Category: Stories

         The night was dark and cold. His robe was plain, not ornate like those he usually wore, and the wind chilled the old man to the bone. But, he was sweating anyway.

         He’d been standing in front of the closed door for more than a full minute. He wanted to knock, but he was scared. What was he going to ask the man? He didn’t know. He only knew in his heart that this man had the answers to questions he didn’t even know to ask.

         He looked right and left, then knocked lightly. He waited. No answer. Was this the right house? His head was covered, yet he still feared someone might recognize him. With each passing moment, the risk increased. He had to get off the street. He knocked again, this time slightly harder. Still no answer. Finally, he banged on the door. After a moment he heard the board that barred the door being lifted, and the door slowly opened a crack.

         Nicodemus could stand it no longer. He pushed the door open and burst into the room. Immediately, he was grabbed by the throat and forced against the wall. The strong hand that held him lifted him off the floor. Only his toes touched.   

“Who are you?” yelled the burly man holding him by the throat.

         Nicodemus couldn’t answer. He had no air. He could only stare at the face of the furious bearded man lifting him off the floor with his left hand, his right fist cocked, ready to break the old man’s jaw. Behind this furious man, Nicodemus saw a circle of strong young men.

         “Who is he?” said someone.

         “I recognize him,” said another. “He’s one of the wealthiest men in Jerusalem. He’s also one of the priests we drove out of the temple last week.”

         “Peter, let him go.” The calm voice came from behind the circle of men.

         Nicodemus felt the hand holding him relax, and he was slowly released. He slumped against the wall, holding his throat, coughing. After a moment, Nicodemus was finally able to speak again.

         “I’m sorry. I know it’s late, and I apologize for the uninvited visit.”

         “What do you want?” said the brutish man who had held him by the throat.

         “I mean no harm.” The crowd surrounding him parted, and the man he was looking for, the man who had spoken to Caiaphas before throwing them out of the temple, stepped forward.

         “Pete,” said Jesus as he placed a reassuring hand on Pete’s shoulder. “We must always welcome those who seek our company. He’s just scared of being seen with us. You’re the one they call Nicodemus, right?”

         Nicodemus nodded.

         “Come and have a seat, Nick. John, could you get Nick and me some wine?”

         Jesus bent to help the old man up and escorted him to the table in the middle of the room. John brought both men a cup of wine. Then retreated to the corner of the room to stand with Pete and the others, out of the way.

         Nicodemus took a drink of the wine, both to soothe his throat and to give him time to think of a question. “Sir,” said Nicodemus, “I know you’ve come from God as a teacher. No one could do the things you do unless God was with him.”

         You idiot, thought Nicodemus. That wasn’t even a question. It was a statement. Instead of continuing, Nicodemus waited for his statement, which called for no answer, to be answered.

         Jesus looked down into his cup. He slowly swirled the liquid in a circle. Then, abruptly, his gaze shifted from the contents of the cup to his new guest.

         Nicodemus felt those eyes pierce him. It was as if Jesus was staring into his soul.

         As Jesus regarded Nicodemus, everyone in the room became uncomfortable. No one said a word. The silence screamed to be filled. Instead, Jesus took a sip of wine, never shifting his gaze. Finally, Jesus put down his cup. “I’m about to reveal to you a great truth. Here it is: unless someone is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

         That’s what I meant to ask, thought Nicodemus. That’s the ultimate question: how can I enter the Kingdom of God? How did he know the unasked question in my heart, the question I didn’t even know how to ask? But the answer is incomprehensible.

         “But how can anyone be born again when he is old, like me? Can he reenter his mother’s womb?”

         “I’ll say it again. Listen up, for it is a great truth. Unless someone is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh; whatever is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Now don’t be freaked out when I tell you you gotta be born again,” Jesus answered with a smile. He looked around the room at the gathering of young men around him. “The wind blows where it wants to. You hear it, but you don’t know where it comes from, and you don’t know where it’s going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

         “I don’t understand,” said Nicodemus.

         “Neither do I,” said Peter, stating what everyone else in the room was thinking.

