Yeshua section 3

Part Two

  

SCENE ONE. Near the Sea of Galilee, about 30 CE. At a Faucet.

YESHUA:

            [He enters showing signs of anger and frustration]                                   Grapple with eagles for an ounce of grace! [Hannah enters and goes to the    garden hose or faucet with two empty gallon-size jugs. Yeshua sees her.]

            Woman, I’m thirsty.

HANNAH:

            For water?  (She hands him a cup. He drinks and passes it back. She returns to             the faucet.)

YESHUA:

            I had a torrid argument with very arid men just now.

HANNAH:

            They call that thirsty work.

YESHUA:

            If we drank from the fountain of living water, we would never thirst again.

HANNAH:

            Then I wouldn’t have to break my back lugging this to the house all hours of             the day.

YESHUA:

            Don’t you have children strong enough to fetch it for you?

HANNAH:

            Had. I had a daughter that died.

           

YESHUA:

            (Not especially sympathetic) My condolences (pauses) to you and your             husband.

HANNAH:

            Husband.

YESHUA:

            What’s that?

HANNAH:

            Typical. I give you water and you insult me – and when I mention the dead,   too. [She walks over to him. With her back to the audience] But perhaps you      talk about husbands because you want to marry me … [opens her robe to him]     for an hour or so. I’m Hannah the whore. But I bet you knew that.

YESHUA:

            The man who beat you wasn’t your husband. Is he the one who lives with you          now?

HANNAH:

            [She closes her robe.] I live alone. [Lasciviously] Most of the time.  

YESHUA:

            [Sits] What do you thirst for?

HANNAH:

            [Considers him. Robustly] For wine you couldn’t buy.

YESHUA:

            You could buy wine from me without money.

HANNAH:

            Sounds like you still have a thirst for something.

YESHUA:

            I do.

HANNAH:

            Can you afford your appetites?

YESHUA:

            Can any of us? What’s the cost?

HANNAH:

            Not much, mister, so long as it clinks together.

YESHUA:

            You should want more.

HANNAH:

            Wanting too much is a dangerous habit.

YESHUA:

            Pride cometh before a fall?

HANNAH:

            Something like that. If you’ve got the coin, follow me.

YESHUA:

            I carry no wallet.

HANNAH:

            Then what are you after?

YESHUA:

            Your heart.

HANNAH:

            My what?

YESHUA:

            What are your desires?

HANNAH:

            You say the strangest things.

YESHUA:

            Have you ever thought that you deserve better?

HANNAH:

            Deserve? Who gets what they deserve? That’d kill off most of the world.

YESHUA:

            Don’t you sometimes envy the meadows their blossoms? What would it be    like to wear the finery of Sheba?

HANNAH:

            I’m a simple woman. I think you have been banged upside the head, though.

YESHUA:

            You should be dressed in a rainbow or painted in silk like a flower.

HANNAH:

            My flower faded a long time ago.

YESHUA:

            Was that after your daughter was born?

HANNAH:

            You ask with savage sweetness.

YESHUA:

            If I’m kind, you will die.

HANNAH:

            [Thinking he’s a clairvoyant] Can you read the signs?

YESHUA:

            I read all the ones that you can read.

HANNAH:

            I don’t see any signs to read.

YESHUA:

            The flowers fade, the leaves wilt. Everything breaks down.

HANNAH:  

            [Losing interest] Well, yes. But I should get back—

YESHUA:

            Without the living water? Or do you have some of that wine at home?

HANNAH:

            What water lives? And then I’d never thirst again?

YESHUA:

            No.

HANNAH:

            I thought you said –

YESHUA:

            [Growing somewhat impatient] I changed my mind.

HANNAH:

            Then what’s the point?

YESHUA:

            Life dries us out.

HANNAH:

            [With distaste] Life.

YESHUA:

            Living waters can only increase our thirst.

HANNAH:

            Increase it? For what?

YESHUA: More life.

HANNAH:

            [Sarcastic] Drown me in it. Life is suffering. Suffocating.

YESHUA:

            Wouldn’t you want everlasting life?

