The birth of the Christ

A short story on what might possibly have been

The old man rapped on the table and called for silence.

As the room fell quiet, the gathered men all looked at him expectantly; each one waiting to find out why he had been called to this secret meeting in a back-street tavern.

The old man stood up.

‘My friends,’ he growled, ‘we face a grave problem. The power of Rome is crushing us. They demand taxes from us – taxes that we can ill-afford to pay; they take our menfolk for slaves and work them to the ground; they use our women for their casual pleasure. We have managed all these years, but it is no longer tolerable. The people are getting restless and I hear talk of rebellion growing stronger every day.’

He paused a moment, glaring round the room.

‘Right now,’ he continued, ‘we are weak and divided, and rebellion would be a disaster. The Romans would destroy us and we would lose more, much more, than we could possibly gain.’ He shook his head. ‘No, what we need first is something that brings us together, unites us and makes us stronger. Then we can co-ordinate a rebellion that will work; a rebellion that has the strength of purpose and the momentum to overthrow the hated Romans...’ his voice rose to a shout, ‘so we can take back Judea for ourselves and for our people!’ He glared around the room again. ‘And I, Saul of Tarsus, I will be proud once again to hold up my head and call myself a citizen of Judea and not a slave of Rome!’

There was a roar of approval from the crowd in front of him. He took a sip of wine from his cup, then raised his hand to call for quiet.

‘I am open to suggestions,’ he continued, letting his voice drop back once again to a soft growl, ‘as to how we can unite Judea around a common cause.’

He sat down, letting the question hang in the air. The men in the tavern looked nervously around at each other.

‘Assassinate the Roman Prefect?’ asked one.

‘Refuse to pay taxes?’ asked another.

Saul shook his head. ‘No, these will give the Romans reasons for more brutal repression. What we need is something that unites us around a strong, powerful message. A message of hope; of solidarity.’

‘You mean, like if the Messiah were to come amongst us?’ said a small voice from the back. Everyone turned, to see a young boy sitting on a table, swinging his legs. The man next to him muttered ‘shhh, my boy. I told you not to talk if you came.’

‘No,’ said Saul, ‘let the boy speak.’

The boy took a breath. ‘If the Messiah came, that would be a message of hope, wouldn’t it?’ he asked. ‘It would give everyone the strength to fight against the Romans.’

‘The boy makes a good point!’ growled Saul. ‘But we have waited for the Messiah for so long – why should he come now? And what is more, how would we know if he were here?’

There was a general muttering of agreement.

‘If the Messiah came, he’d be a great hero, wouldn’t he?’ the boy asked.

‘Indeed he would,’ agreed Saul.

‘My father tells me stories of great heroes,’ said the boy, ‘but they have lived and died.’ He paused. ‘So what if the Messiah has already lived and died?’

‘We would have known,’ answered Saul. ‘If the Messiah had been among us, we would have known.’

‘Maybe we didn’t know,’ said a man at the front. ‘Maybe he kept it quiet?’

‘Or no one believed him,’ said another man.

There was general hubbub as everyone weighed in with an opinion.

After a minute or two of this, Saul raised hand and gradually the noise died away.

‘My friends,’ he said, ‘the truth is, it doesn’t matter if he has been among us or not. As the boy has said, great heroes are generally dead in the stories. So all we need to do is tell the story of the Messiah, and he becomes as real as you or me.’

He turned to the man sitting next to him. ‘Zechariah?’ The man nodded. ‘You are a learned man who knows the sacred texts. What sort of man would the Messiah have been?’

Zechariah thought a moment. ‘I suggest the Messiah, also known as the Christ, would have been a mendicant preacher, like so many who wander the land with their little bands of followers.’

‘Just so. And what would he have done to prove himself the Messiah?’

‘Miracles!’ shouted a man. ‘He would have done miracles!’

‘Indeed,’ said Saul. ‘Who here has witnessed a miracle?’

