Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues of Men or Angels

Because one Sabbath morning a man came to Philippi’s synagogue. A man of perhaps fifty, his age was hard to tell, his face darkened like a field slave’s from decades of days on the road, wrinkled before time by the sun he walked under, or the Son he talked about. A man of short but sturdy stature, with crooked legs, crisp, scanty hair, a single thick eyebrow perched on a broad forehead like moss upon a rock, a bent and bowed nose, and teeth that seemed rather more an assortment than a set. The unkind might even say he was an unattractive man. But it seemed to Lydia that only those who glanced for an instant could ever say that. Not those close enough to feel his forceful eyes. Certainly not those who heard him speak. To Lydia, the man could at times seem like an angel, which perhaps he was, since, like an angel, he was a messenger of God.

And to Lydia, who had known so little of love, he sang a hymn of love.

‘If I speak with the tongues of men or angels, but have not love,’ he said, ‘what am I?’

And because no one in the synagogue answered this riddle, he answered himself: ‘I am just a clashing gong or a clanging cymbal. Even if I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and render over my body to hardship, I may boast of my deeds, but if I don’t do it through love, I gain nothing.

‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not brag, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and love keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.’

And it seemed to Lydia that you could forgive a lot of a person who brought to the world such words as those. It seemed to Lydia that you could forgive him anything.

Lydia was baptized, there in the river, outside the walls. She took a deep gulp of air to prepare as the preacher held her by the crown and pushed her under. She released the air, as she burst free from the water and cried, ‘Abba.’ She released the air and so much more was released with it. She let go of envy and enmity and injury. She let go of a hate she had all this time harboured against a deceased husband. And a place inside her, the space cleared of all those toxins, was filled with love.

Man cannot live on bread alone. But without bread he cannot live at all. And Lydia begged the evangelist and his two companions to stay in her villa awhile. They did, and her whole household was baptized too, by the stranger-angel, whose name was Paul.

Paul’s message was an elegantly simple perfection of form. The Jesus he told Lydia about, though new to her, was a figure comfortably familiar from cults she had known before. And Paul’s faith was linked to the exquisite tapestry of the Israelite scriptures, but without their strictures. Being attached to those ancient texts added an authority lacking in other salvation-sects, but like them, Paul’s followers were promised eternal life. And Lydia retained the powerful sense of belonging that she had experienced from committing to belief in just one God; but rather than being an appendage in the synagogue, she was a fully fledged member of the mystes of Christ. More than that: a sponsor and founder; among the first of equals; though all were equal in the eyes of Jesus.

‘Should I give my slaves their freedom?’ Lydia asked Paul one day, having come to an obvious conundrum of equality. ‘If we are all united now, brothers and sisters in Christ and love, how can I keep them as slaves?’

‘Let those called as slaves remain as slaves,’ Paul said. ‘Slaves should obey their masters with fear and trembling. The new age will dawn at any moment. This generation will not pass away before these things take place, so it is best that everyone just stand as they are. Time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep. Because the world in its present form is passing away.’

Which is why, to Lydia’s great sorrow, Paul could not stay with her for long. He had to continue to spread the word, wherever the Holy Spirit would send him. And the Holy Spirit seemed to think the further away from Jerusalem the better. Travelling with only two disciples: strong-armed Silas, who had come with Paul from the community at Antioch — where Lydia sensed there had been some kind of discord — and Timothy, a half-Jew they had recruited en route.

Lydia pleaded that she be allowed to continue to send money for their work and Paul gracefully agreed that she could.

‘Because the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. He who shepherds the flock drinks the milk of the flock. Just as those who serve in the temple share in what is offered on the altar. So give what you have decided in your heart to give. God loves a cheerful giver. If you sow generously, Lydia, you will also reap generously.’

And surely it was so because, as if by divine intervention, Lydia’s profits increased dramatically only shortly afterwards: one of her slaves discovered that there was another way to get dye from the sea-snails: they do not have to be crushed; they can be milked.

Cloth is costly and the robe is fine and seamless, indivisible without irreparable rending, so the legionaries play dice, to see which of them will claim it. Strictly speaking, gambling on games of chance is illegal for Romans, though betting on contests of skill — gladiators or chariot racing — is a national pastime. But there is no one here to judge the soldiers. No one but the prisoner anyway, and who is he to judge? A crumpled mess, less like a man now than the skin of a shape-changer, something left after the creature itself has departed. But that’s just the way they get, following the half-death of the scourging. He has sufficient strength remaining to suffer awhile yet.

The soldiers were sent from a far-off country to be here. They are blood-sworn to serve Rome; many will not live to retire. They cannot marry while enlisted; they have no family now, save each other; no loyalty, save to their legion and its banners. They are hardened by regular war and constant fear: death is the penalty for nearly every and any infraction of military code. The soldiers probably think themselves no crueller than other men. It was not them who made the rules. They are just obeying orders. And those orders being as they are, what must follow is this.

The prisoner is raised to his feet. He is naked save for a loincloth. It is hot under this sun but he shivers. Whatever energy his body is using to keep him alive has not left enough to keep him warm. He shakes with pain and cold. Blood, some of it scabbing, some of it wet and weeping, coats him. He looks like a corpse pulled from a burned building, so riven is his skin from the scourging, so covered with black and red. Even his teeth are maroon glazed. His beard is matted like the wool of a Passover lamb, throat cut on the altar.

Two soldiers, in their breeches and their breastplates, with their beardless faces like clay golems, bring out the crosspiece beam. It is heavy even for two of them, but the condemned man must carry it on his own. They don’t make the rules. Other legionaries hold him up and they tie the olivewood rafter across his back. They fasten his wrists tight around it. If he keeps dropping it the walk will take all afternoon. It is not so far from this palace courtyard to Golgotha, but it is far enough. Being tied to the beam stops prisoners escaping or being freed in a crush of crowd. And it reminds those who watch the party pass of the fate of all who stand against Rome. The beam itself is stained with blood by the time the soldiers have finished fastening it; the wood and the ragged old ends of rope that hold it in place have been dyed, as if with madder.