HANNAH:

            That sounds more like everlasting death. Growing as old as these stony hills?            No thanks, dreamer. Youth is pain, still greater pain is old age.

YESHUA:

            It is a dream. The one we all have always had since dreams began.

HANNAH:

            Who has time for dreams?

YESHUA:

            Dreams never sleep. We all are dreaming something. How intricate and         ornate are your dreams?

HANNAH:

            Dreams sleep in death.

YESHUA:

            In all eternity no dreams can visit any of the dead?

HANNAH:

            No! [After a pause she is much less certain.] No. Who knows? Eternity! You use           some big words.

YESHUA:

            Where God dwells fully and from which the world was spawned.

HANNA:

            Who knows about any of that?

YESHUA:

            Eternal dreams yearning to be released.

HANNAH:

            I don’t know from moment to moment. Sometimes I only hope

            for another one of those … pieces of warm light… stupid stuff, huh?

PRIEST: (Enters with others.)

            Who consorts with the whore?

YESHUA:

            [Stands] Israel plays the whore with Babylon.

PRIEST:

            What are you doing with this slut?

YESHUA:

            I don’t answer to you, but to God.

PRIEST:

            This female piece of filth will be stoned today for selling that which God set   his Law against.

YESHUA:

            The Law is death.

PRIEST:

            Yes. The case is perfectly clear. She must die.

YESHUA:

            As must you. As must we all.

PRIEST:

            But she dies and in her sins by stoning.

YESHUA:

            Will stoning purify her?

PRIEST:

            What?

YESHUA:

            If you find a bottle of wine that’s bad, do you put stones in it to improve the taste?

PRIEST:

            What do you mean? Do you blaspheme the Law of Moses?

YESHUA:

            Do you purify it?

PRIEST:

            No. It is pure.

YESHUA:

            Purified death.

PRIEST:

            You scoff at the Law.

YESHUA:

            You said the Law is pure.

PRIEST:

            As it is.

YESHUA:

            Are you pure?

PRIEST: She is a whore judged by the Law.

YESHUA:

            Are you pure that you apply the purity of the Law to this case?

PRIEST:

            Are you a doctor of the Law?

YESHUA:

            Are you a sinner, Hannah?

           

HANNAH:

            Er, yes, rabbi! I am a sinner but don’t let him and the others kill me! [She is    truly afraid of the priest and knows that she could be stoned to death. Her confession is an act of desperation.]

YESHUA:

            What about you, sir?

PRIEST:

            What about me? She must die!

YESHUA:

            And you will stone her to purify her? You will kill her because death

            purifies? What about you, sir? Are you a sinner? The Law is pure. Have you never coveted? Have you never desired an evil thing or a good thing evilly?

PRIEST:

            What are you saying?

YESHUA:

            We all must die. The Law is death to sinners. Throw the first stone, [to the     audience, through cupped hands] whoever!  Has.  No.  Sins.  

           

HANNAH:

            [To Yeshua] He wants me dead. He won’t be satisfied by anything less than    my blood, my death. That’s the way with his kind. Heartless.

           

OTHERS [enter]:

            There’s Yeshua, the teacher. The healer, et cetera.  [The Priest is distracted.    Yeshua takes the stone from Priest.] Rejoice, for God is merciful. [His face            mocks the Priest.]

YESHUA:

            [To Hannah] Go. Your sins are forgiven. 

           

HANNAH:

            If I flee, he’ll follow me. These priests will hound me to hell. Their hate sticks             to me like a stinking leprosy that rots my meat.

YESHUA:

            Go. Your sins have been forgiven. Hannah, who accuses you now?

HANNAH:

            [Looking at the Priest. She is deeply moved by what has taken place.]

            No one. I guess no one does.

            [Hannah exits and Mother Mary with her, carrying water. To his invisible          audience.]

YESHUA:

            Come. I won’t let you go till I’ve blessed you. Come,

            Wrestle with my true words.

PRIEST:

            Devils bless no one, devil’s son.

YESHUA:

              Your words make plain your lies.                                                      

PRIEST:

            Damnation on you, devil’s son.

YESHUA:

            So you say and so you do. I offer peace.

            You offer only curses. Devil’s curses.

            But you’re no devil, true? The son of one?