         Jesus continued speaking to Nicodemus. “You mean to tell me you’re a teacher of Israel, and yet you don’t know ’bout the Kingdom of God?” Jesus said with a laugh. His expression became serious again; he leaned across the table. “Listen to me, Nicodemus, because what I am telling you is extremely important. We speak about what we know, and we tell you about what we’ve seen, and yet you don’t accept our testimony. If I tell you about earthly things and y’all don’t believe me, how will you believe me if I tell you ’bout things of Heaven? No one has gone up to Heaven,” Jesus pointed skyward, “except the one who came down from Heaven, the Son of Man” Jesus’s finger now turned to point at himself. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.”

         Nicodemus remembered the strange story in the Scriptures when the Israelites were plagued by snakes after doubting God. The bites of the snakes were fatal. Moses had again pleaded on their behalf. God, instead of removing the snakes, provided an unusual cure. He ordered Moses to make an image of the snake, reminiscent of the snake in the Garden of Eden, and hang it on a stick. Anyone who was bitten by the deadly snakes need merely look on the snake hung upon the stick to be instantly cured.

         Pete turned to John. “Do you understand what he’s talking about?”

         “I wish I could say I do, but I don’t.”

         Jesus then glanced over at John and Pete, as if he had heard what they had whispered to each other. Then he said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “God loves the world so much that he has given his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will never perish but have eternal life. For God didn’t send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save it. Anyone who believes in Him isn’t condemned, and anyone who doesn’t believe is already condemned. That man is condemned because he hasn’t believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.”

         Jesus then poured himself and Nick another cup of wine and beckoned for the others to join them. “I’ve given y’all enough to chew on for one night. Let’s have a drink, welcome our new friend, and enjoy each other’s company.”

This fictional account is taken from John 3: 1–21.

         “What is that?” asked John.

         “It’s a whip,” said Pete.

         “A whip?”

         “Yep.”

         “Pete, where’d he get a whip?”

         “He made it.”

         “Made it?”

         “Yep.”

         “How’d he make a whip?”

         “John, he’s a carpenter. He makes things.”

         “Why’d he make a whip?”

         Pete cocked his head to the side and regarded John as though he was an idiot. “Well, John, maybe he’s making a whip ’cause he’s fixin’ ta whip somebody’s ass.”

         “Who?”

         “I don’t know, but he started making the whip as soon as he got back from the temple. So, if I had to guess, it’s probably somebody at the Temple.”

         “Did you ask him?”

         “Hell naw, I didn’t ask him. Nobody’s asked him. We’re too scared to ask him. He’s too pissed off.”

         About that time, Jesus raised the whip, flipped it in a circle over his head, and, with a violent thrust of his right hand, snapped the whip downward. As the tip of the ten-foot-long, woven leather whip broke the sound barrier, the resulting crack got everybody’s attention. 

“Come on, boys,” Jesus said. He coiled the whip and tied it to his sash on his right side. “Follow me. We’ve got some house cleaning to do.” With that, Jesus strode outside and began the steep climb up the winding narrow road toward the Temple Mount. Pete, Andy, Jimmy, John, Nate, and Phil, along with about twenty others they had picked up in recent days, followed behind.

         “Pete, I don’t know if we should be doing this,” said John.

         “We knew he was going to do radical things. This is probably just the beginning. Besides, I think it’s going to be fun to beat the hell out of some of these pompous, self-righteous, church-going bastards.”

         Along the way, the procession got everyone’s attention. 

Jesus’s strides were long and purposeful. The coiled whip hung from his belt, and he looked neither right nor left. The gang of sturdy men behind him spelled nothing but trouble. Soon, a large crowd was following.

         Pete watched as Jesus reached the base of the temple and mounted the steps to the courtyard gate, two at a time. At the top of the steps was a huge walled courtyard known as the Court of the Gentiles. Jesus and the gang entered the courtyard.

         The Court of the Gentiles was a rectangle spanning an area of more than thirty-five acres, surrounded on all four sides by walls of polished stone. In the middle, slightly toward the rear, stood the much smaller temple itself.

         The sights, sounds, and smells of the Court of the Gentiles were unlike anything Peter had ever experienced. Now, during the time of the Passover, over twenty thousand people crowded into this massive courtyard.

         The courtyard was essentially a barnyard set up around a temple. Those who did not bring their own animal to sacrifice could buy one there.

         “It smells like shit up here,” said Pete.

         John looked at Pete. “Do you always have to talk like that? I wish you wouldn’t cuss so much, Pete.”

