Chapter Twelve
PAUL
It’s the problem of visions: They glisten, splash their thunder with bolts of light, flash and fade. But is there any truth or reality in them? Why had Luke not seen the angel, the luminous Gabriel, nor the man from Macedonia? Certainly the angel spoke in a distinct voice, so loud I nearly covered my ears.
Luke feigned approval of the diversion from Bithynia to Macedonia. He did so, I think, for the sake of Timothy and Silas, knowing that young men adore visions. They dream dreams, and these dreams possess a near-corporal reality for them. And they live in the afterglow of these visions for months or years. I, on the other hand, was hardly a youth by any standard of measurement, and yet I had no doubt that God continued to seek me out, to send messengers, and to court my attention. I could have but didn’t touch Gabriel’s face, terrified that my hand would blaze, my fingers burn like twigs on fire.
Too often I felt like a leaf, my body fragile, scarcely a suitable container for the spirit that seethed in me. I was hungry for the real life beyond this fleshly existence, these pale rags hanging on a crate of bones.
I knew I must accept whatever awaited us in Macedonia, and without fear. God had willed me in this direction. And the Almighty provided a ship for us, a three-masted merchant vessel that carried us with our two donkeys to the port of Neapolis, where (after a night’s layover on Samothrace) we landed late in the morning. The West had arrived!
An eerie, enchanting music played in my head as we disembarked.
“What are you humming, that wonderful tune?” Timothy asked.
“It’s something I hear,” I said.
My companions, however admirable, didn’t quite hear or see what I could hear and see. I seemed to live with one foot on this good earth, the other in that heavenly country beyond our ken, a place discovered more usually in inklings, moments of anticipation, omens, oddments of thought or feeling. And I had nothing like a deep confidence in these encounters or thorough understanding of their name or nature.
If anything, I felt like a beginner. A beginner in the spirit world.
Neapolis, this tiny fishing village in Macedonia, surprised me by its expansive and busy harbor, where we inquired after the whereabouts of a synagogue, assuming one could be found in this region. We were directed to an old man selling pieces of fine purple cloth from a stall by the docks.
He looked at me with keen attention.
“Jews?”
“We are Jews,” I said.
“My employer is a Godfearer, Lydia. Go to her. She knows all the Jews in Philippi,” he said. “Her business is flourishing.”
“What is her trade?”
“Purple dye.”
I knew this profession well, as my father had a friend who had been a purveyor of this rare and precious color, the hue of kings and emperors. It derived from a species of snail, which fishermen along the coast of Macedonia brought to her shop by the thousands in wooden barrels. As I would learn, Lydia and her workers extracted the dark violet dye from the mucus of a gland, an intricate process that involved piercing the shells with a needle. The mucus flowed with a milky shade, but when combined with vinegar and salt and left to dry in the sun, the purple tint emerged. And the effort paid off handsomely, as this dye sold widely through the empire, more expensive than gold or silver. Lydia’s purple, many would say, had a peculiar radiance of its own, shading into deep violet-red at times.
The old man sent us to Philippi, several miles north of Neapolis. “You will like her hospitality,” he said. “Your mission will interest her.”
“Do you trust this man?” asked Silas, whose suspicions were beginning to wear on me. Did he not trust the Holy Spirit to support our efforts?
“He is probably an angel,” I said. “Angels are everywhere.”
We set off with our donkeys toward Philippi, arriving in the city as the evening sun cast a hash of shadows on the streets. It was the dinner hour, and we could smell roasted meat coming from doorways. With surprising ease, we found rooms at a public inn near the marketplace, an expense we could hardly afford but our younger companions suggested it, as this sort of accommodation was a novelty. It was often better to accede in small matters, thus keeping our companionable spirit afloat. Travel was burdensome enough without having to contend with abrasive feelings.
