Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

 

Tuesday



We all slept that night in the upper room of Joseph's house. In the morning Joshua went downstairs. He was gone for a bit, then came back up the stairs.



"They won't let me leave," he said.



"They?"



"The apostles. My own apostles won't let me leave." He went back to the stairway. "You're interfering with the will of God!" he shouted down. He turned back to me. "Did you tell them not to let me leave?"



"Me? Yep."



"You can't do that."



"I sent Nathaniel to Simon's to fetch Maggie. He returned alone. Maggie wouldn't talk to him, but Martha did. Temple soldiers had been there, Josh."



"So?"



"What do you mean, so? They were there to arrest you."



"Let them."



"Joshua, you don't have to sacrifice yourself to prove this point. I've been thinking about it all night. You can negotiate."



"With the Lord?"



"Abraham did it. Remember? Over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. He starts out getting the Lord to agree to spare the cities if he can find fifty righteous men, but by the end, he talks God down to ten. You can try something like that."



"That's not completely the point, Biff." Here he came over to me, but I found I couldn't look him in the eye, so I went to one of the large arched windows that looked down on the street. "I'm afraid of this - of what's going to happen. I can think of a dozen things I'd rather do this week than be sacrificed, but I know that it has to happen. When I told the priests that I would tear the Temple down in three days, I meant that all the corruption, all the pretense, all the ritual of the Temple that keeps men from knowing God would be destroyed. And on the third day, when I come back, everything will be new, and the kingdom of God will be everywhere. I'm coming back, Biff."



"Yeah, I know, you said that."



"Well, believe in me."



"You're not good at resurrections, Josh. Remember the old woman in Japhia? The soldier in Sepphoris, what did he last? Three minutes?"



"But look at Maggie's brother Simon. He's been back from the dead for months now."



"Yeah, and he smells funny."



"He does not."



"No, really, when you get close to him he smells spoiled."



"How would you know? You won't get close to him because he used to be a leper."



"Thaddeus mentioned it the other day. He said, 'Biff, I believe this Simon Lazarus fellow has spoiled.'"



"Really? Then let's go ask Thaddeus."



"He might not remember."



Joshua went down the steps to a low-ceilinged room with a mosaic floor and small windows cut high in the walls. Joshua's mother and brother James had joined the apostles. They all sat there against the walls, their faces turned to Joshua like flowers to the sun, waiting for him to say something that would give them hope.



"I'm going to wash your feet," he said. To Joseph of Arimathea, he said, "I need a basin of water and a sponge." The tall aristocrat bowed and went off to find a servant.



"What a pleasant surprise," Mary said.



James the brother rolled his eyes and sighed heavily.



"I'm going out," I said. I looked at Peter, as if to say, Don't let him out of your sight. He understood perfectly and nodded.



"Come back for the seder," Joshua said. "I have some things I have to teach you in the little time I have left."



There was no one home at Simon's house. I knocked on the door for a long time, then finally let myself in. There was no evidence of a morning meal, but the mikveh had been used, so I guessed that they had each bathed and then gone to the Temple. I walked the streets of Jerusalem, trying to think of some solution, but everything I had learned seemed useless. As evening fell I made my way back to Joseph's house, taking the long route so I didn't have to pass the palace of the high priest.



Joshua was waiting inside, sitting on the steps to the upper room, when I came in. Peter and Andrew sat on either side of him, obviously there to ensure that he didn't accidentally skip down to the high priest and turn himself in for blasphemy.



"Where have you been?" Joshua said. "I need to wash your feet."



"Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a ham in Jerusalem during Passover week?" I said. "I thought it would be nice, you know, some ham on matzo with a little bitter herb."



"He washed us all," Peter said. "Of course we had to hold Bart down, but even he's clean."



"And as I washed them, they will go out and wash others, by showing them forgiveness."



"Oh, I get it," I said. "It's a parable. Cute. Let's go eat."



We all lay around the big table, with Joshua at the head. Joshua's mother had prepared a traditional Passover supper, with the exception of the lamb. To begin the seder, Nathaniel, who was the youngest, had to ask a question. "Why is this night different from every other night of the year?"



"Bart's feet are clean?" said Thomas.