‘I saw one!’ said the same man. ‘At least I think I did… I was at a wedding in Cana, and we ran out of wine, so they started serving water, but then there was more wine!’ The man looked around the room. ‘I’m sure the water was turned into wine.’

‘Hmmm,’ muttered Saul into his beard. ‘Was it not that more wine was simply brought up from the cellar?’

‘Maybe,’ said the man, looking down at his feet. ‘But it did seem a bit miraculous at the time.’

‘For sure,’ said Saul brightly. ‘Then we will use it as our Messiah’s first miracle.’

‘I once saw a man walking along the shores of Lake Galilee, just in the shallows,’ said someone else. ‘It looked just like he was walking on the water.’

‘That is good,’ said Saul. ‘We can use that, too.’

‘He’d have been a healer,’ said another man. ‘The Messiah would have healed people with his touch.’

‘Thank you,’ said Saul. ‘I like that.’

‘We have to decide how he died,’ said Zechariah. ‘He needs a fitting death.’

The boy put up his hand. ‘In my father’s stories, the heroes conquer death,’ he said. ‘Maybe the Romans kill him, but he comes back to life?’

‘Good thought,’ said Saul. ‘And it fits the prophesies as well.’

Zechariah nodded. ‘He would have been crucified like a criminal. That makes the Romans look bad.’

‘And not just the Romans,’ added Saul. ‘The Elders would have been complicit. That will play well to the people.’ He stood up. ‘I need these stories to be written down. Who here can write?’ Four men put their hands up. ‘Good. We will sit down and agree the stories of this Messiah, and you can each write your own version.’

‘A name,’ said Zechariah thoughtfully. ‘We need a name.’

‘Jeroboam!’ shouted one man. ‘I heard of a mendicant preacher of that name.’

‘I heard of one called Shemu’el!’ cried another.

‘Ahaz was a name I heard,’ said a third.

‘Yeshua!’ called out a fourth man.

Saul again held up his hand for silence. ‘A good name, Yeshua. I like that. In the Greek it would be Jesus. A good name. Was there a Yeshua? Does anyone recall a real person of that name?’

‘I think so,’ said the man who had called out the name. ‘Although now I’m not so sure.’

‘No matter,’ said Saul, ‘Yeshua it is.’ He paused a moment. ‘Do you know where this mendicant preacher was from?’ The man shook his head.

‘If he is to be the Messiah, or the Christ, he must be born in Bethlehem in order to fit with the prophesies,’ observed Zechariah. ‘But maybe not from there originally, to lend credence to the story?’

‘How so?’ asked Saul.

‘If he was a constructed character, it would be easiest to make him from Bethlehem. But if we made him from, say, Nazareth, then it would not seem easy – so more real.’ He paused a moment. ‘And we have to trace his lineage back to King David. The prophecies are clear on that point.’

‘So we have our Yeshua from Nazareth,’ said Saul, ‘born in Bethlehem…’

‘Born of a virgin,’ cut in Zechariah. ‘As the Messiah he could not be born of… of… that…’

‘But then he’ll have no actual father,’ exclaimed Saul. ‘How do we trace his lineage back to David?’

‘I’m sure we’ll think of something,’ said Zechariah quietly.  

Saul glared at him a moment, then continued his summing up. ‘He was a miracle worker and healer, crucified by the Romans and the Elders, and rose from the dead.’

He looked around the room. Everyone was nodding in agreement.

‘And we will write his story and tell it to the people, so they become brothers in this Christ of ours.’ He thought a moment. ‘I will at first profess to hate the followers of Yeshua of Nazareth, but then I’ll suddenly be converted – that will give even more credence when I take his story to the people.’

He stood up and held out his arms. ‘My friends, today we have begun a story that may one day help the people of Judea to expel Rome from our lands. Let us all claim to believe the story of Yeshua the Messiah.’ He lifted his head. ‘For if it is to become real for others, it is us who must first sow the seeds of the story.’ He glared round the room.

‘Go,’ he said softly, ‘and let us make this Yeshua of Nazareth as real as you and me.’

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