Philippi impressed with its grand colonnade, its open sunny spaces, its abundant natural springs. I had rarely seen such a mix of vegetation, with flora fed from the water that rushed belowground, out of sight. My eye was drawn to Mount Pangaeus in the distance, with its skirt of yellow clouds and spiky peak.
“I like it here,” Silas said.
This unleashed Timothy, who opened his drawer of knowledge. “The city was named by Philip of Macedon,” he said, “the father of Alexander.”
Silas never liked displays of information. “Why don’t you become a guide?” he asked.
“Shut up,” said Timothy.
I didn’t like to see the boys squabble, not over petty things. Unity was all. But I held my tongue, and soon this ripple of tension passed. I worried, however, about the likelihood that we could maintain a sense of harmony for long, even though we had done quite well thus far. Pettiness is the plague of groups that travel as one, and discord always begins with small matters, minute cracks in the porcelain bowl that widen into fissures and weaken the larger structure. The object must crumble.
The next day was the Sabbath, and we heard that Lydia and her friends met at a nearby river, the Gangites. It was a well-known gathering, where Lydia led weekly prayers on a flowery bank. We followed the river north from the city and found a dozen women and two men in prayer beside the running stream, one of the women standing with her skirt raised to her knees in a bed of watercress. Without saying anything, we sat among ferns, cross-legged, lifting our palms to heaven.
A black buffalo hulked alone in the shallows, drinking, as Lydia’s strong voice carried through the trees. Her spangled dress and copious purple head scarf set her apart.
“You are strangers,” she said, coming toward us when she had finished her prayer, “but welcome. Are you Jews or Greeks?”
“I’m Paul of Tarsus, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, trained at the school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem. My friends are Jews as well.”
Luke didn’t accept my sweeping inclusion. “I was a Godfearer, in Antioch. Almost a Jew, but a Greek.”
“I’m from Judea,” said Silas. “But I follow a special rabbi.”
Only Timothy felt no need to explain that he had recently been circumcised and simply offered his name.
“Can you recite from the scroll?” she asked.
I launched into a long passage from Isaiah, by memory. And this opened her eyes: I was not an imposter. She smiled, and her circle drew around me eagerly when I had finished, whereupon I took this as my first opportunity in the West to speak of Jesus.
“We come with news from Jerusalem. My younger companion, Silas, has mentioned our teacher. Rabbi Jesus has arrived in this world, the Christ.”
“He is the Christ?”
“A great teacher, with a new truth. And yes, the Christ himself. He is among us now.”
“Here?”
“He is always present. Crucified under Pontius Pilate, he died in terrible pain. But he rose again after three days.” I paused. “It was a glorious resurrection, and we shall rise in him, all of us, Jew and Greek.”
This confused them, I could see. And Lydia gave their hesitation voice: “A man who is crucified can really be the Christ?”
“He is the Christ, here before and after.”
This passed over their heads, drawing puzzled expressions, so I took another approach. I had only begun to learn what to say in these circumstances and what to hold back. The release of knowledge in the right order, in appropriate quantities, was key. And I must always find a language appropriate to the moment, one that took on the hues of the local surroundings and lodged where it must, in the listener’s heart.
“Jesus received his powers from God, as do I, and you as we,” I explained. “Each of you on this riverbank in Philippi is a child of God, empowered by him. Jesus opens the way to God, because that way involves suffering. We all suffer terribly, as part of what it means to live.” I looked at each one slowly. “Haven’t you all?”
“My husband died—a very young man at the time,” Lydia told us.
I could feel anguish in the expression of that sentence.
“I’m sorry for you, Lydia,” I said. “But what the cross means, for me and for you, is that suffering leads to resurrection. It’s not a hole. And the fact of resurrection changes everything.”
I could feel the spirit talking, not me, Paul of Tarsus. I became his vessel, and he moved my tongue, figured my words. I was astonished by what I said, the cascade of metaphors, phrases, and images that tumbled from me, effortlessly. “Every suffering soul draws closer to God by praying in the name of Jesus, the beautiful one, who has shown us the face of God by his pain. His pain becomes our pain. His relief is our relief.”
