After being thrown out of the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus found crowds following wherever he went. Some people said that his words showed he had gone out of his mind, and his family tried to speak to him and restrain him, for they were worried about what he would do.

But he took little notice of his family. Once, at a wedding in the village of Cana, his mother said to him, ‘Jesus, they’ve run out of wine.’

Jesus answered, ‘What’s that got to do with me, or with you? Are you like my brother, that you want me to perform a miracle?’

Mary did not know how to answer that, so she simply said to the servants, ‘Just do as he says.’

Jesus took the chief steward aside and spoke to him, and soon afterwards the servants discovered more wine. Some said Jesus had created it out of water by means of magic, but others said that the steward had hidden it, hoping to sell it, and Jesus had shamed him into honesty; and yet others only remembered the rough way Jesus spoke to his mother.

Another time, when he was speaking to a group of strangers, someone came and told him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’

Jesus replied: ‘My mother and my brothers and sisters are right here in front of me. I have no family except those who do the will of God, and whoever does the will of God is my mother and my brother and my sister.’

Word of that got back to his family, and they were dismayed. That only added to the scandal that was beginning to surround his name, of course, and gave the people something else to spread stories about.

Jesus was aware of the way people were talking about him, and he tried to discourage it. Once, a man whose skin was covered in boils and running sores came to him privately, and said, ‘Lord, if you choose to, you can cure my disease.’

The usual ritual for cleansing a leper (as those with skin diseases were commonly called) was lengthy and expensive. This man might simply have been trying to avoid the cost, but Jesus saw the trust in his eyes, and reached out to embrace him, and kissed his face. And at once the man felt better. Christ, who was nearby, was the only person who was watching, and he saw Jesus’s gesture with astonishment.

‘Now go to the priest, as Moses commanded,’ Jesus told the leper, ‘and get a certificate of cleanliness. But say nothing about this to anyone else, you hear me?’

However, the man disobeyed him and spoke about his cure to everyone he met. Naturally, this made Jesus even more in demand, and wherever he went people came to him both to hear his preaching and to be cured of their sicknesses.

The local teachers and religious lawyers, the scribes, who were alarmed by his fame, thought they should take steps to deal with him, so they began to attend whenever Jesus was teaching. On one occasion the house where he was speaking was crowded, and some men who had carried a paralysed friend there in the hope that Jesus would heal him found they could not get in at the door; so they carried him up to the roof, scraped off the plaster, removed the beams, and lowered the sick man on a mat down in front of him.

Jesus saw that the man and his friends had come in honest hope and faith, and that the crowd was excited and tense with expectation. Knowing the effect it would have, he said to the paralysed man, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven.’

The scribes – village lawyers most of them, men of no great skill or learning – said to one another, ‘This is blasphemy! Only God can forgive sins. This man is asking for trouble!’

Jesus saw them whisper, and knew what they would be saying, so he challenged them.

‘Why don’t you come out with it?’ he said. ‘Tell me this: which is easier, to say “Your sins are forgiven”, or to say “Take up your mat and walk”?’

The scribes fell into the trap he’d set, and said, ‘To say “Your sins are forgiven”, of course.’

‘Very well,’ said Jesus, and turning to the paralysed man, he said, ‘Now, take up your mat and walk.’

The man was so strengthened and inspired by the atmosphere Jesus had created that he found himself able to move. He did just what Jesus had told him to do: he got to his feet, picked up his mat, and went to join his friends outside. The people were scarcely able to believe what they’d seen, and the scribes were confounded.

Soon after that, they had something else to be scandalised about. Jesus was walking past a tax office one day, and he stopped to talk to the tax-collector, who was a man called Matthew. Just as he’d done to the fishermen Peter and Andrew, and to James and John the sons of Zebedee, Jesus said to Matthew, ‘Come and follow me.’

At once Matthew left his coins, his abacus, his files and records, and stood up to go with Jesus. In order to mark his new calling as a follower, he gave a dinner for Jesus and the other disciples, and invited many of his old colleagues from the tax department. That was the scandal: the scribes who heard about it could hardly believe that a Jewish teacher, a man who spoke in the synagogue, would share a meal with tax-collectors.

‘Why is he doing this?’ they said to some of the disciples. ‘We have to speak with these people from time to time, but to sit and eat with them!’

Jesus didn’t find that charge difficult to answer. ‘Those who are not sick need no doctor,’ he said. ‘And there’s no need to call righteous people to repent. To speak with sinners is exactly why I’ve come.’

Naturally, Christ was following all this with great interest. Obeying the stranger’s instruction to watch and wait, he was careful not to draw any attention to himself, but stayed in Nazareth, living quietly. He didn’t find that hard to do; although he resembled his brother, of course, he had the sort of face that few people remember, and his manner was always modest and retiring.

Nevertheless, he took care to listen to all the reports that came back to the family about what Jesus was doing. It was a time when political feeling in Galilee was beginning to stir; groups such as the Zealots were urging the Jews to active resistance against the Romans, and Christ was anxious in case his brother should attract the wrong sort of attention, and become a target of the authorities.

And he waited every day in hope of meeting the stranger again, and hearing more about his task as the word of God.

One day Jesus went out to find a great crowd of people who had come from far away: as well as those from Galilee, people had come from the lands of the Decapolis beyond the Jordan, from Jerusalem and Judea. In order to make it easier for them all to hear his teaching, Jesus climbed up into the mountains a little way, with his disciples and the crowd following. Christ was inconspicuous among them, and no one knew who he was, for they were all strangers to the district. He had a tablet and a stylus with him to take notes about what Jesus said.

When Jesus had reached a prominent spot, he began to speak.

‘What am I preaching?’ he said. ‘The Kingdom of God, that’s what. It’s coming, friends, it’s on its way. And today I’m going to tell you who’s going to be received into the Kingdom, and who isn’t, so pay attention. It’s the difference between being blessed and being cursed. Don’t ignore what I say to you, now. A great deal hangs on this.

‘So here you are then: the poor will be blessed. Those who have nothing now will soon inherit all the Kingdom of God.

‘The hungry will be blessed. In the Kingdom, they will be filled with good food; they will never hunger again.

‘Those who mourn will be blessed; those who weep now will be blessed, because when the Kingdom comes, they will be comforted, and they will laugh with joy.