It struck me that while I had come in search of one particular beggar, here was one also in need of meeting Jesus. Perhaps I had been brought to this moment for his sake. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Jabez of Antioch,” he replied.
“Have you heard of Jesus of Nazareth?”
“The charlatan from Galilee? Is that him over there?”
I looked across the plaza. On both flanks of Jesus’ audience were knots of hecklers: Pharisees in tall headdresses and brocade robes in one group; austere, thin-lipped Sadducees in another; a file of scribes, scholars in the interpretation of religious legal precepts, in a third.
“I assure you, he’s very real,” I corrected.
Jabez made a sour face. “Real or not, and I don’t admit he is, he’s offended the authorities. ‘Have nothing good to say about that Jesus,’ they told me, ‘or out you go.’ You understand my position, sir?”
My frustration was growing even greater. “Wouldn’t you rather be healed? At least see what he can do for you?”
“And lose my livelihood?” Jabez exclaimed. “Would you step aside, sir? The kind gentleman behind you is offering me a penny. God bless you, sir. God bless you.”
Disappointed, I drifted back across the courtyard. At the back of the crowd, Temple police were accosting listeners, demanding names, and making notes on wax tablets. Many of the curious onlookers moved away under the stern, disapproving glares.
I arrived in time to hear Jesus repeat the core theme of his message: “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
A man at the back of the crowd shouted, “I am a descendant of Abraham!” He tapped his barrel-shaped chest with a meaty thumb. “I’ve never been a slave to anyone. What do you mean, I can be set free? I am free!”
Looking right at the man, Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth: everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”
The critic dropped his head and blushed, then scowled when the crowd laughed.
Resuming, Jesus said, “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet here you are, ready to kill me because you have no room for my Word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, but you do what you have heard from your father.”
“Abraham is our father!” the heavyset man roared with exasperation, recovering from his momentary shame.
“That’s right!” another heckler added. “Who do you think you are, going on about our father?”
“What are you trying to say?” demanded a Levite in the robes of his duty at the Temple.
There were a number of opponents planted in the group surrounding the steps. Some were there merely to heckle. Others were present to prod Jesus into making incautious remarks for which he could be arrested … or worse.
Suddenly I was afraid for him. If they accused him of blasphemy they might try to stone him. The authorities might kill him and blame it on an angry mob, even if the first stone was flung by someone paid by Lord Caiaphas. I hoped he would be cautious, judicious with his choice of words.
“If you were Abraham’s children,” Jesus said quietly. By lowering his tone, he forced the mockers to be still as well to hear what he said next. “If you were children of Abraham, you would do the things Abraham did.”
What did that mean? Abraham was known for a life of faith and obedience, even against all human reason … even to the point of trusting a God who asked him to sacrifice his only son.
“As it is,” Jesus continued, “you are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the things your own father does.”
The connection to the depth of Abraham’s faith was overshadowed by the last challenge. A growling rose from the rabbi’s opponents. Even his closest followers looked uncomfortable.
“We are not illegitimate children!” challenged a Pharisee. “The only Father we have is God himself!”
“If God were your father,” Jesus replied, “you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say: you belong to your father … the devil!”
There was such a roar from the crowd that Jesus’ words were drowned out. The biggest disciple, Peter, and two muscled fishermen, stood to form a protective screen between Jesus and the mob, but the Teacher pushed them aside.
He did not let up. “He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. He who belongs to God must do what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
As the rank of Temple police closed in, the rings of listeners scooted out of the way and the crowd started to dissolve.
Someone shouted an insult, “You’re a Samaritan, aren’t you?”
Another amplified the abuse: “You’re a Samaritan, and you’re demon possessed!”
“I am not possessed,” Jesus called back calmly, “but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. I tell you the truth: if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”
That statement rocked me to my core: Never see death? What did that mean? Even if Jesus was a good man, a fine teacher, a great philosopher, and a gifted healer, who could say such an outrageous thing? My wife and child were beyond that very veil. Never see death?
Who was this man?
Jesus’ critics verbalized and amplified my doubts. “Now we know you are demon possessed! Abraham died—”
“That’s right, and so did all the prophets!”
“Yet you claim that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death?”
“Are you greater than our father Abraham?”
This was very, very near dangerous ground. Making oneself out to be greater than Abraham was almost blasphemous and certainly sacrilegious, given the reverence in which Father Abraham was held.
“Who do you think you are, anyway?”
“Yes, tell us! Who?”
Jesus made some other remarks I could not catch amid the bellows of rage and animosity, but then some words again came through clearly: “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad.”
“What?”
“Preposterous!”
“This is a madman!”
“Lock him up for his own good!”
“You’re not even fifty years old, but you claim to know Abraham?”
“You’ve seen him? He lived … twice a thousand years ago! What are you saying?”
What was he saying? My heart was pounding in my chest.
Was Jesus about to be stoned or gathered up bodily and thrown from the pinnacle of the Temple to the rocks below?