Timothy spoke after me, and he was eloquent, talking about the Kingdom of God and how we worked to bring it forward. I had made the right choice to bring him along. And I knew that his beauty enchanted the women, who gazed at him attentively as he talked, with the light of his hair like a halo in the morning sun. The spirit whirled around and through us, and that very day I baptized everyone in the river that flowed into Philippi. I poured the icy water over their heads, saying again and again in a strong voice: In the Christ, there is neither male nor female, neither slave nor free man, neither Jew nor Greek. I saw that the idea of “neither male nor female” delighted Lydia, who quite rightly regarded herself as representing a new spirit and time.
That night, at her invitation, we adjourned to her house. It doesn’t suffice to call this a “house,” as it was an array of buildings on the river, a dozen structures, which included offices, workshops, and storage areas. She invited us to occupy a cottage by the water, putting three slaves at our disposal, and told us over a dinner of many courses about her early days in business after the death of her husband. Through trial and error, she had perfected her process of extracting dye from mollusks, and this was her “very own secret.” She had obviously prospered in this commercial venture.
It mattered, she said, that Philippi had a special status, and those who owned property or businesses here could work without taxation by Rome. The city had been rebuilt by Augustus, she explained, calling to mind the Battle of Philippi, where Mark Antony and Augustus (then Octavian) had defeated Brutus and Cassius, the slayers of Julius Caesar. “We have been designated as ius italicum,” she said. “This imperial exemption has allowed me, as a woman, to create my wealth and live independently, without legal interference.”
This was a city of many gods (including the Greek gods), emperors, and Egyptian deities such as Isis and Serapis, Lydia said. Innocent Silas found this shocking. “We are among pagans!” I smiled, telling him to think of this as an advantage. “The spirit is awake here, opening doors.” Lydia agreed, saying that she would happily finance our work in Macedonia.
“God will reward you,” I said. “There’s no time to spend your fortune, not in the years that may never come. But a greater fortune awaits us all: the return of the Lord.” I noted that few of us in that room would undergo death in the usual way. “Death itself will die,” I said.
That evening we met Isola, a willowy, sad-mouthed girl with prophetic powers who was owned by Lydia’s influential neighbor, Abas, who had a seat on the city council. Lydia said Isola had proven invaluable to Abas, as people would pay astonishing sums for the use of her gift of foretelling the future.
The girl lingered, standing beside us as we finished our meal, watching us eat. Perhaps fifteen years old, she had the miles-long stare of the mad, her eyes cindery, sunken below the skin, orbs that looked inward, not outward. Her skin had a mossy cast, while black hair tumbled in clumps to her waist. A sour smell pushed us away from her.
“It’s quite uncanny, even unnatural, what she does,” said Lydia.
At this, Isola stepped near to me, too close for ease. The odor of sweat in her filthy dress appalled me, and I disliked seeing her stained toenails and mud-splashed ankles. Her battered shins were indecently exposed. Silas sat beside me, and the girl’s hand touched his cheek below the eye, drawing a line to his chin with her thumb, and he stared back at her in revulsion.
“You will die by the blade of a dull ax,” Isola said to him. “Your skull will crack in the dust. The birds will devour your eyes and pick clean your bones.”
This was definitely not the sort of thing one said to Silas, who rose, trembling. “Get away from me! Take her away!”
I grabbed her shoulders with both hands. “Look at me, Isola.”
She stared up at me with mindless intensity, her lips apart. I flattened the palm of my right hand on her forehead, pressing into the bone of the skull.
“Kneel, Isola,” I said.
She obeyed, still looking up at me.
“You will die by the blade of a dull ax,” she said.
“Me as well, then?”
She nodded, and I realized she could see with unusual clarity into the future, and I did not doubt the truth of her observation. Nor did I care.
“You are possessed by demons,” I said. “Do you wish to remain like this?”
