The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  Reverend Justus frowned. “I can quote the Gospel of John forward and backward,” he said, “and that’s not in there.”

  Fletcher smiled. “I never said it was from the Gospel of John. I said it was from a gospel. A Gnostic one, called the Acts of John.”

  “There’s no Acts of John in the Bible,” Justus huffed. “He’s making this up.”

  “The reverend’s right—it’s not in the Bible. And there are dozens of others like it. Through a series of editorial decisions, they were excluded—and considered heresy by the early Christian church.”

  “That’s because the Bible is the Word of God, period,” Justus said.

  “Actually, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John weren’t even written by the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They were written in Greek, by authors who had a modicum of education—unlike Jesus’s fishermen disciples, who were illiterate, like ninety percent of the population. Mark is based on the apostle Peter’s preaching. Matthew’s author was probably a Jewish Christian from Antioch, Syria. The Gospel of Luke was allegedly written by a doctor. And the author of the Gospel of John never mentions his own name . . . but it was the latest of the four synoptic gospels to be written, roughly around A.D. 100. If the apostle John was the author, he would have been extremely old.”

  “Smoke and mirrors,” Reverend Justus said. “He’s using rhetoric to distract us from the basic truth here.”

  “Which is?” King asked.

  “Do you truly believe that if the Lord chose to grace us with his earthly presence again—and that is a big if, in my humble opinion—he would willingly choose to inhabit a convicted murderer, two times over?”

  My hot water started to boil, and I disconnected the stinger. Then I turned off the television without hearing Fletcher’s answer. Why would God choose to inhabit any of us?

  What if it was the other way around . . . if we were the ones who inhabited God?

  MICHAEL

  During the drive to Maggie’s parents’ home, I wallowed in various degrees of guilt. I had let down Father Walter and St. Catherine’s. I’d made a fool of myself on TV. And although I’d started to tell Maggie that Shay and I had some history between us that he didn’t know about—I had chickened out. Again.

  “So here’s the thing,” Maggie said, distracting me from my thoughts as we pulled into the driveway. “My parents are going to be a little excited when they see you in my car.”

  I glanced around at the quiet, wooded retreat. “Don’t get much company here?”

  “Don’t get many dates is more like it.”

  “I don’t want to burst your bubble, but I’m not exactly boyfriend material.”

  Maggie laughed. “Yeah, thanks, but I’d like to think even I’m not that desperate. It’s just that my mother’s got radar or something—she can sniff out a Y chromosome from miles away.”

  As if Maggie had conjured her, a woman stepped out of the house. She was petite and blond, with her hair cut into a neat bob and pearls at her neck. Either she’d just come home from work, or she was headed out—my mother, on a Friday night, would have been wearing one of my dad’s flannel shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and what she called her Weekend Fat Jeans. She squinted, glimpsing me through the windshield. “Maggie!” she cried. “You didn’t tell us you were bringing a friend for dinner.”

  Just the way she said the word friend made me feel a rush of sympathy for Maggie.

  “Joel!” she called into the house behind her. “Maggie’s brought a guest!”

  I stepped out of the car and adjusted my collar. “Hello,” I said. “I’m Father Michael.”

  Maggie’s mother’s hand went to her throat. “Oh, God.”

  “Close,” I replied, “but no cigar.”

  At that moment, Maggie’s father came hurrying out the front door, tucking in his dress shirt. “Mags,” he said, folding her into a bear hug, which was when I noticed his yarmulke. Then he turned to me and held out a hand. “I’m Rabbi Bloom.”

  “You could have told me your father was a rabbi,” I whispered to Maggie.

  “You didn’t ask.” She looped her arm through her father’s. “Daddy, this is Father Michael. He’s a heretic.”

  “Please tell me you’re not dating him,” Mrs. Bloom murmured.

  “Ma, he’s a priest. Of course I’m not.” Maggie laughed as they headed toward the house. “But I bet that street performer who asked me out is starting to look a lot more palatable to you . . .”

  That left two of us, men of God, standing awkwardly on the driveway. Rabbi Bloom led the way into the house, toward his study. “So,” he said. “Where’s your congregation?”

  “Concord,” I said. “St. Catherine’s.”

  “And you met my daughter how?”

  “I’m Shay Bourne’s spiritual advisor.”

  He glanced up. “That must be unnerving.”

  “It is,” I said. “On many levels.”

  “So is he or isn’t he?”

  “Donating his heart? That’s going to be up to your daughter, I think.”

  The rabbi shook his head. “No, no. Maggie, she could move a mountain if she wanted to, one molecule at a time. I meant is he or isn’t he Jesus?”

  I blinked. “I never figured I’d hear that question from a rabbi.”

  “Jesus was a Jewish man, after all. Just look at the evidence: he lived at home, went into his dad’s business, thought his mother was a virgin, and his mother thought he was God.” Rabbi Bloom grinned, and I started to smile.

  “Well, Shay’s not preaching what Jesus did.”

  The rabbi laughed. “And you were around the first time to know this for sure?”

  “I know what it says in scripture.”

  “I never understood people—Jewish or Christian—who read the Bible as if it were hard evidence. Gospel means good news. It’s a way to update the story, to fit the audience you’re telling it to.”

  “I don’t know if I’d say that Shay Bourne’s here to update the story of Christ for the modern generation,” I replied.

  “It makes you wonder, then, why so many people have jumped on his bandwagon. It’s almost like who he is matters less than what all of them need him to be.” Rabbi Bloom began to scour his bookshelves, finally lighting on one dusty tome, which he skimmed through until he found a certain page. “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like.’ Simon Peter said to him, ‘You are like a righteous angel.’ Matthew said to him, ‘You are like a wise philosopher.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like.’ Jesus said, ‘I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out.’”

  He snapped the book shut again as I tried to place the scripture. “History’s always written by the winners,” Rabbi Bloom said. “This was one of the losers.” He handed me the book just as Maggie poked her head into the room.

  “Dad, you’re not trying to pawn off another copy of The Best Jewish Knock-Knock Jokes, are you?”

  “Unbelievably, Father Michael already has a signed copy. Is dinner ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank goodness. I was beginning to think your mother had cremated the tilapia.” As Maggie ducked back into the kitchen, Rabbi Bloom turned to me. “Well, in spite of how Maggie introduced you, you don’t seem like a heretic to me.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’m sure you already know that heresy comes from the Greek word for choice.” He shrugged. “Makes you wonder. What if the ideas that have always been considered sacrilegious aren’t sacrilegious at all—just ideas we haven’t come across before? Or ideas we haven’t been allowed to come across?”

  In my hands, the book the rabbi had given me felt as if it were burning. “You hungry?” Bloom asked.

  “Starving,” I admitted, and I let him lead the way.

  June

  When I was pregnant with Claire, I was told that