Continued from Tuesday
3. So you could imagine our interest when rumors flew up the Jordan that a man named John was washing people in the River Jordan, not far from Jerusalem. He was calling Israel to repentance. God would restore us as a people, he preached, if we would just turn to the Lord with our whole heart.
Prophets like this one didn't come along very often. There were of course stories of the prophets from long ago, Elijah, Elisha. Even though they mainly prophesied in Samaria, we considered them our prophets because they were from the north, like we were.
About a hundred fifty years ago there had been the Teacher of Righteousness. He was a famous Essene like this John the baptizer. You didn't see Essenes everyday. They tended to live together in small, closed communities like the one at the Dead Sea. I suppose that made John all the more intriguing.
Then there was the way he called out Herod Antipas. Antipas had divorced his wife so that he could marry the wife of his half-brother, a woman named Herodias. She had divorced her husband as well. The situation was abominable in so many ways. First, it was not permitted for a wife to divorce her husband. Then for a man to have his brother's wife! The divorce of his first wife would eventually lead to a war.
Apart from God's intervention, a man like John would not last long. When you speak out against such powerful men, death is never far away. Several of us felt an urgency to see him. On the one hand, we did want to believe that God was about to do something special. Then again, John might soon be dead.
4. John proclaimed that God was about to send a true king. How subversive! If Herod the Great were still around, he would kill John just for saying such a thought in private, let alone in public! At the moment, we did not have a king imposed on us by the Romans. We had that vile Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who brought idols into the city of Jerusalem.
We wanted to believe John, that God was about to raise up and anoint someone to restore the kingdom to Israel. Imagine what that would be like, to live at the time when God raised up a messiah to restore Israel! John was "baptizing" people at exactly the same spot where Joshua led us into the Promised Land. It was like he was preparing the way for God to bring us into the land again, just as Isaiah prophesied about Israel returning from Babylon.
If we would only repent of our sins as a people, God would forgive us. God would restore us. There were plenty of washings, especially in Judea. There were miqvaot, baptismal pools, all over the place. But John's washing was different. He wasn't calling us to wash over and over again. He was calling us to wash once as a people, together. Then God would raise up the anointed one!
Showing posts with label Jesus novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesus novel. Show all posts
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Jesus Novel 1
I thought I might blog a novel about Jesus, narrated from the perspective of James the son of Alphaeus, who of course was the first of the apostles to die.
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1. The life of a fisherman is very predictable. You get up early. You fish. You take your catch to the market. You take what you get and trade for what you need for your own family. You eat a meal and sit with the other men of the village until dark, telling stories. Then you get up the next day and do it all over again.
My family lived in Capernaum, on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee. My father Zebedee did well enough with fishing. He had his own boat, along with a steady crew of workers. There was my brother John and myself. Then two other brothers from Capernaum also worked with us, Simon and Andrew.
It was very rare that something interrupted this flow of life. Rarely did the outside world intrude on this peaceful world in an insignificant part of the Roman Empire. Sure, there was that revolutionary Judas from Gamala, who collected a band of discontents and tried to defeat the Romans. He revolted when Quirinius took a census to raise taxes. He ended up dead.
Even Jerusalem was far off. I don't think I had ever seen a Pharisee in Galilee. Why bother with this insignificant country to the north, a three days walk? I had never even been to Samaria and it was close enough. A person like me might go their whole life and scarcely go further than a few stadia from home.
The priests and some of the leaders of the synagogue went to Jerusalem at least once a year for one of the festivals. Good for them. The rest of us lived off their stories. One day I would go up for a Passover, but there was plenty of fishing to keep us busy in the meantime.
2. We thrived on stories. Every night we told the same old stories over and over again. Remember when Simon got his tunic caught in the net? We grasped at any bit of news. Remember when the toll collector at the Jordan got chewed out by his boss? What was his name? Levi?
Most of the time, there wasn't much new to tell. We could finish each other's punchlines. The same stories led to the next. Occasionally there was some new tidbit from Bethsaida or Chorazin. Still less frequently was some news from Jerusalem, still less of the broader Roman Empire.
Occasionally there was talk of revolution against the Romans. We grumbled about them all the time. Judas had failed. He showed himself to be a false messiah when he died. But he called to mind how God had brought victory against the Syrians in the days of the Maccabees. One day, we believed, he would anoint another man to throw off Roman rule.
3. So you could imagine our interest when rumors flew up the Jordan that there was a man named John washing people in the River Jordan, not far from Jerusalem...
__________________
1. The life of a fisherman is very predictable. You get up early. You fish. You take your catch to the market. You take what you get and trade for what you need for your own family. You eat a meal and sit with the other men of the village until dark, telling stories. Then you get up the next day and do it all over again.
My family lived in Capernaum, on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee. My father Zebedee did well enough with fishing. He had his own boat, along with a steady crew of workers. There was my brother John and myself. Then two other brothers from Capernaum also worked with us, Simon and Andrew.
It was very rare that something interrupted this flow of life. Rarely did the outside world intrude on this peaceful world in an insignificant part of the Roman Empire. Sure, there was that revolutionary Judas from Gamala, who collected a band of discontents and tried to defeat the Romans. He revolted when Quirinius took a census to raise taxes. He ended up dead.
Even Jerusalem was far off. I don't think I had ever seen a Pharisee in Galilee. Why bother with this insignificant country to the north, a three days walk? I had never even been to Samaria and it was close enough. A person like me might go their whole life and scarcely go further than a few stadia from home.
The priests and some of the leaders of the synagogue went to Jerusalem at least once a year for one of the festivals. Good for them. The rest of us lived off their stories. One day I would go up for a Passover, but there was plenty of fishing to keep us busy in the meantime.
2. We thrived on stories. Every night we told the same old stories over and over again. Remember when Simon got his tunic caught in the net? We grasped at any bit of news. Remember when the toll collector at the Jordan got chewed out by his boss? What was his name? Levi?
Most of the time, there wasn't much new to tell. We could finish each other's punchlines. The same stories led to the next. Occasionally there was some new tidbit from Bethsaida or Chorazin. Still less frequently was some news from Jerusalem, still less of the broader Roman Empire.
Occasionally there was talk of revolution against the Romans. We grumbled about them all the time. Judas had failed. He showed himself to be a false messiah when he died. But he called to mind how God had brought victory against the Syrians in the days of the Maccabees. One day, we believed, he would anoint another man to throw off Roman rule.
3. So you could imagine our interest when rumors flew up the Jordan that there was a man named John washing people in the River Jordan, not far from Jerusalem...
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