The Madonnas and the Political Prisoner, Chapter 18/1

Chapter 18 AD 26

It’s seemed a long winter. Not because of adverse weather or family problems, but so much has been packed into the last few months. After our stop in Nain, my sister Salome and my cousin, Susannah, both now free of family responsibilities, decided to come with us. Our travelling party therefore consists of nine women – the five relatives of the male disciples, Mary, Salome, Susannah and me – and the dozen male disciples, my James and Joshua himself. Our progress through Samaria has been so slow as every village on our route has sought to detain us to listen to Joshua and bring their sick for him to heal. We’ve had to divert to other villages off our track too, as Joshua received pleas for him to go to them. At every stop, more people have joined us, mainly men, but some women too. We now resemble an army on the march – well, a very ragged and undisciplined army, it’s true, for this army ambles and stops and meanders.

We really started this growth after an incident in a little village on the highway to Jerusalem after we’d rejoined it from our sojourn in Nain. I suppose we were only just into Samaritan territory and we’d camped and some of the disciples had gone to buy food while the rest were putting up the tents. Joshua had been exhausted by his labours in Nain and had asked for us to stay in this camp for a few days as he wished to rest and restore his powers by reflection and quiet prayer. We hadn’t noticed that he’d gone at first, then someone said that he’d left just before noon to find a deserted place to pray. The others of us were resting from the heat of the midday sun, and looking forward to the opportunity to stay a while to find water and wash the dust from our clothes and bodies.

We discovered later that Joshua had found a lone Samaritan woman drawing water from the village well. He’d apparently asked for a drink and got into conversation with her – typical of him. She’d been mesmerised by what he’d said to her and had rushed back into the village to tell her family and friends. Before he’d finished his prayers he found half the village gathered wanting to see this man that had so astounded the woman. When he’d talked to them and had healed a couple of cripples who’d limped out to see him, the village went crazy and virtually imprisoned all of us until Joshua had spent days telling them about the kingdom of God and healing all those in the village who had any kind of ailment. When the villagers found the rest of us camping nearby, they invited us into their homes and would not hear of us coping on our own or buying food, but were lavish in their hospitality. Poor old James – the welcome and generosity of these folk challenged every prejudice he had and he was speechless. I’ve never known my son to be so reticent!

After that, the fame of Joshua preceded our every step. We were greeted in nearly every village with the same rapturous welcome and when eventually we were allowed to move on, we found nearly half the population of the village would trail after us. Most of course only followed us for a day or two, but others have followed us all the way until we must be a throng of several hundred.

I’m beginning to get a bit nervous, although not half as much as James, who sees this crowd as a threat to order in the capital city – even if we’re allowed to get that far. I know we’re no threat in fact, but James says that the Romans will see us as such and disperse us brutally before we can do anything that might really upset them. I think Joshua is a bit concerned too, for he spends a lot of his addresses to the crowds stressing his peaceful mission, praising peacemakers and abhorring violence as I think he suspects that many in the crowd have been inspired by the Messianic rumour and, whatever, he says, think they are about to throw the Romans out.

I stay to hear most of his talks to the crowd although occasionally I join the other women buying sustenance for our journey – although, as I said earlier, we are usually given hospitality by the villages we pass through. I’d expected Joshua to be giving the same talk everywhere we went, but as so many people followed us Joshua kept unearthing new things to talk about and thus they stayed interested and continued to follow us. I thought that such a crowd advancing on each village would have provoked fear, but word of Joshua’s presence seemed to run ahead of us and we were welcomed by the local population of every town and village.

Today he talked about the hypocrisy of the authorities and contrasted the attitude of the priests and Pharisees he’d met with the sincere confessions and desire to change of some of the sinners and criminals he’d come across. This won’t go down well with the authorities although the crowd today lapped it up and we have a couple of hundred people or more camped in a field on the edge of the village ready to follow us tomorrow. Goodness knows how they’re feeding themselves – the village shops have been stripped bare of everything edible.

And so we progressed slowly. We spent several days in the Samaritan cities of Shechem and Sychar and seemed to lose some of our followers there, although Joshua continued to be a sensation everywhere he went. When we finally crossed the border from Samaria into Judea, we diverted from the main route to Jerusalem by taking the Jericho road through Ephraim. By now many of our Samaritan followers had returned home but a nucleus remained despite the fact that we were – to them – in hostile Jewish territory and we now found villagers from Judea joining us in considerable numbers.

At one village we crammed into the local synagogue and saw Joshua heal a man who had a crippled arm that prevented him from working. That provoked immediate uproar from the local synagogue authorities and they accused him of defiling the Sabbath by carrying out unlawful activity on that day of enforced rest. I thought our Nazareth synagogue experience was to be re-enacted all over again, but most of the congregation cheered when Joshua challenged them about the priority of immediate compassion over strict observance of the law.

We arrived in Ephraim itself and we stayed for several days. The town is a lot bigger than our Galilean villages; it must be about the size of Magdala. It has several synagogues and Joshua was invited to talk in each, with large crowds crushed in each one to its limited capacity. Today we are invited to the main one in the centre of the town, and I notice with some trepidation that there are a large number of priests and rabbis present, obviously from all the local synagogues and not just this one. They’ve obviously ganged up together and I sense there might be trouble. They’ve sought safety in numbers to stand up against the pressure of the crowd and I wait with bated breath to see what will happen.

