Chapter 25: Death, Prayers, Fish, and a Storm

               
5th Gospel--Told by Jesus' Beloved Apostle

               
A Novel by Richard Jewell

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Book II: The Rabbi
Part Four–Teacher
                                      

Jesus started teaching his envoys, his followers, and family about death by explaining what happens to us in normal dying. “The spirit leaves the old house, the body,” he told them, “just as it can in normal times with proper training.” He had learned this from Judy when he was younger.

He showed them how they, too, could leave their bodies and travel in the air without them. But few were able to do this alone, without his touch and mental concentration making it happen. Peter, and Jesus’ brother Jude, were among those who did not need assistance.

Beyond these words and teachings, frightening though they were to some of the followers who could not return to their bodies easily, he told them little. He was waiting for something. He sensed death approaching and he wanted to meet it. He hoped he might be able to heal the approaching death, for he sensed it was either his own or that of someone close to him.

When the death came, it totally surprised him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The man who brought Jesus news of this death was Miriam’s rich brother, Lazarus. Lazarus lived in Bethany, east of Jerusalem, with his sister Martha. Since Miriam had stopped her activities as a courtesan, she had become reconciled with Lazarus and Martha and sometimes stayed with them in Bethany.

Because their father was dead by this time, Lazarus was the head of the household. He was a handsome man, tall and slender with greying hair scattered across his temples and through his hair. His eyes were a soft blue, from their Grecian mother, and his face strong with the prominent cheekbones and high forehead that richer Greeks have.

From his father’s side of the family, he inherited all the fire and reason of Israel itself, for he was a lawyer. He defended the poor, and Essenes and others unjustly accused, before the Sanhedrin and the Roman procurator Pilate. many of the Pharisees and members of the Sanhedrin hated him. But because of his wealth and his strict honesty, no authority dared touch him. He knew the Laws better than they, and yet believed in the Essenes’ and Jesus’ ways. He was one of Jesus’ close friends, one on whom Jesus was coming to rely.

This was the dignified man who personally brought the message of death to Jesus.

Jesus was reclining at lunch in the new dining room of his family’s villa when Lazarus arrived. Several of the envoys and others such as Zebedee, Mary, Josi, and even Judy were at the long wooden table with him. Everyone was using his or her barley bread to dip freely into two huge bowls of fish and leeks, one at each end of the narrow table. They were passing around laughter and stories of their recent adventures, for recently Jesus had sent many of his followers, including enjoys, family, and friends as well, to teach and heal in other towns.

Lazarus appeared solemnly in the doorway with dust on his crimson traveler’s cloak.

Jesus smiled happily as soon as he saw Lazarus. He rose to greet the lawyer. “It is good of you to come,” Jesus told him, reaching out to embrace him.

Lazarus returned the hug. The two men were equally tall. “I have missed you, my friend,” the lawyer said.

“Here,” Jesus pointed. “Water for washing. Let me also wash your fee, for you must be sore and tired after traveling.”

Lazarus cut him off with a short wave of the hand.

Jesus suddenly looked more closely at Lazarus’ eyes. “you bring death,” Jesus said, feeling his boy tense. He heard the room behind him quickly grow quiet.

Lazarus nodded gravely. His long Grecian jaw was tight. He stared at Jesus. “John is dead. Herod is finally finished with him.”

Jesus mouth dropped open. His eyes glazed. He felt numb.

Several of the envoys rose.

“Not John!” exclaimed Thomas, who also was Greek and a lawyer. “We have been expecting death. If the Master hurries there, can he heal him?”

Peter, who had also risen, looked at Thomas and shook his head mournfully. “It is too many days’ travel,” he said.

Lazarus was looking at Jesus in surprise. “Heal death?” he said. “Surely it has not gone that far!”

Jesus was staring at him but not seeing him.

“No,” Lazarus continued. “Even if you could, it surely would be impossible this time! John’s head was cut off.”

Many of the people in the dining room gasped and drew back.

Jesus looked at all of them once. Tears were beginning to break through the numb surprise he felt, and fall down his cheeks. Then he turned sharply and strode from the room.

Several of the enjoys and his mother, Mary, rose to follow him.

“Stop,” Peter growled. “Let him alone.”

