"One Bears the Cross": The Story of a Rejected Disciple of Jesus of Nazareth

BOOK ONE

Israel

Young Jesus  

I am old, yet I have so much to say and so little time. Perhaps I should start from my childhood. How else can I tell you about Jesus and my lost friend, Judas Iscariot? I grew up with them as boys. We played and argued and I know—I alone know—that what I am about to tell you starts from my crippled foot. I was a boy then. I am no longer crippled; so, how can I begin my story unless I speak of my broken foot?

My father wanted me to become a lawyer as I had one foot completely turned around. Only Rabbis, lawyers and tax collectors wore cloaks long enough to cover the feet, he said, and if I wanted to get ahead in the world I must first cover up my abnormality. How wrong he was. I found that anyone born with a deformity is humiliated. The human race has little tolerance for anyone born with a clubbed foot. Much as one tries to disguise it, people always know. Covert smiles and sweet greetings are a sure sign that they know.

I remember something else my father told me. He said if I did not stop going around with that lazy, dreamy Jesus I would become nothing but a beggar.

As a boy I never talked back to my father moreso as I liked to play with Jesus. Jesus did not talk much but he did listen a great deal. This was a comfort as my friends made life miserable for me pulling on my long cloak and tripping me so my deformed foot would dangle to their squeals and merriment. Jesus never taunted me. Further, he never offered platitudes about the will of Yahweh being the cause of my misfortune. To the contrary, Jesus was the only one of my childhood friends who never made me feel that there ever was anything wrong with me at all. He accepted me as I was. I enjoyed being with him. He apparently enjoyed being with me. Had I ever stood up to my father he would have made me stay away from Jesus for sure.

Then one day an odd thing happened. Come on, run! Jesus said to me. I knew he was not mocking me. Jesus was my friend.

I can’t. You know I can’t. I said trying to leap forward to show him.

Of course you can. Come on!

I did. I don’t know why but I tried. I ran, or tried to run. I can’t, I said running after him. I stumbled and fell as I knew I would. He stopped to look upon me. I got up. He turned around and started to run again. I followed him as best I could; and then in a gully filled with rocks it happened. I fell down. With a cry I knew I had broken my foot, my lamed foot. The pain was horrible and cruel; my foot was flapping loose and completely turned around facing forward. Jesus ripped his sleeve into strips and bound my foot tightly.

Don’t, don’t, I yelled in pain, and dropped unconscious.

When again I opened my eyes Jesus was by my side holding my foot. The pain was gone but I could not walk at all.

You will not be able to walk for some time, he said. Lean on me. I will take you home. You will be alright.

It was then I noticed that Jesus was suffering pain instead of me. He could hardly walk at all himself, as if the pain had been transferred from my foot to his. His face was tight, he was seething and his eyes were closed. But he took me home.

Father silently accepted my explanation of how I broke my foot. Instead of scolding me he took me to the Egyptian physician of my aunt Rebecca who immediately bathed my foot in balsams and spices and rebound my foot as he had found it. My aunt Rebecca paid the Egyptian, as she was the rich sister of my father and could afford it, but she charged my father for all the medications and demanded that my father repay her within two years.

Needless to state, my father forbade my ever playing with Jesus again. I kept my promise. I never played with him again; but I did go to visit him once at his father’s carpenter shop to tell him about the wonderful physician who had cured my foot, turning it completely around like everyone else’s.

Judas Iscariot  

Soon after I regained my strength my father decided to send me to school in Jerusalem under the care of his good friend, Rabbi Ben Joseph. As I like to read and argue, my father told me an education could provide me with political advancement in the court of Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee. If that was his thought, he is wrong. Antipas is a puppet of Tiberius Caesar. If political advancement was the goal, I would have sought it in Rome, not Jerusalem. In Rome, fat and degenerate as it is, I would have learned to be a master, not a slave; for Herod Antipas is merely a client king of Caesar, call him what you will.

Then, perhaps, my mother may have hoped that I would become a Rabbi because I argued Levitical law and cursed like a prophet when I didn’t get my way. Dear woman. How parents can misjudge their children. My true reason was that I wanted to be near my friend, Judas Iscariot.

I had first met Judas on a trip to Judea, in Kerioth, where my four brothers had gone in search of the finest ram to breed to our ewes.

You’ll find no rams in Judea, you stupid Galileans, Judas said to my brothers. Any fool know that the best sheep in the world are found in Scythia and no place else.

My brothers would have clubbed Judas were it not for an explosion of my own wrath. You half-caste whelp of a Samaritan dog, grasping Judas by the throat We are not stupid. You hear?

My brothers were amazed and said Well, I’ll be fried in boar’s oil, one of my brothers said. Look at Barsabbas, will you? Who would have thought the skinny bookworm was a warrior. Give it to him! Lay it on, boy. Lay it on!

But Judas was not one to be taken by the likes of me, not by the beard of Moses he wasn’t. Quickly he tied me up in my own robe but instead of beating my nose in, as he could have, he started to argue.

I’ll give you five gold pieces for every ram you find in Judea, he said. Better still. I’ll give you every ram, he said shaking me to the marrow of the bones of my toes, every ewe, every ass!"

My brothers eyed the scene and laughed.

You will? I managed to squeak in reply.

Sure. He let go of me. My father owns half of everything you see. I am his sole heir. You don’t have to buy anything around here if you find just one ram. Understand? Arghh! Galileans! None of you have the intelligence of a low born flea. Scythia is where you go for sheep, not Judea.

I don’t remember what else Judas said, but I do remember one thing; there was only one man in the whole world more insufferable than me: Judas. It appeared to be his fashion to walk about the warm countryside in search of disorders. After all, had we not come unto the land of Judea in peaceful search of commerce only to wind up being called fleas and asses, and stupid ones at that?

