Mother's Eyes

by Woods, Karen

  Yosef’s son, Shimon, took a drink of wine. “You present a compelling case.”

  “The truth is always compelling,” Halphai replied.

  “Did Yehoshua say what was required to have the eternal life he so often spoke of?” Shimon asked.

  “To repent and be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” Halphai replied.

  “Are you equating Yehoshua with Avinu Malkeinu?” Shimon demanded, clearly shocked.

  Miriam said, “My son taught that those who had seen him had seen the Father, that he and the Father are one.”

  “It is blasphemy for any man to make himself equal with Avinu Malkeinu,” Shimon said, his voice flat, too controlled. It was obvious to her that he was angry almost beyond words.

  “It is not blasphemy to make that statement if it is the act of Avinu Malkeinu, himself. With my son, it is so,” Miriam said. “Before the world was, Yehoshua existed. Did you never wonder who Elohim spoke to when in the beginning he said ‘Let us make man in our own image’?”

  There was silence at the table. She watched everyone look at one another, some in joy, others in dawning acceptance, at Shimon wearing a questioning look.

  Miriam continued, “The Holy Spirit moved upon the waters at the beginning of time. He is the author of life. Yet, it is Elohim, who is the author of life. The Holy Spirit is one with Avinu Malkeinu. They are one. And yet, Avinu Malkeinu is not the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is not Avinu. It is a matter of revelation and great mystery that Elohim is both one and three, consisting of Avinu, Yehoshua, and the Holy Spirit, and yet the persons we see in Elohim do not change the long established revelation that Elohim is one. It is a great truth and beyond our ability to understand.”

  “I certainly don’t understand this,” Shimon said, unbending a bit.

  “Have you ever thought about the fact that even our name for him, the word Elohim, is plural?” Miriam asked, her voice quiet.

  “But the Sh’ma says that he is one,” Shimon replied.

  Miriam nodded. “It does. Do you believe that the human mind is able to fully understand Elohim?”

  “No more than a bucket can hold the sea,” Shimon replied on a sigh.

  Miriam nodded. “Is it not possible, Shimon, that Elohim has been slowly revealing himself to us? First, He made a covenant with Adam. That contract, Adam and Cheva broke through disobedience. Later, He made a contract with Noach. And even later still, He made a contract with Father Avraham. Elohim protected and gave great wisdom to Yosef in Egypt. Still later, Elohim showed himself in the burning bush to Moshe. He made the covenant with the people at Sinai. And later, he spoke through David, Shlomo, and all the prophets through the ages. Gradually, our understanding of Elohim has grown as He has given the light for us to see Him more clearly. That revelation of Himself has continued through my son’s life, a life that the prophets foretold. And what Yehoshua has taught us about the nature of Elohim, that He and Avinu are one, yet are different, that Elohim consists of three persons in unity, all of this must be taken profoundly seriously.”

  Shimon sipped from his glass of wine again. “Yes. I see that. Yet, if this is so, then I have done my brother a gross injustice.”

  “He loved and forgave you,” Miriam said.

  “I did love him. But, I was unkind to him,” Shimon said, his voice holding sorrow. “He made me quite angry more than once. I thought he was acting in a way that would endanger his life and the family, as well. I was frightened for him.”

  “Have you considered that your anger might have been more your fault than His?” Halphai asked, his voice quiet, in a way that reminded her so much of Yosef when angry.

  Miriam watched Halphai and Shimon exchange looks.

  Shimon looked away and sighed. “Perhaps.” He was quiet for a moment before he added, “Probably. Yehoshua wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. I am.”

  And that was as close to an acknowledgement as they were likely to get, Miriam knew.

  Then Shimon surprised her by saying, seemingly withsincerity, “And is this baptism all that I must do to have the eternal life promised by my brother?”

  Miriam smiled at him. “When a young rich man came to my son with that question about what he must do to inherit eternal life, Yehoshua told him to keep the commandments. Then before He was arrested, Yehoshua gave us a new commandment, to love one another as he has loved us. He said, ‘By this shall all people know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ And just before He ascended into heaven, he commanded us to go into all the world to tell the good news and to baptize all in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I know that you have kept halakhah all your life, Shimon. Will you be baptized into the name of the three persons of Elohim and accept this mystery of new birth?”

  “My brother always had more of an ability to love than I have had,” Shimon said, his voice tight.

  “Naturally,” Halphai said, “he was Elohim come to us in flesh. Elohim is love.”

  “How can any person love the way that Elohim does?” Shimon asked, not dismissing the thought, but honestly asking.

  “Only by allowing Elohim to love through us. Of our own strength, we cannot do this thing. We must depend fully upon Elohim for strength,” Miriam said. “We must be His hands in the world because He has chosen to work through us.”

  Shimon replied, “He took my breath away when, after Abba died, he said his mission was to call the children of Yisra’el to repentance and bring the Goyim to Elohim. But that is precisely what he has put into play, is it not?”

  “It is,” Miriam said.

