The Tongues of Men or Angels

Thirty-four Years after the Crucifixion

‘We really should write to Philemon soon, Useful: your former master must be told where you are and what has happened so that he may forgive you.’ Paul shuffles on his chair, face cut in jagged squints, like a cracked tile, as he does so, his bad back clearly paining him.

‘Maybe what I have done is beyond forgiveness,’ Useful replies.

‘Nothing is beyond forgiveness. Didn’t I explain to you how Jesus has made himself a sacrifice for all the sins of the world? Any who believe in Him are now forgiven anything they have done. I add here that you must still try not to sin. That may sound obvious, but we had some problems with the community in Corinth on that score. I’m sure we’ll come to it presently in the story, but the idiots seemed to think that because all was forgiven they could do what they wanted. Orgies were going on, flesh writhing upon flesh, like serpents in a pit; drunkenness and debauchery became normality. They devoted themselves to pleasure. Many stopped working for a living, because they assumed the end time would arrive any day. The form of this world is indeed passing away, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work in the meantime! Or ignore basic decency: one chap in Corinth married his mother! There was talk of doings so bestial that it would shame my lips even to mention them. The whole thing was a disaster. So now I always have to couch it in these terms: all your sins are forgiven, but you still shouldn’t sin.

‘Anyway, what we really want to say in this letter is that Philemon must forgive you, but that you ought to remain here with me. You should continue to serve me, only with Philemon’s blessing. I don’t want to order him, he must decide of his own free will, but he must decide to do what I direct him towards. It’s probably a bit like the sinning thing: God gives you the freedom to do what you want, but you must still do what He wants …

‘What was your crime, anyway, to so upset Philemon that you fled in fear of your life? Actually, don’t answer: we can discuss it another time. We really should return to our work: my story, God’s mission on earth.

‘So, after my baptism, filled with the Holy Spirit — are you getting this down? — I learned all I could from Ananias. Several weeks I stayed with him in Damascus. But soon I realized that I could draw little more from him. After all, I had spoken with Jesus himself. Ananias had never known Jesus, before his death or after. The greatest lesson Ananias taught me was the first one he showed me in the words of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant: that everything which is to come is written in the phrases of the past; that the scriptures can be mined for prophecy and direction; that words may look as though they have one meaning, when encased in context, but with the Holy Spirit’s inspiration we can lift them free to reveal their true meanings, and present them to the world.

‘Ananias having said that my vision of the risen Christ was similar to those experienced by Cephas and James, it became obvious that I must have been chosen as an apostle of equal standing to them. Perhaps my destiny then was to carry The Way into new quarters. So to this end I left Damascus and went into Nabataean Arabia, alone, to preach the word of God and the message about Jesus.

‘To be honest, Useful, we probably don’t need to dwell too long on that year in Arabia. My gospel and my preaching were not yet wise and persuasive and the Arabs weren’t ready for the word. To add to this, Galilee and the Nabataeans were in a period of conflict, which made the struggles of an itinerant preacher even harder. You could just write down something like: And Saul had many great victories there among the Arabs and showed them how the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead and that verily Jesus is the Christ. Put something like that.

‘So afterwards I returned to Damascus. I was half starved and ragged as a beggar’s step-child. It is hard enough to survive in a foreign land, dependent on the kindness of strangers, without the extra encumbrance of adhering to the Israelite dietary laws. Thinking back, maybe it was during this period that the Christ first began to whisper to me that He had redeemed us from those outworn Torah bonds. In any event, I certainly realized that if I was going to go on such missions in the future I would need some kind of trade to support myself while I preached.

‘In Damascus, there was an aged awning and tent maker, who was baptized with me. And when I returned to the city, I lodged with him awhile. He was a droll old soul, of whom I grew fond. Though boss-eyed as two sides of a coin, he could stitch as neat as any man on earth. And he patiently taught me his trade, which I thought a good one for a traveller. Because there are always people who need things patched on the road: clothes or tents or blankets; and ships need sails mending; and every town has awnings and shade cloths to be replaced. You need carry nothing but your awl and punch and other gubbins and you can find employment anywhere you are. And the old tent maker gave me his tools in the end too, when he became too weak to work, and because of the communality of The Way had no further need to.

‘It was good that I learned his trade, because afterwards — almost three years since I had left Jerusalem as a Temple Guard — I was forced to flee Damascus, as an apostle of the Christ. Perhaps it was a Jew still loyal to the high priest and resentful of my change of allegiance who betrayed me, or maybe it was a Jew of The Way, whose bones were rotted by envy of my rise to prominence. However it was, someone reported me to the Damascus authorities, and told how I had originally been sent to kidnap residents and forcibly render them to Jerusalem as prisoners. And relations between the states being barely short of all-out war at the time, the governor ordered my arrest. God saved me by disposing me to take a walk through the bazaar the very night that soldiers came to my lodgings to arrest me. But the city of the Damascenes was always rigorously guarded. Day and night men kept close watch on the gates and might have arrested me, or killed me, if I had tried to leave.

‘I had to stay with one member of The Way after another, each wanting urgently to move me onwards, for fear that I would be discovered. Finally, knowing I was so desperate to keep preaching the word in the synagogues that I might expose myself any day, and with almost no one left for me to stay with, Ananias came up with a plan.

‘It was common in Damascus, as in most cities, for householders on the upper floors of tenements to raise and lower baskets down to the street sellers that they might buy bread and other produce without descending the stairs. And Ananias procured a stout example on a strong rope and scouted out an unlit spot where the city wall was low.

‘One night, he and his followers took me there beneath a cartwheel moon and proposed to ease me down in the basket through an opening in the wall. Even in the dark the drop looked high, the rope thin, and the basket was barely large enough to contain both my feet at one time. But I knew that God would protect me.

‘“When you get to Jerusalem, find Barnabas the Cypriot,” Ananias said, as I readied myself. “He knows me well. He’ll introduce you to the others and to James and Cephas.”

‘And so I was lowered, helpless as an anchor into the deep. I had the line twisted round my arm and it bit as it tightened. So I untwisted it, but then — still a death-drop from the ground — my robe got snagged for a moment on the wall and the basket fell away from me. I had to slide down to it again, gripping the rope in my hands alone. It burned a track down both my palms, but apostles count such pains as tallies to their good. And the rest of the distance, I dropped as softly as an angel descending from the heavens.

‘Ananias then raised and lowered the basket again, this time with provisions for my journey, and I crept away into the dark to find the road on which it had all begun.

‘Now, I want you to be sure to insert here, Useful, that although I went to Jerusalem to meet with the Pillars of the Church, it was entirely of my own volition and decision that I went. I wasn’t summoned by them. I was appointed by God and do not think I am in the least inferior to those “Superlative-Apostles”. James has no authority over me. If he and Cephas and Jochanan were held in high esteem — and whether they were or not makes no difference to me: God doesn’t acknowledge such favouritism — I was called as an apostle of Christ to be their equal, at least their equal.’

Paul seems as though he may continue on this theme, but thin-lipped Timothy comes into the room and whispers something to him. Something that turns Paul’s face a seething skull pale. He grips the arms of his chair so hard that the veins spring from the backs of his hands, like rivulets renewed in a desert.

‘He’s here,’ Paul says. ‘He’s spoken already in some house churches. The man pursues me like the stench of a polecat. How many times have I begged the Lord to rid me of that thorn? And now he’s back again: Cephas is in Rome.’