"Joseph of Arimathea is picking up the tab?" said Philip.



Nathaniel laughed and shook his head. "No. It's because other nights we eat bread and matzo, but tonight we only eat matzo. Jeez." He grinned, probably feeling smart for the first time in his life.



"And why do we only eat the matzo on this night?" asked Nathaniel.



"Skip ahead, Nate," I said. "We're all Jews here. Summarize. Unleavened bread because there was no time for it to rise with Pharaoh's soldiers on our tail, bitter herbs for the bitterness of slavery, God delivered us into the Promised Land, it was swell, let's eat."



"Amen," said everyone.



"That was pathetic," said Peter.



"Yeah, was it?" I said angrily. "Well, we sit here with the Son of God, waiting for someone to come and take him away and kill him, and none of us is going to do a damn thing about it, including God, so forgive me if I'm not peeing all over myself about having been delivered out of the hands of the Egyptians about a million years ago."



"You're forgiven," said Joshua. Then he stood up. "What I am, is in you all. The Divine Spark, the Holy Ghost, it unites you all. It is the God that is in you all. Do you understand that?"



"Of course God is part of you," James the brother said, "he's your father."



"No, in all of you. Watch, take this bread." He took a matzo and broke it into pieces. He gave a piece to everyone in the room and took a piece himself. Then he ate it. "Now, the bread is part of me, the bread is me. Now all of you eat it."



Everybody looked at him.



"EAT IT!" He screamed.



So we ate it. "Now it is part of you, I am part of you. You all share the same part of God. Let's try again. Hand me that wine."



And so it went like that, for a couple of hours, and I think that by the time the wine was gone, the apostles actually grasped what Joshua was saying to them. Then the begging started, as each of us pleaded for Joshua to give up the notion that he had to die to save the rest of us.



"Before this is finished," he said, "you will all have to deny me."



"No we won't," said Peter.



"You will deny me three times, Peter. I not only expect this, I command it. If they take you when they take me, then there is no one to take the good news to the people. Now, Judas, my friend, come here."



Judas went to Joshua, who whispered in his ear, then sent him back to his place at the table. "One of you will betray me this very night," said Joshua. "Won't you, Judas?"



"What?" Judas looked around at us, but when he saw no one coming to his defense, he bolted down the steps. Peter started after him, but Joshua caught the fisherman by the hair and yanked him back off of his feet.



"Let him go."



"But the high priest's palace isn't a furlong away," said Joseph of Arimathea. "If he goes there directly."



Joshua held his hand up for silence. "Biff, go directly to Simon's house and wait. Alone you can sneak by the palace without being seen. Tell Maggie and the others to wait for us. The rest of us will go through the city and through the Ben Hinnon valley so we don't have to pass the priest's palace. We'll meet you in Bethany."



I looked at Peter and Andrew. "You won't let him turn himself in?"



"Of course not."



I was off into the night, wondering even as I ran whether Joshua had changed his mind and was going to escape from Bethany into the Judean desert. I should have known right then that I'd been had. You think you can trust a guy, then he turns around and lies to you.



Simon answered the door and let me in. He held his finger to his lips, signalling me to be quiet. "Maggie and Martha are in the back. They're angry with you. All of you. Now they'll be angry with me for letting you in."



"Sorry," I said.



He shrugged. "What can they do? It's my house."



I went directly through the front room into a second room that opened off to bedchambers, the mikveh, and the courtyard where food was prepared. I heard voices coming from one of the bedchambers. When I walked in, Maggie looked up from braiding Martha's hair.



"So, you've come to tell me that it's done," she said. Tears welled up in her eyes and I felt as if I would break down with her if she started sobbing now.



"No," I said. "He and the others are on their way here. Through Ben Hinnon, so it will be a few hours. But I have a plan." I pulled the ying-yang amulet that Joy had given me out of my tunic and waved it before them.



"Your plan is to bribe Joshua with ugly jewelry?" asked Martha.



I pointed to the tiny stoppers on either side of the amulet. "No, my plan is to poison him."



