John's Story (4 page)

John slowly opened his eyes and through the smoke became aware of activity all about him. The soldiers had moved away from the pot. The slaves assigned to keep the fire stoked advanced quickly, shielding themselves with heavy tarpaulins, tossed in more wood, and rushed back to safety. John managed to twist enough to see in his peripheral vision the regal spectators behind him move so their benches could be slid farther from the heat.

The bubbling of the oil had begun in earnest now, and as the air pockets exploded, sizzling oil splashed onto John’s head and the sides of his face. Yet it felt only tepid! Soon the giant pot was fully aboil, the liquid in an angry rage, steam roaring even from the sides of the vessel.

“Move! Move!” a centurion cried, sweeping the curtains back. “The draperies are about to catch fire!”

No one could stand within thirty feet of the inferno now, and John could tell his manacles had softened in the heat. With barely any effort he pulled them apart and could now support himself with hands and feet, but he remained in position lest anyone notice he was free.

Everything was being moved now—benches, platform, backdrop, all of it. The crowd cheered and applauded, leaping for a better view, obviously hoping to see when the clouded head of the heretic finally dropped out of sight.

The oil boiled over now and dripped into the flames, sending them higher. The pot glowed orange, and yet the apostle lived. In fact, he was no more aware of the heat than if he were frolicking in the Gennesaret on a hot summer day with his brother as a child.

John once thrilled to the Pentateuch’s story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego surviving the fiery furnace. They had not even felt the heat, but enduring that would be worth it to wake up in paradise. But this seemed to be taking so long. Was he dreaming, suspended in some lull between earth and heaven?

As the soldiers protected the royal entourage and forced the crowd back, John stood, a pale specter in an impossible scenario. The man of God was not only alive, but he was also unharmed. Musicians fell faint. The emperor’s wife ran screaming, followed by soldiers. The crowd began to riot, many to flee. Others stood apoplectic as Domitian and his advisers cowered just past the reach of the flames and steam.

“Spear him!” the emperor shrieked. “Run him through!”

But dozens of soldiers and centurions merely watched agape, seemingly frozen.

“Kill him!” Domitian shouted now. “Death to him!”

But no one moved.

Suddenly the crowd burst into a new shout. “We would believe!” they ranted. “Praise to the Most High God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! Praise to the God who spares His own! Blessed is the God who saves His servant from the fire!”

John carefully placed his hands on the lip of the pot and hoisted himself over the side, sliding to the ground next to the source of heat that had driven everyone else away. He lifted his hands in thanks to God.

“We would believe!” the crowd yelled.

“Kill him!” Domitian snarled.

As the people pressed against the soldiers, John walked slowly toward the emperor, his simple tunic strangely already dry, bleached pure white by the oil.

“I want him beheaded,” Domitian said, his voice quavery.

“His sentence has been carried out, Augustus,” Nerva said quietly.

“What are you saying, man? I want him dead!”

“He was boiled in oil. That was his sentence. The law does not allow you to attempt to put him to death twice.”

“Nonsense! He survived! He must be executed.”

“What will kill him, if not the oil?”

“He cannot die!” the crowd shouted. “Blessed is the immortal, the servant of the Most High God!”

“To Patmos with him then,” the emperor said. “He is banished to toil in the mines for the rest of his days.”

Nerva leaned close to Domitian, but John heard him. “I am not certain you are free to sentence him twice for the same offense, regardless whether the second sentence is death or not.”

“I have spoken! Patmos!”

John turned toward the crowd. “Would you believe?” he said.

Many fell to their knees. “We would! Tell us of the one true God.”

“I will tell you of Him and His Son,” John said.

“No, you shall not!” Domitian raged. “Seize him!”

Soldiers warily approached as John urged the assembled, “Seek out the people of The Way. They will tell you the truth. They will lead you to the living God.”

This time John was not bound, not chained, not manacled. And while he was bound for a sentence that might destroy a man even half his age, his very spirit felt as free as if he could fly. God had shown Himself! Surely no one would mistake this miracle for some human accomplishment.

John was led to a cart that would transport him all the way to the harbor at Three Taverns. Throughout the long journey he prayed aloud and sang, praising God and confounding his guards. Finally he was led aboard a ship that several days later would deliver him to the island of Patmos, where he had been assigned hard labor in the marble mines.

