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

feet.”
    “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a ham in Jerusalem during Passover week?” I said. “I thought it would be nice, you know, some ham on matzo with a little bitter herb.”
    “He washed us all,” Peter said. “Of course we had to hold Bart down, but even he’s clean.”
    “And as I washed them, they will go out and wash others, by showing them forgiveness.”
    “Oh, I get it,” I said. “It’s a parable. Cute. Let’s go eat.”
    We all lay around the big table, with Joshua at the head. Joshua’s mother had prepared a traditional Passover supper, with the exception of the lamb. To begin the seder, Nathaniel, who was the youngest, had to ask a question. “Why is this night different from every other night of the year?”
    “Bart’s feet are clean?” said Thomas.
    “Joseph of Arimathea is picking up the tab?” said Philip.
    Nathaniel laughed and shook his head. “No. It’s because other nights we eat bread and matzo, but tonight we only eat matzo. Jeez.” He grinned, probably feeling smart for the first time in his life.
    “And why do we only eat the matzo on this night?” asked Nathaniel.
    “Skip ahead, Nate,” I said. “We’re all Jews here. Summarize. Unleavened bread because there was no time for it to rise with Pharaoh’s soldiers on our tail, bitter herbs for the bitterness of slavery, God delivered us into the Promised Land, it was swell, let’s eat.”
    “Amen,” said everyone.
    “That was pathetic,” said Peter.
    “Yeah, was it?” I said angrily. “Well, we sit here with the Son of God, waiting for someone to come and take him away and kill him, and none of us is going to do a damn thing about it, including God, so forgive me if I’m not peeing all over myself about having been delivered out of the hands of the Egyptians about a million years ago.”
    “You’re forgiven,” said Joshua. Then he stood up. “What I am, is in you all. The Divine Spark, the Holy Ghost, it unites you all. It is the God that is in you all. Do you understand that?”
    “Of course God is part of you,” James the brother said, “he’s your father.”
    “No, in all of you. Watch, take this bread.” He took a matzo and broke it into pieces. He gave a piece to everyone in the room and took a piece himself. Then he ate it. “Now, the bread is part of me, the bread is me. Now all of you eat it.”
    Everybody looked at him.
    “EAT IT!” He screamed.
    So we ate it. “Now it is part of you, I am part of you. You all share the same part of God. Let’s try again. Hand me that wine.”
    And so it went like that, for a couple of hours, and I think that by the time the wine was gone, the apostles actually grasped what Joshua was saying to them. Then the begging started, as each of us pleaded for Joshua to give up the notion that he had to die to save the rest of us.
    “Before this is finished,” he said, “you will all have to deny me.”
    “No we won’t,” said Peter.
    “You will deny me three times, Peter. I not only expect this, I command it. If they take you when they take me, then there is no one to take the good news to the people. Now, Judas, my friend, come here.”
    Judas went to Joshua, who whispered in his ear, then sent him back to his place at the table. “One of you will betray me this very night,” said Joshua. “Won’t you, Judas?”
    “What?” Judas looked around at us, but when he saw no one coming to his defense, he bolted down the steps. Peter started after him, but Joshua caught the fisherman by the hair and yanked him back off of his feet.
    “Let him go.”
    “But the high priest’s palace isn’t a furlong away,” said Joseph of Arimathea. “If he goes there directly.”
    Joshua held his hand up for silence. “Biff, go directly to Simon’s house and wait. Alone you can sneak by the palace without being seen. Tell Maggie and the others to wait for us. The rest of us will go through the city and through the Ben Hinnon valley so we don’t have to pass the priest’s palace. We’ll meet you in Bethany.”
    I looked at Peter and Andrew. “You won’t let him turn himself in?”
    “Of course not.”
    I was off into the night, wondering even as I ran whether Joshua had changed his mind and was going to escape from Bethany into the Judean desert. I should have known right then that I’d been had. You think you can trust a guy, then he turns around and lies to you.

    Simon answered the door and let me in. He held his finger to his lips,