There was something in that smile. ‘I have heard tell of you, I think…’ He frowned, trying to put a finger on it. ‘Are you one with this Order?’
Jesus shook his head slightly.
‘What are you doing here, then?’
‘I am the same as you.’
John nodded, reflecting on it. ‘I am a solitary wanderer…a seeker…’
Jesus said, ‘And that is what I am.’
He threw him a hard stare. ‘What are you seeking?’
Jesus returned it, measure for measure. ‘The truth.’
John shrugged. ‘That is what every man seeks.’
‘Is that not also…what you seek?’
‘Yes…’ he said disconcerted, ‘but have you found it? That is the question.’
Jesus was tranquil and courteous, ‘I had hoped to find it among the good men, but I didn’t.’
‘And where else have you looked for it?’
‘Among the pagans,’ Jesus said, ‘and the priests at Jerusalem before that.’
‘And you didn’t find it?’
‘I found temptation, but I also found that when a man flees from temptation, that is when he falls all the more into its pit.’
John smiled again to himself. This was a day full of rarities. ‘Yes… that is so,’ he agreed.
‘I had to ask myself,’ Jesus continued, ‘why must salvation come only to those who have the blood of Abraham? Why could it not come to all men?’
John thought it a novel idea.
‘Have you never asked yourself this?’ Jesus continued. ‘Here, in this seclusion the Essenes strive to be pure. They touch no money and don’t stain their hands with labour and yet, a man has to eat bread and drink water, he has to have clothes to ward off the cold and a shelter to ward off the sun, don’t you agree?’
John nodded. ‘So he must, and the Essenes, who need these things, lay the burden of sin on those who support them, those who are willing to taint themselves with worldly things for their part, and do what the Essenes will not do.’
Jesus looked out to the desert. ‘I have seen what happens to what they turn away from their gates…it goes out into the world to taunt ordinary people.’
John was attentive. ‘What have you seen?’
‘I have seen Satan, and the Devil,’ Jesus said, looking at him, ‘and when they flee from here, they tempt those that live outside all the harder.’
John was dumbstruck. His own concerns and intuitions were, through this man, made more understandable to him. He peered into the landscape, torn and abandoned. Yes, he had seen the Devil and Satan: one a hot creature that made men fall into frenzy, the other a cold creature that lived in hard thoughts and hard hearts. He had known them in his meditations, and they had tempted him. It was difficult for him to speak of these things, which defied the tongue and words, except with this man.
‘Yes…as you speak I realise that a time for seclusion is passed!’ He looked at Jesus. ‘And a time must come, when blood is of no importance…it is so near I can taste it on my tongue! Surely redemption cannot come by selfishly casting off burdens, but by shouldering the burdens of others!’
‘That means,’ Jesus told him, ‘that if we are to find redemption we cannot escape suffering.’
John looked at Jesus squarely in the eye. ‘For men like you and me, men who spend a long time looking at the same desert and wondering when He will come, this suffering cannot come soon enough!’
‘Whom do you wait for?’
‘The Messiah,’ John said, ‘whom else? I tell myself that Daniel’s prophecies are all fulfilled! Lions and beasts, war and famine, degradation and enslavement have come to us. A great supply of calamities! How much suffering will convince God that we are ready for the consolation of Israel? How much suffering before the liberator comes to relieve us?’
‘You sound angry with God.’ Jesus of Nazareth said, pointing out the obvious.
‘I have a bone to pick with him, it’s true!’ John said. ‘All my life I have fasted and waited and fasted, and denied the flesh and fasted again – does God not hear the anguish of the soul that is alone and weary and waiting for the day of the Lord to come?’
The Galilean looked thoughtful, ‘Perhaps the Lord is waiting for you to fulfil Elijah’s task.’
John measured his guile. Finding none, he said, ‘Tell me once more who you are.’
‘We are kin, I think. My mother was Mary, your mother’s cousin.’
‘My mother’s cousin…’ he said. An amazement washed over him and a sense of destiny signalled his soul to attention.