Punishing as this would be on his old bones, worse to John was the torment of spending the rest of his days just fifty miles southwest of beloved Ephesus. On clear days he would be able to see it across the Aegean Sea, the beautiful port city that had been his home and his base for so long.

Over the next several days at sea, he was eager for even one glimpse of the harbor that rivaled Egypt’s Alexandria and Syria’s Antioch. It was known by merchants as the most strategic harbor on the route from Rome to the East, but to John it represented his home church and the dear brothers and sisters he had served as bishop and to whom he had always returned after long missionary journeys.

Persecuted, fearful, they met throughout the city in homes, primarily in one left by the dear departed martyrs Aquila and Priscilla. There, in an upper corner of the large three-winged dwelling, John had resided for years between journeys. It was a humble abode, plain, with a latticed window that looked out to the sea, a sleeping mat, a chair, and a wood table he had used both for simple meals and for crafting his messages. The very thought of a piece of fruit, a slice of cheese, and a cup of wine delivered by one of the believers made him smile. Others had praised John’s austerity, but that chamber and those delights now seemed to him extravagant.

It was from those humble quarters that John had traveled the world, helping to found and then to visit and encourage churches throughout Asia Minor. He had discovered a gift for preaching and teaching, but also for making disciples of young men, much as the Master Himself had done with John.

John had left the work at Ephesus with the young, impetuous Polycarp, who would even now be seeking any information he could share with the others about John’s fate. Had he heard of the miracle, or would all be assuming John dead? If they learned of his sentencing to Patmos, they might abandon all hope.

And yet Polycarp reminded John of himself as a young man, when he and his brother had earned the nickname the Sons of Thunder. Might God spare him yet again to one day rejoin the beloved in Ephesus? Or had his secret work with Polycarp and Ignatius—which had quickly become public and led to his arrest—rendered him forever banished from those he cherished? If that was true, he wondered why God had spared him from the oil. What had been the purpose behind the enemy on his own doorstep who had exposed him to Roman authorities not so long before?

Ephesus,
A. D
. 94

As John walked through the bustling port city, now boasting nearly a quarter million residents, his most trusted young disciple, a redhead in his early twenties, had been trying to talk the old man into taking a break from leadership of the Ephesian church.

John had already acceded to Polycarp’s insistence that he invite a surprise guest to take over the teaching and preaching for two weeks. That was not easy for the bishop. “It shows how much I trust you, young man. And I cannot persuade you to tell me who it is?”

“No. I wish to see the look on your face when he arrives. Of course, you have so many friends from afar and have had such influence that it could be any of hundreds, and you would be glad.”

“I am trying to guess.”

“I will not say.”

“Very well.”

“You will be pleased by my choice, teacher. You must get some rest. And you must visit the new Roman Varius Baths too.”

“A bathhouse? Now that I would rather not do. How easily that could become a place of debauchery, especially considering its source.”

“The Lord gave me the liberty to try it, sir, and I found it most enjoyable, and appropriate. Men and women bathe separately, of course, and patrons may choose not to disrobe completely. It is so refreshing and relaxing, I know it would do wonders for you.”

“But, dear one, I have heard the stories out of Rome, how ostentatious men bathe in wine and their wives in milk. Rumors say Nero’s wife’s bath was supplied with the milk of five hundred donkeys. And aren’t these bathhouse buildings akin to temples erected for Roman gods?”

“Master, you yourself taught me not to concern myself with lesser gods. We know the futility of allegiance to anyone but the one true God. Paul tells us we are free from the law and that the world, even other religions, have no sway over us. Every day we have walked past the state agora and the temple deifying Julius Caesar, not to mention the divine personification of the Roman Empire itself.”

John shook his head. “This is hardly persuading me. It’s bad enough I have to endure the Temple of Isis even before I reach Domitian Square. And when we are at the baths, how far would we be from that brothel with the ridiculous name?”

“The House of Love?” Polycarp said. “Look past it to the great theater where Paul was accosted. We can pray there and thank God for all the rich teaching that beloved man bestowed upon us and the entire church.”

John stopped. “Perhaps. But please don’t refer to the brothel as a house of anything but decadence. Sometimes I wonder what we are even doing in this city.”

“Respected teacher, I mean no disrespect, but Ephesus has for more than five hundred years been a shrine to the Goddess Artemis, and yet you—as did Paul—chose it as a base for telling the world of the only true path to God. Didn’t you tell me that the Master Himself dined with publicans and sinners? We are here because it is where we must be, among the people who need our message as much as or more than anyone else in the world.”