She wept, shaking her head.
“In which case, Isola, repeat my words: God, my Lord in heaven, take away these demons.”
“God, my Lord in heaven, take away these demons.”
“Let us repeat. God, my Lord in heaven, take away these demons.”
“God, my Lord in heaven, take away these demons.”
“Do you believe in God’s power to accomplish this?” There was no response. “Answer me, Isola. Your life depends on your response.”
“I do, my lord.”
“I am not your lord! Isola, there is one God.” I paused. “Do you believe in God’s power to heal you?”
“I believe in God’s power,” she said.
That was the phrase. Now she trembled with a violence that disturbed everyone in the room. Her mouth foamed, her arms flapped and beat the air like windmills. Her eyes popped wide, and she screamed with a vile scream, a single searing note. Falling with a slap to the floor, she writhed. And I crouched beside her, lifted my hands in the air, and called loudly to heaven, “Jesus, help your servant, Isola. Jesus, Jesus.”
Timothy knelt beside me, lifting his arms, crying, “Jesus, Jesus.”
A great storm passed through her body, after which I could see a light coming into her previously dead eyes.
I pointed to Luke. “This is my friend, Luke. Can you tell me how he will die?”
She drew herself up slowly, precariously, then stepped close to Luke, inspecting him. “I know nothing of this,” she said. “I see nothing.”
Silas said, “What about me?”
“I know nothing.”
Lydia began to clap, and the rest of her associates clapped as well.
The next day, however, as Silas and I walked along the cobbled pavement into the market, four guards apprehended us.
“What’s this about?”
“Our master, Abas, has charged you with unlawful sorcery.”
“I’m no sorcerer!”
“We’ve done nothing!” Silas shouted.
But they paid no attention to our protests, and we were brought forcefully before Linus, the local magistrate in Philippi. Abas stood there, arms folded across his chest. Then he pointed to me.
“Are you Paul?”
“I am.”
The magistrate looked bored, slumped in a chair behind a table in his gray toga. His beard was caught up in black snarls. He asked me if I practiced sorcery or dared to break laws established by Rome.
“I heal in the name of Jesus. I do nothing except by God’s grace.”
“And which god do we speak of?”
“Jehovah.”
“You’re a Jew?” Linus asked.
“A Jew and a Roman citizen.” I paused. “I would, of course, never do anything against Roman laws. I respect the temporal authorities.”
The word “temporal” gave him pause. “Why have you come to Philippi?”
“A very good question, sir,” I said. “To proclaim the kingdom, God’s unfolding kingdom. I speak in the name of Rabbi Jesus.”
“So you’re an agent of a foreign power, and a Jew.”
“Not an earthly power, sir, a heavenly one. Rabbi Jesus was the embodiment of God.”
“I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Until the heart softens, knowledge fails. The truth cannot be observed from without.”
This seemed only to inflame the magistrate.
“Honestly, Paul. Do you wish to go to jail? You and your friend?”
“You can’t take away my freedom,” I said.
This alarmed Silas, who began to protest that I hadn’t fully understood the question. He explained that we had done nothing wrong, although this had no effect on the magistrate, whose guards seized us, tied our wrists behind our backs with hemp, and took us to a jail on the via Egnatia, several miles north of the city.
“I doubt there is much criminal activity in Philippi,” I said to Silas. “This will provide amusement.”
I had scarcely released the words when Roman guards dragged us into a rocky yard behind the jail. They stripped us both, then tied us to a post, whereupon they flogged us with braided whips, drawing fat welts on our shoulders and the backs of our legs.
Silas wailed inconsolably, and I wished I could help to ease his pain. But there was nothing for it.
The jailor, whose name I later learned was Matthius, brought us cups of water and bits of bread, with salted fish.
“You must eat,” I said to Silas, who sobbed uncontrollably. Before this I had not quite realized the fragility of my young companion. His sobbing continued into dusk, and it didn’t stop until darkness cloaked us.