I explained how the poison worked to Mary and Martha and then we waited, counting the time in our imaginations, watching in our mind's eyes as the apostles made their way through Jerusalem, out the Essene gate, into the steep valley of Ben Hinnon, where thousands of tombs had been carved into the rock, and where once a river had run, but now was only sage and cypress and thistles clinging to the crevices in the limestone. After several hours we went outside to wait in the street, then when the moon started down and the night made way into early morning, we saw a single figure coming from the west, not the south as we had expected. As he got closer I could tell from heavy shoulders and the moon shining on his bald pate that it was John.



"They took him," he said. "At Gethsemane. Annas and Caiphais came themselves, with Temple guards, and they took him."



Maggie ran into my arms and buried her face in my chest. I reached out and pulled Martha close as well.



"What was he doing at Gethsemane?" I said. "You were supposed to be coming here through Ben Hinnon."



"He only told you that."



"That bastard lied to me. So they arrested everyone?"



"No, the others are hiding not far from here. Peter tried to fight the guards, but Joshua stopped him. Joshua negotiated with the priests to let us go. Joseph came too, he helped talk them into letting the rest of us go."



"Joseph? Joseph betrayed him?"



"I don't know," said John. "Judas was the one that led them to Gethsemane. He pointed Joshua out to the guards. Joseph came later, when they were about to arrest the rest of us."



"Where did they take him?"



"To the palace of the high priest. That's all I know, Biff. I promise."



He sat down hard in the middle of the street and began to weep. Martha went to him and cradled his head to her breast.



Maggie looked up at me. "He knew you would fight. That's why he sent you here."



"The plan doesn't change," I said. "We just have to get him back so we can poison him."



John looked up from Martha's embrace. "Did you change sides when I wasn't here?"



Wednesday



At first light Maggie and I were pounding on Joseph's door. A servant let us in. When Joseph came out from his bedchamber I had to hold Maggie back to keep her from attacking him.



"You betrayed him!"



"I did not," said Joseph.



"John said you were with the priests," I said.



"I was. I followed them up to keep them from killing Joshua for trying to escape, or in self-defense, right there at Gethsemane."



"What do you mean, 'in self-defense'?"



"They want him dead, Maggie," Joseph said. "They want him dead, but they don't have the authority to execute him, don't you understand that? If I hadn't been there they could have murdered him and said that he'd attacked them first. The Romans are the only ones who have the authority to have someone killed."



"Herod had John the Baptist killed," I said. "There were no Romans involved in that."



"Jakan and his thugs stone people all of the time," Maggie said. "Without Roman approval."



"Think, you two. This is Passover week. The city is crawling with Romans watching for rebellious Jews. The entire Sixth Legion is here, plus all of Pilate's personal guard from Caesarea. Normally there'd only be a handful. The high priests, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisee council, even Herod will think twice before they do anything outside the letter of Roman law. Don't panic. There hasn't even been a trial in the Sanhedrin yet."



"When will there be a trial?"



"This afternoon, probably. They have to bring everyone in. The prosecution is gathering witnesses against Joshua."



"What about witnesses for him?" I asked.



"That's not how it works," said Joseph. "I'll speak for him, and so will my friend Nicodemus, but other than that Joshua will have to defend himself."



"Swell," Maggie said.



"Who is prosecuting him?"



"I thought you'd know," Joseph said, cringing slightly. "The one who started the Sanhedrin plots against Joshua the other two times, Jakan bar Iban."



Maggie whirled around and glared at me. "You should have killed him."



"Me? You had seventeen years to push the guy down the steps or something."



"There's still time," she said.



"That won't help Joshua now," said Joseph. "Just hope that the Romans won't hear his case."



"You sound as if he's already convicted," I said.



"I'll do my best." Joseph didn't sound very confident.



"Get us in to see him."



"And let them arrest the two of you? I don't think so. You stay here. You can have the upper rooms to yourselves. I'll come back or send word as soon as anything happens."



Joseph hugged Maggie and kissed her on the top of the head, then left the room to get dressed.



"Do you trust him?" Maggie said.



"He warned Joshua before when they wanted to kill him."



"I don't trust him."



Maggie and I waited all day in the upper room, jumping to our feet every time we heard footsteps going by in the street, until we were exhausted and shaking from worry. I asked one of Joseph's servant girls to go down to the palace of the high priest to see what was going on. She returned a short time later to report that the trial was still going on.