John sighed. “I fear we had best begin heading back. And Polycarp, I know you are right. Sometimes it is true that the teacher needs to be taught.”

“Or at least to be reminded. I would not presume to teach you, sir.”

“But you do. You do. The greater church has need of you, son. Pray to keep yourself pure for the broader ministry to which God may call you. I foresee you as an angel to one of the very churches I recently visited.”

“An angel? I consider you such, master, as I do many of the other church leaders, but the term has always sounded so alien, so foreign to my mind.”

“I mean bishop, of course.”

“I cannot think of myself in those terms either, sir,” Polycarp said, as they ambled back toward Aquila and Priscilla’s estate. “I feel privileged, of course, to have sat under your teaching and counsel. Who else knew the Master personally?”

“No one I know anymore.”

“Indeed,” Polycarp said. “But past your mentoring, I am not an educated man.”

“And you are still young.”

“So you remind me daily.”

“I’m sorry, Polycarp, but I have admitted that I learn from you as well. And your energy and enthusiasm inspire me, as they will another church someday.”

“If that is true, rabbi—and I confess it still does not reach the core of my soul—forgive me and indulge me further to plead with you to imagine the healing powers of the Varius Baths! It is very inexpensive. And interesting. Full of unique chambers that are entered in order. I started in the cold room, where I disrobed to my inner tunic and was issued wood sandals.”

“Sandals for a bath?”

“Yes! The Romans have an ingenious heating plan, and by the time you have worked up a sweat in the warm room and move to the hot room, the floors are steaming from wood-burning furnaces below. And they have even devised a way to pipe this heat into the walls! After you have bathed, you return to the cold room where you plunge into cool water. It’s so invigorating!”

John made a face. “Is it not on the same street as the public latrines I find so revolting?”

“Yes, and I know you find them distasteful because both men and women use them and there is no privacy, but we need not even go near those. We’ll go only to the baths, and from there straight to the theater.”

“Perhaps next week, after the Lord’s Day.”

S
ATURDAY EVENING
John was enjoying a leisurely meal in the courtyard with several dozen of the saints when he realized Polycarp had left his place. Before John could ask about the young man, others began interesting discussions with him. A woman wanted to know whether John thought Sunday would ever be recognized as a religious holiday, the way the Romans allowed the Jews to observe Shabbat.

“I’m afraid it’s unlikely,” John said. “We must enjoy our day of rest on Saturday as we always have and celebrate Resurrection Day while we work.”

“It’s difficult to have to wait until the end of the workday for all of us to assemble on Sunday,” she said.

John nodded as he munched grapes. “And yet that is the nature of what the Romans consider an insurrectionist sect. We dare not even make too widely known our evening Lord’s Day worship. That is also why Paul’s letters and the correspondence between churches must be kept so private.”

An older man asked John to tell a story of Jesus. “Something He said in your hearing.”

John laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Nothing would give me greater joy,” he said. “But this is something I have planned for the next time I address the saints here.”

Yet another man asked John if he was aware Cerinthus was in Ephesus, and the old man shuddered. “The heretic?” he said. “What is his business here?”

“I don’t know,” the man said, “but he has been busy. Twice I have heard him speaking to large crowds on the street. He sounds highly educated, and frankly he puzzles me.”

“You should pay him no mind,” John said. “You have been here long enough to recall Paul’s admonition to your bishop Timothy to beware of false doctrines within the church. Cerinthus propagates heresy from without. Cross to the other side when you see him. Don’t listen to a word of his blasphemy.”

“Begging your pardon, teacher, but that is what troubles me. We should not be afraid of ideas, should we, if we know the truth? What he is saying has not struck me as blasphemous.”

John sat back and rubbed his eyes. Where was Polycarp? He could help here. He could explain Gnosticism, which amounted to nothing less than the worship of knowledge and the danger of counting on “knowing” for one’s salvation.

“It is more complicated than I can get into at this moment,” John said, “but I pledge to speak on this sometime soon as well. In the meantime, you would do well to close your ears to such an enemy of the truth as Cerinthus. Fortunately for him, I have not run into him yet. I fear I would be compelled to challenge him publicly.”

“I would relish seeing that,” the man said.

“Do you recall,” John said, “when we recently read aloud those last two epistles of Paul?”

