ face grew red with excitement. “Everything!” he burst out. “Fishing!”

“Where?” Jesus asked. He frowned. There weren’t good places for fishing near Nazareth.

“By Capernaum!” James answered. “We’re going to live there!”

“Capernaum?” Jesus was confused. No one had told him about this.

“Yes! Momma and Poppa talked about it when I was sort of asleep. We’re going to live there after you go to India next week!”

“India next week?” Jesus asked. “Come on, James.” He juggled his little brother into a more comfortable position in his arms. “We’d better ask Momma and Poppa more about these things. It’s time for us to eat anyway.”

“Jesus.” James fixed his large, round eyes on his brother. “Do I have to wash my hands? You’re home, now. You don’t wash, do you?”

Jesus showed him one of his gritty hands. “Even I have to wash, James. Everyone does.”

James scowled.

“I’ll tell you all about Egypt and mummies while we wash,” Jesus said.

“Mummies!” James exclaimed. “Did you see one?”

“Several,” Jesus said. “I’ll tell you about them while we wash.”

Supper was a mixture of a normal meal and a party. While Jesus had been out with James in the back yard, Mary had hurriedly cleaned up the family day room. Though she had not had time to roast a whole lamb, she put out sweets such as dates and honeyed figs and raisins, a main course of smoked fish, and a vegetable of freshly cooked lentils flavored with onion, garlic, and several Indian spices on the low wood supper table.

Jesus barely had time to change into a better robe. When he came into the family room, each of the adults and James gave him a kiss as one would for any well-loved guest.

As soon as they were all lying on their couches in pairs, for the couches were long enough for two or three people each, Joseph said the blessing. As they began dipping their bread slices into the large stoneware serving bowls of food, Jesus turned to his father.

“I would like to stay and rest here before going on, Poppa. Have you heard whether I am to leave for India soon?”

“Next week,” James said, munching on a dried apple.

“Not that soon,” Joseph said. “Perhaps next month.”

“Are you moving to Capernaum? Jesus asked.

Joseph and Mary looked at him in surprise. Josi’s eyebrows went up.

“We’ve told no one, said Joseph. “How did you know?”

“James told me.”

“You do not mind, do you?” Mary asked, giving James a frowning glance. James kept his eyes on the serving bowl nearest him.

Jesus shook his head. “Why should I? It is not for me to say where you should live.”

“It is always your home, too,” Mary reminded him.

“Then I would enjoy Capernaum, where I can be with you.” Through the goatskin door he heard several neighbors passing their house, deep in conversation.

“Good,” Joseph said. “But we will wait until after you are gone to move. We don’t want all of us busy working while you are here with us.”

“Where in Capernaum will we live?” Jesus asked.

Joseph looked down at his food. His eyebrows twitched in good humor. “At a small villa by the Sea,” he said.

“A villa! But Poppa!”

“How can we afford it?” Joseph asked. He nodded. “It is simple, really. But it involves things we weren’t going to tell you until you were home several days.”

“You see,” Mary quietly said, “a visitor has come from India. A prince. He has heard of you and wants you to return home with him.”

“A prince,” Jesus said. It didn’t make sense to him. He glanced around the simple day room in confusion. He was used to priests, but princes and other such royalty were still far beyond his understanding. What would such a man want with a family living in such a little, ordinary house as this, and in such a small town?

“Why not a prince?” Mary exclaimed. “You are more worthy than a prince, yourself!”

Jesus blushed.

Joseph raised his hand.

“Wait, both of you. This prince, Jesus, has offered us sapphires and gold, like the Magi did, because we are your family. He is a powerful and hasty man. Judy and the other Essenes say we must not anger him, or he may make it impossible for you to go to India. We must accept the gift.”

Joseph looked his son in the eye. “We are not afraid to take the gift, Jesus,” he continued. “The Essenes want James and Ruth to have an education from the Greek and Roman scholars. We must hire these scholars ourselves, and we must have at least a small villa before such scholars will accept a job in our home.”

“Will the remaining money go to the Essenes?” Jesus asked.

Joseph shook his head. “No. They don’t want it. We are to save it for your later years. When you return from your travels, you will become a scholar and teacher. You will not work for a living.”

“Many Doctors of the Laws are supported by rich patrons, men and women alike,” Mary reminded him. “We will be your rich supporters, Son.”

Jesus slowly nodded. He looked at the old, worn reading mats in the corners of the room, and Josi’s frayed sleeping mat that was rolled up against one wall. He couldn’t imagine seeing them in a villa by the Sea of Galilee.

“There will be enough,” Mary told him, “to support you for many years. With care, the money may still be there when you are an old man.”

Jesus suddenly felt a rush of anxiety in his stomach. He didn’t like to think of himself getting old. It made him uncomfortable. He changed the subject.

“tell me more about this rich prince,” he said.

“Oh no you don’t,” Josi exclaimed. “You will meet him in several days. It is our turn to ask questions. You must tell us all about Egypt and the priests and the Great Pyramid.”

“Tell all of us about mummies!” James exclaimed.

