GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL - Excerpt from Fifth Gospel - A Novel

 

He was in the Garden with his heart full of woe, for he did not know if any of his followers, even his chosen ones, would be capable of remaining awake with him during his tempestuous struggle with death.

He looked to heaven: the wolf was biting at the moon and clouds were covering her face. He remembered that temptation in the wilderness those years ago, and recognised the feeling of dread that was come upon him.

The wind paused – a reprieve.

It was a moment stolen from out of the stream of time. Soon his agony would begin, but not yet…for now the part of him that was a man, took in the smells of the night and the aroma of wild roses. It recalled to his mind a tale spoken with his mother’s voice, of a Nightingale that loved a white rose and sang the most beautiful songs to it, but only from afar, for fear of its thorns. One night, beneath the swollen moon, having drunk her fill of song and emboldened by love, the Nightingale resolved to embrace the rose. Clasping it to her breast, she was pierced through by a thorn, and yet she sung the most beautiful song she had ever sung; a song of sacrifice and true love found, pressing the thorn closer and closer to her heart. When she died the rose mourned, and stained with her heart’s blood, the rose forever bloomed red.

He thought on his mother, dead so many years and yet so alive in his stepmother. He thought of Yeshua, dead and yet hovering over him always. He reflected on the mystery of love and leaned his heart toward Jerusalem, which stood deathly pale and shivering in the scant moonlight. He had embraced her and sung his love-song to her, and still she did not love him. Soon, she would pierce him with her thorn and he would stain the world with his blood!

His sadness was a deep well, and yet lofty was his love, which was higher than life. For what was the heart of a bird, compared to the heart of a man? And what was the passion of a man, compared to the passion of a god? He looked up. The cold moon died away, and the man’s thoughts became the thoughts of the God.

‘The hour is come,’ he said to himself, and prayed for strength.

The wind began its stirring. Time established its dominion over the world. His body resumed its work, dissolving in pain and he knelt on the ground in what he knew were death throws. He felt the cold breath of death near his cheek, and he shivered.

‘Father in heaven, help them to remain awake!’

But they were faltering. He knew this because the Holy Spirit was loosening from him. Soon he would be alone and he did not know if he would be strong enough to hold back the tide of his godhood beyond this hour.

‘Simon-Peter!’ he cried. ‘Watch with me!’

There was no answer.  

And yet…he was not alone.

From the wind came a whisper of the blue Archangel, Satan.

‘Greetings, Son of God! You have lasted longer than I expected in that wretched temple. But rejoice! I have come to unlock the door and to let you out!’

‘You mean you have come to ensnare me in your prison!’ he said to him.

The God of Death seized him tenderly by the head, to peer into his eyes. ‘Son of God, Alpha and Omega, Lamb of Lambs! You are deluded! Do you not see how much I love you? Look around you, where are your disciples? The moon herself hides her face and leaves you in darkness. Even the Holy Ghost is taking to its heels, without so much as a god-speed! I alone have remained at your side in this dark hour, and I come to bring you sleep, and rest, and comfort!’

Satan’s blue, claw-like wings began to enfold him, but he prised them away.

‘Leave me be! I will die in freedom!’

‘Stop joking, for God’s sake! There is no freedom in dying, only the necessity of the Father, and I am his master craftsman! You might be His son by name, but you are a son to me, by nature! You are stubborn, and full of longing…like I am! Come then, give your father a kiss...now or later, what does it matter?’

His breath drew near.

‘Get away! If this body is to pass from me before my task is accomplished, then let it be God’s will, not yours!’ 

The angel sighed, filling the whole world with shadows. ‘You wanted earthly life, you stooped to drink from my fountain – and you have drunk it dry! Now your flesh is drunk and your soul is drunk and you must succumb to my will! Let me take you home before you hurt yourself. Forget those fools you love…they have already forgotten you, for they do not love you like I do. The truth is that when I come into a room, memory goes out the door. You see, memory is a whore…she loves the man who pays her the most, and my purse is always full!’

Christ Jesus took in a breath and Satan slipped into it, filling the span of his lungs. Satan would have him breathe out, but he would not. When he could stand it no more, his out-breath gave wings to Satan’s words,

‘I die!’

 At that moment, the moon’s dark spectres floated away from her. Demons and ghosts and phantoms were drawn to him like vultures to dead meat. They came down in the gusts of wind to encircle and enfold him in their shadows, called forth by Satan’s words in him.

Stripped bare of the living forces of the Holy Spirit by that creature’s power over his disciples, he could not prevent the mighty force of Christ from entering to the very bones. This was Satan’s realm, the bones, and here death would seize him too soon, before the performance of his sacrifice.

