Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues of Men or Angels

He cuts his hand again, while forcing the crown onto the prisoner’s head, but the others are applauding, so he continues. From the scores the thorns cut in the Jew’s head, it is as if he weeps tears of blood.

Yeshua might well have approved of this community in Antioch, Cephas thinks. It is a strange thing, all right, to have Gentiles and Jews sitting down together like brothers. But strange is not the same as wrong. The prophets of old said that, when the Kingdom of God comes, every people will look to Israel for rule and guidance. Just as Zechariah put it: In those days, ten men of every language and nation will hold tightly to each Jew by the hem of his garments saying, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard how God is with you.’ In the time shortly to arrive, the Israelites will be the priests of all the world. So perhaps these people here at Antioch are just the first fruits of that.

This is Cephas’s debut trip to a foreign land, if you don’t count Samaria, and you can’t count Samaria. Scar-throated Jochanan didn’t think it was a good idea for Cephas to come. But Cephas is heartened now he’s arrived to witness this curious symbiotic synagogue and to see it so thriving.

Because it’s all very well for Jochanan to say that things should be this way, things ought to be thus and such. Things are as they are. It’s been a year since the meeting with Paul at Jerusalem, and Cephas thought it was past time that one of the Pillars visited the following at Antioch, to see what it was all about.

The church meets in a riverside warehouse, which a wealthy merchant has given them on permanent loan. It was damaged in an earthquake and parts of its stone walls still bear the marks of that, cracks jagged and random as the tracks of startled hens.

Paul, Barnabas and some of the other brothers live there, in canopied quarters they have fashioned, a kind of tent-village within the building, like internal Bedouin. But any of The Way are welcome to pass by at any time, and daily they do. And all of them gather for the commensal meal and prayers, held on the first day of every week so that the Jewish brothers can continue to observe the Sabbath, but all can join in together on the following evening.

And it’s on his first such evening that Cephas witnesses the collection being taken for the poor ones of Jerusalem, just as James had laid down to Paul. A Phrygian cap is passed around and each person places their donation deep within it, so that no one can note how much or how little a fellow can afford to give. But by the time it is returned to Paul, the cap is bulging and heavy, lumpen like a face stung by bees.

Perhaps they give especially generously because Cephas is here. It is hard for Cephas not to get a little swept away by his own celebrity. He is the first person these Antiochenes have met who knew Yeshua and they beam and gaze at him. Cephas is, of course, recognized and respected by many in Jerusalem too. But here believers even try to touch the blue-threaded tassels of his robe, as if they expect a little magic thereby to come upon them. Before the meal, some jostled and jockeyed one another for position, like boys at the beginning of a running race, to try to secure a place closer to Cephas’s.

Paul tells Cephas that Antioch’s dense-packed population is said to be more than four hundred thousand strong, with eighteen different ethnic districts confined within its walls. Not two years ago there were riots against the Jews and a great many died. Outside this warehouse of The Way is a city of mistrust and misunderstanding, gangs and rivalries, enmity and poverty. But in here all men are brothers and all men are fed.

And so Cephas breaks bread with them. Drivers, drovers, porters, bathhouse cleaners, tin-workers, merchants, shop attendants, carvers, coopers, labourers, blade-grinders, masons, sweepers, wea vers, artisans, tanners, spinners, stallholders, tailors, sailors, silversmiths, and even some slaves. Pierced and painted and branded, with hair and hat and apparel of every folk and fashion of the Empire. It is a marvel to behold. And Jochanan probably wouldn’t approve of it, but Cephas can’t help feeling that Yeshua might have.

For while it’s true that Yeshua never went to the Gentiles, didn’t he also say, in that parable about the feast: Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find . Yeshua only ever ate with Jews, it’s true, but within that he dined with sinners and whores, he welcomed any who would accept his message of rededication and repentance to bring about the new age. And, when you think about it, seemingly Yeshua never expected to die — he said back then that the new age would come within his lifetime; but since he did and it didn’t, everything subsequent has to be re-evaluated.

Paul calls the communal meal the Lord’s Supper, Cephas notices, which is a little odd. And he reverses the normal Israelite order, first blessing the bread and then the wine. And even the blessing is unusual: ‘We, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf,’ Paul says.

And he calls the wine the Cup of the Covenant. But aside from that, things are not so very different from community meals as the Nazarenes practise them in Jerusalem. And the table is spread with better food and Cephas has a belly for food. And the company is good. Though Paul, who sits next to Cephas, is also the most distant.

Paul has a livid blotch on his forehead. When Cephas first arrived, he thought it must be some minor injury. But over several weeks he notices that it has formed where Paul clutches his hand to his head when he seeks God’s guidance or prophesies. He pushes his fingers there — as if to govern utterances threatening to overwhelmingly burst forth — so hard that the place is becoming permanently bruised. It is a visible mark of Paul’s prodigious faith. But it must ache, Cephas thinks. It looks sore.

Cephas is unlettered — illiterate — and he admires Paul’s learning while watching him teach the community and new converts over those first weeks at Antioch. But Paul can also seem slightly shifty somehow. Cephas can’t quite batten down the sensation, much less define it, but it’s as if Paul is trying to be all things to all men. Around the Jews he acts like a Jew and accentuates and exaggerates his Jewishness. Around the Greeks you would never know he was a Jew at all: he acts like one of them, like a former pagan — even his accent changes. Perhaps that’s just the sign of a gifted orator, though, not disingenuous. There is no doubting that Paul has a compelling charisma. Whether he exhorts the followers to work, to pray, or to praise God in strange and startling tongues, he sweeps everyone along with his passion, like a mighty wave. Cephas half suspects that he is only really noticing little eddies of his own jealousy at Paul’s great gifts.

If Cephas hadn’t been chosen by Yeshua, he would still be a Galilee fisherman. His back would likely be strained and shredded as an old net by now. His face would be as dark and lined as the bruised skies before a storm. But he couldn’t in all honesty say he’d be less contented. There was something to be said for the simplicity of his life before The Way. When Yeshua was still around, Cephas had felt so alive and filled with hope. But he hadn’t needed to make any speeches or decisions back then; he had needed only to believe and protect. Now people look to Cephas to lead them. And Cephas doesn’t know if he was formed to lead; he doesn’t always know if his choices are the right ones.