I found the night air quite soothing in a strange way, as it had been miserably hot throughout the day, and the slight chill in the wind touched our wounds like a soft invisible hand and, to a small degree, lessened the pain. I asked Silas to pray with me. This was impossible for him, but at least he listened and, almost imperceptibly, moved his lips: Dear God, Almighty father, help us in our distress. Help us, Jesus, aid us. Our defeat is your victory. Thy will be done, father.
Matthius sat on a block of wood beside us, watching with interest. He had probably not seen many prisoners pray to God. The name of Jesus had certainly never been invoked in this setting. In fact, I suspected that few in Macedonia or Greece had yet heard the name of Jesus, my Lord, the Christ.
“What is your name, sir?” I asked.
He told me, and I thanked him for bringing us the water and food, which I was able to eat. Silas, beside me, slumped in his chains, unable to speak. He had resisted those who beat him, and this proved wrongheaded. Long ago I had learned to allow an assailant to complete his work, having become aware that anguish is pain intensified by the struggle to resist it.
“Do you want to hear about Rabbi Jesus, our wonderful Lord?”
He nodded vaguely, though I could detect no enthusiasm. In the boredom of his life, he could not refuse to hear news of any kind. I explained to him that we must all die soon, and yet there was one God in whom we could trust. When I told him about what happened to me on my way to Damascus, he seemed to awaken. I explained to him that Jesus was an aspect of God, and that he was alive, in spite of being crucified at Golgotha. I also told him that I had been commissioned by God himself to bring this news to the people of Macedonia.
“Do you wish to pray with me, Matthius?”
He didn’t and made that clear. But he thanked me for what I told him, and said his wife might like to know about this. They had recently lost a child to fever, and she had not been well. “She weeps in her sleep and cries out,” he said. “I’m unable to help her.”
“What is her name?”
“Endora,” he said.
I prayed loudly: “Dear God in heaven, Jesus, son of God, please comfort Endora in her distress. Please do this, Lord. In the name of Jesus.”
Matthius explained that he would sit with us through the night, as it was his duty. His superiors had apparently been worried about our escaping. We must not escape, he said, or he would fall into jeopardy with the courts. This was, he said, “a dangerous time,” and the Romans had become concerned with foreign visitors, especially those who might be subversives and wished to undermine imperial authority.
“We have no wish to do this,” I said. “I’m a Roman citizen.”
As night darkened the room, Matthius lit three torches on the wall. I don’t know how much time passed, but I fell asleep late, possibly after midnight. I startled awake, however, sensing what felt like a minor tremor in the distance. At first, I thought it was something in my legs, not the earth itself, that moved, having experienced muscular tremors before. I noticed that poor Silas had his eyes open.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
He didn’t reply.
“You should try to drink some of that water.”
But the water, in a clay jug, slid off the little table beside us, spilling into the dirt. Then the walls themselves began to vibrate and crack, with stones collapsing upon stones. One roof beam cracked in the middle, and the plaster of lime fell from the ceiling. Matthius leaped to his feet.
“Oh God, liberate us!” I cried. “Tear down these walls!”
So the ground juddered, and the jail itself spun in a wild cyclone, with a high-pitched whine. More of the roof fell onto the floor, and beams split.
“Fall to your knees, Matthius! Ask God to help us!”
Matthius obeyed and dropped to the ground, his knees tucked into his stomach, his arms splayed in the dirt as stones dislodged from the walls, one of them striking Matthius in the leg, though he didn’t move. Within moments, the whole roof now tumbled in upon itself.
“I’m free!” Silas said. “Free!”
His chains, like mine, had released.
The earthquake went on for a few minutes, then stopped, as dust hung in the air, and the room held its breath.
We lay still, none of us quite sure what to do next.
Feeling I must act, I bathed the wounds of Silas with cold water from a bucket, and he did the same for me. I was surprised to see that, almost miraculously, his wounds healed. Mine, too, receded. We stepped back into our clothing, which had been piled in one corner.
Now I bent beside Matthius, who wept inconsolably, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“If you run away,” he said, “they will abuse me. You don’t know what they are like. I have three living children.”
“We aren’t going anywhere,” I said.
“Why are you so kind to me?”
“I love you, Matthius, as one of God’s own children,” I said. “Do you wish to speak to Jesus?”
“Yes,” he said.
We prayed, the three of us together, and I baptized Matthius with the remaining water in the bucket.
“You’re a new man,” I said. “God is your shield now! Fear nothing.”
Matthius accepted this, inviting us to his house, some minutes from the jail, and we told Endora about Jesus, too. Her husband’s enthusiasm moved her, and when I asked if she wished to be baptized, she knelt and wept, and I poured water over her head. And soon their slaves joined us, and everyone knelt with me and held hands as I prayed.
Silas said, “Our Lord likes the unexpected.”
It was touching to see him gathering the world into phrases he could accept, attempting to make sense of unlikely circumstances. But I feared for him. Reality never breaks in expected ways, and it can’t be described easily. The scaffolding of language often collapses beneath us, leaving only the dust of experience.
We slept in Matthius’s house that night, and at sunrise walked into the town, going straight into the courts again, where Linus sat alone at his desk. He looked up and was startled to see me. When I told him what had happened, he stood in amazement and said, “I must ask you to leave Philippi at once.”
We returned to Lydia’s house, where Luke and Timothy wrapped us in their arms. They loved our stories, even though Silas still complained about the lashes. After a night of rejoicing, we left the next morning. I promised Lydia that I would send regular dispatches from my travels and would return when I could to assist and encourage her gatherings.
Only a week later, on the way to Thessalonica, I paused for a day to write at length to Lydia and her companions, missing them sorely. “My dear friends, sisters and brothers in Jesus,” I wrote. “Your many kindnesses will remain with me, and I know I speak for Timothy, Luke, and Silas as well as myself. You are the first fruits in this country. That is precious to me. I would ask you to remain as close to God as possible, speaking to him through his son, Jesus the Christ. All I ask of you is to practice what through God you have received as wisdom. Keep in mind only whatever seems true and worthy, just and pure. Stay close to what is attractive, beautiful, high-toned, and excellent. If you do these things, always in the name of Jesus the Christ, without losing sight of God, peace will flood your hearts, and you will stand in the river of love.”
We traveled along the via Egnatia for some three days, stopping briefly in the cities of Amphipolis and Apollonia, arriving in Thessalonica at midday on the most brilliant of summer days. The city perched on a hill overlooking the indigo waters below, its houses white as dice tumbling downhill to the pebble-strewn beach. Mountains were heaped behind it, and we could see the white crown of Olympus in the distance.
The synagogue, our first destination, lay on the street called Patros, close to the harbor, in a tight enclosure with its shutters drawn, eager to remain unmolested by pagan curiosity. I found one of the elders rocking in prayer, draped in his shawl, and sat quietly beside him until he had finished. At the appropriate moment, I told him about our mission, identifying myself as a faithful Jew who brought word of a great new rabbi.
“Jason will help,” the old man told me.
Indeed, Jason proved more than helpful, this strong young man with a business that included tanning and exporting hides. He welcomed us with enthusiasm, embracing me as if we were old friends when I told him about my family’s commercial interest in tents, and how I had shipped hides from Jerusalem in my early days. He was an intelligent fellow and questioned me late into the night, having invited us to remain as long as we liked at his house. Within days, he accepted that the Way of Jesus made sense, and I baptized him, using water from a swift stream that flowed behind his house into the bay.
I soon realized we could establish an important outpost here, in Thessalonica, as the synagogue teemed with Godfearers, many of them well-trained in Greek philosophy as well as Jewish scriptures: a perfect combination. I began to see that the teachings of Jesus married well with those of Plato. And could actually picture God as the One described as a spirit anticipated by Plato in his Phaedrus.
We soon met Aristarchus, Jason’s best friend, a gentle young soul with cobalt eyes and strong limbs who worked in the leather trade as well. He and I had long conversations after many First Day gatherings. He seemed to follow me wherever I went in Thessalonica, eager to hear my reflections. I liked him, with his soft but persistent manner, his innocent but intelligent questions. One day he asked me to baptize him, and I felt a surge of joy in bringing him more closely into our circle. Luke, too, admired him a great deal, and shared with him a collection of sayings by Jesus, which Aristarchus committed to memory. I often thought of him as almost the ideal new member of the Way, with his sincerity and depth of feeling. Soon I joined him and Jason at their workshop, which enabled me to draw on my skills. Charity was fine, I told my companions, but one must earn the respect of those in any community by working with them, side by side. Even if we had plenty of funds, this labor was necessary. It established ties, enlarging the web of community. The Way of Jesus would only prosper in this context.
Thessalonica enchanted us, with its open paved streets and a marble-tiled forum that had become the administrative center of the city. During the day it overflowed with carts and stalls, with commercial travelers from distant parts. Everything was bought and sold here, as in Tarsus or Antioch. There was a large stadium in the eastern quarter, with seating for some four hundred, and one could attend games there or, on occasion, see a play. We went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and I would read to them from the scriptures at their request, but I took every opportunity to speak about Jesus. For the most part, they accepted my teaching, and we met with interested parties at Jason’s house each week on the First Day, singing hymns and sharing the sacred meal.
My skills in tent-making proved useful again, as one of the men in Jason’s gathering had a small factory where he produced tents and canopies. The speed of my work surprised them, and I found myself spending long hours at my table. Silas and Timothy joined me on occasion, when they weren’t in the shop with Jason and Aristarchus, and we made a good team.
The Thessalonians folded us into the life of their city.
But, as one could have foreseen, a number of the Jews resented the successes of Jason’s gathering, which grew week by week, and they hardened their hearts against the Christ and, as his representative, me. I tried to meet with them, and one of them (a man named Elon) acceded, and we had long and serious conversations. He, like the others, resisted all changes to what was considered the core of Jewish practice. I reminded him that Jesus was a Jew, and nothing he said or did obliterated that fact.
“Only God matters,” Elon said.
“And how do you know anything about God?”
“We know him by his actions.”
I pressed here. “What might those actions be?”
“The creation of the world!”
“Ah, yes. But that was not a single event in the past,” I said. “Creation is an active and continuous process.”
This puzzled, even annoyed him.
“The world dawns every day,” I said, “and it’s always new. The creation overwhelms us with its beauty, its changes. Such beautiful changes.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” he said. “God gave us the Law.”
“God is mysterious,” I said. “We can’t know much about him, not in this life. Even the Law remains a mystery. But he has chosen to reveal himself through Jesus, who is the point of intersection between the infinite God of this universe and mere human beings. We can only know of God what Jesus has shown us.”
My arguments failed to impress him, that much I could see. And the next day, I heard from a friend at the shop that a number of Jews planned to apprehend us, charging us with treason and blasphemy. Blasphemy had no meaning here, not among the Romans, but the ears of the imperial authorities twitched when they heard any mention of treason, and they reached for their swords. Traitors to the empire would be dealt with harshly. I knew very well the potential outcome of this charge and rushed home to my friends, insisting they pack at once. Thessalonica could no longer be imagined as a haven, as we had hoped.
Why did God never let us rest?
We left the city even before Jason arrived home for the evening, when—so I heard a few weeks later—he encountered an irate group of Jews, who seized him instead of us, bringing him before a magistrate that evening.
I certainly did not wish, after our experience in Philippi, to subject Timothy and Silas, or Luke, to flogging and imprisonment.
But God drew us forward, opening a way in the thick underbrush of antipathy.
I hoped we would have less trouble with the noble Bereans.