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said.
In other words, listen and I’ll answer your question. Give me a chance to speak. Hear me out. Pay attention.
“I tell you the truth …”
And then he spoke the fatal, unmistakable words, words that echo down through time, ringing in my ears to this very day. The unequivocal statement that Jesus was himself divine. No good teacher, no wise philosopher would ever, ever speak these words in Hebrew: “Before Abraham was, I AM.”
He had said it! The very title almighty God spoke when Moses asked by what name the God of the children of Abraham chose to identify himself. God said: “Say this to the Israelites: I AM THAT I AM. Tell them, I AM has sent me to you.”
My worst fears were being realized. With a collective howl of rage, while families scattered in all directions, scribes and Pharisees and Temple officials clawed out cobblestones. Prying loose the pavement with their fingertips, they prepared to stone Jesus to death! Jesus had saved my sister from this very fate.
Who would save him now?
What could his small band of followers do to protect him? What could they do but die with him?
“Where did he go?” the burly heckler demanded.
There was a rush up the steps of the Treasury, but Jesus was not inside.
“Toward N
icanor! After him!”
But Jesus was not by the bronze gates either.
Somehow he had slipped away.1
Each of the angry enemies stood pivoting in place until, feeling foolish, they dropped their clods and rocks and broken chunks of tile and departed.
Baffled and exhausted, so did I. No one could assert Jesus never claimed to be divine. I saw it. I heard it. He was almost stoned to death because of it!
Chapter 16
I wandered about Jerusalem, lost in my thoughts. Who was this man from Nazareth? Who, in his right mind, would claim he was older than Abraham? That he was, in fact, divine, equal to the I AM?
I also reviewed what my own eyes had seen: the transformation of water into wine, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, walking on the surface of the sea and calming the storm … bringing Jairus’s daughter back to life again.
Surely he was more than a charlatan. All these events could not be staged, could they?
I heard his teaching. I had seen the transformation of my sister Mary’s heart—itself a greater accomplishment than changing water into wine. I already believed him to be a prophet sent by God.
What was the phrase used by the prophets to describe when God appeared to men as a man? The Angel of the Lord—that was it. He had visited Father Abraham, wrestled with Jacob, appeared to Joshua, guided Gideon, proved himself to Samson’s father. He was Almighty God, referred to as an angel but looking human.
But Jesus was human. I had eaten with him, tasted wine with him, walked beside him when he had to stop and pull a pebble from his sandal.
What could it mean?
I scarcely knew where I was going and did not know where Jesus had gone. Perhaps he had already returned to Bethany.
Eventually I discovered I had crossed the viaduct into the western city. I needed someone to talk with, and that sent me to find Nicodemus. If there was anyone with whom I could pour out my confusion, it was the learned Pharisee who was also wrestling with the same issues.
As it happened, I located Nicodemus and Jesus together. Deep in conversation and accompanied by a ring of Pharisees not yet convinced Jesus was more than a fake, they were outside the wall of Nicodemus’s home, near a famous gardenia bush now grown as large as a tree.
I also found Peniel at the same moment. The blind man sat in the shade of the gardenia, his cloak spread out to gather alms, should any be offered.
One of the Pharisees singled out Peniel to challenge Jesus, to see what the rabbi would say. It was a familiar argument that made me cringe to hear: “Being born blind is about the worst thing that could happen to anyone. So who sinned? This man or his parents?”
What response would Jesus make? I felt myself holding my breath. Much, it seemed, depended on his reply.
Stooping beside Peniel, Jesus touched the beggar’s forehead, brushing back a lock of the young man’s hair. It seemed as if the two of them communicated without speaking. Then Jesus said: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. This happened—”Jesus straightened and answered his challenger by addressing Peniel—”this happened so the works of God might be displayed in your life. As long as it is day, I must do the works of him who sent me.”
The antagonistic Pharisee bristled visibly at the word work. I remembered suddenly that it was the Sabbath day. Nicodemus put out a restraining hand. Let Jesus continue, the gesture suggested.
Jesus knelt again, stirred up a pile of earth under the gardenia bush with his fingers, and spat in it. As he mixed it into mud, he said, “Night is coming, when no one can work. While I AM in the world, I AM the light of the world.”
There it was again! Claiming the authority of God, claiming equality with God!
With a gentle touch, Jesus applied the clay first to one of Peniel’s eyelids and then to the other. He took his time, smoothing away wrinkles and folds until he was satisfied with the workmanship.
Standing, Jesus brushed off his hands. As if he had no audience, he spoke to Peniel alone. “Now go. Wash in the Pool of Siloam.”1
Peniel rose to his feet, trembling. Putting out a shaking hand to locate Nicodemus’s wall, the boy took two hesitant steps, then steadied himself and walked purposefully away.
I suddenly realized he might need assistance locating the pool of which Jesus spoke. It was below the Temple Mount toward the south. “Peniel,” I called after him. “Can I …”
It was Jesus who touched me on the arm. “Let him go. I want you to stay with me.”
