Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues of Men or Angels

Paul used to believe that the future was out there waiting for him, but time has taught him that the thing lurking around the next corner is invariably the past. Sometimes the past emerges as an ill-suppressed memory and sometimes it comes as a person, this person: Cephas, the old, stony nemesis.

‘So here he is again,’ Paul says, ‘the man of threes: the third Pillar of Jerusalem, the third disciple, who leaped to deny our Lord three times, before the cock could even crow. And three times I’ve asked God to rid me of him too. Yet he’s back.’

Cephas still has something toughened about him, but he is age-dried and seamed now, like well-seasoned wood. ‘Yes, I’ve caught up with you again,’ Cephas says, ‘and I’ll keep coming after you until the grave claims one of us, or you stop peddling your lies.’

‘The gospel I preach is not of human origin. I didn’t receive it from any man, nor was I taught it,’ Paul says. ‘I received it by revelation direct from Jesus Christ, so how can it be lies?’

‘But can anyone really be educated for teaching by visions? And if the correct way was to be shown by vision, then why did Yeshua live with and preach to waking men for a whole year? How can we believe that he appeared to you, when your sentiments are so opposed to what he taught during his life?’

‘Why can’t you understand that He must have been changed by death? You who knew Him in the flesh know Him no longer …’

‘Changed, perhaps, all things can alter, but to become opposites? Impossible! They tell me you now preach that followers of The Way must be subject to Caesar and his governors, that all authority has been established by God. That whoever rebels against Rome is rebelling against what God has instituted.’

‘Of course: rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but only for those who do wrong. Caesar is God’s ruler and protects those who obey. But if you do wrong, be afraid, because rulers will bring the sword when there is reason to. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.’

‘Spoken like the Temple Guard groveller you once were, but that isn’t what Yeshua thought, that isn’t what he said. The Romans bleed our lands. God didn’t appoint them to rule us any more than the Egyptians, or Babylonians, or the Seleucid despots whom the Maccabees defeated. Your gospel is so opposed to what Yeshua believed that it simply cannot have come from him. He was executed by Rome, have you forgotten that?’

‘He wasn’t executed,’ Paul says. ‘He surrendered himself to be our redemption offering. He was the Passover Lamb, who atoned for the sins of the world. That’s why He was sacrificed on the Passover.’

‘Yeshua surrendered to save those of us who were with him that night, not the world. And he wasn’t even crucified on the Passover — it was the day before.’

‘Details, details, what difference does a day make?’

‘Time means nothing to you, I know. You think you spoke with a vision for a single hour and became an apostle through that. If you truly are an apostle, then preach Yeshua’s words, those he spoke in life, expound his meaning, love his disciples, don’t fight with us who knew him. Instead of slandering me and reviling the preaching that I heard myself in person, become once again our fellow-workman.’

Paul turns to the circle of his followers now. ‘You hear how the poison of vipers is on his lips. I let him under my roof only so that you could witness for yourselves the blasphemy of the false brothers. But if Cephas, or those others, or even an angel from Heaven, should preach a gospel other than the one I preached to you, let them be cursed by God! I repeat: if anybody preaches to you a gospel different from what I tell you, let them be cursed by God! This dog, this evildoer, this mutilator of foreskin flesh, would lead you away from the path of Jesus and back to the ways of the Jews.’

‘But Yeshua was a Jew, a devout Jew, and to follow The Way to its fullest you should become Jews.’

‘See? I am not lying, the messenger of Satan confesses it with his own tongue. If this agitator is so obsessed by circumcision, why doesn’t he cut the rest off too? I wish he would go the whole way and castrate himself.’

At this Cephas lets out a curse of exasperation, as a child might at one who has bested, not his argument, but his self-control. He comes at Paul with poultry-skin hands extended in a shaky grip, as if to grasp his throat and throttle. Magnified by Cephas’s great size and the tremors of age, the act looks exaggerated, almost comic, as an actor might perform it, so that those at the back of the amphitheatre could see. Perhaps Cephas would have restrained himself again, but Demas and Silas thrust themselves quickly in his path anyway. Then Manius draws his gladius and raises the tip up at Cephas’s face, and like this Cephas is forced out of the still open door, though in his prime he might have thrown all three of them through it closed.

So even this vast city, it seems, is not large enough to contain both Paul and Cephas. The Way has long since passed a parting of the ways. But now one route or the other must be forbidden. One path must be blocked with felled trees and covered with cut brush until the wild reclaims it and humankind forgets that there ever was a track along there. The winning trail must be broadened and marked, laid straight and solid like the roads of Rome, paved with hewn stone, bound in with kerb and ditch. There can be only one right way. Intersection is heresy, if all roads lead to Rome. The alternative route must be hidden and returned to the forest; it must get overgrown until even the wolves forget it was once a path.

It is words that will win this struggle. The writer of the story chooses the ending. The teller decides the truth. And later Paul continues his tale to Useful.

‘In Antioch, it was, upon return from the successes of my first missionary journey, that this still-weeping wound was carved open. Though it would be some time before the pus and fester took hold. Assisted by the Holy Spirit, I had founded daughter churches and communities of believers right across the provinces of Pamphylia, Pisidia, Phrygia and Galatia, from the viridescent Mediterranean Sea to the tusks of the Taurus Mountains. I preached in sombre synagogues, and market squares amid the singsong cries of sellers and the hubbub of slaves and housewives. I was spat upon and stoned, flogged with rods and lashes, laughed at as a madman and revered as a god. But in each place I visited, I planted a seed, which through God’s grace would continue to grow. In every city I located a patron who could become the foundation stone and host a gathering, where baptisms and the sacred meal rites could be performed, where believers would leave the sins of the flesh at the door and inside be one with the spirit and rejoice in prayer, united in fellowship and God’s love. But, at the end of seven years — exhausted by my efforts and the innumerable hardships suffered — I returned to the mother church at Antioch, from where we had first set off. And I spent two years there, not at rest, but regaining strength and nursing the already large community, teaching and preaching, commemorating and telling of all the wonders we had achieved, and innovating ways to glory God and Lord Jesus.

‘But then there came to Antioch false believers, secretly brought in, like snakes that slide through the holes gnawed by rats. They slipped in to spy on the freedom we enjoyed in Christ Jesus. False brothers crept into our church at Antioch. Men sent up from Jerusalem infiltrated our ranks, intent on disruption and provocation and informing upon us, to enslave us to old ways. Individuals of The Way came from Judaea and started teaching the Greek brothers, Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved .