Bright Dark Madonna. Elizabeth Cunningham

Israel. Or at least there is no agreement about changing that. That’s what’s so different, so precarious now. We apostles have to make decisions together, based on the scriptures and his teachings. Right now I am included in everything.”

      “So what you’re saying is—”

      “Don’t screw it up for me,” she concluded with admirable brevity.

      “Will you baptize them, then?”

      “Yes, if they are Jews.”

      “I’m sure they are.” I didn’t bother to tell Mary that if they weren’t before, they certainly would be now at the prospect of a good meal. “So let’s go get some water. Because I know one thing for sure, Jesus would be seriously pissed off if we turned anyone away hungry. He had a thing about that. Remember? ‘In as much as you have done it unto one of these the least of my sistren…’”

      “Brethren, I believe he said. Sistren is not a word, Mary. But yes, you’re right. When we fed that huge crowd in Galilee no one cared who was Jewish and who wasn’t or who had been baptized by John or by Jesus. Sometimes you actually make sense, Mary. And of course you knew him, well, intimately.”

      I could feel her blush, and I wondered if she was still a virgin or if perhaps she and Philip (her only intellectual equal) might have tangled over something other than interpretation of obscure passages in Leviticus.

      “That’s why I wish you could be at the meetings. They, we, need to hear what you have to say.”

      “All right, I will come if you want me to, Mary. It’s just that I get tired so early these days, and the meetings do tend to go on and on.”

      “You didn’t understand me, Mary.” She paused and turned to face me. “You missed so much when you were in Bethany. Now you can’t come to the meetings, not any more, not unless you convert and accept baptism. The men are immovable on that point. I wish you would become a Jew. For my sake, for the Christ’s sake.”

      I wish she wouldn’t have put it that way. For Jesus’s sake. How could I refuse him?

      “I’ll think about it, Mary.”

      “Good.” She handed me a basin, and began to draw water from the house cistern, for only pure rainwater would do for ritual purifications. “Let’s go baptize some whores.”

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      TRUE CONFESSIONS

      IN THOSE EARLY DAYS before the word Christian came into use, following the Way was not for the faint of heart. There were no confessionals with doors and screens to cover the sinner’s shamed face. There was no general mumbled apology with the priest blithely absolving the whole congregation with a few ritual words and the sign of the cross in the air with a wave of his hand in the dim, musty air of ecclesia. Instead, every week before Shabbat eve feast, the whole ecclesia gathered to air its sins in public.

      Not a bad idea in theory; at Temple Magdalen people who had a grievance against each other were invited to sing their conflicts, impromptu operettas which usually resulted in everyone, especially the aggrieved, rolling in the aisles. But at Temple Magdalen conflict was conflict; we liked to resolve it if we could, but we were practical rather than moral. We did not expect people to perfect themselves, just to get over themselves and get on with the business at hand, whatever it was. And at our Shabbats the business was pleasure. Eat, drink, tell stories, dance till you couldn’t remember why you were mad at anyone anyway.

      The public confessions at the ecclesia were much more somber. Everyone gathered, lining three walls of the courtyard. The apostles assembled together on the fourth side, not exactly a judge and jury, more like elders, or as they called themselves, deacons—the literal meaning of which is servant, though personally I would rather have a servant soak my feet than extract a confession. Whatever you want to call them, they presided over the gathering, though they also participated, confessing in minutiae, perhaps to set an example, things I really didn’t think I needed to know. Too Much Information, so to speak. They were also skilled at the sort of confession that is really a scantily veiled accusation.

      “I confess that I committed the sin of anger in my heart, which our Master said was as bad as murder, when the other night brother so and so helped himself to more bread without offering it to anyone else first, and he really ate pretty much the whole loaf, except the heel, which he put back on the table and no one wanted it by then, and I might add he drinks rather more wine that he should, which is also a sin, isn’t it, although of course it is not my sin, and I am not here to accuse anyone….”

      To make matters worse for the pregnant (which is to say me) these longwinded confessions, repentances (lots of prostrating, the origin perhaps of punitive pushups), and absolutions had to be completed before we could eat, because then as now you are supposed to be in love and charity with your neighbor when you approach the Lord’s Table. I do want to ask an important theological question here: Does it never occur to anyone that it is easier to love your neighbor when your blood sugar is not low as the Dead Sea?

      Well, let me not be guilty of the sin of ingratitude. At least the full confessional only happened once a week. One night when it was just looking as though people were starting to run aground on their sins (perhaps for lack of sustenance) Peter, who had confessed a few already, rose and addressed the assembled.

      “Brothers and sisters in the Lord, it grieves me more than I can express that there are terrible sins left unconfessed, the sin of stealing, and, worse still, the sin of lying to the Holy Spirit.”

      Oh, shit. The cookie jar.

      I glanced in Ma’s direction. Her eyes were closed. I might have thought she was asleep, except for the soft humming that no one else noticed. She seemed utterly lacking in any conviction of sin, secure, perhaps, in her foreknowledge that one day one of Peter’s successors would issue a papal bull declaring her to be without sin once and for all, light-fingered or not. I looked at Peter again, hoping the angels were advising him to drop the charges and save himself future embarrassment—and save me from feeling obliged to cover for her—when I saw that his attention was fixed elsewhere.

      “Ananias,” said Peter, “will you not come forward and confess your sins?”

      He was addressing the prosperous newcomer he had introduced to the community a few days ago. The man refused to budge, but I thought he looked scared. Well, Peter was scary these days. What had happened to the big, impulsive man who had once broken down (much to his dismay) and wept on my breast because he felt his ignorance brought shame to his beloved master? He had become so sure of himself, and with the certainty had come not arrogance, exactly, but hardness. He knew his cause was righteous. Nothing else mattered.

      “Come forward,” Peter said, a command this time.

      Ananais did as he was told, and stood before the elders, his knees beginning to wobble, one hand clutching the other to stop the trembling.

      “Ananais, how can Satan have possessed you that you should lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land?”

      Peter spoke softly but the room was so quiet, there was no difficulty in hearing him. Ananais’s nervous breathing and swallowing was painfully audible. Peter let the silence lengthen, but Ananais seemed incapable of speech.

      “While you still owned the land, wasn’t it yours to keep, and after you sold it, wasn’t the money yours to do with as you liked? Of your own free will, you pledged all the profit to the ecclesia. What possessed you to pocket part of the price in secret? What put this scheme into your mind?” Peter stood and pointed a finger at the exposed sinner. “Know this, Ananais: you have been lying not to men but to God.”

      I did not see anything, no lightning bolt flashing from Peter’s finger, no grade Z special effects. But I could sense it—that same fire that flowed into my hands when I touched someone who was ill or in pain, what I called the fire of the stars. Peter had the fire in his hands, too. I had been there when Jesus opened the disciples to receive it (as once, long ago, I had passed the fire to him).