PRIEST:

            Devil-dog. Be gone. Don’t curse the God of Torah.

YESHUA:

            I preach the God of love, the God of hate.

            God hates your hate.

PRIEST:

            How can you preach? Let Moses preach.

YESHUA:

            There are things greater than Mosaic code,

            Which crushes harlots with its tables. ‘God,

            Don’t let my sins be weighed against me.’ Psalms

            Says that. ‘Create in me a righteous heart!’

            ‘Restore my soul!’ David sang that, we’re told.

            Cleanse me, you heavens!

            We wrestle with a sinless God. We fight his love.  

            [Reads] The world was formed by perfect love. The mind

            Of thinking man God framed as architect

            Eternal, from beyond the spear of time.

            [What figures limn quintescent air, or light

            Surpassing light, the being one and whole?

            The all of God almighty thus apart

            From all our temporal glint of faulty sight?–

            Zero is not yet closer to us than

            The unapproachable luminosity

            Of heaven’s quenchless fire, our Maker God.]

            And yet to shape this cosmic frame for us,

            Creating God divested power to leave

            Us free of all coercion; double blind

            He urged our being be, prepared to fail,

            Empty of all but mortal risk. Disgrace

            Potential, equal to his potent grace,

            Squatted on the horizon like a roosting cormorant.

            He hurled the purblind dice, the stolen sparks,

            Freely igniting conflagration free.

            Without necessity he let it burn.

            The hazard of his ignorance still burns

            Like glowing cauteries in God’s heart.

            If we don’t feel his warmth on frigid nights

            Like shepherds on a gelid hillside watch,

            The world gone cold beneath the stellar ice,

            The father comprehends, leaves unresolved

            Our brittle frost, the crystal of the self.

            Faults and shivers distinguish us from him,

            Who made life possible by chance,

            Who formed a nature failable and free,

            According to his aleatoric plan.

            [Regular Lighting Resumes.]

PRIEST:

            Blaspheming fool! God gambles?! Blasphemy!

            What stupid lies!  A stream of lies! Latrines

            Flow out as sweet! The God of Israel blind?!

            The fiery pillar was not sightless, child.

            The father tosses knucklebones?! Such trash!

            Canaan was not disclosed in darkness, nor

            Was Abram led from Ur by stumbling steps.

            Insanity and craziness – unschooled,

            Untutored, uncredentialed craziness!

            You gambol as a senseless windblown leaf. 

            [He has a coughing fit.]

YESHUA:

            Something to drink? [He offers a cup.]

PRIEST:

            Foreknowledge has no room to err by chance!

            His hand fulfils the promises he speaks!

            Heaven and earth cannot contain him, nothing hides

            From him! What place is there for ignorance

            With God?! below the earth?! above the stars?! 

YESHUA:

            [Feigning the mildest disappointment,]

            Then God made Rome to rule, made us to kneel.

            [He’s happy that he’s beaten the Priest’s logic.]

            You didn’t let me finish. I had more.  

            [Reads] His will permits no foreknown accident.

            Murder all-knowing God creates, and rape,

            When he creates knowing all things, or else

            He must forgive confusion in our hearts

            When we confront white-hot infinity.

           

PRIEST:

            What!? [Unwilling to think of God fostering confusion. He slaps at his own face.]

YESHUA:

            But God need not move equal everywhere,

            Or at all times the same.

           

PRIEST:

            Hellish child!

           

YESHUA:

            If if if if if – if! [Enraged suddenly because  the Priest isn’t following his   argument.]

            In humble form

            He soiled himself and formed our random race,

            Hidden from us – our ends yet hid from him.

            He wore a blindfold for the cosmic outcome.

            Look at it another way:

            Fathers on earth aren’t worse than Moses’ God.

            Earthly sons are more generous than scribes

            Toward fathers on the earth. Scribes skimp with God.

            Would not an earthly father feed a hungry son?

            Or would he beat him for requesting bread?

            You scribes are fathers who beat your hungry sons.

            The Pharisees bankrupt heaven, enslave the world,

            The world’s creator, chain him to their need,

            Hobbled by their consistency and greed

            For superficial honey-drizzled truths. 