An ice-like pain tore through him now. He could feel the heavenly power invade his organs, it began to macerate his liver and spleen, burning holes in his lungs, erupting into his heart and bladder and brain. It broke through the walls of those earthly veins with such power that it flooded the cup of his tissues, making blood seep through the pores of his skin and from his eyes. Could he feel it in his bones?

He was knocked down by it, and fell with his face in the dirt.

The world turned.

The wind dropped.

A sudden quiet fell over the grotto.

Would he die now?

Upon the midnight hour, in the garden of good and evil, the struggle of life with death made a pause.

A sublime effulgence, a subtle warmth descended, melting away the coldness of death. This gold-giving radiance gathered into the sparkling, shimmer-glowing form of an angel – the angel of John the Baptist. He bent life’s cup to Christ Jesus’ lips and let him drink the nectar that would bring strength and life and vigour to his wasted body.

The moon’s old forces were obliged then, to unwind from him and to scurry away. A shriek was heard in the bowels of the world and the blue archangel of death fell back into the shadows. Satan had not succeeded. The moment had passed. The Christ in him had not entered the bones and Jesus had not succumbed to death – for now.

Relief washed over him. He would go on to accomplish his deed.

Chapter cut from Fifth Gospel - A Novel - HOSANNA

HOSANNA

‘Behold thy king cometh unto thee; he is just and having salvation; lowly and riding upon an ass and upon a colt the foal of an ass.’

Zechariah 9:9

IT WAS ON Sunday, on an ass’s foal, that Christ Jesus came into the city of Jerusalem followed by those faithful to him. As he entered through the great gate of the city the crowds, having received tidings of his approach hastened to meet him and upon seeing him they were seized with ecstasy and began to throw palm fronds over the ground in imitation of those primitive rites of spring. He was to them a symbol of a king, the sun that rises out of the darkness of winter’s night; and also the symbol of a priest of the order of Melchizedek who has come to bestow his blessings on those who are gathered in the oldest sun-sanctuary of humanity - Mount Zion.

He knew their thoughts and understood that the frenzy in their souls would not last.

For three years he had held back his magnificence not wishing to prematurely dazzle human beings. But now his divine selfhood was consuming his very humanity and so it radiated outwards through his human body like a flame that burns brightly one last time before reducing the wood to ashes. Soon he would stand before them like a dying star, a powerless human being and he knew what they would do.

It was his destiny to pass calmly through this festival of merriment, meekly through the welcoming praise of Hosannas to show the world the way that leads from the powerless body to the resurrection of the spirit.

This morning he had instructed his disciples to go to Bethphage, which means the House of Figs, a hamlet situated on a rocky plateau on the other side of Olivet. He had requested that they find him a foal of an ass, the white colt upon which he now sat.  He had chosen this place because in Bethphage the old initiatory practice of ‘Sitting Beneath the Fig Tree’ was still cultivated and it was here that these animals were held sacred. They were held sacred because Balaam, the old prophet, had also sat upon an ass. But the ecstatic visions that Balaam had achieved through the state of soul bound to the body, the ass, were no longer appropriate. He wanted to show his disciples how the Fig Tree was barren, that the old initiation must give way for what he would bring and so he had pointed out to them the Fig tree with many leaves and no fruit. He wanted to show the people that the time of ‘riding of the ass’ was over, for a new awakening was upon them, so on this day, when the old sun still shone in the heavens, he used a symbol the people recognised from the past but he showed them how he would use it in the way of the future.

He looked about him now to his disciples. They were revelling in the royal acclamations; laughing and smiling to see so many happy and ecstatic faces - all except Lazarus-John. Tomorrow Christ Jesus would curse the Fig Tree and in the coming days they would come to observe how fruitless were these Hosannas and how temporary and superficial were these cries of Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord! For he knew these Hosannas would prove not a blessing but a curse; they were poisoned fruit; an echo of the ancient and archaic language sung by jubilant crowds on Mount Zion soon to be traded for angry calls on that other mount, the arid place where lived the old moon religion of Jehova, Mount Moriah, where was situated the Temple of Solomon. For tomorrow he would enter the temple and cleanse it one last time of those nefarious intruders who, under the guise of priesthood, tainted his Father’s house with the traffic of money. One last time he would show them the power of his spirit before the great battle with the Pharisees and Scribes, which he knew would come. Then at last would the Fig Tree wilt and wither away and the people would realise that he had not come to bring back the old mysteries - to breathe new life into an old corpse - but to show them the seed to something new – something they could plant in the soil of their hearts for later times.

This realisation would eventually nail him to the cross. 

And with sorrow in his heart among the excitable sounds of the jubilant, fickle populace, he wept for Jerusalem. He wept for its people and he prayed to his Lord on their behalf.

