The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

‘Who Do You Say I Am?’

Around that time, King Herod began to hear rumours of this man who was going about the country healing the sick and speaking words of prophecy. He was alarmed, because some people were saying that John the Baptist had been raised from the dead. Herod knew full well that John was dead, for hadn’t he himself ordered the man’s execution, and offered his head on a platter to Salome? But then other rumours began to circulate: this new preacher was Elijah himself, returned to Israel after hundreds of years; or he was this prophet or that one, come back to chastise the Jews and foretell catastrophe.

Naturally, all this concerned Herod deeply, and he sent out word that he would be glad to see the preacher in person. He was unsuccessful in this attempt to meet Jesus, but Christ noted it down as evidence of how well known his brother was becoming.

To go by what his informant told him, though, it was clear to Christ that Jesus was not happy about this increasing fame. On one occasion, in the region of the Decapolis, he cured a deaf man who had a speech impediment, and ordered the man’s friends to say nothing about it, but they went and told everyone they knew. Another time, in Bethsaida, he restored the sight of a blind man, and when the man could see again Jesus told him to go straight home and not even go into the village; but word got out about that too. Then there was an occasion in Caesarea Philippi when Jesus was walking along with his disciples, and they were talking about the public following he was gathering.

‘Who do people say I am?’ Jesus asked.

‘Some say Elijah,’ said one disciple.

Another said, ‘They think you’re John the Baptist, come back to life.’

‘They say all kinds of names – prophets, mainly,’ said a third. ‘Like Jeremiah, for instance.’

‘But who do you say I am?’ said Jesus.

And Peter said, ‘You’re the Messiah.’

‘Is that what you think?’ said Jesus. ‘Well, you’d better hold your tongue about it. I don’t want to hear that sort of talk, you understand?’

When Christ heard about this he hardly knew how to record it for the Greek stranger. He was confused, and wrote it down in the disciple’s words, and then erased them and tried to formulate the expression to be more in keeping with what the stranger had said about truth and history; but that confused him further, so that all his wits seemed to lie scattered about him instead of working firmly at his command.

Finally he gathered himself and wrote down what the disciple had told him, up to the point where Peter spoke. Then a thought came to him, and he wrote something new. Knowing how highly Jesus regarded Peter, he wrote that Jesus had praised him for seeing something that only his Father in heaven could have revealed, and that he had gone on to make a pun on Peter’s name, saying that he was the rock on which Jesus would build his church. That church would be so firmly established that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Finally, Christ wrote that Jesus had promised to give Peter the keys of heaven.

When he had written these words, he trembled. He wondered if he were being presumptuous in making Jesus express the thoughts that he himself had put to his brother in the wilderness, about the need for an organisation that would embody the Kingdom on earth. Jesus had scorned the idea. But then Christ remembered what the stranger had said: that in writing like this, he was letting truth from beyond time into history, and thus making history the handmaid of posterity and not its governor; and he felt uplifted.