Maggie and I made a nest of the cushions under the wide arched window in the front, so we could hear the slightest noise coming from the street, but as night started to fall, the footsteps became fewer and farther between, the distant singing from the Temple faded, and we settled into each other's arms, a single lump of low, agonizing grief. Sometime after dark we made love together for the first time since the night before Joshua and I left for the Orient. All those years had passed, and yet it seemed familiar. That first time, so long ago, making love was a desperate way to share the grief we felt because we were each about to lose someone we loved. This time we were losing the same person. This time, we slept afterward.



Joseph of Arimathea didn't come home.



Thursday



It was Simon and Andrew who stormed up the steps to wake us Thursday morning. I threw my tunic over Maggie and jumped to my feet in just a loincloth. As soon as I saw Simon I felt the heat rise in my face.



"You treacherous bastard!" I was too angry to hit him. I just stood there screaming at him. "You coward!"



"It wasn't him," screamed Andrew in my ear.



"It wasn't me," said Simon. "I tried to fight the guards when they came to get Joshua. Peter and I both did."



"Judas was your friend. You and your Zealot bullshit!"



"He was your friend too."



Andrew pushed me away. "Enough! It wasn't Simon. I saw him face two guards with spears. Leave him be. We don't have time for your tantrum, Biff. Joshua is being flogged at the high priest's palace."



"Where's Joseph?" Maggie said. She'd dressed while I had been railing at Simon.



"He's gone on to the praetorium that Pilate set up at the Antonia Palace by the Temple."



"What the hell's he doing there if Joshua is being beaten at the palace in this end of the city?"



"That's where they'll take Joshua next. He was convicted of blasphemy, Biff. They want a death sentence. Pontius Pilate is the ruling authority in Judea. Joseph knows him, he's going to ask for Joshua's release."



"What do we do? What do we do?" I was starting to get hysterical. Since I could remember, my friendship with Joshua had been my anchor, my reason for being, my life; now it, he, was running toward destruction like a storm-driven ship to a reef, and I couldn't think of a thing to do but panic. "What do we do? What do we do?" I panted, the breath refusing to fill my lungs. Maggie grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.



"You have a plan, remember." She tugged on the amulet around my neck.



"Right, right," I said, taking a deep breath. "Right. The plan." I grabbed my tunic and slipped it over my head. Maggie helped me wrap the sash.



"I'm sorry, Simon," I said.



He forgave me with the wave of a hand. "What do we do?"



"If they're taking Joshua to the praetorium, that's where we go. If Pilate releases him then we'll need to get him out of there. There's no telling what Josh will do to get them to kill him."



We were waiting along with a huge crowd outside the Antonia Palace when the Temple guards brought Joshua to the front gates. The high priest, Caiaphas, wearing his blue robes and with a jewel-encrusted chest piece, led the procession. His father, Annas, who had been the high priest previously, followed right behind. A column of guards surrounded Joshua in the middle of the procession. We could just see him amid the guards, and I could tell that someone had put a fresh tunic on him, but there were stripes of blood soaking through the back. He looked as if he was in a trance.



There was a great deal of posturing and shouting between the Temple guards, and from somewhere in the procession Jakan came forward and started arguing with the soldiers as well. It was obvious that the Romans were not going to let the Temple guards enter the praetorium, so the transfer of the prisoner was going to take place there at the gate or not at all. I was measuring whether I could sneak through the crowd, snap Jakan's neck, and sneak back out without jeopardizing our plan when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked around to see Joseph of Arimathea.



"At least it wasn't a Roman scourge they lashed him with. He took thirty-nine lashes, but it was just leather, not the lead-tipped whip that the Romans use. That would have killed him."



"Where were you? What took so long?"



"The prosecution took forever. Jakan went on half the night, taking testimony from witnesses who had obviously never even heard of Joshua, let alone seen any crime."



"What about the defense?" asked Maggie.



"Well, I put forth a defense of good deeds, but it was so overwhelmed by the accusations that it was lost in the noise. Joshua didn't say a word in his own defense. They asked him if he was the Son of God and he said yes. That confirmed the blasphemy charge. It's all they needed, really."



"What happens now? Did you talk to Pilate?"



"I did."



"And?"