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

the beach and Joshua paced before us.
    “The kingdom is open to everyone,” Joshua said. “Ev-ree-one, get it?”
    Everyone nodded.
    “Even Romans.”
    Everyone stopped nodding.
    “The kingdom of God is upon us, but the Romans will remain in Israel. The kingdom of God has nothing to do with the kingdom of Israel, do you all understand that?”
    “But the Messiah is supposed to lead our people to freedom,” Judas shouted.
    “No master but God!” Simon added.
    “Shut up!” said Joshua. “I was not sent to deliver wrath. We will be delivered into the kingdom by forgiveness, not conquest. People, we have been over this, what have I not made clear?”
    “How we are to cast the Romans out of the kingdom?” shouted Nathaniel.
    “You should know better,” Joshua said to Nathaniel, “you yellow-haired freak. One more time, we can’t cast the Romans out of the kingdom because the kingdom is open to all.”
    And I think they were getting it, at least the two Zealots were getting it, because they looked profoundly disappointed. They’d waited their whole life for the Messiah to come along and establish the kingdom by crushing the Romans, now he was telling them in his own divine words that it wasn’t going to happen. But then Joshua started with the parables.
    “The kingdom is like a wheat field with tares, you can’t pull out the tares without destroying the grain.”
    Blank stares. Doubly blank from the fishermen, who didn’t know squat from farming metaphors.
    “A tare is a rye grass,” Joshua explained. “It weaves its roots amid the roots of wheat or barley, and there’s no way to pull them out without ruining the crop.”
    Nobody got it.
    “Okay,” Joshua continued. “The children of heaven are the good people, and the tares are the bad ones. You get both. And when you’re all done, the angels pick out the wicked and burn them.”
    “Not getting it,” said Peter. He shook his head, and his gray mane whipped around his face like a confused lion trying to shake off the sight of a flying wildebeest.
    “How do you guys preach this stuff if you don’t understand it? Okay, try this: the kingdom of heaven is like, uh, a merchant seeking pearls.”
    “Like before swine,” said Bartholomew.
    “Yes! Bart! Yes! Only no swine this time, same pearls though.”
    Three hours later, Joshua was still at it, and he was starting to run out of things to liken the kingdom to, his favorite, the mustard seed, having failed in three different tries.
    “Okay, the kingdom is like a monkey.” Joshua was hoarse and his voice was breaking.
    “How?”
    “A Jewish monkey, right?”
    “Is it like a monkey eating a mustard seed?”
    I stood up and went to Joshua and put my arm around his shoulder. “Josh, take a break.” I led him down the beach toward the village.
    He shook his head. “Those are the dumbest sons of bitches on earth.”
    “They’ve become like little children, as you told them to.”
    “Stupid little children,” Joshua said.
    I heard light footsteps on the sand behind us and Maggie threw her arms around our necks. She kissed Joshua on the forehead, making a loud wet smacking sound, then looked as if she was going to do the same to me so I shied away.
    “You two are the ninnies here. You both rail on them about their intelligence, when that doesn’t have anything to do with why they’re here. Have either one of you heard them preach? I have. Peter can heal the sick now. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen James make the lame walk. Faith isn’t an act of intelligence, it’s an act of imagination. Every time you give them a new metaphor for the kingdom they see the metaphor, a mustard seed, a field, a garden, a vineyard, it’s like pointing something out to a cat—the cat looks at your finger, not at what you’re pointing at. They don’t need to understand it, they only need to believe, and they do. They imagine the kingdom as they need it to be, they don’t need to grasp it, it’s there already, they can let it be. Imagination, not intellect.”
    Maggie let go of our necks, then stood there grinning like a madwoman. Joshua looked at her, then at me.
    I shrugged. “I told you she was smarter than both of us.”
    “I know,” Joshua said. “I don’t know if I can stand you both being right in the same day. I need some time to think and pray.”
    “Go on then,” Maggie said, waving him on. I stopped and watched my friend walk into the village, having absolutely no idea what I was