Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

“Tell me what happened!” I said. I kept my voice low. I pleaded. “Tell me everything.”

“Let’s talk about the battles, and the rebellion, and these Kings of the House of Herod. It’s easier,” he said. He was still looking off.

Then he looked down at me.

“I ca

“Not yet,” I said. “But soon!”

He smiled. “Yes, a man!” he said. “I see that. How could I not know you were a man? Listen to me, someday before I die, I’ll tell you all I know. I promise you…” He went into his thoughts again.

“What is it?”

His face was full of shadows.

“I will tell you this,” he said. “Keep it in your heart. The day will come—.” He shook his head. He looked away.

“Speak, go on, I’m listening to you.”

When he turned back to me, he had a sharp smile again.

“Now to Caesar Augustus,” he said. “What does it matter who is collecting the taxes or catching the thieves? What does it matter who stands at the city gates? You saw the Temple. How can the Temple be rebuilt and purified if the Romans don’t bring order to Jerusalem? Herod Archelaus gives the order for slaughter in the very Temple. The thieves and the rebels stand on the cloisters and shoot their arrows in the very Temple. I’d have a Roman peace, yes, a peace such as we had in Alexandria. I’ll tell you something about the Romans. Their cup is full, and it’s good to be ruled by one whose cup is full.”

I didn’t answer him but I heard every word and remembered every word afterward.

“What did they do to Simon, the rebel whom they caught?”

“He was beheaded,” said Cleopas. “He was let off easy, if you ask me. But then I didn’t care that he burnt the two palaces of Herod. It’s not that …it’s all the rest of it, the lawlessness, the ruin.”

He looked at me.

“Oh, you’re too little to understand,” he said.

“How many times have you said that to me?” I asked.

He laughed.

“But I do understand,” I said. “We don’t have a Jewish King who can rule over all of us, not a Jewish King whom men love.”

He nodded. He looked around, at the sky, at the passing clouds.

“Nothing for us really changes,” he said.

“I’ve heard this before.”

“You’ll hear it again. Tomorrow, you’ll come with me to Sepphoris and help with the painting of the walls we’re finishing. It’s easy work. I’ve drawn the lines. I’ll mix the color. You just fill in. You’ll be working just as you did in Alexandria. That’s what we want. Isn’t it? That and to love the Lord with our whole hearts and minds, and to know his Law.”

We walked back home together.

I didn’t tell him what was in my heart. I couldn’t. I wanted to tell him about the strange dream I’d had but I couldn’t. And if I couldn’t tell my uncle Cleopas, then I couldn’t tell anyone what I’d dreamed. I’d never be able to ask the Old Rabbi about the man with wings, or the visions I saw, that I’d seen the colo

And who would understand the night near the Jordan, the beings around me in the dark?

We were almost down the hill. There was a woman singing in her garden, and little ones playing.

I stopped.

“Was is it?” he asked. “Come,” he gestured with his hand.

I didn’t obey him.

“Uncle,” I said. “What was it, up there, that you were going to tell me? Tell me now.”

He looked at me and I looked at him.

In a small voice I said,

“I want to know.”

He was quiet, and a change came over him, a softening, and then he spoke in a low voice as he answered me.

“You keep what I say in your heart,” he said. “The day will come when you will have to give us the answers.”

We looked at each other, and I was the one to look away. I must give the answers!

There came over me the remembrance of the Jordan River in the sunset, the fire in the water that was a beautiful fire, and the feeling of those others, those countless others all around me.

And there came in a flash to me a feeling of understanding everything, everything!

It was gone as soon as it had come. And I knew that I had let it go, this feeling. Yes, I had let it go.

My uncle was still looking at me.

He bent down and brushed my hair back from my forehead. He kissed me there.

“You smiling at me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “You spoke the truth,” I said.

“What truth?”

“I’m too little to understand,” I said.

He laughed. “You don’t fool me,” he said and he stood up and we walked down the hill together.

Chapter 21

The summer had been so good.

The second crop of figs was pulling down our old tree in the courtyard, and the olive pickers beating the branches in the orchards, and I felt a happiness I’d never known, and I knew that I felt it.

It was the begi

As the months passed, we finished all the repairs on our house so that it was near to perfect for all of our families—that of my uncles, Simon and Alphaeus and Cleopas, and for Joseph and my mother, and for me.

The Greek slave, Riba, who had come with Bruria gave birth to a child.

There was much whispering and fussing about this matter, even among the children, with Little Salome whispering to me, “She didn’t hide in that tu

But the night of the baby’s birth, I heard it crying, and I heard Riba singing to it in Greek, and then Bruria was singing to it, and my aunts were laughing and singing together, with the lamps lighted, and it was a happy night.

Joseph woke up and took the baby into his arms.

“That’s no Arab child,” said my aunt Salome, “that’s a Jewish boy and you know it.”

“Who said it was an Arab child!” cried Riba. “I told you—.”

“Very well, very well,” Joseph said quietly, as always, “we’ll call him Ishmael. Does that make everyone happy?”

I liked the baby at once.

He had a good little chin and large black eyes. He didn’t cry all the time like my aunt Salome’s new baby, who fussed if you made a strange noise, and Little Salome loved to carry him around while his mother worked. And so there was Little Ishmael. Little John of Aunt Salome and Alphaeus was one of fifteen Johns in the village, along with seventeen Simons, and thirteen by the name of Judas, and more Marys than I had fingers on both hands—and these just in our kindred on this side of the hill.

But I go ahead of my story. These babies didn’t come till winter.

Summer burned hot without the sea breeze of the coast, and bathing in the spring was great fun every night when we returned from Sepphoris, and the boys got into water fights with each other, while around the bend in the creek you could hear the girls laughing and talking amongst themselves. Upstream at the cistern cut in the rock where the women filled their jars there was much talking and laughing too, and my mother even sometimes came in the evening just to see the other women and walk with them.

As the summer wore on, there were weddings in the village, both of them long all-night celebrations at which it seemed everybody in Nazareth was drinking and dancing, the men dancing with the men wildly, and the women dancing with the women, and even the maidens, though they were fearful and stayed together always next to the canopy under which the bride sat, the bride covered in the most fine veils and shining gold bracelets.

Many in the village played the flutes; and several men the lyres and the women beat the tambourines over their heads, and old men hit the cymbals to make a steady time for the dancing. Even Old Justus was brought out and propped on pillows against the wall, and nodding, and smiling at the wedding, though the spit dripped down his chin and Old Sarah had to wipe it away.