WISE MEN, RICH MEN AND LEPERS - Excerpt From Fifth Gospel - A Novel.

              

JESUS walked the road that led from Nazareth to Judea with his feet moving of their own accord and his thoughts vacant in his head.

During his conversation with his stepmother, what had lived embedded in him like a seal on wax had begun its leave- taking. This had made him feel bewildered and abandoned. As he walked now, he could no longer think coherent thoughts, and his movements followed only a predetermined design, towards the man who would take his destiny further.

At daybreak, a wind-storm announced itself in the anger of a red sky. Soon the air had picked up around him to sting his eyes. He stumbled and fell. Two men dressed in white garments with hoods over their heads and scarves over their faces, came from the road ahead, leading an overburdened mule.

The taller man helped him up, and said loudly over the din, ‘What is this? Jesus of Nazareth, is that you? Where are you going alone, my son?’

Jesus looked up at him, trying to understand words that no longer made sense. When his voice came from his mouth it sounded hollow, as if it came not from him but from the wind, ‘I am going to where people like you do not wish to direct your vision, where human pain can find the consolation that comes from what you have forgotten!’

‘Jesus of Nazareth!’ the other man shouted. ‘Do you not remember us from Engaddi?’ The man took the scarf from his face momentarily. ‘Do you see who I am?’

The shorter did likewise and said, ‘I once sat with you in the grotto...do you remember?’

Jesus did not see them. He saw only what they represented.

‘Come away from this scorching wind!’ the taller one said, ‘The Lord is a storm come to sweep away the world.’

‘You are lost lambs!’ Jesus coughed, walking away.

‘We are all lost, Jesus!’ the shorter one cried, ‘It does not matter how many psalms we sing, or how many temples we build, God continues to deny us our Messiah!’

Jesus stood in the tempest of elements and looked at them. ‘And when I become your shepherd,’ he said, ‘when you realise who I am, you will run away again and become lost, just as you ran away from me long ago.’

The men put scarves to their mouths to ward off the dust and debris. The shorter man said, ‘you must come with us...you are not well, there is a house of the order not far from here, where you can rest.’

‘Leave me be!’ he said to them. ‘I won’t go to your secluded house! You wear white, and you pretend to be pure, but you are not pious men in your hearts, because in you burns a fire that has not been kindled by God, but by your own ambitions. You bear the mark of the tempter! It is the tempter that has made you arrogant, so that your wool glitters with his fire!’ He put his fingers to his face. ‘The hair of this wool pricks my eyes but it will not blind me!’

The taller man shouted, ‘Rest assured, Jesus, it is the dust that pricks your eyes! You know we have shown the tempter the door, he has no part in what we do...you should’ve stayed with us, now look at what the world has made of you! Let us help you!’

‘Oh what arrogance and pride! You are only greater than others because you stand on their backs!’

They did not know how to respond to this, and he left them standing in the desert. Behind him the mule made its loud complaints, shaking its head, as the breath of Jehova carried the world away to blot out the sun.

The storm abated, and days passed without beginning and without end.

It was night.

Fatigued and cold, Jesus wandered towards a light in the distance. When he drew near to it, he saw a man sitting by a fire preparing to eat a meal. When the man looked up, he stood in a hurry, afraid, and called out to him with a mustered boldness, ‘Who are you? I am alone but I have a knife, and I shall not be afraid to use it!’

Jesus showed him his empty hands. ‘I thirst,’ he said, knowing he must pause, for his legs would soon give out from under him.

The man came to Jesus and helped him to a place beside the fire. ‘Forgive me...I am constantly afraid of being robbed by thieves, or killed by bandits! I see you are no thief, and no bandit...come...be my guest...eat at my table. I have made soup,’ he said, showing him the watery stew which he was pouring into a bowl. ‘There’s crow in it and wild mushrooms,’ he pointed out those meagre morsels with an approving eye, ‘and some other wild things I have no name for....once, you know, I would have spat at the thought of such a meal, but now I shake with anticipation. Look at my hands how they shake. Because of the crow, I have made it boil a good long while to kill the poison...that is what it has come to...still...thanks be to God, I have something!’ He sighed. ‘Israel mourns...Israel hungers...its people cry out in pain for deliverance, but first I must cry out for something to feed the hunger of my body! Something to put in my belly! After that, a man can turn his mind to the hunger of the soul. Until then, we are all animals...’ he looked at Jesus, ‘You need something in your belly too I’ll wager...you look like you have eaten nothing in days...come...it's good you will see, I have let it boil long to kill the poison...’

Jesus shook his head, ‘I want only water.’

