Great Lion of God (95 page)

In Israel, the Essenes and the Zealots (so many of them now Nazarenes) became a particular object of the frightened hatred of the Jews. Therefore, they refused to listen to their message and all sympathy for them, as patriotic Jews opposed to the Roman, disappeared. In other parts of the world Saul was received with resentment and fury by his fellow Jews, as a potential troublemaker and revolutionary, and so a threat to their lives. In vain he pleaded that “His Kingdom is not of this world,” and that “freedom from bondage” meant freedom of the soul from death and sin. They thought this a mere sophistry, and so did the Romans.

So Saul returned to Jerusalem to reconcile both Jews and Christian Jews, and to save the Church there. On the journey, he was often overcome by despair. He feared for the Christian community in Israel, and deplored the excesses of the Christian Zealots and Essenes. He had written to them while still in Athens: “While we proclaim the Messianic Age—for it has truly arrived—we insist that the Law is still in force, for it is immortal and was given by God, blessed be His Name. Alas, that the Zealots believe that the Messianic Age compels them to throw off all restraint and to engage in riot and incendiarisms and physical attacks and disobedience! For the Lord is the Prince of Peace, and not the Leader of violence and murder and hatred between brothers.”

He had been even more disturbed at receiving information from Jerusalem that the Gentile converts were misinterpreting the Messias, and were using His very Name to incite trouble. As these converts were in the main former slaves, and freedmen, and of many random races, and artisans and malcontents and desirous of the riches “promised” by the Messias, they mischievously mocked the Roman military on the streets of Jerusalem and caused much disturbance and hostility.

The Romans felt themselves, and their Empire, threatened throughout the world, and were aghast at the incredible spread of the Messianic Message in every nation.

Saul found matters in Israel much worse than even his vivid imagination had imagined. Simon Peter, the bishop of the Christian community, had left for Rome, with the desire to bring order and comfort to the Christians and to allay the terrors of his fellow Jews. Saul learned of all this in Joppa, the seaport, where he remained for a few days.

Joppa, though it stank as did all cities, was still swept by the winds of the sea, freshening and stimulating. The streets were like stairs, one above the other, and walled and paved with blocks of marble and sandstone, and wound precipitately, and were so narrow that overhanging balconies almost touched. The windows which looked out upon the streets were grilled and slitlike, and there were meager little shops set in the walls below. Huge flocks of gulls lifted like metallic gold shavings flung against the hyacinth skies, and glittered. And everywhere, where there was a spot of bare ground, rose the green clouds of tamarisk and sycamore trees, and the knifelike emerald blades of palms, and the counters of the little shops were heaped with citrons, green and yellow, and cakes and meats and fabrics and spices. Over all was the chuckling and wash of the sea and the strong sea-born winds, and the cries of children and the complaints of animals.

Saul found the house of Simon the Tanner and remained there for a space, while they discussed the precarious situation of the Jerusalem Community, beset within and without. Simon was a crooked little man with a satyrish grin and small dancing eyes and clever hands, and he made elaborate purses and pouches as well as sandals and boots, and exquisite ornaments of leather embossed with gold and silver. He was not a man to take life too seriously, as he explained to Saul. What came of a somber countenance and fears and premonitions and terrors? A bad digestion, and one knew that a bad digestion could cast gloom on the soul, and in that gloom the soul was cut off from the life-giving sun of God, blessed be His Name. To fear was to doubt God, for were not all things in His Hand? Saul looked at that small and malformed face and wondered if Simon were secretly jesting at him.

“I have loved greatly, and I have lost greatly,” said Simon, in his shrill womanish voice. “But I endured, and I survived. What avail is it to complain? The Jerusalem Community will survive, if God wills it, and it will not survive, if He wills it.”

“God’s ‘failures’ are really man’s failures,” said Saul, with bitterness. “It is easy to throw all onto the Shoulders of God and do nothing. But we are called to labor, even if the result is His own. What else can we do?”

Simon went to the door of his odorous little shop and looked at the sky and the gulls and then over the shelves of the street to the brilliant blue sea. Waves were coming in tall and rapid, and as they crashed on the beach they were a pure flash of white fire, hurtful to the eyes. Simon blinked.