Jesus walked out into the bright, warm sunshine of the Jordan Valley winter. His heart was pounding in his chest and his legs felt weak. Through the blur of his tears, he could see only the vague shapes of green grass, blue sky, and white buildings. Haltingly he found his way down to the edge of the water. He sat down and began quietly crying in earnest. He cried for several minutes.

When he lifted his head he saw, down the beach, several fishermen sitting around small noontime bits of logs lit for a fire. They had spitted several fish on green twigs and were roasting them over the flames.

One of the fishermen raised his hand and waved. The man was unshaven and his old fishing robes were tied up around his legs by leather thongs. His face was deeply tanned and his movements spare and calm, as befitted a fisher of the wide, quick-to-storm lake.

Watching the man, Jesus suddenly began yearning for the waters, and the loneliness of traveling across them with only a man’s closest friends beside him.

He slowly stood up, carefully picked his way up the hill, and reentered the villa. The low, solemn buzz of conversation in the dining room suddenly died. Everyone’s eyes turned toward him.

“Peter, Andrew, Judas,” he said. “Come.”

He saw several of the other envoys, who had just returned from traveling around the country. He called to them, too. “Let us go across the Sea and be alone for a time,” he said. Then he turned and, without looking back, he led them all down to the shore and a large boat that belonged to them all for their travels.

They sailed the Sea for several hours until midafternoon. They remained quiet most of the time. His enjoys waited for him to speak first.

Finally they landed in a barren and lonely place on the northeast coast of the Sea, near Bethsaida. Jesus was beginning to feel more at peace with himself by this time. He intended to take the disciples into a small, hidden valley in the rocks. He had once discovered it as a boy with his father Joseph. There, Jesus hoped, they all could meditate and talk quietly about his friend John’s death.

But as they strode along the wet, muddy path leading from the shore, they rounded a great heap of rocks and stunted bushes, and there before them were over one thousand people.

The people all began shouting loudly in unison when they saw him. “Doctor!” they called. “Teacher! We have hurried along the coast of the lake, waiting for you to come ashore!” More were coming in groups and alone every minute.

“Send them away,” Judas suggested.

“Master,” Peter said, touching Jesus’ arm, “we can return to our boat and go elsewhere.”

Jesus looked at the milling, happily shouting crowd. He breathed deeply and turned to his envoys. “We will not leave. If they have come this far just to be with us, then let us not disappoint them.”

He pointed to a nearby hilltop and began walking to it, laying his hands on people as he went and comforting them with kind, quiet words.

On top of the hill, Jesus stood, and he had his friends, many of whom had come with the crowds to hear and help him, clear a space directly around him so everyone could see him speak. Several handfuls of young girls and boys sat and lay down respectfully around his feet. Andrew’s son, a handsome little boy of ten, was among them.

Jesus remained silent as the minutes and the increasing quiet of the crowd drew on. More people were coming to the slopes of the hill every minute. They were cautioned against noise by others as the newcomers laid out their rush mats and skins on the short grass, or simply found a spot more cushioned by the thick winter grass than others, and sat down. The rich, strong scent of winter flowers drifted through the air.

Jesus finally began to speak.

“John the Cleanser, whom you have heard was healing and cleansing with water down by Jericho, is dead.”

Many in the crowd gasped. Others from Capernaum, who had already heard the news, watched Jesus closely.

He spread out his left hand. “What is life,” he asked in a steadily louder voice, “that it can be taken away like the autumn leaf blown from the tree by the wind?

“I will tell you. Life is but the body of our Mother who guides us in all we do. Our earthly Mother, the soul of our lives, is within us and we are in her. She is our Momma who brings us sleep at night, and she who wakes us and gives us energy for the day. She is in every flower we smell, every drift of breeze we breathe. In her we move and have our being.”

Some of the envoys’ mouths were dropping open. They had heard Jesus talk of God as a Mother, but never so completely as this. The crowd on the hillside, though, was rapt with attention.

“Our Mother,” he continued, “forms the body and the blood, the bones and the tissues that are our earthly life. Men think that we are made of clay and water, and of fire; but I tell you that we are made of our Mother’s being. We are her. Our spirits alone are our own. Our Mother decides which of us shall live and which of us shall die, and how these things may happen day by day, for the elements of our bodies are the elements of hers.

“Do not fight our Mother,” he said. “For every time we become sick, or do someone an evil, we are trying to break our Mother’s Laws! Be good, for the Mother shall heal us in her own ways and times if we but let her. Otherwise she heals by removing our bodies from us, so that we must return to our Father in heaven for a time, until we are ready to do better.”

