Great Lion of God (76 page)

Therefore, there was left to Saul of the house of Shebua ben Abraham only his sister, Sephorah, whose husband had sickened and died but a few weeks ago. “We are a house of mourning,” the lovely Sephorah said, weeping, “but those we loved died in the knowledge of the Messias, and they now rest in His bosom.” Her children were gentle young things of no particular intellect, except for Amos ben Ezekiel, who had been raised from the dead by the Messias, and it was to this young man, now nineteen years of age but still unmarried that Saul turned in his distress.

Amos was of a kind if adamantine spirit, quiet in speech, determined in action, just, reverent, devoted and patrician. Once decided upon a way, he could not be moved from it. He listened to Saul’s impassioned diatribes against his fellow Jews, both Nazarene and unbeliever, with calm detachment. With something of his grandfather, David’s, objective amusement—which he did not display, however—he understood exactly why Saul had been rejected, but no more than Saul did he know what the older man must do. “God will enlighten you concerning His Will,” said Amos, trying to gentle that most ungentle man. To which Saul replied, “I have been seeking His will since I was born, and He has still not informed me! Am I to waste my life among fools or hostile men, who will not listen?”

“He will tell you,” said Amos. Saul was about to burst out in imprecations when he saw Amos’ golden eyes, shining like coins, and radiant, and it came to him in wonderment that Amos’ words had suddenly struck on his hot heart like a cool cataract of healing water, and he said, “You are only a youth, with hardly a beard, and I am your uncle, and I know the world and have had a Revelation. Yet, something mysterious tells me that you have spoken words of wisdom, and I have sinned in my impatience.”

Amos sighed. His uncle had always been excessive in emotion, though paradoxically he was a man embedded in reality. Was his fault that of an inability to endure fools gladly, or at least suffer their existence? All men were not called to arduous service. Why did Saw believe they were? He, Amos, had his own plans, which he did not divulge to Saul.

Saul’s encounters with Simon Peter had not been the happiest of events. Simon Peter, a brawny fisherman, was not of Saul’s subtle and colorful mind. He was as stubborn as Saul and frequently as obdurate, and often their voices had risen to acrimonious heights. Peter had explained his own vision that in the sight of the Lord there were no “common” men, nor unclean, and that he must not reject those among the Gentiles who came to him for learning and teaching and baptism. Saul had said with scorn, “But how obvious that is! Once I, too, despised the Gentile and avoided him, as an infidel and heathen, but I know—not through a vision such as you have had—but with intelligence, that God is the Father of all men. I did not need a vision!”

This offended Peter. Had Saul seen the Messias in the flesh? Had he—walked with Him in the dust? Had he witnessed His crucifixion? Had the Messias imparted to him wondrous things over many days? (John had said, and truly, that if all that the Messias had said and done it would fill “many books.”) Saul claimed to have seen the Messias on the desert, and Peter did not doubt this for an instant. But first he had persecuted the followers of the Messias as no Roman would persecute them. Who had slept with the Messias and broken bread with him, but Simon Peter? Had not he, Peter, washed the feet of the Messias? Had not he walked with Him for forty days after He had risen from the tomb? Yet this Saul of Tarshish, this Pharisee, this man of Greek and Roman knowledge and worldly ways, this man of haughty intellect, appeared to believe that he had more understanding of the Messias than those who had dwelt with Him! It was very vexatious.

Through Peter Saul had also met the umbrageous brothers, John and James ben Zebedee. They, like Peter, were industrious men acquainted with labor and toil, and somewhat younger, though all were young. However, they were more of Saul’s own spirit, fiery, sometimes inclined to excesses of speech and gesture, unyielding and full or temper. Peter considered Saul’s anger against the docility of many of the Nazarenes sinful, and urged him to look upon those who labored as diligently as ever, or more, and did not sit in the Temple purlieus in slothful attitudes with upturned and useless palms, not overly clean. He also told Saul that a man could not entirely blame the Jews for not accepting his teachings, because they feared and distrusted him.

“Are we not all imperfect men?” Peter asked him.

“Are we not to put on perfection?” demanded Saul.

