Chapter Cut from Fifth Gospel - A Novel - TEMPLE SLEEP

TEMPLE SLEEP

‘And the youth looked at him and loved him.’

The secret Gospel according to Mark

To Lazarus Christ Jesus said, ‘Soon you will pass into spiritual worlds, and your sister shall prepare you for your burial, she will sit with you and hold you in her heart, for she shall be the guardian of your soul until I return…Have faith Magdalena,’ he said to her, ‘support your brother as you support me…for in every death there is a rebirth…Wait for my call, then shall you see the last sign before the Son of Man begins his journey to his death. In your brother shall be resurrected what lives in me, the eternal Word, the light and the life that comes from those heavenly spheres from which I have come to earth. He shall be the first to see the Kingdom in all its fullness on earth, for his illness is not unto death, but to the glory of God, to the revelation of the eternal Word.’ Now to Lazarus he said, ‘Through this initiation, you shall venture into spirit worlds and you will become another man, you shall have another name and they shall call you John the beloved disciple of Jesus. It is true that every birth is accompanied by an illness, the illness of the mother. But this illness does not lead to death, but to new life.’

Lazarus was amazed by these words but his eyes were heavy laden and his heart seemed to falter. At this point he heard his sister Martha hurrying into the booth. ‘Lord,’ she said, ‘do you not care that my sister has left me to serve you alone? Please tell her to come and help me!’

Mary answered, ‘Martha, sit with us…the master is speaking of eternal truths.’

But Martha’s voice, very far away now, came into his mind, irritated and unhappy, ‘There is so much work to do! I should also like to sit and to listen to eternal truths, but who shall feed the master, then?’

‘Martha, Martha,’ came his master’s gentle words, ‘you are careful and troubled about the food, which is your task for you must care for my physical well-being; in you lives what is active. But one other thing is also needful - Mary listens to my words because she has a task that is different from yours, she cares for my soul, what lives in her is contemplative…and as you have chosen, so too has she chosen what is suited for her part…and this shall not be taken away from her.’

Lazarus heard his sister’s voice say, ‘Yes, my lord,’ and after that her footsteps in the courtyard.

Christ Jesus continued with his teaching and as his words were spoken Lazarus felt his body at peace, its turmoil stilled. The world too seemed quiet, the sea, and air and the very heavens came to rest and among this harmony did his acquiescent soul lift up from him.

And he fell out of his head.

                        

               Lazarus sees himself stripped of all earthly pretensions standing beside his master in the temple of Jerusalem, before the Pharisees.

          ‘Verily, verily,’ Christ says, and it is as if Lazarus himself were saying it, and it seems not strange at all but the most simple thing, for he feels as if he is one with Christ. ‘I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death…’

The Pharisees answer, ‘Are you greater than our father Abraham which is dead, and the prophets which are dead? Who makes you so great?’

Christ tells them, ‘If I honour myself, my honour means nothing: it is my father who honours me, of whom you say that he is your God…but you do not know him! I know him! And if I were to say that I do not know him to please you, then I would be a liar, like you. I know him and I keep his word, you only speak of Abraham. Abraham himself rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it and was glad.’

‘You are not yet fifty years old, how can a man so young have entered so deep and risen so high as to have seen the father Abraham in the blood of his generations?’

‘I am not an initiate. I am the initiator, and yea more than that, I am the subject of initiation itself! I am the foundation of the very world! I am not only one with Abraham, but with what pulses in the entire cosmos, I was before Abraham was. Before Abraham was, existed the one who is I AM and I AM He.’

The people grow angry. They take up stones to cast at him and he has to flee. There are hindrances all around. He feels pain as stones strike him but they are not stones, it is that his soul is being wrenched from the temple, the grave of his body.

He realises that Christ is the door and that through Him he can enter a higher sphere, a glorious mountain.

From the outspread widths of space comes to him an angel, the self of his great teacher, John the Baptist, whose words had so often warmed his heart. His mighty cosmic form seems to Lazarus like Adam and he blesses him with his greatest gift – the gift of his own spirit. Lazarus feels it enter into his emptied soul.

I am John!

Now in the upper airs the moon’s snow face cuts the night’s skirt, and is stirred by delicate green whirlwinds that move from star to star inscribing in astral light grand pictures for his seeing.  He rises higher through the agency of another angel, upwards to a sea the colour of peach blossom that stretches out to distant purpling plains and resounds in glorious songs. This angel points to the father of his people. 

Abraham!