            Desire for truth is no desire for God!

            You’d rather be renowned as wise than close

            And prone before God’s limitless abyss.    

            Forgive me, priest. I doubt you have the truth.

            Trembling agrees with your rash ire, no doubt.

PRIEST:

            [He indeed trembles.] Almighty God shakes through me. You blaspheme,

            Concoct a God of your own ego, like

            The Greeks, the Greeks, the Greeks praise pointless words!

            But God’s Word, promises of Israel’s God! [Thunderously loud.]

YESHUA:

            [With condescending patience as if he is talking to a stupid child who is nonetheless trying hard to understand him.]

            For one small crack you smash the houses down.

            The children dance but you refuse to smile.

            The orphans weep, but are you moved at all?

            You’d rather starve a man than stain a scroll.

            This child right here has suppurating wounds.

            Is this the plan of God? Proud heart! What keeps

            The bird-shit from your cloaks? What stops the grave

            From suing for your bones? God hates your lies,

            Religious lies that horrify the poor.

PRIEST:

            So lies are sacred Scripture, snake?

YESHUA:

            Your hissing sounds can suss it out.

PRIEST:

            [He thunders.] Gideon made sounds like these! 

YESHUA:

            Jonah’s fish made noise. It belched.

PRIEST:

            ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ that trump I blast. I read the Law.

YESHUA:

            You read what pleases you. You hear your voice.

            You wouldn’t smell a rotten corpse behind

            Your couch. You pack the Lord inside a purse, [prim mockery]

            A sacerdotal purse, and take him out

            Before a rain and say, ‘This storm is small

            Compared to Jacob’s God.’ Or Herod’s God.  

PRIEST:

            Azazel take you! [He exits.]

YESHUA: 

            Death takes us all. [He turns to the girl with the suppurating wound and tries             to comfort her, examining her sore.]

           

GIRL’S MOTHER:

            Teacher, what sin of mine has made her sick?

YESHUA:

            (He sheds tears at this and shakes his head. He embraces the mother and           whispers in her ear that it is not her fault. The mother and girl exit.)

PHARISEE: (He and Woman enter separately.)

            Is there something wrong with his eye? He’s weeping like an unsteady           woman and squeezing those beggars like their long lost cousins. He can’t be     the one I heard was screeching sermons, can he? Is this unlettered busker          trained to mime?

WOMAN:

            No, he’s the healer, from near Nazareth. 

PHARISEE:

            A healer, eh? Too bad he doesn’t mime.

WOMAN:

            Why’s that?

PHARISEE:

            Apostates are never mimes. [Sarcastically] I said it backwards. 

WOMAN:

            He healed my sore – you want to see the scar?

PHARISEE:

            Dear, no. [Nauseated] A chine in heavy sauce – I just ate.

WOMAN:

            I saw him work a miracle on a blind guy.

            I watched him make an eyeball out of yolk

            From a dove’s egg.

PHARISEE:

            Amen! [Ironically]

YESHUA:

            People, what sin can fortify against

            The love of God? Save callousness, what sin

            Remains to separate us from God’s realm?

            Here, now, alive: it’s heaven’s kingdom, here!

            Extending to Topheth. So, Israel’s Rock

            Replaces Molech’s chair, and splits the night

            Above the stars. My father builds his hearth,

            For all who ask, within the willing heart. 

WOMAN:

            Master! Yeshua! I came back to thank you.

            I’m healed! You healed me.

YESHUA:

            God has healed you: either by his natural miracle

            Or else by art. He glories in our strength.

PHARISEE:

            What doctrine do you teach?

YESHUA:

            Nothing but what the prophets taught.

PHARISEE:

            That being?

YESHUA:

            Salvation. God’s gift. [He would have listed more.]

PHARISEE:

            [Cutting in.]

            The Law of Moses. That’s salvation. But

            Maybe you mean another kind, a vagrant ranting kind?

            Nothing pharisaical.

YESHUA:

            No. Nothing pharisaical. A dose of medicine and nothing more. Someplace     safer than caves during earthquakes. I teach a means of health.

