Man Named Jesus

Rose Calmes Gayle

Description

An ordinary family lives in a small community outside ancient Jerusalem. They dont expect what takes place inside the massive walls of the city to have much impact on them or their daily lives. The patriarch of the household is concerned with supporting his family, especially after soldiers destroy work he had completed for wealthy customers, threatening his income and reputation. His wife concentrates on running their home and raising their family. The older children are restless, only concerned with their future. The younger children seem oblivious to all that goes on around them. Caught between worrying about a coming baby and surviving the present, none of them expect that a new kind of life awaits them.Danger threatens this community and its inhabitants. From the lively rabbi who embraces the rumblings of new teachings to the old women who reject any change around them, everyone in the village faces challenges to their traditions, lives, and beliefs. An unstoppable momentum beyond their control strengthens, and resistance to change forms the beginnings of a new faithbut faith in what? Something amazing has happened, and none of their lives will ever be the same again.A Man Named Jesus offers a powerful glimpse into what it would have been like to live during the time that Jesus lived, died, and was resurrectedthe beginning of Christianity.All proceeds from book sales will be donated to the Backpack Ministry at Bethany United Methodist Church, Austin, Texas, providing weekend meals to elementary school students on assistance programs who otherwise would go hungry. For more information, contact www.bethany-umc.org.

Sujets

• Christianisme
• Fantasy
• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)

Informations

• Publié par: Inspiring Voices
• Date de parution: 29 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781462406043
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright © 2013, 2014 Gayle Rose Calmes.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Inspiring Voices books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:
 
Inspiring Voices
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.
 
ISBN: 978-1-4624-0605-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4624-0604-3 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013907342
 
 
Inspiring Voices rev. date: 05/13/2014
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgements
 
 
 
 
 
In memory of Mama Lee Sottile, my Barnabas and my friend

INTRODUCTION
I t was 8:40 a.m. I sat in my reclining chair next to the window. I was still in my pajamas, with a prayer shawl made by a good friend around my shoulders. I sat watching birds at the feeders and flowers on the weeds waving in the breeze. On the window ledge beside my “prayer chair” sat a cup of coffee, a bottle of nail polish, a tube of moisturizer, two small calendars, and the clock. The time and the day registered deep in my heart. It was Good Friday. Tradition says that Jesus’s trip to the cross and crucifixion began sometime around nine a.m. and ended around three p.m. My clock said it was almost nine a.m.
Unlike the date for Christmas, Easter is an accurate date each year because of its proximity to the Passover. Passover is the annual celebration by Jewish people that commemorates the first Passover when they smeared lamb’s blood over their doors, marking them as the children of God, to keep the angel of death from harming them.
The Egyptians suffered the results of their pharaoh’s refusal to free the Jews when every firstborn of Egypt died. This included the pharaoh’s own son, which finally persuaded him to let the people go with Moses. The Passover meal is filled with symbolism and maintains the tradition of orally passing on the history of the Israelite people’s exodus from bondage under Pharaoh and their journey to the Promised Land.
Two thousand years ago, a new lamb’s blood was shed to free people from the bondage of sin. Instead of being placed above the door to our homes, it was placed over the door to our hearts.
I decided to observe the time of Christ’s crucifixion somehow. I picked up my journal to begin my usual conversation with God. I looked at the clock one more time. Then I began to write.
Thirteen hours later, I was still in my prayer chair, in my pajamas, writing. I had barely eaten and had declined going to church for the Good Friday evening worship service. I didn’t need to go. I was already at Golgotha, living it all through the eyes and life of a man who had lived in Jesus’s day. I spent the next several months with him in my mind and writing his words. He lived on the edge of Jerusalem with his wife and children. He was a regular person, an “everyman,” just living his life as best he could—until he was inadvertently drawn into the drama of Good Friday by a surging mob and normal, human, morbid curiosity. For him, as for all of us—whether we choose to believe or not to believe—nothing was ever the same again.
This book is not historically, theologically, or biblically correct in all details. It is written in today’s language, using regular words and descriptions. Rather than attempting to write only accurate information as to the exact lifestyle and wording used during the time of Jesus, I have left the style as it came to me, in the language that my heart and I recognize.
To anyone disturbed by my fanciful locations, characters, or events, I apologize. It is an imaginary story, but one that might have happened to any one of us if we had lived then. This is how it came to me—to give to you.
Whenever I picked up my pen and opened myself to God, I became this man and his words. Like Mother Theresa puts it, I was a little pencil in God’s hand. This is the narrator’s story, not mine. Yet, even today, this can also be our story—yours and mine—if we choose it to be. It is a common story about finding faith and how hard that can sometimes be. Come, join me on a journey that began long ago and goes on forever.
 
