Life Continued
Jesus said, “The Kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest, went astray. He left the ninety-nine sheep and looked for that one until he found it. When he had gone to such trouble, he said to the sheep, 'I care for you more than the ninety-nine.'”
“He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.”
His words trailed off. Riders were galloping toward them, and not a few thought that these might have been Herod’s men or Pilate’s men or men from the Temple. There were any number of enemies Jesus had garnered for himself And this place was not safe.
In the last few days they had retreated to the semi desert town of Bathabara. Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where Yochanon had been baptizing in the early days. There he stayed, and many people came to him. They said, “Though Yochanon never performed a sign, all that Yochanon said about this man was true.”
In that place, many came to believe in Jesus. Judas, who wanted to believe asked, “How long will we stay here? How long before we go back to Galilee?”
And Jesus said, “You all will go back to Galilee. But you will not go back with me.”
“What does he mean?” Simon Zelotes had demanded.
“You know what he means!” Judas hissed in the night. “He grows stranger and stranger with this… death wish of his. How can we follow someone who wants to die?”
“Because he is the Christ and there is nowhere else to be and no one else to be with,” Thomas told his Twin. “And we will follow him. Even if it is to die/”
Peter grunted assent and clapped Thomas on the shoulder, and John turned around and went away.
In those days, Magdalene returned to her Bethany to be with Marta, for she had received news that Lazaros was not doing well, and now, behold, as the riders arrived before Jesus in the midst of his preaching, he recognized by the blue and red reins and the garments or the riders, that these were men from the house of Marta. Jesus rose and bowed, and the young man leapt from the horse saying, “Master, Lazaros, the one who you love is ill. The ladies Marta and Mary have sent me looking for you and beg you to attend him.”
There were sighs all around them, Jude and James and John had known Lazaros long before Jesus had begun his work, and a disturbed look passed over Jesus’s face.
“Yes,” he said, sounding distracted.
“Sir,” the rider said, “we have spent extra time looking for you, and Lazaros was gravely ill.”
“This sickness will not end in death,” Jesus insisted, though he still seemed distracted, and he told the rider, “Go take some water.”
“I must turn back.”
“Taking some water and food for yourself will not make Lazaros any better any sooner,” Jesus said. “Now take water for yourself.”
The rider, looking as troubled as the rest of them, nodded, and taking his horses reins, was led by several women to take refreshment.
“What is wrong with him?” Philip whispered to Nathanael.
“Bethany is near Jerusalem,” Nathanael reasoned. “To travel there would be his death. Might even be ours.”
“He could heal him from a distance,” Alphaeus murmured, “as he did before with—”
But at this Jesus seemed to return to himself, and his voice rising, he declared: “The kingdom is like a man who had a hidden treasure in his field without knowing it. And after he died, he left it to his son. The son did not know about the treasure. He inherited the field and sold it. And the one who bought it went plowing and found the treasure. He began to lend money at interest to whomever he wished. Whoever finds the world and becomes rich, let him renounce the world.”
“What in the world is he doing?” the young rider asked of Joanna as she poured more water for him and filled his flask.
“Is he not coming?”
“The heavens and the earth will be rolled up in your presence,” Jesus continued, “and the one who lives from the living one will not see death. Whoever finds himself is superior to the world?”
“I do not know,” Joanna said. “In truth, often I do not now what he is about.”
“Woe to the flesh that depends on the soul,” Jesus cried. “ Woe to the soul that depends on the flesh."
Judas had entered the house, and was frowning.
“These days,” he said, “none of us does.”
The next two days passed in an odd fashion, as if days themselves could hold their breath. All this time Jesus had talked of going into Jerusalem, but now he stopped. Was he afraid? But Jesus was never really afraid, or at least he did not give way to his fears. Then what? Some knew nothing of Lazaros and less of the messenger that had come for him, and it was strange that Jesus went on preaching and teaching until two days had passed and then he said over breakfast, as if the message had just come to him.
“Let us go back to Judea.”
And there it was, and Judas said, “You have delayed two days, and wasn’t it because a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you? And yet you are going back?”
“Are there not twelve hours in the day?” Jesus returned, as he tore apart the great loaf of bread he held.
“Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” James snapped, his nerves pressed to their edge.
“Our friend Lazaros has fallen asleep, James. But I am going to wake him.”
James laughed.