         “What would you prefer: dung, or feces, or how about doo-doo?’” Pete spat on the ground. “No. What do you think it smells like to him?” Pete said, pointing toward Jesus. “I’ll tell you what it smells like to him. It smells like shit, that’s what. That’s why he’s so pissed off. His Father’s house smells like shit, and it’s filled with people making a buck off other people’s guilt.”

         Peter remembered Jesus’s rants that morning that had taught him the priests’ principles of economics. The priests, jealous of the merchants making money hand over fist, had found an ingenious way to guarantee their share of the take. The priests understood that whoever controlled the monetary system controlled both the buyers and the sellers.

         With respect to the buyers, the priests had simply instituted a rule that if a sacrifice was to be purchased, it had to be purchased with temple money that had been made and issued by the priests. Thus, anyone who came to the temple, hoping to have God forgive their sins, would first have to exchange their real money for temple money so that they could buy a sacrifice. This gave the priests control over the rate of exchange, allowing them to charge whatever rate they deemed the market could bear.

         With respect to the sellers, the priests instituted a rule that if a merchant wished to secure a spot in the Court to sell sacrificial animals, he had to pay rent, and rent was only payable in real money. In addition, for the seller to make real money, he had to exchange the temple money he received from the sale of the sacrificial animals for real money. The only way to do that was through the priests. This system returned the otherwise useless temple money back into the priests’ hands to be exchanged over and over again for real money. The priests were making a killing.

         Jesus walked over to one of the corrals holding oxen and sheep.

         A man quickly hurried over. “I have some of the finest oxen and sheep for sale here. If you wish your sins to be forgiven, then I’ll be happy to sell one to you. Of course, if you want to make sure all of your sins are forgiven, then you’d be wise to buy nothing but the best.”

         Jesus said nothing. He simply stared coldly at the man, while he gathered the loose folds of his robe between his legs, pulled them up and tucked them in his belt so that his bare legs were free to maneuver and his groin was protected. He then untied the whip from his belt. He turned to Peter and the other disciples and said, “Gird your loins, boys. We’ve got work to do.” He then grabbed the rails of the corral with his left hand and ripped them down. With his right hand, he swung the whip above his head before sending it down with a sharp crack to drive the sheep and oxen from the corral, into the crowd.

         Jesus went from corral to corral doing the same thing, causing havoc as he went. Every money-changing table that lay in his path, he overturned, spilling and scattering the temple money and the real money over the ground. Those who tried to stop him were met by the readied fists of Pete and the other disciples. A huge fight ensued.

         A few moments later, the temple guards hurried over to attempt to quell the uprising. At the head of the guards strode two priests, wearing elaborate and ornate robes. “What’s going on!” one of them shouted.

         Jesus, with fire in his eyes, turned to him and said, “Get these things out of here. Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace.”

         “You don’t know who I am, do you?” asked the priest.

         Jesus didn’t respond. He simply looked the priest in the eyes.

         “I’m the high priest. I am Caiaphas.”

         Still, Jesus said nothing.

         “What authority do you have to do this?” demanded Caiaphas.

         “I’ll tell you what authority I have. Destroy this sanctuary, and I’ll raise it up again in three days.”

         “It took forty-six years to build, and you’re gonna raise it up in only three days?”

         With that, Jesus swung his whip and cracked it above Caiaphas’s head. Both priests ducked and ran like scared little chickens as Jesus and his boys cleared the courtyard of every merchant, animal, priest, and guard.

         When the Court of the Gentiles was finally cleared and the fighting was over, Peter turned to John. “Was that fun, or what?”

         John untied the robe from around his waist and used it to wipe the blood from his face and hands. “Pete, you enjoy a good fight more than anyone else I know.”

         “You and your brother ain’t too bad yourself”, said Pete. “I see why Jesus calls y’all the Sons of Thunder.” He bent down and gathered a handful of dirt in his hands using it to clean the blood from between his fingers. He looked over at Jesus. “But I’ll tell you, one guy I wouldn’t want to mess with,” said Pete.

         “I know,” said John

         “Yeah,” said Peter. “I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.”

         “Pete, let me ask you something. What do you think he meant when he said, ‘Destroy this temple, and I’ll raise it up again in three days?”

         “I don’t know, John. Sometimes he says stuff that just doesn’t make much sense.”

This fictional account is taken from John 2: 12–25.