PHARISEE:

            Can lepers learn it? You instruct cripples

            In acrobatics, I bet. And what health or safety do you preach

            That guards against death?

YESHUA:

            Did God not name creation good? Is he unmoved when grackles fall?

            You think God never sorrows? Never sheds a tear

            While he is shackled to the sickly earth? 

            Narrow is the gate that leads to wisdom. Few will ever find it.

PHARISEE: 

            Let the learned teach. We Pharisees are well-schooled

            and thoroughly trained.

            What wisdom do you have for sinners such as this?

             [He points to a man lying down beside the path, apparently

            unaware of his surroundings.]

YESHUA:

            [Warming] You are the sinner. All are lost as stupid sheep.

            But you bilk widows.

            You jawbone crowds with the jawbone of an ass,

            You’d brush them in a pit – and just to take

            The center of the street to synagogue. 

            [Bending down before the man beside the path.]

            This is David.

PHARISEE:

            The king, I think!

YESHUA:

            David, your sins are washed away. God’s love is here. 

DAVID: 

            Bless you, rabbi.

PHARISEE:

            Such ideas!

YESHUA:

            Ideas save our lives – or kill us outright!

SADDUCEE: 

            [Has entered before unnoticed.] Men take lives.

PHARISEE:

            [To Yeshua] Who are you, claiming sins atoned?

YESHUA:

            God loved us long before we ever loved

            Ourselves or thought of loving others, hoped to love;

            Whereas we feared, and fear barred thought of hope.

            Terror anticipated any dream

            Of optimistic thought. So what of hope?

            That was a dream we never had. If skies

            Glowered, a demon it was called. The earth’s

            Temblors were named heaven’s hate. The fire, the flood,

            Plague, famine, war: all pointed to one truth:

            Happiness is for man temerity;

            Always the gods knock down the foolish proud.

SADDUCEE:

            The Lord lifts up the perfect man. [Looks askance at the Pharisee.]

PHARISEE:

            And who is perfect but God?

YESHUA:

            The dead.

SADDUCEE:

            How’s that? [Ready to take offense.]

YESHUA:

            Man’s nature is the body. The nature of the body is maturity from which       death follows. The perfection of the nature of the man is death, therefore.

SADDUCEE:

            That’s reasonable. [Without irony, but grudgingly.]

YESHUA:

            And in times unpropitious and unreasonable as these. [Lightly snide.]       

            [Reads] The Romans fault Apollo for a sudden shock,

            Instant death or protracted languishing.

            Should we blame Jehovah for heaven’s crimes of negligence?

            Wouldn’t some be better never born? What

            Good gift is wretched life?

            Unless God made the world he had to,

            One he could not invade with his oppressive presence.

            The Psalmists couldn’t hide from God.

            Today, I’ll hide you, then, within God.

            The creator has made darkness within himself

            In which shadows we can take refuge and

            Make a redoubt there to have doubts and fears,

            Simple thoughts to ourselves. No human room

            Without room for a human doubt.

PHARISEE:

            Fear, doubt? You preach this stuff as gospel?

YESHUA:

            And hate. “Six things the Lord God hates, yea – ”

PHARISEE:

            [Conceding the point,] “Yea, seven are abominable to him.”

YESHUA:

            Abusive power most hateful of all.

SADDUCEE:

            Absolutely incoherent! You’d upturn the world. There is an order to the        earth. A hierarchy.

YESHUA:

            The world is incoherent. God made it to be.

            To tie your brain in knots.

SADDUCEE:

            Idiocy and blasphemy.

YESHUA:

            I’m a Jew. Are you not Jews? Or are you passersby of the Pentateuch?

PHARISEE:

            I must agree with my “friend” here. God gives

            His fullest blessing to the righteous man.

            All who live in accordance with truth shall prosper.

            God holds back no good thing from the godly.

            All nations were once ignorant of God

            And were by nature foolish and unable

            To see from the good things that are, the One

            Who always is and was.

            [Yeshua does a mocking dance.]             

             They worshipped idols.

            Their speedy end has been established since

            Before the world’s foundations were emplaced.

            The judgment of the Most High God descends

            Adamantly on sinner’s heads as punishment.

