oneself out to be greater than Abraham was almost blasphemous and certainly sacrilegious, given the reverence in which Father Abraham was held.
“Who do you think you are, anyway?”
“Yes, tell us! Who?”
Jesus made some other remarks I could not catch amid the bellows of rage and animosity, but then some words again came through clearly: “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad.”
“What?”
“Preposterous!”
“This is a madman!”
“Lock him up for his own good!”
“You’re not even fifty years old, but you claim to know Abraham?”
“You’ve seen him? He lived … twice a thousand years ago! What are you saying?”
What was he saying? My heart was pounding in my chest.
Was Jesus about to be stoned or gathered up bodily and thrown from the pinnacle of the Temple to the rocks below?
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said.
In other words, listen and I’ll answer your question. Give me a chance to speak. Hear me out. Pay attention.
“I tell you the truth …”
And then he spoke the fatal, unmistakable words, words that echo down through time, ringing in my ears to this very day. The unequivocal statement that Jesus was himself divine. No good teacher, no wise philosopher would ever, ever speak these words in Hebrew: “Before Abraham was, I AM.”
He had said it! The very title almighty God spoke when Moses asked by what name the God of the children of Abraham chose to identify himself. God said: “Say this to the Israelites: I AM THAT I AM. Tell them, I AM has sent me to you.”
My worst fears were being realized. With a collective howl of rage, while families scattered in all directions, scribes and Pharisees and Temple officials clawed out cobblestones. Prying loose the pavement with their fingertips, they prepared to stone Jesus to death! Jesus had saved my sister from this very fate.
Who would save him now?
What could his small band of followers do to protect him? What could they do but die with him?
“Where did he go?” the burly heckler demanded.
There was a rush up the steps of the Treasury, but Jesus was not inside.
“Toward Nicanor! After him!”
But Jesus was not by the bronze gates either.
Somehow he had slipped away.1
Each of the angry enemies stood pivoting in place until, feeling foolish, they dropped their clods and rocks and broken chunks of tile and departed.
Baffled and exhausted, so did I. No one could assert Jesus never claimed to be divine. I saw it. I heard it. He was almost stoned to death because of it!
Chapter 16
I wandered about Jerusalem, lost in my thoughts. Who was this man from Nazareth? Who, in his right mind, would claim he was older than Abraham? That he was, in fact, divine, equal to the I AM?
I also reviewed what my own eyes had seen: the transformation of water into wine, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, walking on the surface of the sea and calming the storm … bringing Jairus’s daughter back to life again.
Surely he was more than a charlatan. All these events could not be staged, could they?
I heard his teaching. I had seen the transformation of my sister Mary’s heart—itself a greater accomplishment than changing water into wine. I already believed him to be a prophet sent by God.
What was the phrase used by the prophets to describe when God appeared to men as a man? The Angel of the Lord—that was it. He had visited Father Abraham, wrestled with Jacob, appeared to Joshua, guided Gideon, proved himself to Samson’s father. He was Almighty God, referred to as an angel but looking human.
But Jesus was human. I had eaten with him, tasted wine with him, walked beside him when he had to stop and pull a pebble from his sandal.
What could it mean?
I scarcely knew where I was going and did not know where Jesus had gone. Perhaps he had already returned to Bethany.
Eventually I discovered I had crossed the viaduct into the western city. I needed someone to talk with, and that sent me to find Nicodemus. If there was anyone with whom I could pour out my confusion, it was the learned Pharisee who was also wrestling with the same issues.
As it happened, I located Nicodemus and Jesus together. Deep in conversation and accompanied by a ring of Pharisees not yet convinced Jesus was more than a fake, they were outside the wall of Nicodemus’s home, near a famous gardenia bush now grown as large as a tree.
I also found Peniel