“Well, if he is asleep he will recover? Do you think you are the only one who can wake him?”
At this, John knew his brother had missed the point even before Jesus said plainly, with the weight of a stone dropping:
“Lazaros is dead,”
As the room fell into silence, Jesus said, “And for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.”
“You were… waiting for him to die!” Judas said, incredulously. But it was more credible than Jesus being too afraid to move, Jesus being hesitant about helping his friend. He had, after all, seen this man drive demons into swine and destroy three thousand pigs in a day.
“I was waiting for the right time to leave,” Jesus said. “Every time is your time. Not so with me.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake—” Judas began and Jesus cut him off.
“But at any road, let us go to him.”
Jesus rose, the red robe hanging from him, and retired into his private room to prepare, and after a moment’s silence, Thomas looked around the room and said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
They set out in the late part of the day, the sun gleaming on the old white robe of Jesus as, swathed and hooded in the great white mantle, he traveled through the rocky country, surrounded by the Twelve, to reach the green slopes around Jerusalem and, by late day, arrive in the hilly town of Bethany within sight of the tree covered Mount of Olives and Jerusalem. As they approached, a pall was upon the whole town. Many houses were empty, and everyone had gathered around the house of Marta. Even as Jesus entered the town, those who saw him ran to the house.
Three days the soul hovered about the body, and on the fourth it went into the otherworld. How could it be that now he was truly gone? Marta prized herself for being a woman of reality, even despite all things a woman of great reality, and she had lost a husband. She had received the headless and lifeless body of Yochanon and buried him. Sometime later, wrapped in myrrh soaked cloth and placed in a precious box, she had received his head, supposedly retrieved from a dungheap, to be buried by the body, She had buried her grandmother and her father and her beloved mother. Death was not new. She understood the ways of the world.
But in the last few years Jesus had bent the ways of the world. She had believed in him, and believing in him, she had stopped believing in death. Maybe this was why she had not been in such a hurry to call for him. And Mary, her sister was here, such a strange and magical woman. How could Lazaros ever die? How could her ears be filled with the shrieking scream of her sister. Even when he was gone, could he be gone? And all the time he had sickened, and even when he was freshly dead, she thought, Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming. Even when they marched with his bier to the caves and he was all swathed in white, Marta had thought, Jesus is coming. The road had remained empty, and then worse, the road had travelers, and then several mourners, but not a one of them was Jesus.
Mourning was so strange. She was never used to it even now when she was not entirely surprised by it. The more than sadness, the weakening, the draining, the disappearance of all color and desire, the being placed in an odd not world, a death of your own where you thought it very likely you might not return to the land of the living. The impossibility of regaining the company of someone who, though possibly mere feet away, had been taken so very far from you that you could never retrieve them again.
And then there were the moments when he simply was not there as if he had stepped out of the room, followed by overwhelming, howling screaming grief.
And after this first of those screaming griefs, Sara, still openly sobbing, mounted the stairs.
Marta felt like a fool. Sara had always loved Lazaros and he had always loved her. She was young, but she was old enough to marry as Lazaros had been well old enough to marry long ago. Why had they not? Because she was a servant? But if he was here again, then the clock could be turned back. If Jesus was here… But by now Marta was getting used to the fact that he was not.
“Sara?” she said.
And Sara said, “The Master is here.”
She was no fool. She understood all the reasons Jesus might not come, all the reasons why he might have been delayed. These were dangerous days. She bore no resentment, well she bore little resentment, and frankly she’d felt a lot of fear. She swathed herself in elegant black and left the house, walking from her grandmother’s rooftop quarters and down the steps along the side of the house, attracting as little attention as possible.
When she came to him, before he could speak, black robed Marta said to Jesus swathed in white: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
And then she added, “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
And Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
But Marta was weary and tear streaked and tired of the poetic turn Jesus had taken of late and she said, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
And Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
“Yes, Lord,” Marta said, removing her veil, so that her dark hair over her shoulders, and now she stood straight.
“I know that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
“Does Mary know?”
“Of course she does,” Marta said. “More than anyone else.”
“Bring her to me.”
Marta nodded, somehow strengthened, transformed not into something new, but into something she’d forgotten she was. She marched up the road and into the house, stronger than ever, and passed through the courtyard and then through the great door and bent near Magdalene, wrapped in black, and whispered to her.