            The chosen reap the benefits of love.

YESHUA:

            You sigh in ease while children lie in misery

            Under your feet. Surely, you must suspect

            As bad, or worse, could come for you or for

            Your little ones. Too often evil men succeed.

            Pharisees don’t possess the wealth of Rome.

            I heard that a wise Greek, when asked what makes

            Man happy, said, “Never to have been born,”

            Or if not that, to die still young.”

SADDUCEE:

            The Greeks are heathens. The heathens rage! What do the Greeks know?

YESHUA:

            Blessèd are the Greeks. [Somewhat facetiously. To the Sadducee.] You’re a       Sadducee, correct?

SADDUCEE:

            You recognized me?

YESHUA:

            [Sniffs deeply.] No.

PHARISEE:

            You stand here and curse life? God’s sacred gift you curse?

YESHUA: 

            Yes – if the goal of life is happiness. If ignorance is bliss, bliss must be pretty             damn ignorant.   

PHARISEE:

            Insane! Insane!

SADDUCEE:

            Madness!

YESHUA:

            That we die at all – there’s the crucial brink.

            Life has its key in death, the final enemy,

            The great abyss. Hope is the cobweb God

            Uses to haul us over hell.

SADDUCEE: 

            What does it matter if these cattle die? (Referring to commoners.)

YESHUA:

            It’s sick cattle-matter, is it?

            [Crazily] It’s sickness worse than we can fix!

            Better kill it! Better kill it! Before it spreads.

            Gone in the head like Nebuchadnezzar! [Runs around and crawls on all fours as if he’s lost his sanity.]

            Sick as, as . . . as Gehazi! [Recovering himself.]

            Listen – callousness, indifference, apathy and cruelty – what sin is greater     than these?

SADDUCEE:

            A demon has this man! [Stunned, forgetting he doesn’t believe in demons.]

YESHUA:

            You have no depth, no great profundity

            Of need. The wind blowing across the sea stiffens

            Nothing in you. You’re young and don’t fear death.

            What of the death of children? Dried up phlegm

            Has more feeling than you. Better are these

            Perfectionists the Pharisees. You’d do

            As well to join that sarcophobic clan

            They call Essenes who live like desiccated angels

            In a pure xeric fastness near the Asphalt Sea. 

            They too have hardly room for human doubt

            Or human hope. They know. [To the Pharisee.] The Sadducee

            Does not believe. Judges believe one guilty

            Or innocent. For them that’s all there is to it.

            A matter for the brain. A set of codes.

            A shibboleth. [To the Sadducee.] Is faith a theorem? Words?

            Comfort is your fetish. No complicated thoughts,

            Conflicted yearnings. No ambivalence.

            Certainty All.  The Way. A-round. Belief?

            A waste of time for those who make a god of knowledge!   

            [Screams] You served up John the Baptist to the worms, unmourned!

PHARISEE:

            Herodians! Herodians did that! Our hands are clean of it!

YESHUA:

            Your grippers stink of gore!

SADDUCEE: 

            God’s will be done and may he hand you to a Roman idol!

            Burn your skin on their obscene demonic altars.  

YESHUA:

            As Herod’s temple you make obscene.

            The grand Sanhedrin skims and scams the indigent,

            Infirm, the simple trekking from Cilicia,

            From Negev, and from Alexandria. They come. For what?

            Humiliation. Abasement. [Screams.] Besmirched and robbed – or worse!

PHARISEE:

            There’s faith enough for them at synagogue.

            Once a year to the Temple’s not so much.

            But you, uneducated, unwashed riff-ruffian,

            Desire a name, a messianic fame. That flock of quail

            And sparrows following you will be snared and strangled.

YESHUA:

            Thugs, dregs, brigands, dacoits: You’ve seen

            Them all. And I – who preach in fields saying all are

            Created in God’s image: poor or ill – am criminal par excellence.

PHARISEE:

            [Stammering with nervous anger, forgetting that Yeshua already sardonically told the Sadducee to become an Essene] Those desert troglodytes who want   reform within the Temple? Those effete, emaciated Essenes? Go reform yourself with them!

YESHUA:

            All Jews must soon reform their hearts!