He shifted his attention from the people near the top of the hill and closer to him, to those on the outer fringes of the crowd. He had to look at a good distance to include them, for thousands of people were gathered below him.

“But what of death?” he continued. “Is death a form of punishment? It is punishment, for we are perfect beings surrounded by shells of imperfection. But it is not punishment, for long ago in Adam’s time, we gave up the freedom to avoid this shell, and the result is that we are bound to our imperfect bodies whenever we live on earth. No one can be blamed directly for this bondage. Because of this bondage, we are freed at the end of our lives to once more live with our Father in heaven that we may rest and choose new bodies. Death is a release, though a temporary one, so that we may know God better and do his will.

“But what of our bodies? Will we always be bound repeatedly to such an imperfect instrument?”

Jesus circled his hand in a wide arc toward everyone below him on the hill, and beyond.

“I tell you today,” he said, “that we will not be bund this way. The Son of Man,” he said, pointing to himself, “even now is preparing the way for overcoming death. Soon death will be conquered, for our Mother is showing me the ways of healing the body of age and mortal wounds, so that not even sudden death may steal in like a thief in the night!”

People’s faced wore puzzled and surprised expressions as they began realizing what Jesus meant. Many leaned forward intently, drawing the cool, late-afternoon air in sharply. Others picked stems of grass and chewed on them. Others simply watched him in amazement.

“But what of us?” shouted one surprised man. His beard was long and pointed. “We are not you, therefore we can’t conquer our own deaths!”

Jesus disagreed solemnly. “You can conquer death,” he said to the man, “and someday you will. I am sent as a messenger from God to lead the way. Where I walk, healing death itself, someday all of you will follow. All of us are sons and daughters of the Most High. We have been that way from the beginning of time, or have made ourselves that way. It may take several more times of being born again in the bosom of the Mother, though, for each of you to do this.”

People who understood reincarnation, especially those of Essene and Pharisaic training, nodded at this. They already knew they would return someday again as a spirit in the body of a newborn baby.

“How can you do this?” Jesus asked. “I tell you now, each of you is God!”

People gasped.

“As the burning bush told Moses in the wilderness, ‘I AM THE I AM.’ God said to Moses, at that time, ‘Tell the people of Israel I-AM has sent you to them.’ Each of you,” Jesus explained, has the I AM within you. Therefore, when you speak of your Momma or your Poppa in heaven, know that a part deep within you is speaking of itself.”

Many of the more strict Jews in the crowd drew back in fear at these words, for Jesus had uttered the unmentionable name of God. I AM, known also as YAHWEH, is a word that even now good Jews are forbidden to speak out loud.

“Do not be afraid,” Jesus said, “for I am with you. If the son of God is here, what need have you to fear the Father? Listen, for I would teach you how to meditate, so you may discover this spark of holy love deep within you.”

He smiled. “When you meditate to discover the Father within you and beyond, use these words:

Our Father who is of heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Let your kingdom come. Let your will be done

in earth as it is done in heaven.

Give us each day our body’s needs.

and forgive us our debts,

as we forgive our debtors.

Be our guide through temptation and trouble

and lead us in paths of love.

For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the grace forever.

“When you are seeking our Mother within you and all around,” Jesus continued, “use these words:

Our Mother who is upon earth,

hallowed be your name.

Let your kingdom come, let your will be done

in us, as it is done in you.

As you send each day your angels,

send them to us also.

Forgive us our wrongs,

as we amend our wrongs against you.

Be our guide through sickness and despair,

and lead us in paths of love.

For yours in the earth, the body, and the well-being forever.”

Some people listened carefully, but others were watching Jesus and paying more attention to his face and tall, graceful body than to his words. Most of them were drinking in the way he looked, for the power of his words had given him a beauty and handsomeness that men or women rarely have. They were worshipping him.

Jesus noticed this. “Look again!” he commanded them. “For the kingdom of heaven is within us, and not in any appearance that you see just with your eyes or hear just with your ears!”

He repeated the two meditation guides. Then he motioned to his enjoys to draw closer to him. “Go out among the crowd,” he told them, “and we will teach as many as we can, how to find the inner silence and their true selves deep within.”