Judas later found himself in Jerusalem, studying with my own Rabbi. But before that, since our first encounter, we had exchanged letters; for I was not one to come out second best in any argument. I intended to excoriate him with knowledge seeing that physically he was the stronger of the two of us. But even in his letters he confounded me; every trick of invective rhetoric he would puncture with logic and cutting anger. He asserted that this world is a mistake and that each man in it is a feckless trek from here to nowhere.

Men talk of peace but only think of bettering themselves at the expense of others. There is no morality in living; every day follows night, inexorably grinding men until they become dust and oblivious as all the other debris of nature, he once wrote to me.

It was not much use arguing with him, to make him angry and lose control of himself. He was always angry. I never met the likes of such a man. Angry though he was, he seemed to be in control of any situation. In school he was no better.

Ha, He once said. Now you will try to convince me with fairy tales of the prophets; that it was Daniel who ate the lions. Posh!

I finally resolved to stop arguing with him and started listening. I was startled to discover how little I knew and that the more I studied the more fathomless the pit of knowledge became. Judas! He would surely be the cause of my death unless I got the best of him somehow. But I could not find a weak spot.

All the passions of men lead but to his own ruin, Judas said.

That is untrue.

It is? Then how do you explain that the beast in man routs the kindness out of him? How do you explain that the wicked prosper, the good don’t; that son turns against father, Jew against Jew? Hate and Power, money and force, you have enough of these and you will become master of the world.

I don’t believe it.

It is not what you believe; what is, is. Don’t be a stupid Galilean all your life. Use your mind. Look around you. That Tretarch of ours, for example. A more devious, demoniac wretch never breathed; a son of a father ten times married who murdered his wives. Is it untrue?

No.

Then it is not what you believe or what you hope should be. Believe me, Barsabbas, all the Tretarchs of this world come from bloody wombs.

As I said before, I stopped arguing with Judas. I admired his mind. But I considered him wrong, completely wrong, although I could not prove it. Goodness, kindness, beauty and integrity; without them, life is not worth living. But tell Judas that and he will reply, One has to be good and honest because it is convenient to be good and honest. Otherwise the world would be peopled with thieves and murderers and that would be impractical.

*

My room was on top of a small house by an olive grove. I liked the smell of fresh mown grass because it reminded me of home; so, once I was lodged conveniently close to school, I took walks about the small farms that bordered the school so I could breathe the old familiar smells of home. I longed to hear the cock crow. As I walked I would allow my thoughts to ramble whichever way they chose. How to answer this man Judas? There is a God, the one God of my fathers, I thought. But even in my own thoughts I could hear the strident voice of Judas laughing at my hypocrisy: Nothing ever leaves this world. It merely changes form. Burn a log to cinders, but the log remains here as smoke, ashes, acrid particles hovering in the air. This smoke and ashes in turn become a part of the air and soil which gives birth to new forms of life every day. This and nothing more. There is no God.

A terrible man, my lonely friend Judas. How could I make him feel instead of think? How could I make him love instead of hate? Then one day I succeeded. It was a small success.

I mentioned my formerly crippled foot to him one day and Judas, for once, remained silent, without an answer.

I want to meet this physician of yours, he said.

The physician of my aunt Rebecca? I replied. Oh, he died years ago.

Judas kept on walking by my side silent. No, not that one. The other one; that son of the carpenter, your playmate, the one you call Joshua the Nazorean, he finally said.

Judas Thaddeus  

Many years passed. With the coming of Spring, the students of Rabbi Ben Joseph were allowed to return home for the Passover. This holiday is always a joyous one for me as it is invariable marked by celebrations and family reunions.

As I prepared to leave for home on this, my last Spring in school, I was particularly cheerful and eager because my years of preparation, I felt, had equipped me to handle the problems of living with a minimum of effort.

Fortunately, through my acquaintance with the son of a steward of Herod, I managed to get appointed tax collector for Galilee. This is a coveted position because it is lucrative; but it is also an unenvied position because all people hate to pay taxes; and as servants of Rome the Jews hate Publicans, as that is what Jewish agents are called.

Judas Iscariot had gone to Judea. But before departing, both of us promised that we would keep in contact with the others. Judas was confident that he would soon be the richest man in Judea as his father was aging fast. When his father died Judas said he would need me to handle his accounts and collections, no doubt to give him more time to harass people as that, so it seemed, was the quickest way for Judas to become noticed by others. Perhaps that is what Judas was seeking from life; to become noticed. If that in fact was his purpose he was most successful. There wasn’t one student in school who did not at one time or another want to stone him. But Judas, even at this early stage in his life, seemed to be welcoming death; he could find no meaning to life.

In a way, I was glad to be going home to get ways from Judas as well as from Rabbi Ben Joseph. A young man must think of things other than the development of his mind. I did not believe my father would particularly welcome me, however, because once he eventually discovered that his curly headed son had come home not only to celebrate the Passover but to count his sheep, there was to be much wailing in his house. But a revenue agent, in order to win promotion, must first prove himself by taxing his own. This I proposed to do. My father would, I am sure, protest my new found zeal, but this, at least, I had learned from Judas: first be honest with yourself.

It was with mixed emotions that I was going home. But, frankly, my own family came last in my thoughts. What I was most interested in and my first thought was Rhoda, daughter of James.

When I first reached Galilee I left my bag of clothes at the nearest inn and set off with light heart at seeing Rhoda again.

I once thought Galilee dull and colorless, filled with long faced shepherds in rough robes. But now that I see the waterfronts at night and the narrow streets lit with torches, I have changed my mind. I now know that should I choose to