“What else can we do?” repeated Simon. “We can do only our best, and if that fails, it is not our failure, for it was ordained.”

After a moment he said, “I have lost many I loved to the Romans. But I know that it is appointed for men to die once, as you have said, yourself, Saul of Tarshish. What matter when a man dies? Is life so beautiful, and so desirable, that we must strain all measures of juices from it, even from the seeds and the rinds and the gall, as women strain the juices of citrons or pomegranates? Let us not yearn for the pulp and the bitterness of the refuse, greedily like goats, unwilling to put down the cup. The sweet first juice is enough.”

This seemed to Saul to echo the very words of his old teacher, Aristo, for they had a cynical overtone and a faint hint of laughter. But looking at Simon’s gnarled face, and the dark deep sorrow in his eyes, Saul knew that he spoke out of wisdom and not in jest. Still, it was not consoling, and Saul soon took his leave. He journeyed to Jerusalem in a small car rented from an inn in Joppa, and on the way to the beloved city he brooded and thought.

His sister’s house, where Sephorah’s husband and her husband’s father had been born, and all her own children, was like a rescue to Saul, like a loving refuge. Sephorah’s once bright hair was almost as white as his own, and her grandchildren stood about her like saplings around an old parent tree. She embraced Saul with tears and laughter, and he found the kisses of the little ones pure and endearing, and many of the scars he carried on his soul became smooth and halted their aching.

“We are no longer young,” he said to Sephorah, as they wandered in the calm and lovely gardens he remembered and paused by the very bench on which he had sat and wept dolorously when a youth, to be found there and comforted by his father, so long dead. Here he had crouched in anguish in the spring, and it was spring again, the Pentecostal Season. Nothing had changed except himself and the human world. Nature and nature’s law went their way indifferently, as heedless of man as the clouds, themselves, and as remote.

“We are not old, unless we desire to be,” said Sephorah, and her wrinkled face was sweet. “I feel in my heart that I am still a girl, joyful and expectant, eager for each newly minted day, and love is still ruler of my heart.” She touched his hand gently, remembering how many he had lost, and how weary and dusty was his way, and how misunderstood, and how full of danger and wretchedness. But still he was Saul, her brother, and his eye still held passion and steadfastness, and his spirit shone forth, and so flesh was nothing.

He told her of the letters he had received from his cousin, Titus Milo Platonius, the Praetorian general in Rome, for no longer did he believe that all women were superficial and light and trivial and unable to understand important matters. He saw a maternal wisdom in Sephorah’s golden eyes, which were immortally young and gay, and the intrepid valor of her soul, and he thought to himself that she resembled their dead father whom he had so misjudged.

“Milo,” he said, “is most unhappy in Rome under the domination of that vile Commander of the Praetorian Guard, Tigellinus, who is his superior officer, and who, at the instigation of the wife of Caesar, Poppea, murdered the old Commander, Bursus. Ah, there is a wicked woman, truly the harlot of Babylon, for did she not incite Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus to murder his mother Agrippina, out of jealousy and fear of the mother’s influence? Tigellinus hates Milo, and Milo does not fear death, but his soldiers love him and so Tigellinus refrains from still another murder—though it may not be for long. Alas, that men like our cousin are becoming more rare each day, and rarer still are men like his father, Aulus. Milo is a reproach to the Roman court, and to Nero, for he is a man of virtue, and a Christian, though others do not know this. Can we not induce our cousin to return to Israel, where he was born, and on the night the Messias was born? He is old, too, but indomitable. If he remains in Rome he will surely die.”

“I have written him so, also,” replied Sephorah, “but he answers that his duty is in the city of his fathers, for is he not a Roman as well as a Jew?” She sighed, and smiled. “How he danced at my wedding! And how he drank!” She thought of the days of her girlhood and it seemed to her that it was the dream of another and not herself, and she had heard of it only by rumor. “Why do you not visit him, Saul, and implore him to return to us for at least a space?”

“I? Visit Rome?” Saul was incredulous. “That seat of vice and infamy and murder, of luxury and terror and unspeakable lewdness, of crime and degeneracy? God forbid!”