He is one with Abraham. his ancestor.

A light rises over the horizon of this unpolluted, immeasurable landscape. A sun, suspended, luminous, diaphanous. incandescent and transparent all at once permeates the heaven-opened world from all sides like the rays of a dawn sun. These throw their luminance upwards to the hems of a lowering cloud making it gleam all gold.

The Sun is the light and life and love of the world and it is born now in me!

I am a Son of Man!

I am one with Christ who is the light of the world.

From those mighty cosmic reaches, come the resounding words,

‘Lazarus…come forth!’

And Lazarus tells himself, 

‘Now do I truly recognise without hindrance what lives in the soul of Jesus…Him who has awakened me - the sublime being of Christ!’

             

Excerpt from Fifth Gospel: MARY

MARY

F

ORTY generations after Abraham, and some months after the birth of that first child, a young woman called Mary accompanied her husband on a journey from Nazareth. It was the era of Caesar Augustus. Herod the Great had died and his cruel, sadistic son and successor, Archelaus, was deposed and Syria was made a Governorship of the Roman Senator Quirenius.

Under his rule a census was announced for the purpose of taxation and the people of Judea were required by law to travel to the seat of their ancestors to be counted. Mary’s husband, Joseph, was of the lineage of David and so he and Mary had to make the journey to Bethlehem, the town of his forebears, even at this difficult time.

For Mary of Nazareth was long with child.

Nine months earlier the seed had been sown in her belly. That night, the Essene priests had called her and her betrothed, Joseph, to the veiled place. They had given them both a cordial, after which all had fallen into nothingness. So it was with surprise and anxiety that Mary herself greeted the news of her conception, for she could remember nothing of her union with Joseph. It was only the warmth and protection of that radiant angel of God that had calmed her worried heart. For the angel’s soft whispers had announced the birth of her child in these words:

Ave Maria! Blessed are you among women! To you will be born a child and you will name him Jesus, and he will be called the Son of God.

This was the same voice which had compelled her to travel to her older cousin Elisabeth’s house to help her with the imminent birth of her child.

Since her youth, the world had seemed a recent thing to Mary, and she had felt like nothing more than a dust mote drawn upwards by the breezes and the winds of heaven, a dust mote that rarely falls down-to-earth. But on her journey to Elisabeth she found that an awakening was taking place in her soul. As she walked through the cold southlands, among the sadness of the mountains and the misery of the desolate trees, among the mocking face of the unforgiving brown coloured sky of Judea, she found that she was not only on the threshold of Elisabeth’s house, but also on the threshold of her own life.

It became clear to her, that she was coming down to earth, and only now did she truly understand what she must give up.

That had been six months ago and now as she cast a glance at her husband, the young carpenter with the soft brown eyes and hair like charcoal from the fires, she knew her descent was near complete and she put her trust in Joseph, who saw to all her needs and pulled the animal gently on the road, so as not to cause her unnecessary discomfort. He toiled over the frozen hills and mountains, with his feet blue and blistered and his hands callused and frigid, and made no complaint, as others did, of the Romans and the census. 

Joseph did not squander his words.

She remembered his face when he had seen, upon her return from Elizabeth’s house, how she was grown with child. No memory lived in his heart of the union brought about by the ministering of the priests and yet, in his dream-full eyes, she had seen no recrimination; from his mouth, no harsh words had come. When the township gathered to call her to account and she feared the people would stone her, Joseph remained steadfast in his love for her, refusing to shun her, making it possible for the priests to keep to themselves their workings.

She looked out of her thoughts and realised they were nearing Bethlehem. Darkness was fast descending over the highland wilderness of Judea and only a red outline remained in the west where the road to Hebron made a thread through the valleys and hills that separated Bethlehem from Jerusalem. The last of the sun was touching the pinnacles of a mighty palace. She looked to the east, to where a star-like moon was rising behind purpling clouds; a strange moon, a moon unlike any moon she had ever seen, and at that moment, the dusk was pierced by the howling of a wolf. It filled her with dread, and she was glad when they arrived at the outskirts of the town of Bethlehem.

It was cold, but the fields that swept upwards to the heights along which the city stretched, were rich with terraced vineyards and gardens well tended. Lights flickered in the houses, full with guests. The sound of merry talk and laughter reached them even here and it cheered her heart, which until now had been heavy with the bitter knowledge that she was homeless and may not have a warm place to bring forth her child.

She bent over to hold her belly for the pain that came then, and she told her child,

‘Not yet!’

