Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

you?”
    Joshua kicked me under the table. “Yes,” he said. “By the power of my father I have relieved the suffering of some who were plagued by demons.”
    When Joshua said “my father” every one of them squirmed. I noticed movement in one of the doorways to Jakan’s back. It was Maggie, making signals and signs like a madwoman, but then Jakan spoke. Attention turned to him and Maggie ducked out of sight.
    Jakan leaned forward. “Some have said that you banish these demons by the power of Beelzebub.”
    “And how could I do that?” Joshua said, getting a little angry. “How could I turn Beelzebub against himself? How can I battle Satan with Satan? A house divided can’t stand.”
    “Boy, I’m starving,” I said. “Bring on the eats.”
    “With the spirit of God I cast out demons, that’s how you know the kingdom has come.”
    They didn’t want to hear that. Hell, I didn’t want to hear that, not here. If Joshua claimed to bring the kingdom, then he was claiming to be the Messiah, which by their way of thinking could be blasphemy, a crime punishable by death. It was one thing for them to hear it secondhand, it was quite another to have Joshua say it to their faces. But he, as usual, was unafraid.
    “Some say John the Baptist is the Messiah,” said Jakan.
    “There’s nobody better than John,” Joshua said. “But John doesn’t baptize with the Holy Ghost. I do.”
    They all looked at each other. They had no idea what he was talking about. Joshua had been preaching the Divine Spark—the Holy Ghost—for two years, but it was a new way of looking at God and the kingdom: it was a change. These legalists had worked hard to find their place of power; they weren’t interested in change.
    Food was put on the table and prayers offered again, then we ate in silence for a while. Maggie was in the doorway behind Jakan again, gesturing with one hand walking over the other, mouthing words that I was supposed to understand. I had something I wanted to give her, but I had to see her in private. It was obvious that Jakan had forbidden her to enter the room.
    “Your disciples do not wash their hands before they eat!” said one of the Pharisees, a fat man with a scar over his eye.
    Bart, I thought.
    “It’s not what goes into a man that defiles him,” Joshua said, “it’s what comes out.” He broke off some of the flatbread and dipped it into a bowl of oil.
    “He means lies,” I said.
    “I know,” said the old Pharisee.
    “You were thinking something disgusting, don’t lie.”
    The Pharisees passed the “no, your turn, no, it’s your turn” look around the room.
    Joshua chewed his bread slowly, then said, “Why wash the outside of the urn, if there’s decay on the inside?”
    “Yeah, like you rotting hypocrites!” I added, with more enthusiasm than was probably called for.
    “Quit helping!” Josh said.
    “Sorry. Nice wine. Manischewitz?”
    My shouting evidently stirred them out of their malaise. The old Pharisee said, “You consort with demons, Joshua of Nazareth. This Levi was seen to cause blood to come from a Pharisee’s nose and a knife to break of its own, and no one even saw him move.”
    Joshua looked at me, then at them, then at me again. “You forget to tell me something?”
    “He was being an emrod, so I popped him.” (“Emrod” is the biblical term for hemorrhoid.) I heard Maggie’s giggling from the other room.
    Joshua turned back to the creeps. “Levi who is called Biff has studied the art of the soldier in the East,” Joshua said. “He can move swiftly, but he is not a demon.”
    I stood up. “The invitation was for dinner, not a trial.”
    “This is no trial,” said Jakan, calmly. “We have heard of Joshua’s miracles, and we have heard that he breaks the Law. We simply want to ask him by whose authority he does these things. This is dinner, otherwise, why would you be here?”
    I was wondering that myself, but Joshua answered me by pushing me down in my seat and proceeding to answer their accusations for another two hours, crafting parables and throwing their own piety back in their faces. While Joshua spoke the word of God, I did sleight-of-hand tricks with the bread and the vegetables, just to mess with them. Maggie came to the doorway and signaled me, pointing frantically to the front door and making threatening, head-bashing gestures which I took to be the consequences for my not understanding her this time.
    “Well, I’ve got to go see a man