Jesus sighed. He had been home only an hour and already his mind was full of India. He didn’t want to talk about Egypt.

Quietly, between bites, he began telling them what the Egyptian priests and their temple were like. He couldn’t tell them about his rites of initiation in the temple. But everything else about the Great Pyramid and the grounds around it were okay to talk about. Soon he, too, was caught up in the stories he was telling.

The next day Jesus was planning on visiting Judy, but there was no need. She came to him, and in no normal manner, either. She was riding a camel. The camel was part of the Indian prince’s escort.

Jesus was on a crude but solid ladder laid against his home, fixing the walls in places high up where his father was too old to safely reach. As Jesus worked, he saw a cloud of dust in the valley on the small trail leading form Mount Carmel to Nazareth. As the cloud got closer, he saw strange beasts walking in it in pairs. He recognized them and wondered what camels were doing in the Galilean hills. It was as unusual as if Egyptian crocodiles suddenly appeared in Nazareth’s town drinking well.

He finally was able to make out figures on the camels’ backs. One figure was tall and light-skinned with a white cloth wound around the top of his head. The light-skinned stranger was gleaming in the morning sunlight with jewels and gold. Beside him, a small but extremely dignified old woman, carefully wrapped in lines and a wool cloak, rode with a straight back and a quick gaze. It was, Jesus realized, Judy.

He jumped off the ladder and strode to meet them in the streets.

“Stop!” Judy commanded the group in a loud voice, raising her hand. Her large beat shuddered and paused.

The prince, and a dozen other men on camels behind him, barked a noisy variety of individual commands to halt their camels, forcing the restless animals to stop.

Jesus ran up to Judy’s camel and looked up at her in wordless pleasure.

“Jesus,” she said, looking down on him. Her warm voice was low and rough. She cleared it. “How was your trip?”

He went to one knee in the dust, bowed his head, and then rose again.

“Three degrees, Teacher.” He held up his fingers. “Three!”

She smiled. “I know.”

His eyes opened wide in surprise.

“I watched over you in my dreams,” she explained. “I saw each degree awarded to you.” She reached her hand down and laid it gently on his head.

“Besides,” she added, “you are not thinking well today, my pupil. The Essene who helped you return to us has already reported everything you and John did.”

“It is he!” a deep voice boomed. “The Expected One! Is it not?”

Jesus turned his head. The prince had dismounted and was coming around the front of Judy’s camel, holding out his hands. He was thin but muscular, moving with easy assurance and dignity and holding his cloth-wrapped head high. As Jesus had noticed when he first saw the prince at a distance, the man’s skin was lighter than everyone else’s. The flashing of his jewels made the little town around them seem even dustier than normal.

When he reached Jesus, he embraced him as if Jesus was a relative or close friend.

“I am Prince Ravanna!” he told Jesus. “I have heard everything about you!”

“I am honored, Prince,” Jesus said. Once more he bowed.

“He is polite! God’s holy son is even polite!” Ravanna exclaimed. He looked at Judy with delight.

“You will find he is everything we have told you, sir,” Judy said.

Jesus looked up at Judy with questions on his lips. She looked deeply into his eyes. Her own were sparkling with amusement.

Jesus turned back to Ravanna. “What have they told you about me, Prince?”

Ravanna waved his carefully manicured hands. “The birth! The predictions! The Magi!”

He leaned toward Jesus and spoke low. People were coming out of their homes and staring at him.

“A pupil of one of those very Magi is in my escort!” He waved his arm at the camels behind Judy. Several men in long white-and-red robes sat watching Jesus intently.

Before Jesus could greet them, Ravanna took his arm.

“Come, King of Israel. I wish to meet your parents once again.”

Then suddenly he let go of Jesus’ arm. He looked at his hand with worry. “My lord!” he said. “It never occurred to me that I might be too small an insect for you to even notice. If I have offended you by touching you, please tell me.” He dropped to both knees and bowed his cloth-wrapped head.

Jesus looked from Ravanna to his own work-stained old robe that was tied about his middle for climbing on his father’s ladder. Then he looked at Judy helplessly.

“Go on,” she said. The corner of her mouth twitched in humor.

Awkwardly Jesus cleared his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see some of his neighbors smiling at him.

“Rise up,” he told the prince. “Sir.”

Ravanna looked up hopefully. “Have I offended you, my lord?”

Jesus took the prince’s shoulders.

“Please, you haven’t offended me. It is good for people to touch. You may rise.”

Ravanna gratefully stood up. He wiped his dusty brow. “I was afraid that it may be, for you, like it is for me in India,” he explained. “You see, I am a Brahmin, a person of superior class. No one may touch me unless I so designate it.”

Ravanna closed his eyes and shivered once. “And no one,” he continued, “may ever touch me or even look at me if they are one of the Trash, the Untouchables. The penalty, should one from the Trash touch me, is death!”

Ravanna opened his eyes a crack. “I was afraid I was Trash to you.”