Her husband, having heard this, grew concerned. He hastened through the ruined gates of the city, going from house to house in search of accommodation, but no one had room. Joseph asked those on the crowded streets if they knew of any small space wherein they might spend the night, since his wife, he showed them, was great with child and her hour was at hand. They told him the little town was much burdened by visitors, who had come from near and far to be counted. Every house was full, perhaps they should try the Inn?

The Inn was also full to the brim, but the innkeeper took pity on them and told Joseph of a rocky grotto outside the city walls. He warned him that it had once been a place of sinful ritual and that part of it was used now as a stable, because Bethlehem was so full that even those places reserved for animals in the township had been taken by people as lodgings.

The young couple, having no other choice, made their way to it. And thus it was that Mary entered into that grotto where two years before, Herod had performed a black ritual with the blood of the children of Bethlehem. And in that dark space surrounded by animals, fragrant with dung and straw, she sat. Above her, a cleft in the rock allowed a little of that sun-like moonlight to enter. It brought her peace. Here, she was away from the chattering noise-some crowds and could make herself comfortable, to wait for the onset of the more painful spasms that would soon come again and in the meantime, her young husband would go and find help.

When he returned he was accompanied by two women, a midwife and her young attendant, a girl called Salome, whose dark round face and clear eyes made a gladness in Mary’s heart. The midwife told her that the girl had a withered hand from birth, but that it would not prevent her from collecting the water and folding the cloths and cleaning the knife with wine.

It was many hours later, as Mary lay exhausted with her child suckling at her breast, that the old midwife sent Salome to fetch more water. When she returned, Mary noticed that the girl’s malformed hand was now made well and Salome, following her gaze, noticed it also. She dropped the water vase, and fell to the ground and gave thanks.

Excerpt from Fifth Gospel: Water and Wine

‘What do you see?’ His eyes held hers.

To look at him near blinded her and so she looked away. ‘I don’t know what to tell you…I see a dazzling glory!’ she looked again, ‘Praise be God! I see…’

‘What?’

‘I see the Son of God!’ Immediately she put a hand to her mouth as if she had blasphemed.

‘Don’t be afraid, you have committed no wrong…’ he said, ‘trust in your heart.’

Tears came into her eyes. ‘I feel joy!’ She lost her balance and he steadied her and held her face close to his.

‘This is heaven expressing itself through you, for this is the first time my mother in heaven sees the Son who long ago departed from her…she sees Him who is in me through your eyes!’

Again she felt she would faint, and to forestall it he held her with one hand and took the cup of water and brought it to her lips. ‘Drink this,’ he said, ‘it will sustain you.’

When she took a sip she was full of confusion. She looked into the cup trying to decide whether she believed it.

She said, ‘How does this taste of wine Jesus?’  

Jesus nodded. ‘It is only water…but what lives between you and me can make even water taste of wine.’

She had heard these words before, they echoed the words of the Anchorite in Egypt, spoken so many years ago.

‘This is a mother’s love for her son,’ she marvelled.

‘And a son's love for his mother,’ he replied.

Before she could say more the storm of light that had surrounded Jesus ebbed away. So swiftly did it go that she wondered if she’d seen it at all.

Returned to those eyes was the calm expression she knew. 
‘You look tired…’ he said to her, ‘Tomorrow is another busy day.’

She hesitated, ‘I have been saying fare-thee-well to you all your life Jesus, and now I find myself not wanting to leave you, lest you disappear into thin air!’

Jesus let his face open in a smile, ‘I know. But this is a new season, and we must not say fare-thee-well, we must say, Shalom! Shalom, mother…shalom!’

He hugged her and she hugged him back. Embarrassed, happy, she closed her eyes, settling the word into her heart.

When the moment was over she took the pitcher and cup and walked out of the workshop, feeling the swelling of a love so great, that she could neither contain it, nor properly express it.

The Nightingale and the Rose...Excerpt from Fifth Gospel

They looked until nightfall. Exhausted they found lodgings and rested, but Mary’s sickness had increased with her sorrow and concern. In her feverish sleep, she heard the song of a night bird and it was woven in her dreams with an Arab tale that she had often told Jesus. It was the tale 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 and clasping it to her breast, was pierced through by a thorn. She sang the most beautiful song she had ever sung, pressing the thorn closer and closer to her heart, a song of sacrifice and true love found, until having stained the rose with her own heart’s blood, she died.
And so that rose, in mourning, forever after bloomed red.