“But Simon Peter is there,” said Sephorah. “Did you not know? He left but a month ago, for the Christian community in Rome is in disarray. The Roman populace has taken a dislike to the Christians of whom they tell vile lies and of whom they make the wickedest accusations. Jew and Christian—they are equally hated in Rome and are the jest of the people, who complain that Claudius Caesar had once expelled the Jews but Nero permitted them to return. I hear he is a most vicious and decadent man, for all his youth, and one wonders why he allowed the Jews to resume their home in Rome and regain a measure of their property.”

“Perhaps,” said Saul with gloom, “he wishes to make of them a scapegoat as have other rulers in other nations.” His words, even to himself, seemed incredible, and then a cold wind touched him between the shoulder blades and he shivered. He said, “I knew Peter had gone to Rome. We never loved each other, for each of us believed that our way was the only way,” and Saul smiled. “But, in His Name we were reconciled, in spite of Mark who never loved me, either.”

Sephorah took his browned and calloused hand in hers and said, “My brother, you are as easily hated as loved, for never do you falter and your opinions are inflexible, and your judgment, alas, is usually correct.”

Now Sephorah, sighing again, spoke of Jerusalem and of the people, whose despair increased hourly. The new procurator, Felix, hated the Jews even more than had Pontius Pilate, and conspired with the High Priest and his minions to oppress and steal from the people and to break their spirit. What they had endured under Pilate was nothing to what they endured now, for their own priests had turned against them, and plotted against them and reduced them to fearful anguish. They were robbed of their last substance in taxes, to be sent to Rome, and to support the Temple which the priests profaned by their very presence. The priests imposed enormous tithes even on the destitute, and woe to that man and his family if the money was not forthcoming on demand. Now assassins, nameless, roamed through the purlieus of the Temple, and left blood and dead bodies behind them, and no one knew what vengeance they were executing, whether on the worshipers or on their oppressors. It was said that King Agrippa was responsible, that he wished to reduce his people to the status of slaves, in order to please the Romans. Still others said that the assassins were Zealots or Essenes, and that they were revenging the insult to the Temple. And still others said they were Christians, or Nazarenes, as they were still called in Jerusalem, young men intent on overthrowing the government of Felix and of Rome, and of King Agrippa.

“I only know we all live in terror,” said Sephorah. “The people pray to God in one voice, for deliverance from their tyrants, Jew and Nazarene together, and the longing for God in the hearts of our poor people is an agony. They see the priesthood living in luxury on the money stolen and wrested from them and see those closest to the High Priesthood reveling with the Romans in the most indecent of orgies and celebrations, and in blood spectacles in the circuses and in licentious plays at the theater.” When the people periodically could endure no more there were mysterious murders of both Jewish priests and Romans, and then there were accusations that the excessive Zealots had accomplished these crimes, and the Zealots were hunted out and crucified and the people subsided in renewed terror and were quiet for a time. “Never was our people and our nation in so desperate a plight,” said Sephorah.

Saul gazed at the tender blue sky and then at the pink almond blossoms and the flowering palms and pomegranates and he thought how beautiful was the world, and how immeasurably evil was man, who created murder and hatred and ruin and ugliness out of his own heart, and delighted in the pain of the innocent and in their oppression, and made victims of his brothers. For him had the Messias come and had given up His blameless life!

“It is well, perhaps, that I have returned,” said Saul. “I was commanded so, in a vision, but I am only one man and neither the Jews nor the Christians will hearken to me, here in my own nation and among my own people. I do not know why I am here. It is in the Hands of God, for I do not know where I must start and what I must say!”

He contemplated the modern world of blood and plunder, of monstrous Caesars and faithless priests, of debaucheries and wars, of hatred among the peoples, of despair and tears and terror, of mindless rage and cruelty, of exploitation and slavery, of imprecations on the weak and the glorification of the strong. Surely the world he had known as a youth had not been so wicked! Surely it had not been so depraved and heartless! It was as if the Messias had never been born, and that the legions of hell now ruled the earth.

Surely, he said to himself, when this age passes there will be peace and kindness among men. The present would pass like a direful dream, and future ages would bask in the sun of the Messias. For that, he worked and hoped and prayed. “And there shall be war no more.” Nor would there be enmity and malice and lust and fury and hatred. All would pass, and men would rejoice in the new and celestial dispensation.