When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and ran out the door. Nikodemos, Joseph, and several of those sitting on the floor mourning, left after her, yes, some to comfort, but others to be relieved of the boredom of sitting shiva.
By the time Mary had reached the gate, she was not alone, and her veil had fallen from her hair, trailing behind her in a black ribbon. She had, energized by the sound of Jesus’s name, prepared to take the back of her hand across his face as sharply as she could, which she did, and his head snapped back, his face stinging.
And then, at once, Magdalene collapsed to her knees and lay bent over and weeping, her hands spread out as she wailed her terrible wail, and the men around her were disconcerted to see someone so strong so undone. Joanna and Binah and Susanna came to her, kneeling beside her, and John looked to Jesus, whose face was still red from the slap, and Magdalene wailed:
“Where were you? Where were you? Where in all the hells were you?”
Her words were indecipherable and she sobbed, “Damn you! Damn you!”
And then she wept more while even Marta knelt beside her weeping, and the women rocked her and finally she said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Jesus, who had been such a mystery, such an odd person of late, who seemed completely in command, but of what he was in command none could say, looked around as if he had reawakened to human life and said, “Mary, where have you laid him?”
And as if the sound her name had called her back to sanity, Magdalene stopped sobbing, and lifted her face, red and swollen with grief. She passed the back of her hand over her face and, with the aid her sister, rising, said:
“Lord, Come and see.”
Jesus followed Marta and Mary ouf of town to the rocky area of the tombs, and they led him to a little stony valley with a great round stone covering a grave, the grave of his friend, the friend who loved the idea of travel, but rarely did it, who loved the servant Sara, but had not made it known, who hoped for the coming Kingdom, but had not lived to see its birth.
And then, just like that, Jesus’s shoulders shook, and he threw back his head and howled. Only John dared approach him in this state, and Jesus wept and wept as if he had held in these feelings for days. He stood there sobbing, almost doubled to the ground, shaking his head, and John could hear bits of, “I’m sorry…. I’m so sorry… I wanted to… I’m so sorry….”
And as he wept, those of Bethany, and those of the great families who had come up from Jerusalem looked to each other.
“See how he loved him!” some said,
But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Nikodemos looked away, thinking it best to leave a man to his grief, and Joseph of Arimathea agreed.
Meanwhile, Jesus’s sobbing had stopped, or at least lessened, and now he stood, his own face stained, his eyes stinging, and he said, winded by traveling all day and winded by this last hour of raw grief: “Roll the stone away.”
And whatever Marta had hoped for in the last hour, now she was horrified.
“Lord,” she said, calling him to his senses, “by this time he is rotting, and the tomb is full of the smell. He has been there four days.”
And then there he was, the Jesus who stopped the sea storm with a word and walked across its waters, who had fed thousands on a hilltop and had raised the daughter of Jairus. He was in perfect calm when he spoke to Marta.
“Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
Marta nodded, and she made a gesture to some of the men, and they went down into the tomb, shocked and horrified, and began taking away the bindings of the stone and rocking it. As they rolled it away and the sound of grinding rock was heard, Jesus veiled his head and bowed, and his lips began to move in prayer.
And now, as he raised his head, his mantle fell from his head and his face was exposed to the sun in its blue heaven. His hands rose as he prayed
“Who is like thee, O Father in heaven, majestic in holiness, terrible in glorious deeds, doing wonders. There is none that can deliver out of thy hand. You wound and cure, You wound and You make alive… Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon this man that he may live.”
And then he cried, loudly:
“Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I know that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
And so he shouted into the blackness of the tomb: “Lazaros… Come forth!”
These last moments had been moments of such power, of such expectation, though none dared say what they had expected, and now there was only the silent blackness of a tomb no one dared to approach for the smell. In the silence, Magdalene came had come down to stand beside Jesus at the tomb, and she chanted, taking his hand:
“I went down into the countries
underneath the earth
To the peoples of the past
But you lifted my life from the pit…
My Lord…
My God.”
And even as she finished, one shrieked, and then others shouted as much in horror as in joy, and when Mary the Magdalene raised her eyes, shuffling out of the shadows of the tomb, bound in burial cloths, there stood the tall form of Lazaros.
All around people were trembling, and Mary looked up to Jesus, but Jesus barked, almost in irriation to the people around him.
“Unbind his grave clothes and let him go.”
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