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

Passover feast of the Essenes,” Joseph said. “Stay here for supper.”
    “Celebrate the Passover early? Why?” John asked. “Why celebrate with the Essenes?”
    Joseph looked away from Joshua when he answered. “Because at the Essenes’ feast, they don’t kill a lamb.”

T uesday
    We all slept that night in the upper room of Joseph’s house. In the morning Joshua went downstairs. He was gone for a bit, then came back up the stairs.
    “They won’t let me leave,” he said.
    “They?”
    “The apostles. My own apostles won’t let me leave.” He went back to the stairway. “You’re interfering with the will of God!” he shouted down. He turned back to me. “Did you tell them not to let me leave?”
    “Me? Yep.”
    “You can’t do that.”
    “I sent Nathaniel to Simon’s to fetch Maggie. He returned alone. Maggie wouldn’t talk to him, but Martha did. Temple soldiers had been there, Josh.”
    “So?”
    “What do you mean, so? They were there to arrest you.”
    “Let them.”
    “Joshua, you don’t have to sacrifice yourself to prove this point. I’ve been thinking about it all night. You can negotiate.”
    “With the Lord?”
    “Abraham did it. Remember? Over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. He starts out getting the Lord to agree to spare the cities if he can find fifty righteous men, but by the end, he talks God down to ten. You can try something like that.”
    “That’s not completely the point, Biff.” Here he came over to me, but I found I couldn’t look him in the eye, so I went to one of the large arched windows that looked down on the street. “I’m afraid of this—of what’s going to happen. I can think of a dozen things I’d rather do this week than be sacrificed, but I know that it has to happen. When I told the priests that I would tear the Temple down in three days, I meant that all the corruption, all the pretense, all the ritual of the Temple that keeps men from knowing God would be destroyed. And on the third day, when I come back, everything will be new, and the kingdom of God will be everywhere. I’m coming back, Biff.”
    “Yeah, I know, you said that.”
    “Well, believe in me.”
    “You’re not good at resurrections, Josh. Remember the old woman in Japhia? The soldier in Sepphoris, what did he last? Three minutes?”
    “But look at Maggie’s brother Simon. He’s been back from the dead for months now.”
    “Yeah, and he smells funny.”
    “He does not.”
    “No, really, when you get close to him he smells spoiled.”
    “How would you know? You won’t get close to him because he used to be a leper.”
    “Thaddeus mentioned it the other day. He said, ‘Biff, I believe this Simon Lazarus fellow has spoiled.’”
    “Really? Then let’s go ask Thaddeus.”
    “He might not remember.”
    Joshua went down the steps to a low-ceilinged room with a mosaic floor and small windows cut high in the walls. Joshua’s mother and brother James had joined the apostles. They all sat there against the walls, their faces turned to Joshua like flowers to the sun, waiting for him to say something that would give them hope.
    “I’m going to wash your feet,” he said. To Joseph of Arimathea, he said, “I need a basin of water and a sponge.” The tall aristocrat bowed and went off to find a servant.
    “What a pleasant surprise,” Mary said.
    James the brother rolled his eyes and sighed heavily.
    “I’m going out,” I said. I looked at Peter, as if to say, Don’t let him out of your sight. He understood perfectly and nodded.
    “Come back for the seder,” Joshua said. “I have some things I have to teach you in the little time I have left.”

    There was no one home at Simon’s house. I knocked on the door for a long time, then finally let myself in. There was no evidence of a morning meal, but the mikveh had been used, so I guessed that they had each bathed and then gone to the Temple. I walked the streets of Jerusalem, trying to think of some solution, but everything I had learned seemed useless. As evening fell I made my way back to Joseph’s house, taking the long route so I didn’t have to pass the palace of the high priest.
    Joshua was waiting inside, sitting on the steps to the upper room, when I came in. Peter and Andrew sat on either side of him, obviously there to ensure that he didn’t accidentally skip down to the high priest and turn himself in for blasphemy.
    “Where have you been?” Joshua said. “I need to wash your