Yesterday he humiliated some of them when a woman was hauled before him who’d been caught in an adulterous situation and he’d been challenged as to whether the legal penalty of death by stoning should be carried out. They knew of his compassion and soft spot for sinners and were clearly trying to show him up as being too lenient and undermining their traditional laws. He then hit them where it hurts by telling any of them who were confident that they’d never sinned in their life could throw the first stone. That stymied them and one by one, embarrassed at his response, the threatening crowd had melted away. They were now gathering to get their own back.

I am not surprised therefore, when Joshua is interrupted before he’s got into his stride. They start asking questions about marriage and divorce, clearly trying to get him to say some things which are at odds with the law so they can accuse him of encouraging law-breaking. This Joshua counters by emphasising the sacred nature of marriage, then saying that people cannot live up to that standard so that the Mosiac law allowed divorce. However, he only cites unfaithfulness in marriage as a valid reason and many other excuses that some men use for reasons for divorce merely make them adulterers in practice.

The challenge peters out and Joshua turns once more to his theme of hypocrisy, contrasting the outward words and actions of many with the evil thoughts simmering in and polluting their minds. He is making the religious elite squirm once more, for it is clear he is getting at them. He knows why they’re asking these questions, trying to trap him and not because they really want his advice. The crowd knows this too, and many are grinning at the authorities’ discomfort.

Afterwards, when the crowd has eventually dispersed, we manage to snatch an hour in the house of a man and wife who have provided Joshua and a couple of his disciples with lodging. We are all there – the disciples and our women plus our host and his wife. The subject of marriage is quite a tricky one for several here. Some of the disciples, I know, have been criticised for leaving their families and following Joshua. Some women have had to choose between staying with their husbands and leaving their children with relatives or staying with their children and not seeing their husbands for months at a time. One of them, Thomas I think, shouts above the general murmur of conversation.

“Yeshua, you’ve set a high standard for marriage in what you said today. Many people find it difficult to live by that standard. In that case, isn’t it better that we shouldn’t marry at all? If it’s that hard, perhaps we shouldn’t risk it.”

The room falls silent. With the wives of five of the disciples present, this could be a little sensitive. Joshua is clearly thinking carefully before replying.

“This teaching can’t apply to everyone – not if they don’t accept God’s laws and don’t even try to live by doing God’s will. There is a higher standard for those that wish to follow me and be part of the kingdom of God. And marriage is not for everyone. There are those who deliberately decide not to marry because they are called to put their work on behalf of the kingdom first and marriage would then create conflicts of priority. My cousin John did not marry for he spent years in the Judean desert preaching and baptising.

John here,” - he points to his disciple sitting next to him – “John has not married. I don’t know if he will, but his priority at the moment is to follow me and those of you who are already married know how hard are the choices you have to make between coming with me and being with your families. And as you know, I have not married.”

He glances at Mary at this moment and all of us turn to look at her.

“For the same reason. It’s not that I don’t want to, but it’s a sacrifice I have to make if I’m to spend my life carrying out the plan that my Father God has for me, taking risks that would be too selfish for a married man to make. There will be many others who will not marry for that very legitimate reason. But there are others too who will prefer not to marry, because they’re just made that way or they are influenced that way by others.”

“What do you mean?” It’s my son, James, who asks this question, bristling.

“Well, some men are physically not capable, they may be infertile or impotent. They may be emasculated by their families for some specific reason or traditional role. Others may have no inclination for women because of their make-up or because of earlier experiences that may have damaged or changed them. For such men to marry would cause not only distress to themselves but disappointment and frustration to their wives.”

“What are you saying? Are you condoning departure from the sacred union of men and women?”

Joshua just smiled at James. Then he said, “I told you what is the ideal state for those who wish to follow me. But I’m realistic. Compassion is the greatest priority. There are many virtues and sometimes they conflict. When that happens the greatest rule I’d ask you to follow is to love your fellow human being. Love others as much as you value yourself. Treat others as you would want to be treated. Look at my words and interpret them if you will in the light of that.”

We are all silent then. No-one wants to get drawn into the implications of this, least of all my son, James. But I can see my son Joshua is going to cause all sorts of problems with the traditional religious authorities if he continues to be as controversial as this in public. But Joshua tends to leave people to draw their own conclusions from his words. He rarely spells out exactly what he is thinking. He doesn’t like dogma like some of the Pharisees. Dogma too often clashes with compassion.

We ran into more opposition as we got further along the road from Ephraim to Jericho. News of our arrival went before us to both those who would welcome us and those who came to scoff or argue. There were one or two incidents where our motley group of followers were ready to commit violence against those who laughed or derided Joshua, but my son was quick to calm the crowd indicating that all had a perfect right to express their views without being threatened with fists or staves. Such rebukes would be followed by the departure of a few of the hotheads, much to my relief really, because I could see some of them were eager for the opportunity to stir up rebellion which I, unprompted by James, could well see the danger of.

Joshua was very patient with some of the Pharisees and teachers from the synagogues who tried to trap him into saying things that might antagonise the crowd at every opportunity. He would always give an answer and usually it was one which disarmed his critics and sometimes caused the crowd some merriment if the pompous official or rabbi got an answer which deflated him. This only upset the authorities who would retreat for a time and then turn up at the next village redoubling their efforts to trip him up. They never learned and would only retreat once more humiliated and angrier than ever.