“It happened not long after my brother, Andrew, and I had abandoned our nets and our boats to follow him. We were still in our own village and Jesus was preaching in our synagogue. My wife’s mother, only a few days before, had become afflicted with the burning fever, a deadly sickness common to people of the waterfront. We had already tried the remedy of magic recommended in our Talmud and repeated the prescribed four verses from Exodus, day after day, but her condition grew worse and there was little hope. We shared our sadness with Jesus, but instead of just consoling us he made us take him to our home, and when we walked into the room where the dying woman slept, he knelt beside her bed and took her hand. Then he reached out and lifted her to a sitting position and she opened her eyes. Soon her feet were on the floor and the fever had passed and she went directly to the kitchen, after kissing Jesus, and prepared supper for all of us.”

“Would you call that a miracle?”

Peter cocked his head defiantly. “What would you call it?”

He had obviously dealt with people like me before. “I don’t know,” I replied. “I’ve not had as much experience with miracles as you are reported to have had. Now, let me take you to another time and place. Almost from the beginning, the words and actions of Jesus angered those in authority—Herod, the high priest, the Pharisees and Sadducees—so that on many occasions, in order to escape their taunts and challenges, he led those closest to him away from Judaea and Galilee to places where you would be out of harm’s way. Is that correct?”

“That is so. Those hypocrites in power, feeling the sting of the Lord’s words every day, were constantly plotting to entrap Jesus in their nets and destroy him. He called them ‘a generation of vipers’ who, being evil, could never speak or do good things anyway.”

“But didn’t their constant harassment eventually take its toll? Did not many who had been loyal followers of Jesus begin to fall away, after a while, because they feared those in authority?”

Peter rubbed the back of his hairy hand across his eyes. “There was a time,” he said regretfully, “when Jesus asked me and the other eleven if we were planning to desert him too.”

“Caesarea Philippi!”

The apostle’s body stiffened. “What?”

“Caesarea Philippi!” I repeated.

“What of it?”

“What happened there?”

“How do you know about Caesarea Philippi?” he asked, scowling furtively at Joseph.

“I have been given to understand that something very important took place near Caesarea Philippi—something that none of the apostles have ever forgotten, even to this day.”

“Especially this apostle.” Peter sighed.