Peter sighed. He was a man of quiet humor. “We can but try,” he said, a remark which Saul thought frivolous. John and James listened to this with emotion racing across their darkly active faces, and Saul to his pleasure, saw that they agreed with him and not with Peter. However, they also agreed with Peter that before a Gentile could become a Nazarene he must first become a Jew, be circumcised and learn all the sacred Scriptures. How else could he understand the Messias, who had been prophesied through the ages, and the signs of His coming?

John said, “When we were in Samaria, and the people therein rejected Our Lord and would not hearken to Him, I implored Him to call down fire on the city and destroy it.”

“And what did the Lord reply?” asked Saul.

Peter’s large brown eyes glinted again with humor. “The Lord rebuked John,” he said, in a tone which implied that the rebuke had not been gentle. John flushed and pulled his cloak closer about his shoulders. James lifted his head in a most vigorous movement. It was obvious that they still believed that cities and nations which rejected the Lord deserved hell-fire. For some obscure reason this annoyed Saul. One should feel sorrow for the cities and the nations and seek to enlighten them, but certainly not to devour them in flames. That was hardly a good method of persuasion.

Their fellow Jews did not reject Peter and John and James with deaf contempt, but granted them the courtesy of listening to them, and thus they made many converts to the new sect. Moreover, they rebuked the docile Nazarenes who would not work but simply awaited the imminent arrival of the Messias. “Who knows but what hour He comes?” asked Peter. “Let Him not find us idle, but engaged in honest toil and in prayer.” And many were ashamed and resumed their labor.

This baffled Saul. He was rejected, but the other Apostles were given respectful attention. They even made converts among the Romans and the Greeks. But he had no offerings to give the Lord, no flowers to lay on His altar.

It came to him slowly and disastrously that with the exception of a few now, of his own house, no one spoke to him, all shunned him and averted their eyes, or stood at a distance silently derisive, that even the priests in the Temple had nothing to say to him, no, not even during the High Holy Days. Peter had left Jerusalem, and James and John had gone far away, and no Jew, orthodox or Nazarene, recognized his existence.

Chapter 37

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Saul’s pathetic pleasure, he received an invitation to dine with his old friend, Joseph of Arimathaea, who hinted that he might be happy to meet another guest. Saul, with a new humility consulted his nephew Amos, who advised a long tunic of deep red wool bordered with gold, a gold girdle and ring, and a cloak of dark blue and fine leather boots against the chill of autumn. “How sinful it is to garb one’s person so when there is hunger in the land. The Messias scorned luxury,” said Saul, who nevertheless thought his appearance vastly improved. He still could not grow a beard because his skin, though darkened by the sun, was extremely tender, but the long red curls before his ears were clean and polished and glistening with health and his hair was a shining red mane.

“All the gold of men in the world would not abolish poverty nor feed all the hungry,” said Amos, who was as practical as his great-grandfather, Shebua ben Abraham. “And He smiled upon Mary of Magdala who bought sweet ointment for His feet, costly and fragrant, and He rebuked those of His disciples who told her that it should have been better had she spent the money on the poor. There is a time for all things,” said the handsome young man glancing with amusement at his uncle, who was surveying himself in a long mirror in Amos’ chamber. “There is a time to be poor and a time to be rich, a time to cut a figure and a time to be inconspicuous. This is your time to be a peacock, Saul.”

Saul, even in the expensive raiment, was hardly a peacock, with his sun-darkened countenance and arms and hands. Amos had thought of a single jeweled earring, widely affected among young Jews in these days, or armlets of gold and jewels, or gemmed wristlets, or a slight effusion of perfume, but he thought it injudicious to mention these things. He had struggled enough with his uncle over a few matters.

“Hah,” said Saul.

“You are a rich man,” said Amos. “You have not touched even the interest on your interest, according to my mother.”

“I think of other concerns,” said Saul, with sudden gloom. However, he let Amos persuade him to take one of the family cars and he drove off with a flourish, seated on velvet cushions, with a driver almost as well-clothed as himself. Sephorah had clapped her hands at her brother’s “splendor,” and innocently prayed that this occasion would be the beginning of his return to the house of his family. Saul, holding to the gilded rail, did not know why he felt a sudden hope and ease. After all, he was only dining with a senile old man, and a stranger.