‘Only water...!’ the man said, peering at him with more intensity. ‘Are you a prophet? Yesterday, I heard tell from a holy man, of a prophet in these parts...So help me God! He was described to seem just like you! Many don’t trust prophets, they think them mad people with one foot in heaven and the other in hell...but I believe it a good thing to know a prophet who can speak to God.’ 

The man gave him some water, which Jesus drank with gratitude. ‘I thank you for the water...but I am not a prophet.’

‘What a shame!’ The man’s spirit drooped. He took a thoughtful gulp of his soup. ‘If you were a prophet,’ he continued, ‘I would ask you to speak to God on my behalf...on account of the paths my soul has taken.’

Jesus was directed to an apparition that loomed large and red over the man. ‘What are these paths? I have seen you before...a thousand years ago. You were different then!’

The man grew fearful. ‘What do you see? Oh, dear God of Abraham, what do you see? Is it the Devil sitting on my shoulders? Is it? Yes...?’ He shuddered and moaned, and shuddered again. ‘Would you send it away? It hounds me. I have given up everything, and yet it follows me! I admit that I was never a pious man. My heart was always bent on acquiring riches and high honours. I thought that I was of greater value than others. One day I had a terrible dream. I saw what had made me rich. It was not I, myself, it was a black angel with huge red wings, and I was terrified because I knew that it was the devil! I took to my heels to escape him, abandoning everything, and I have been going about for a long time, fleeing from what sits on my own shoulders...’ when he said this, his eyes clouded with tears and he seemed to be lost in a vision of his own wretchedness.

‘I have seen this spirit that hounds you before,’ Jesus said to him, ‘at the pagan altars...it is the spirit of pride and arrogance!’

‘Yes...yes...!’ the man said, with eyes wide. ‘Pride and arrogance! Exactly! That is my weakness!’

Jesus could not help him, he could not help anyone, not yet...something was waiting for him in the Jordan and he had to go. He stood and with a heart full of woe, left the man in his misery.

He walked day after day with the sun’s fingers on his brow, and spent the nights huddled, trembling from cold, with his teeth chattering and only his thin, white robe wrapped around him. On the morning of the thirteenth day when the fire-ball came out of its rocky bed he was up again, walking, and came upon the disfigured shape of a man sitting beneath a solitary tree.

Already the world was a furnace and he knew he must have shade, but as he neared the tree the man sitting there raised his head and Jesus could see that his skin was covered in pustules, leaking with suppurations, that his nose was a hole in his face and that the lids over his eyes were gone missing, giving him the look of a living cadaver. The leper tried in vain to cover his malignancies with a hand eaten and ravaged. ‘Go away!’ he said to Jesus. ‘I am foul! Hurry! Don’t come near, for the path I walk is not your path, my son. I beg you to leave while you can...!’

Jesus sat near the man and wiped his brow with a sleeve and said. ‘It is hot.’

‘Yes, yes...it is hot...but please, save yourself! Must I take upon my soul your death on top of everything else I have to bear?’

Jesus heard snakes hissing behind rocks and when he looked at the leper he saw blue wings and a cold eye. He had seen this eye before in the faces of those Temple priests. The eye looked at him while its wings enfolded the man.

‘Tell me,’ Jesus said to him, ‘where has the path your soul has taken led you? I know you, I saw you thousands of years ago, but you are now changed, you are come down to earth!’

The leper was terrified. He sucked in a breath through the purple edged crater that was his mouth, and from within this cavern he emitted a strangled voice, ‘Do you see it? Oh the misery! Where is the Messiah? When will he come to release me from this dreadful thing that claws into my flesh? He came so gradually, you know. At first I thought he was the Archangel Gabriel and I adored him but I soon realised that he was another...I realised he was the angel of death! Death itself gnaws at my bones and feeds on my flesh...look at me! Me, a learned rabbi, a powerful man in the synagogue! Now I am defiled and no one will have me near them, and I have to

walk alone in desolate places like this, scarcely able to beg for what scraps people will give me at their doors.

‘When you came I was waiting for death to tear me to pieces with his jaws...I have waited! But he wants to torture me more...’ He began weeping then into his ulcerated hands.

‘I have seen it,’ Jesus told him, putting a hand on the man’s shoulders, ‘It is the sharpness of your dead thoughts, rabbi...these are like corpses and rotting carcasses.’

The man was so frightened that he put both hands over his face to ward off the picture of it.

Jesus pointed his head to the sun and bellowed an ‘Ahhh!’ into that white light that blinded his eyes. ‘I am a grain of sand in the desert! What can I do?’ he said to it. He got up, hot tears falling on the dirt, and with exhaustion in his limbs went on his way.

And like the wise men and the rich man, this leper did not see him go until he was a speck on the horizon.