Lightly perspiring on his forehead and around his neck, drained of all but the urge and power to teach, he led his envoys into the crowds. Soon all of them, Jesus included, were busy forming small groups of six or eight people at a time, and leading them into the breathing and beginning postures of meditation. Many people that day discovered the light, the love, and the power of the greater forces at work in all people. The lessons went on, with group after group, for several hours.

As the sun began to fall into the western Great Sea far away, turning the distant hills of Galilee ocher yellow and pink most of the envoys began to tire. It had been a long day, and an eventful one for both them and Jesus. They were also tired because no one had eaten. Several of them felt their stomachs growling and decided it was time to do something about it.

Peter and Andrew came to Jesus as he was kneeling in the damp grass before a woman who had fainted from too much excitement. He was holding his hand against her brow and sending his healing energies into her.

After she rose and he instructed her sons to lead her to a grassy spot apart where there was water to drink, Andrew spoke to him. “master.” Andrew spoke quietly. Sweat had soaked through his tunic. He was carrying his cloak over his arm. “There is no food here. Send the people home so that they may eat.”

Jesus looked about the crowded hillside. By this time some five thousand people were busy talking, meditating, and visiting with neighbors and friends.

“It is going well here,” he said. He looked off over the blue Sea of Galilee. The far sides of it fell in the distance to the wide green Jordan Valley beyond. He felt at home with himself, strong and secure in his body and good from doing so much work.

“You feed them,” he told Andrew.

Andrew and Peter looked at each other. “We only have enough money t buy food for several hundred people,” Peter said. He stroked his beard impatiently. “Besides, Judas does not want us to use the money for food. We asked him. He insists it is for our Passover celebration in the spring.”

Jesus sighed. “Bring me what food you can find. We will see if that, in addition to what little our money can buy, is enough.”

Andrew and Peter began to walk among the five thousand, asking for food to share. Most people already had long ago eaten what little they had brought. Finally, Andrew’s son, who had been helping his father search, ran up to Andrew and Peter with a basket in his arms. “Poppa,” he yelled, “I have found some fish and bread!”

Andrew took he basket and looked inside. He frowned and lifted the covering to show Peter.

“Two fish and five loaves of bread!” Peter exclaimed. He scowled. “A merry feast that will make for all of us!”

They took it to Jesus. Jesus looked at it. He sighed again. “Give the food to me,” he told them. “Ask the people to form dining groups of fifty and one hundred, and to recline.”

Jesus went to the top of the hill where he was left alone. He sat down on the grass. The fish was packed in green leaves that still held some of the early morning’s coolness. The bread was on top. Jesus touched it with his finger. It was growing dry.

He lifted the bread and fish out of the basket and, holding some of each in his hands, he closed his eyes and let himself slide into a deep concentration. In his mind, the laughing face of his friend John appeared. He forced himself past it and plunged so deeply into awareness of himself that he could feel the blood racing through his veins and sense new particles of skin forming under the old layers, ready to replace his old skin particles when they flaked off from sunburn or normal washing. His awareness felt to him like a small dot in a sea of busy activity and movement as the parts of his body went about their work.

He focused and widened the small dot. Then he sent it pushing and seeking down his arms, and out from the center of his chest, into the bread and fish in his hands. He felt the composition of the food, the smooth and the rough particles within it that, by the millions, made it into visible food. Within each of these particles, he knew, was a slumbering awareness, a quiet consciousness that was sleeping and unaware of itself. He looked for that consciousness in the myriad particles, found it, and awakened it. The particles sang, as if they were about to change into little sea creatures or perhaps small air creatures tinier than the hole in a needle.

Jesus quieted them. Then, in myriad groups of thousands and millions, he nudged them to grow into more particles like themselves.

It worked.

He was afraid to pen his eyes for visible proof because the growing might stop. But he could feel and see it happening with his inner senses. The particles had decided to reproduce themselves quickly. He waited until the whole universe of his awareness seemed to be filled with particles of fish and bread expanding and overflowing everywhere.

When he finally opened his eyes, tiny bits and pieces of fish and bread were lying all over his lap. His hands had been breaking them off from the original pieces while he had been deep in meditation. Even as he watched them, he could see them expanding as foam on the sea suddenly appears or as flowers unfold.

As quickly as he could, he repeated the process with the other fish and loaves of bread. Then he gathered the pieces into his hands and dumped them into the basket. They overflowed, for already there was more than when he had started.

