The Third Man.

The Road To Emmaus: That same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. And as they talked and deliberated, Jesus Himself came up and walked along with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. Luke 24:13-16 (Painting by Chris Antenucci)

“DO YOU REMEMBER that man passing us?” Benjamin shielded his eyes against the bright sunlight, gazing intently at the three figures well ahead of them on the road.”

“Surely you mean men, brother? Those two have been ahead of us ever since we left Jerusalem.”

“No, no. Not them. I’m talking about the third man. You must see him, Isaac, the man in the middle? I don’t remember him overtaking us, but he must have. Didn’t you see him pass by?”

“Nobody has passed me all day, Benjamin. The road has been unusually quiet. No one behind us, and just those two up ahead. Although, now that I look, I see what you mean. There are definitely three of them, now. That is strange.”

“Jerusalem is awash with strange happenings these days. This last week in particular. Did you hear what happened at the Temple?”

“Who hasn’t, Benjamin? It was that Galilean preacher. They say he lost his temper completely. Threw over the tables of the money changers. When I first heard about it I wondered whether he might be one of us – a Zealot. From what people were saying he was angry enough.”

“One of us? No, no. The Galilean wasn’t a Zealot. Somebody tested him with a question about Rome’s latest tax. Do you know what he said?”

“I do, as a matter of fact. Ezra told me. He was standing right beside him. The Galilean said: ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.’”

“What was that supposed to mean, anyway? Render unto Caesar? No Zealot would say that. No true Jew counsels surrender to the Romans!”

“I’m not sure that he was counselling surrender, brother. There is something else in his answer, something that speaks between the words.”

“These vagabond preachers are all the same, Isaac. They speak in riddles. Words that can be taken to mean anything you want them to mean. Sometimes I think Israel consists of nothing but words. Would that we had as many swords – and men brave enough to use them!”

“Well, you cannot quibble with the Galilean’s courage, Benjamin. Crucifixion is a horrible death, and he bore it bravely.”

“You were there? You saw him die?”

“I was, and I did, brother. If our struggle for Israel requires us to suffer the same rebel’s death, then I hope we bear it as stoically.”

“Did he say anything before he died?”

“He did – and it amazed me. As they nailed him to their bitter tree and hauled him up against the sky, he said: ‘Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.’”

“Forgive them! Truly? That makes no sense. Why? And who did he mean by Father?”

“His followers whispered that he was the Son of God, Benjamin. Yes, God. Not a title the Romans were willing to accept – or the High Priest. Although the Galilean himself was, reportedly, content to be known as the Son of Man.”

“He sounds mad, Isaac. Just another preacher who has spent too long under the desert sun.”

“Speaking of the sun, Benjamin. The one we have been travelling under is about to set. Shall we follow the example of the trio up ahead and purchase some supper and a bed for the night? The inn at Emmaus is comfortable I hear, and travellers speak highly of its bread and wine.”

“I did not think the third man was going to join his companions. He seemed determined to continue his journey, but they prevailed upon him.”

“A wise choice, it will be night soon.”

Seated at one end of the long table that filled the dining room, the two brothers broke the still warm loaf of bread that had been placed before them, washing down each mouthful with the dark red contents of the wine-jug.

Benjamin leaned forward and whispered to Isaac.

“There is something going on at the end of the table, brother, between those three. See how they stare at the face of he who joined them on the road? Though how he got past us unseen I’ll never know.”

“It is passing strange, brother, but stranger still is the certainty that grows in me that I have seen the third man somewhere before.”

“Where, brother? Where did you see him?”

“Upon Golgotha.”

This short story was published in the Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star at Easter 2022.

Bloodlines.

The Inward Journey: Indeed, this would appear to constitute the essence of the Gospel of Mary. That the teachings of the Christ are not to be read as a promise of victory over Death; but as an invitation to explore ever more fearlessly the manifold mysteries of Life.

THE EASTER STORY is central to the Christian faith. From Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection Christians draw the central tenets of their faith: the remission of sins and the promise of eternal life. In twenty-first century ears, it is received as a supernatural tale: one that takes place outside the “real” world; in what the mid-century television producer, Rod Serling, called the Twilight Zone.

Thanks to the patient work of archaeologists and biblical scholars, however, those who eschew supernatural plot devices, have been given the opportunity to construct a very different narrative.

In the Gospel of Mary, for example (unearthed outside Cairo in 1896) it is made clear that Jesus loved Mary Magdalene more than any of the other disciples who accompanied him on his travels through Galilee and Judea. This Gospel is but one of a great many “heretical” documents rigorously excluded from the Christian canon in later centuries. In one of these suppressed scrolls, a male disciple even testifies to observing Jesus kissing Mary on her mouth.

Even in the New Testament, Mary plays a critical role. She is, after all, the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection. And, it is Mary who breathlessly informs the other disciples: “He is risen!”

In Martin Scorsese’s film The Last Temptation of Christ, the obvious implications of this radically heterodox Christian narrative are explicitly explored. He dares us to ask the obvious question: “Were Jesus and Mary lovers?”

Naturally, that question gives rise to an even more unsettling query: “Did Mary become pregnant by Jesus?”

The American novelist, Dan Brown, became a very wealthy man by answering that question affirmatively in his best-selling thriller The Da Vinci Code. The idea of a sacred lineage, descending from Jesus and Mary Magdalene, also constituted the central theme of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail by Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh – from which Brown drew so much inspiration for his novel.

Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh speculated that the mythical “Sangreal” – or Holy Grail – is a corruption of the medieval French sang real – royal blood – the bloodline of Jesus.

According to Arthurian tradition, the Holy Grail was the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, in which Mary Magdalene’s friend and benefactor, Joseph of Arimathea, later collected Jesus's blood after his body was taken down from the cross. For Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh, however, the Holy Grail was also Mary’s metaphorical womb.

By following this heretical line of reasoning, the Resurrection itself takes on a very different aspect. Rather than Jesus reanimating in an earth-shaking surge of divine energy, he lives on, as do all parents, in the bodies and minds of his children: the inheritors not only of his genes, but his inspired insights into the meaning of human existence.

Indeed, this would appear to constitute the essence of the Gospel of Mary. That the teachings of the Christ are not to be read as a promise of victory over Death; but as an invitation to explore ever more fearlessly the manifold mysteries of Life.

Heresy? Of course. Blasphemy? Perhaps. But just consider what might have happened to the Christian religion if the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene had not been suppressed. (And Mary shrewdly identified by the misogynistic Church fathers with the wanton woman taken in adultery. John 8: 1-11) Christianity may well have anticipated the split that still divides Islam. On the one hand, the Sunni: who believe that religious leadership is best bestowed upon those who faithfully reflect the Prophet’s teachings. On the other, the Shia: who believe that only members of the Prophet’s lineage can lay claim to a proper understanding of the Prophet’s words.

The ever practical Romans, having adopted Christianity as the Empire’s official religion, were not about to acknowledge any flesh-and-blood inheritors of that first Easter – steeped as it was in all-too-Roman blood, gore and cruelty. A Jesus that stood at the right hand of the all-powerful Emperor of Heaven, was one thing. A Jesus that lived on through his descendants, and whose emancipatory teachings the ever-expanding family of Jesus and Mary Magdalene struggled ceaselessly to differentiate from the designs and purposes of the mighty, was something else altogether.

Far better a safely Crucified and Risen Christ, than a Jesus whose blood still flows through the beating heart of the World.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Thursday, 1 April 2021.