We chatted together for about two hours, sitting in Nicodemus’s courtyard. It was an amiable discussion, despite the efforts of a couple Pharisees to catch Jesus saying something in opposition to the Law of Moses. They were clumsy, and he was clever.
Toward the end of the visit, one grew exasperated and accused Jesus of trying to become famous and popular with the common people.
Jesus replied, “I am not seeking glory for myself. But there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me.”
The Pharisee harrumphed at these words, and it looked like there would be another explosion when an out-of-breath messenger tumbled into Nicodemus’s yard with a summons. “Master Nicodemus, you must come at once. Joseph of Arimathea asks for you.”
“Where and for what purpose?” Nicodemus returned. “You see I have guests.”
Truthfully the courier’s eyes bulged when he recognized Jesus, so he stammered and said, “There is an urgent meeting of the Pharisee brotherhood in the Chamber of Hewn Stone.”
“And the subject of this urgent meeting?”
“I don’t …” The messenger cast a worried glance between Jesus and Nicodemus as if unsure whether he was violating a confidence.
“Speak plainly,” Nicodemus urged. “We are all friends here.”
Visibly swallowing his nervousness, the messenger answered, “There is a man … ” Stopping, he corrected himself. “It has been reported that a man born blind …”
“Go on, man, out with it!”
“This blind man … can now see! He says he was healed today, on the Sabbath! He is being brought to our council to answer questions about how it happened. We need to investigate whether it’s fraud or sacrilege!”
Nicodemus muttered under his breath, “And those are the only two responses the learned council can imagine?” He stood, dismissing the courier with a curt, “Tell Joseph I will come at once.” To me he added, “You should come and witness this, David. I would like someone besides myself to hear and report fairly.” Next he faced Jesus but said nothing.
With a shrug, Jesus offered, “I don’t think my presence will be wanted at your council, friend Nicodemus. We will visit further later.”
“Indeed we will … Lord.”
When Nicodemus and I reached the Chamber of Hewn Stone on the Temple Mount, an uproar was already in progress. Peniel, eyes wide open with bewilderment, was at the center of an inquisition.
Eyes … wide … open!
Astonishment overwhelmed me! In place of wizened flaps of skin covering useless, flattened sockets, bright eyes sparkled and gleamed. Like a bird in flight, Peniel’s gaze flitted from ornament to ornament, lamp to lamp, tapestry to chair to mosaic tile to the face of the man in front of him.
From that moment on, Peniel concentrated his study on faces, as if he were searching for someone.
But how could someone who had never, ever, seen anyone’s face before possibly know when he had located the one he sought?
“Who are you really?” one of the Pharisees demanded.
“I’m Peniel, the potter’s son,” the boy responded. “I beg at Nicanor Gate.”
“Liar!” another shouted in Peniel’s face. “That fellow was born blind! Since the world began, no one has ever opened the eyes of a man born blind!”
Peniel shrugged. He was not belligerent, but neither was he intimidated. “And yet I am he.”
“Perpetrating a religious
fraud is a crime akin to stealing,” the first interrogator bellowed. “Or else it’s blasphemy. Now which are you guilty of?”
“Neither. I have been blind all my life … until today. Here in the room with me are my parents and some of my neighbors. They all know me. They know I’ve always been blind.”
“Then how do you explain the change?”
Peniel reflected before answering simply, “A man put mud on my eyes. I washed, and now I see.”
“It’s a hoax,” the first questioner muttered.
“And it’s sacrilege,” the second intoned. “Healing on a Sabbath? Whoever did this, he can’t be from God. He doesn’t keep the Sabbath. Sabbath-breaker! Lawbreaker!”
Peniel closed his newly functioning eyes. He stood completely still. He had retreated, it seemed to me, into a place of safety in familiar darkness. Out here in the light was beauty but also anger.
Peniel had been born blind. Through no fault of his own, he had lived cut off from much of the world. He had lived a gracious, gentle life, bearing up under a weight that would have crushed a guilty man, let alone an innocent one.
And now that he was healed?
Peniel was still not guilty of anything. He had not caused the healing. He had not demanded that anyone break the Sabbath laws. Blind or healed, Peniel was still guilty of nothing yet judged by the Pharisees to be guilty!
If the veins in the necks of the Pharisees had not bulged so badly already, I would have laughed at them with scorn! How could they be so completely wrong on both arguments? The evidence that Peniel had been blind and now could see was right before their willfully blind eyes!
So their alternate challenge was, “Even if this is true, it’s still a sin! It should not have been performed on a Sabbath!”
One was a deliberate, stubborn refusal to face facts.
The other was arrogant, self-serving self-righteousness.
Nicodemus was even more incensed than me. He roughly shouldered between the two inquisitors and planted himself in front of the boy. Leaning close to Peniel’s ear, he said reassuringly, “Peniel. Open your eyes.”