He stood up and called to Peter, who was nearby. “Peter! Come here. Would you please pass this food among the people?”

Peter raised one eyebrow and looked at Jesus. He took the basket from him, though, and without another word he began going among the crowds and passing out handfuls of the food.

Half an hour later, Peter, Andrew, and his son and several of the other envoys and friends returned with twelve borrowed baskets. The baskets were full of leftover pieces after everyone had eaten to his or her content. The fish pieces smelled fresher and better-roasted than the day the original fish were caught and cooked. The hunks of bread scented the air with a warm, home-baked tang.

“Here,” James, Jesus’ brother, said, laying one basket in his brother’s lap. James was among the envoys. He had spent the afternoon walking tirelessly through the crowds and healing whomever he could with the large carpenter’s hands like his father Joseph’s. “How did you do that?” he asked his tired older brother.

Jesus picked up a piece of the white-fleshed fish to eat it. He examined his younger brother’s strong, wind-lined face. “James,” he said quietly, “don’t you listen? The words I spoke just today are enough to teach you how to do this very thing. All things of the earth come from our Mother. If you would know these things and find them, then you must look for our Mother in each of them. The fish and bread were only answering my call to them to multiply. Cant you see?”

James slowly shook his head, then he smiled. “Having a brother like you is not easy.”

Jesus smiled back. “Come and eat with me,” he suggested.

James laid his hands on his stomach. “I already have. Thanks for the meal. But I will sit with you anyway.”

He and the other envoys sat down with Jesus. They were full of questions, but Jesus asked them to wait until the next day. He was too tired. He wanted this time for a rest.

As night came on ever faster, many people lay down on the slightly warm ground right where they were and began sleeping. Others stayed up to talk and play simple games with sticks in the dirt. Still others sought out Jesus or one of his closer followers or friends for serious discussion on some point of the Laws, or to be healed.

By the middle of the night, almost everyone was sleeping. Only one thousand were left, for Jesus had told the others, who lived nearby, it was better that they go home and sleep in comfort.

Finally, as even the night birds ceased calling, Jesus called the envoys to him. “Get in the boat and go home,” he said. “I am staying here for a while. I wish to be alone.” He smiled wearily at them. “I will see you in Capernaum tomorrow or the day after.”

The envoys obeyed him. They took the large wooden boat with its wide deck out on the lake and put up the boat’s sail. Zebedee had given this fishing boat to them. His sons, and his former employees Peter and Andrew, knew the boat from their years of working it, so they were the ones who sailed it.

But on this night, as it turned out, sailing was hard.

“The moon is full tonight,” Peter commented. They were sitting quietly, the boat barely moving in the water.  “If we had a breeze of any kind, it would be a perfect night for sailing.”

“As dawn approaches,” Andrew pointed out, “a breeze will spring up.”

“Why don’t we swim?” Judas asked.

Peter drew back quickly. “Swim!” he said. “The water is cold! And we are in the middle of the lake. What if a storm suddenly came down on us? We might drown.”

Simon the Zealot, a leader of the Judean revolutionaries before coming to Jesus, who was a man with a sharp eye, pointed up into the far northern skies. “Look at the stars,” he said gruffly. “They are disappearing. A storm is coming!”

All of the envoys peered toward the north and Mount Hermon. A flash of lightening flicked down from a narrow bank of dark clouds, hitting the mountaintop in the distance.

“Great,” said James the son of Zebedee. He frowned. “Just what we need. Get out the oars quickly. There is one for each of us.”

They put the sail down and began rowing as fast as they could, but the clouds were much faster. The great, dark, rolling shapes chased over the moonlit waters, towering above everything and swallowing the moon and stars.

Everything became black. Peter lit a torch, but a quickening gust of wind blew it out.

“Should we put the sail back up, James?” one of the envoys asked.

James shook his head. “By the time it is up, the wind may be too strong. It might rip the sail. We will just have to ride out the storm.”

Peter’s hands were trembling. He knew the Sea. He looked across the other envoys, most of whom were tense, to his brother Andrew.

Andrew, an accomplished seaman like Peter, looked at the night and smelled the sharp, metallic scent on the wind. “A bad one,” he said to himself. He nodded grimly at Peter.

Suddenly the wind rose and battered the side of the boat.

“Swing it around and point it into the wind!” James yelled, his strong body striding to the fore. The Sea began churning in greater and greater waves with whitecaps topping each other.