“I do, yes, but I confess I don’t remember them in their entirety.”

“That’s understandable, but let me remind you: In the first he cautioned against becoming enamored of philosophy and vain deceit. In essence, he was saying that those who enjoy considering every new wave of doctrine run the risk of being blown about by the wind.”

Seeing the man’s response on his face, John added, “I say this not to scold you, sir. Please just take my counsel as a caution.”

And suddenly there stood Polycarp with a wide grin, and next to him one of John’s dearest friends and former disciples, a tall man, reed-thin, with a black beard and piercing dark eyes.

“Rabbi,” Polycarp said, “I believe you know Ignatius?”

John was struck dumb. Ignatius. All the way from Syria. What a perfect choice for his temporary substitute. Now John could truly relax. Years ago Ignatius had been John’s Polycarp, learning at his feet, traveling with him, and becoming one of the boldest defenders of the faith John had ever known. John had joined Peter and other disciples of Jesus in selecting Ignatius for his role as bishop at Antioch. All the reports in the years since bore witness to a man, now about half John’s age, who had become a beloved and courageous pastor in the midst of a hostile Roman Empire.

John greeted his dear old colleague and protégé with a kiss and insisted on personally ushering Ignatius to the guest parlor and washing his feet.

“This is too much, teacher!” Ignatius said, eyes full. “How wonderful to see you again and to be able to praise God with you.”

“In spite of my age, you mean to say,” John said, covering the younger man’s feet with water. “I can see it in your eyes. I am grateful for a little more time to serve my Master, and I wish the same for you, though reports of your recklessness worry me.”

“You need not invest a moment’s concern for me, kind sir. You are as willing as I to be martyred for the cause of Christ.”

“Willing, but not eager, Ignatius. I have heard from more than one source that you consider martyrdom a thing to be grasped, a crowning achievement to a life of service to God.”

“I have heard the same,” Polycarp said.

Ignatius smiled. “Does this game have no rules?” he said. “Am I to be attacked by more than one at once?” As John wiped dry Ignatius’s feet, the Antiochan added, “At least let the youngster fetch my drink so I am required to answer to only one inquisitor at a time.”

“With pleasure,” Polycarp said, and as he headed for the water he threw back over his shoulder, “Youngster indeed.”

“Verily,” John said, allowing Ignatius to help him up so he could sit next to him, “may I exhort you as an elder, if you don’t consider me too much an old fool by now?”

“Don’t even whisper such a thing,” Ignatius said. “I yearn for your wisdom as always.”

Polycarp returned with the cup and asked if he could sit at the men’s feet.

Ignatius grabbed the young man’s wrist and tugged him down. “As long as I see open ears and a closed mouth. From what John tells me, by the end of my visit I will have learned more from you than you from me.”

As the visiting bishop seemed to ponder his reply to the charge that he elevated martyrdom over a life of service, John had to smile. He was encouraged that Ignatius had learned not to answer immediately, as he used to, and as Polycarp often did. John remembered his own impetuousness as a young man. Not much older than Polycarp, John twice humiliated himself before the Master Himself, who responded with such grace that John was even more humbled.

First, he and his brother James went to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask.”

John felt his face flush even remembering the incident. Why had he not been able to detect from Jesus’ amused look the gaffe they had committed? Jesus said, “What do you want Me to do for you?”

John said, “Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory.”

Jesus’ look had turned to sadness. “You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”

John had said, “We are able.”

Jesus motioned to them to sit, and he joined them on the ground. He shook his head slowly and spoke softly. “You will indeed drink the cup that I drink, and with the baptism I am baptized with you will be baptized; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared.”

The other disciples soon became aware of what John and James had asked, and they cast glares at the brothers and rebuked them. But Jesus called them all together and said, “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

It had not been the first, nor would it be the last time Jesus had taught with paradoxes. Sadly, neither was that the last time John had humiliated himself before Jesus. Not long after, he said, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow with us.”

But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side.”

Later, while they were steadily on their way to Jerusalem, a village of the Samaritans did not receive Him. James and John said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?”

But He rebuked them. “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

John had borne that shame for days, and yet he learned. Perhaps if he was kind and not contentious with Ignatius, this brother would learn too, even from a mild rebuke.

“It is one thing to be willing to die for Christ, Ignatius, and yes, the martyrdom of so many of our beloved brethren crowned their lives. But should we not desire even more to present ourselves as living servants?”