Joseph met him with embraces in the beautiful atrium of his house and then a young man with a pink and merry face, a gleaming black and curling beard and deep black waves of hair on his head, and wearing a cap of the tribe of Levi, emerged from the shadows, and Saul, with delight and amazement cried, “Barnabas!” He fell into the arms of Barnabas and the young men embraced fervently, for this was Barnabas ben Joshua who had saved his life in Damascus by lowering him over the walls of the city in a basket. It was Barnabas who had told him much of the Messias, for he had been one of His disciples, and he had given letters to Saul to introduce him to Simon Peter and the brothers, John and James ben Zebedee.

Saul’s weary face glowed and became young and unlined again as he embraced Barnabas over and over in his joy, and then held him off to exclaim, “Is it really you, you rascal?”

“It is surely I,” said Barnabas. His features were plump and highly colored; he had a mouth like a mischievous boy, and eyes that danced with a black light. Nothing could darken or sadden that cheerful spirit for too long, and Saul had found him a solace during moods of doubt, and a staff to help him over rough boulders of thought, and a companion who loved to eat and drink fine wine and jest to such effect that even Saul had reluctantly found himself bursting into laughter, the old boisterous laughter of his youth.

To Barnabas the Messias was not terrible, as He sometimes was to Saul, but a joyful and tender Comrade, loving a jest also, and enjoying an excellent meal in the houses of rich Pharisees. When Barnabas repeated some parable, he did not do it solemnly in the way of Peter and John and James, but with a twinkle, and at once Saul could see the Messias smiling and His imperial blue eyes shining with mirth. “Often He implied to us that Heaven is full of laughter and gaiety,” Barnabas would say, “and humor both subtle and broad, and that merriment rings from the battlements, for that which is good is happy and blithe, but that which is evil is somber and dark and laughs not at all. I admit some of us did not regard the thought with pleasure, but you know how gloomy many of us Jews are, alas.”

Though Saul had sometimes suspected, as he studied the ancient and holy Scriptures, that God would have His joke occasionally, he had thrust the thought aside as impious. But a laughing God now appealed to him, like a refreshment in a smiling garden, and Barnabas had frequently called his attention to the fact that in some creatures there was immense humor, and fantasy and buoyant invention and appearance, and the stormy dark heart of the young Pharisee had been impressed: Until lately, in Jerusalem, where he had found nothing to inspire his humor, not even the acrid humor of his youth.

Barnabas, too, had encountered the apathetic and sweetly smiling and docile Nazarenes in Damascus, who sat in sloth staring at the sky in hopes of seeing the Messias return immediately in clouds of glory. But he had not despised them as Saul despised them.

He would say to them, “It is true that the Messias told us not to tear our hearts in fear for the morrow, for today has its own miseries and evils and duties, and that is sufficient for the day, for man lives but one day at a time and the future is mysterious and not yet his own. He also taught us that anxiety is impious, for God our Father knows what we need and desire, and if we labor and are industrious and are prideful of our labor and do the best we can with the hands and minds He has given us, and forget Him never, and seek always His Kingdom, then all else will be added to us.”

While this did not convince all those who preferred sloth and indigence and charity, it did shame the more intelligent among them and sent them hurrying to resume their labor and rejoin their families. Saul had succeeded not at all, except in inspiring the hatred of the shameless.

Joseph’s old face was bright with pleasure at the sight of the young friends and he led them into the dining hall, where Barnabas, surveying the rich sauces and fine meats and good wines and the roast fowl and broiled fish, cried, “Ha! This is a feast for angels! Behold those opalescent grapes, with the dew upon them and the delicate frost, and those olives swimming in delicate oil, and those citrons like the sun, and those plums like a girl’s mouth, and that spiced cabbage and beans in a delectable sauce, and that bread whiter than snow, not to mention the cheeses and the sweetmeats and many other things! Joseph, you are a pasha, a veritable Persian pasha!” He laughed with delight, and added, “Ah, if but the Messias were here with us now, as He was before! How He would rejoice in these viands, which even the richest of the Pharisees who invited Him to dine never served!”

A Messias who had enjoyed the delicious foods of the earth, and had savored the best wines with appreciation, was a new Messias to Saul, But he said to himself, “I am ridiculous. Why should He not have loved the bounty of God, for did He not create them? Why should not He, above all, relish their flavors and admire them?”