The Gospel According to the Son

18

So alive was I with new strength that when we came into Peter's house and his wife's mother was lying there with a fever, I had only to take her by the hand and the fever left. She rose from her bed and was delighted and cooked for us. We were well fed.

In the evening, friends of Simon and Andrew and James and John came to the house with men and women who thought they were possessed of devils. I felt full of wonder and happiness at my new skill and cures came quickly. I had no more than to put my hand upon someone, and out came many small devils.

Then, in the morning, Peter said to me, "People seek for you now, and I fear they will be many. I would warn you. They are curious. They wish to witness miracles. But will that give you the power to change men's souls?"

His speech made me think of John the Baptist in the dungeon of Herod Antipas. Pain came like a knife to slash at my chest. For if the Lord gave me great talents, then I would be open to vengeance from those who hated the Lord. So I encouraged Peter and Andrew and James and John to leave with me. We would move on to other synagogues in Galilee and cast out devils there. It would be better to do the deed and leave each throng with wonder than to remain in one circle until such wonder became our noose. And I knew that now I was thinking with the wisdom of Peter.

In the courtyard of another synagogue in another town, a leper came to me and asked, "Can you make me clean?" When I was silent, he said, "Until I am clean, I cannot enter the synagogue. Yet if I cannot enter, how can I become clean?"

I did not know how to cure a leper. Yet I could not turn away from his eyes. So I whispered to the Lord, "Grant me this power on this day."

Looking at the man, and being careful not to avert my eyes in horror, I was able to remember that it was written in the scrolls that God had said to Moses: "Cast your rod on the ground." And when he did, the rod became a serpent. So soon as it moved, Moses fled. But the Lord told him: "Do not run. Put forth thy hand and take it by the tail."

Moses caught the serpent, and it became again a rod in his hand. The Lord said: "Put down thy hand unto thy bosom," and Moses did as he was told, but when he took his hand out, his fingers were as leprous as snow. Then God said, "Put back thy hand in thy bosom," and Moses did, and this time when he withdrew it, the hand was the same as his other flesh.

Now I heard God say to me, "Do as much," and I knew that the power He had given to Moses would now be mine.

So I put forth my hand and touched the leper on his breast and said no more than: "You will be clean."

His leprosy left him. He was clean. This was so great a miracle that I told him: "Say nothing to anyone."

But he went out and began to speak of his cure, and this caused such excitement that I knew it was time to go back to the desert before there was an inundation of lepers. Nor did I need the Lord to tell me that there might be grave obstacles to curing all of them, and all at once.

Indeed, it did seem true to me that the diseases of man were ranked like the angels. To cure the highest disease, which is but another way of saying the lowest, was to ask the Holy Spirit to descend by ten more dimensions into the pit. And I was weak from curing my first leper. Could it be that God might be diminished as well? It was by the aid of the Holy Spirit, after all, that I had brought forth my cures. And what was such a Spirit but the bond between my Father and myself?

I fled to the desert and told my followers that I would meet them in Capernaum.