Jesus shook his head violently. “That is a terrible–”

Judy interrupted him. “Our Jesus is a very touchable messiah, Prince Ravanna. And he comes from both priestly and kingly descendants, so you need not also fear he is too humble for you.” She spoke softly so that Jesus’ neighbors, standing nearby, could not hear. Some of them slowly drifted closer.

“We do things differently here,” she told the prince in a normal voice. “Maybe we are no better or worse than you Indians.” She looked at Jesus. “But we do touch each other.”

“Some of my friends are farmers and fishers,” Jesus added.

Ravanna looked at him in astonishment. Then the prince carefully rearranged his face so that his expression was neutral once again.

“I am honored,” he told Jesus and bowed low.

They went to Jesus’ small home.

Several days later, Jesus visited Judy alone on Mount Carmel. They sat and talked in front of her cave home, where she could let the sun warm her body. The mountainside all around them was full of new green grasses and leaves of wild mountain shrubs springing out in the warm weather. A pair of wild turtledoves were cooing nearby and preparing a nest.

“We want you to stay in India two or three years,” she said. She was running thread through a small hand loom before her, and then rocking forward to push the thread up into place. Since Jesus had gone to Egypt, she had noticed the first small signs of arthritis in her fingers. She knew keeping her hands busy would long delay the gradual hardening of her joints.

“I thought so,” he answered her. “Do they have degrees of initiation as in Egypt?” he was slowly eating a green onion. He had discovered that he now liked their taste better than that of the mild leeks he used to eat.

“No,” she told him, “it is not quite the same in India. You will have a good teacher whom Ravanna and his priests will help you find. This teacher must teach you the physical and psychic skills of yoga.”

“Will this teacher be a scholar?” he asked.

“He doesn’t need to be. The skills you will learn have little to do with intellectual studies. These skills are called yoga.”

He shifted restlessly. He watched her fingers shuttling quickly back and forth.

“It sounds uninteresting,” he said.

She smiled. “You do not know this yet, my young man, but you are tired of scholarly studies.”

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe,” he told her.

She laughed, a quick, dry chuckle. “You just want to get your hands on those mystery books in the temple in Egypt again.”

He smiled. “I never did get to study them as much as they deserve.”

“Put aside such desires,” she told him. “In India you will learn mastery of the very mysteries you wish to read about. You will discover mastery of yourself within you.”

“So I can do tricks like the priest in India who float in the air and walk on beds of burning coals?”

She put her loom down and looked him in the eye.

“No. You will learn mastery of self so you can do God’s will.”

“What is God’s will?” he asked her. He crunched down hard on the green onion shoot in his hand. Across the valley spread out before them, he saw several wool-shirted shepherds taking their sheep up to a higher pasture.

“For you, I don’t know,” she answered. “It is what is left in you after you have removed all desires and activities that are unimportant.”

“How do we determine what is unimportant?” he asked.

“You ask me that every year.” She sighed. “It is what you decide is unimportant, my son. For each of us, it is different. Would you have me quit working this loom? It is important to me, and I believe it is what God wants me to do when I sit with you on this mountainside like this. Yet it is unimportant for you. You must become the very best that you can, and let God help arrange what you do.”

“It is too hard, Teacher.” He stretched his legs out before him, feeling the thin sunbeams warming him slightly through his robes. He felt very relaxed.

Judy shook her head.

“Get rid of what stops you from growing. Once you have done this, you will always be able to grow even more.”

She picked up her loom and rose. “Now go and talk with some of the young men who are restless like you. Or walk through the mountains. Your time as only a scholar is passing. It is good that it is happening, too.”

Jesus smiled. “At least I’ll be traveling again. Where will I go after India?”

“I have never met a person, young or old, so filled with questions!” She smiled back at him. “We will decide where you go when your stay in India is done.”

He dropped his carefree manner. He bent over Judy’s hand and kissed it. “I am glad to be with you again, Teacher.” His voice was quiet and serious. He felt a wild surge of respect and love well up in his throat, making him choke and swallow.

Tears came to Judy’s eyes. “It is good to have you back, my son. Stay several days so we may talk.”

“It is done,” he said.

After a minute of silence he also stood up to go. The two, student and teacher, standing in front of her cave home, looked deeply into each other’s eyes. Each realized that they were becoming more equal, and in just a few years he would be her superior in knowledge and many skills. Yet in this relationship, hers was the comfort to give.

“Go now,” she said. Gently she touched her fingertips to the spot between his eyebrows. “I will see you at supper in the temple in several hours.”

He walked up the side of Mount Carmel, past the temple, and into the woods beyond. His whole body was filled with energy from her one small touch. He felt that if he could learn in India to touch people like that, it might all be worthwhile.

At supper he questioned Judy more closely about the skills his teacher in India would teach him. As she ate her bread and vegetables, she quietly explained some of the Hindu beliefs to him. By the time she was ready to return to her bed in her cave, he was too excited to sleep. He spent the night wandering the bushy slopes and moonlit forests of the Carmel Mountains, planning how he might be able to someday use his new skills. When dawn broke over the mountains and the wide valley below, he was still walking. He couldn’t wait to start the long journey with Ravanna.

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Most recent revision of text: 1 Aug. 2020.