“But he’s a Jew, Cornelius, and we are Romans.”
“No matter.” He turned to the servant who had gone to Tiberias in search of him. “Get me a fresh horse, and quickly!” he ordered. “I’m going out to find that carpenter!”
A few minutes later he stopped to inquire of a shopkeeper if the man had seen the young Nazarene rabbi. “Has he been around today?” Cornelius asked. “Can you tell me how to find him?”
“He passed here this morning,” the shopkeeper answered, “with Simon and the Zebedees and some of those others who are usually with him. They went out the gate in the western wall, and judging by the poor trade I’ve had all day, the whole city’s gone out after them. I hear the carpenter’s been speaking to them from the side of that little mountain over there.” With his head he motioned toward the west. “In all likelihood you’ll find him there, soldier.” Suddenly his face fell; his hands shook as he grasped his scraggly beard. “Now wait a minute,” he sputtered, “this fellow, this Nazarene, he hasn’t run afoul of you Romans, has he?”
“No. No, indeed. It’s on a personal mission that I seek him.” Cornelius smiled reassuringly. “I’m his friend.”
The shopkeeper looked relieved. “Then if you station yourself at the western gate, you’ll surely see him as he returns to the city. Or you might ride out toward the mountain, soldier.”
Cornelius rode on through the gate. He was halfway to the little eminence in the plain west of the city when he began to meet the throng returning. Soon he spotted the rabbi walking in the company of the Capernaum fishermen. Boldly he rode up to them and dismounted.
The men with Jesus formed a circle about him.
“I am unarmed, and I intend no one harm,” Cornelius said, holding out his hands. “I am seeking the rabbi of Nazareth.”
Jesus stepped forward and held up his staff in salute. His brown eyes were warmly bright. Cornelius, closer to him than he had ever been before, saw sparkling in the beads of perspiration rolling down his bronzed smooth forehead the long rays of the setting sun. He saw them, too, in the beads clinging to the thick mat of reddish-brown hair on the carpenter’s chest, for in the sultry stillness of the dying day, Jesus had thrown open his robe half way to his rope-belted waist.