Then the rain came down in icy sheets, drenching all of them. One of the men, small Nathaniel, was blown over the edge of the boat in the rain. Peter and Andrew reached out their arms, and when the boat slid into a hollow between waves, they pulled him back in.

“Can’t we get to land?” Peter yelled. He was shivering all over from fear.

Just as suddenly, the rain stopped. The chill wind beat around everyone’s ears. The clouds parted overhead for just a minute, and pale moonlight streamed down to the dark, surging Sea.

A ghostly figure, not more than a far stone’s-throw away, was walking the waves. Unaware of them, it trod slowly on the waters as if it were walking upon the hills of the tombs of the dead.

“Lord God save us!” Peter shrieked.

The ghostly white figure turned and began walking toward the boat. Its hair was blowing before its face darkly. Water from the waves sprayed up before it. Its robe billowed out to one side, outlining its slow pace.

Several more of the envoys yelled in fear.

The lips of the ghostly shape moved. “I AM!” it spoke in a loud voice. “Do not be afraid!”

“It’s Jesus!” Judas exclaimed from the mast that he was gripping.

Peter, shaking violently, called out, “Master, if it is you, let me come to you!”

Jesus held out one arm. His hair kept blowing about his shaded features. “Concentrate on me,” he answered, “and come.”

Peter sat astride the rail of the boat and, looking fearfully at Jesus the whole time, stretched one foot to the water and then the other. He stood up and did not sink. Walking as if he were dreaming, he moved toward Jesus. But as he walked, he glanced down quickly and saw the water lapping at the edges of his sandals.

“It isn’t possible!” he cried.

Then he began t sink.

“Save me!” he yelled, and stretched out his arms to Jesus.

Jesus neared him quickly, put his hand out to Peter, and pulled him up. Then holding Peter’s arms, he heled him walk back to the boat. James and Andrew rushed to help Peter climb in.

As soon as Jesus was in the boat, mysteriously it stopped rocking. The envoys looked around them and saw that everywhere the wind had stopped and the waves were falling back into a dead calm. The envoys, all of them, fell back from Jesus. Several of them muttered exclamations of surprise and confusion.

But Jesus did not look at them right away. He bent over Peter, who was miserable, still trembling, and bowing his head in shame.

“My friend with little concentration,” Jesus gently told him, “why did you waver? I cannot do anything for you when you do not keep your awareness in me. If you would have miracles done, you will have to learn to concentrate better. But by that time, you will not need my help. You will be ready to do your own wonders. Water is like earth when our bodies become like the air. That is how I have done this thing.”

James the son of Zebedee, and his brother, suddenly knelt down. Quickly Judas, Andrew, and then all the others followed. “You really are the son of God!” Jesus’ brother, James, whispered. The words of awe and surprise rippled outward in the darkness and calm like spreading rings from the center of a pool.

“I am,” Jesus told him. “All of you now, take your places. Andrew, give us oars. I will row for Peter. It I time we went home.”

Having said that, he took an oar like any fisherman and began rowing with the rest of the envoys. They kept silent, lost in their own thoughts, while they put their whole strength into leaving the middle of the lake.

At dawn when the group reached the shore near Magdala and went ashore at the lakeside house of a friend, everyone slept except Jesus. He found a quiet place to meditate and consider what he had done. He was worn and hungry, but full of energy from concentrating on his own body particles so hard that he had kept himself above the water. He didn’t fully understand why these new methods of concentration worked. All he knew was that he had reached into the horizons and wide plains of the Mother’s deepest secrets, and amazing powers were there.

Soon he, too, returned to the house to sleep. Passover was coming in a few months, and he wanted to be in good health for it. He already had decided to spend it in Jerusalem again, though it was becoming too dangerous for him to venture near the Temple and its Pharisee priests. More and more, they were opposing him. The envoys and his family already had decided to spend this Passover in Galilee, at the villa in Capernaum where everyone would be safe. They thought Jesus was planning on staying with them.

But he had changed his mind. In fact, he planned on going to Jerusalem alone. He knew that was the most practical way. If something did happen to him, the others would still be safe. But he wasn’t planning anything reckless such as he had done two years earlier, when he chased the money changers and animal seller out of the temple. He wanted a nice, quiet Passover. It would be only the third since his ministry here in his homeland began. He hoped there would be many more.

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Most recent revision of text: 1 Oct. 2020.