will be satisfied again and again, and every covenant will be fulfilled. The church will not be the Kingdom, because the Kingdom is not of this world; but it will be a foreshadowing of the Kingdom, and the one sure way to reach it.
‘But only – only – if at the centre of it is the ever-living presence of a man who is both a man and more than a man, a man who is also God and the word of God, a man who dies and is brought to life again. Without that, the church will wither and perish, an empty husk, like every other human structure that lives for a moment and then dies and blows away.’
‘What are you saying? What is this? Brought to life again?’
‘If he does not come to life again, then nothing will be true. If he doesn’t rise from his grave, the faith of countless millions yet unborn will die in the womb, and that is a grave from which nothing will rise. I told you how truth is not history, and comes from outside time, and comes into the darkness like a light. This is that truth. It’s a truth that will make everything true. It’s a light that will lighten the world.’
‘But will it happen?’
‘Such stubbornness! Such hardness of heart! Yes, it will happen, if you believe in it.’
‘But you know how weak my faith is! I couldn’t even… You know what I couldn’t do.’
‘We are discussing truth, not history,’ the angel reminded him. ‘You may live history, but you must write truth.’
‘It’s in history that I want to see him rise again.’
‘Then believe.’
‘And if I can’t?’
‘Then think of an orphan child, lost and cold and starving. Think of a sick man, racked with pain and fear. Think of a dying woman terrified by the coming darkness. There will be hands reaching out to comfort them and feed them and warm them, there will be voices of kindness and reassurance, there will be soft beds and sweet hymns and consolation and joy. All those kindly hands and sweet voices will do their work so willingly because they know that one man died and rose again, and that this truth is enough to cancel out all the evil in the world.’
‘Even if it never happened.’
The angel said nothing.
Christ waited for a response, but none came. So he said, ‘I can see now. It’s better that one man should die than that all these good things should never come about. That’s what you’re saying. If I’d known it would come to this, I wonder if I’d ever have listened to you in the first place. And I’m not surprised that you left it till now before making it clear. You’ve caught me in a net so that I’m tangled like a gladiator and I can’t fight my way out.’
Still the angel said nothing.
Christ went on, ‘And why me? Why must it be my hand that betrays him? It’s not as if he’s hard to find. It’s not as if no one in Jerusalem knows what he looks like. It’s not as if there are no greedy scum who wouldn’t give him away for a handful of coins. Why must I do it?’
‘Do you remember what Abraham said when he was commanded to sacrifice his son?’ said the angel then.
Christ was silent.
‘He said nothing,’ he said finally.
‘And do you remember what happened when he lifted the knife?’
‘An angel told him not to harm the boy. And then he saw the ram caught in the thicket.’
The angel stood up to leave.
‘Take your time, my dear Christ,’ he said. ‘Consider everything. When you’re ready, come to the house of Caiaphas, the high priest.’
Christ at the Pool of Bethesda
Christ meant to stay in his room and think about the ram in the thicket: did the angel mean that something would happen at the last minute to save his brother? What else could he have meant?
But the room was small and stuffy, and Christ needed fresh air. He wrapped his cloak around himself and went out into the streets. He walked towards the temple, and then away again; he walked towards the Damascus gate, and then turned to one side, whether left or right he didn’t know; and presently he found himself at the pool of Bethesda. This was a place where invalids of every kind came in the hope of being healed. The pool was surrounded by a colonnade under which some of the sick slept all night, though they were supposed to come only during the hours of daylight.
Christ made his way quietly under the colonnade and sat on the steps that led down to the pool. The moon was nearly full, but clouds covered the sky, and Christ could not see much apart from the pale stone and the dark water. He hadn’t been there for more than a minute when he heard a shuffling sound, and turned in alarm to see something coming towards him: a man whose legs were paralysed pulling himself laboriously over the stone pavement.
Christ got up, ready to move away, but the man said, ‘Wait, sir, wait for me.’
Christ sat down again. He wanted to be alone, but he remembered the angel’s description of the good work that would be done by that church they both wanted to see; could he possibly turn away from this poor man? Or could the beggar in some unimaginable way be the ram that would be sacrificed instead of Jesus?
‘How can I help you?’ Christ said quietly.
‘Just stay and talk to me for a minute or two, sir. That’s all I want.’
The crippled man pulled himself up next to Christ and lay there breathing heavily.
‘How long have you been waiting for a cure?’ said Christ.
‘Twelve years, sir.’
‘Will no one help you to the water? Shall I help you now?’
‘No good now, sir. What happens is that an angel comes every so often and stirs the water up, and the first one in the pool afterwards gets cured. I can’t move so quickly, as you may have noticed.’
‘How do you live? What do you eat? Have you got friends or a family to look after you?’
‘There’s some people who come along sometimes and give us a bit of food.’
‘Why do they do that? Who are they?’
‘I don’t know who they are. They do it because… I don’t know why they do it. Maybe they’re just good.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said another voice in the darkness. ‘No one’s good. It’s not natural to be good. They do it so’s other people will think more highly of them. They wouldn’t do it otherwise.’
‘You don’t know nothing,’ said a third voice from under the colonnade. ‘People can earn high opinions in quicker ways than doing good. They do it because they’re frightened.’
‘Frightened of what?’ said the second voice.
‘Frightened of hell, you blind fool. They think they can buy their way out of it by doing good.’
‘Doesn’t matter why they do it,’ said the lame man, ‘as long as they do it. Anyway, some people are just good.’
‘Some people are just soft, like you, you worm,’ said the third voice. ‘Why’s no one helped you down to the water in twelve years? Eh? Because you’re filthy, that’s why. You stink, like we all do. They’ll throw a bit of bread your way, but they won’t touch you. That’s how good they are. You know what real charity would be? It wouldn’t be bread. They don’t miss bread. They can buy more bread whenever they want. Real charity would be a pretty young whore coming down here and giving us a good time for nothing. Can you imagine a sweet-faced girl with skin like silk coming and laying herself down in my arms, with my sores oozing pus all over her and stinking like a dungheap? If you can imagine that, you can imagine real goodness. I’m damned if I can. I could live a thousand years and never see goodness like that.’
‘Because it wouldn’t be goodness,’ said the blind man. ‘It’d be wickedness and fornication, and she’d be punished and so would you.’
‘There’s old Sarah,’ said the lame man. ‘She come down here last week. She does it for nothing.’
‘Because she’s mad and full of drink,’ said the leper. ‘Mad enough to lie with you, anyway. But even she wouldn’t lie with me.’