 
 
 
I am not just a character in a book. I am not just words upon a page.
My lungs breathe air. My feet walk earth. My heart beats life.
I am human. I am you. I am me. I am all of us. I am one of us. I am real.
And so was He.
Chapter 1
I am a busy man. I don’t have time for religions, politics, or superstitions. Still, the noise coming toward my shop from the city that morning caught my attention. I put down my tool and stepped onto the stone entry to my shop. The size of the crowd I saw surprised me. The multitude moved until it reached just past my shop and then split to line the street. In the middle of the road, three men carrying horizontal, wooden beams for their own crosses struggled to walk forward, prodded and whipped by Roman soldiers on horseback and on foot.
The first two men seemed to be of no interest to the crowd. There was a slight gap in the procession after they had passed, and then I briefly saw the third man stumbling up the street. He kept his sad brown eyes focused on the road in front of him, ignoring the hostile crowd’s verbal abuse. He certainly didn’t look like a madman, which was one of the names the crowd around him shouted. He was bent almost in half, the weight of the wood tied to his shoulders pressing mercilessly down upon him. His lean face was covered in blood, flowing from a horrible crown of thorns pressed into his scalp. His back and sides showed the deep cuts of a lead-strung whip.
The people blocked my view again as they crowded in on him and yelled at him. I hate to admit it, but my curiosity kept me lined up beside the street, watching. Bystanders continued jeering at the bloodied man, and I knew then that the third man was Jesus. Throwing rocks and words at him, people began shouting. “You say you’re the Son of God. Save yourself!” “You’re the Messiah? No! Our Messiah was going to help us, not make things worse!”
Jesus fell down over and over and was finally unable to get up. The crowd massed around him, shouting, “You seemed so strong during your preaching, but now you can’t even carry your cross.” Three soldiers pushed the closest hecklers back toward where I stood, and my view was momentarily blocked.
Standing on my toes, I peered over their heads in time to see a man being roughly pulled from the sideline by the tallest Roman. Two other soldiers untied the beam from Jesus’s shoulders and tied it onto the unlucky man’s back. My heart chilled as I saw the bystander bend with its weight. Even after the beam had been lifted from him, Jesus sagged to the dusty ground.
I recognized the unlucky bystander: it was Simon of Cyrene! He had obviously been at the wrong place at the wrong time during his latest visit to the city with his two sons. I saw his boys clinging to each other, looking terrified at what they saw. They tried to follow their father but were pushed back by a soldier. The youngest boy fell and started to cry. These boys were old enough to understand that their father had no choice when the Romans pressed him into that awful service. They’d seen the results of crucifixions before but not the journey to the crosses. They were young but aware enough to know where their father was headed and what would happen to the shredded man lying in the dirt. Having no other choice, the children began following their father and the crowd to the last place they wanted to be. A soldier pulled Jesus to his feet and pushed him forward, and the procession resumed.
Before I could step out of the way, I became entangled in the crowd and was pushed along. The mob was so thick and single-minded, I could have lifted my feet and still been moved. Perhaps I should have. My sandals were stepped on so many times, I was blistered and bleeding by the time I was able to separate myself from the shifting mass of people. By then, morbid curiosity had taken over, and I continued to walk behind all of them: the two other men carrying crosses to their doom, the crowd, the soldiers, Simon, and the man named Jesus. Farther behind me, two little boys stepped slowly up the trail. They had no place else to go.
I had no desire to watch a crucifixion, yet I felt a sick excitement, and soon I could see three single posts of wood in the distance. I bent my head and gathered my energy as the pathway ascended the hill. By the time I’d nearly reached the top, many people were already heading back the other way toward Jerusalem. Their faces reflected either anger or sorrow.
I began to feel uneasy and thought about turning around. Any idea I’d had that Jesus might do somethin