  Shimon sat there for the longest time. “Halphai, I see that you are right. To follow my brother is to be faithful to El Ele Yisra’el. I would be baptized into His baptism.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Lucas had finished his painting of her and an infant Yehoshua before they headed back to Yerushalayim. But he hadn’t let her see it. In fact, they were well back in Yerushalayim before she saw the painting and several others that Luke had done of her son, as well as several of herself, both holding her son and praying before an image of her son.

  These images would go out with the various men as they left to go out into the world to make disciples of all Goyim.

  Miriam stood, looking at the images, the eikons. She was overwhelmed.

  Lucas walked up to her. “What do you think?”

  She nodded. When she spoke, her voice was smaller than she had intended, little more than a choked whisper, “The grace of him who was born of me will be spread throughout the world.”

  Lucas was silent for a moment.

  Miriam sighed. “The work is very fine, Lucas. I understand that you are soon to leave us. Where will you go?”

  “Antioch. It is where I was born. I believe I may do good service there in teaching of Yehoshua and prophecy.”

  “So many of our men will be leaving us shortly for distant lands. You and the others will be in my prayers.”

  “Then, Emma, with the strength of your prayers we are to be assured of much success,” Lucas said.

  “Why do you call me Emma?” Miriam asked, taken somewhat aback. This was the first time that anyone of the followers of her son had addressed her as Mother.

  “We have decided that as Yehoshua called us brothers, that we must therefore regard you as our mother, and care for you as such.”

  Miriam nodded, “One of the last things my son asked of me was that I care for all of you.”

  “Then it is right for us to regard you as mother,” Lucas said with a smile.

  “I suppose so. It is will take some getting used to.”

  “Life is a process of accustoming ourselves to change,” he agreed.

  “Yes. There have been so many changes in my life.”

  Lucas nodded. “Yes. There have been. But look at the woman you’ve become because you have gone through them. You’re righteous, wise, strong, humble, gentle, and compassionate. Women could do worse t
han to seek to become like you.”

  “I do thank you for your compliment,” Miriam said. “Even though I am unworthy of it. Women should seek to be more godly, not to pattern themselves after any living person. Everyone who lives, including me, has fallen short of the glory of Elohim. Except for my son, everyone has sinned.”

  Miriamne chuckled. “You won’t convince her, Lucas. She is willfully blind where her own holiness is concerned.”

  “A woman should never be satisfied with the state of her own soul. Salvation is a life long journey. The closer you draw to Him the more you know yourself to be a sinner. Think of it this way. When you sit in a dark room, you can’t see the dirt around you. But when you throw open the shutters and door on a sunny day, only then you can see the dust and the cobwebs. So it is with our souls. Once we open the houses of our hearts to the light that is Elohim, then we see the cobwebs, the dust, and far worse, in our souls. Only when we see the filth can we begin to clean our souls’ homes.”

  “You found favor with Elohim. You are singular in your relationship with Avinu Malkeinu in that you bore his Son. No other woman in the history of the world has become with child by the Holy Spirit,” Miriamne, Magdala, argued. “No one else has ever been closer to Our Lord, Yehoshua.”

  “And it is because of that closeness that I am painfully aware of my own shortcomings,” Miriam dismissed. “No man or woman can rest on past righteousness. We must live in the moment, here and now, in such a way that we seek always to become closer to Elohim. And becoming closer to him, we always have more work to do on cleaning our own souls to make them fit places for the Holy Spirit to inhabit.”

  “And that is precisely why women could do worse than to pattern their lives upon you, Emma,” Lucas replied.

  Miriam shrugged. “It would perhaps be better to speak of another topic, Lucas. Tell me of your return to Antioch. When will you leave us?”

  Late that night, lying down in her place at Yochanan’s home, listening to the sound of others in the house sleeping, she thought about the images that Lucas had painted. She couldn’t believe how beautiful and powerful they were. Were such things proper?

  She recalled the mizmor that urged people to worship Elohim in the beauty of holiness. The more she thought about that, the more scriptures about beauty being an attribute of Elohim came into her mind. Elohim had commanded Moshe to have items of great beauty made for His worship, from the ark of the covenant to the vestments of the priests which were to be of the finest cloth and ornamented with gold and jewels. The mizmor of David where he said, “One thing I ask of Adonai, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of Adonai forever, that I may gaze upon the beauty of Adonai,” filled her mind and would not leave it.

  She reflected in the silence of her mind, “The Hebrew word for beauty is spelled; Yud, Peh, Heh. Yud is the first letter in the four letter name of Elohim, YHWH, a name so holy it is pronounced only in the Temple and pronounced so lowly that it is often lost in the chanting of the priests. Words beginning with Yud generally have some meaning related to Elohim. Yud is also the number of the fingers on both hands, a number signifying wholeness. Peh and Heh together form the word po, here. Does does mean that Elohim Himself is present to us in beauty? If holiness is beautiful, is not beauty holy because it reminds us of the truest beauty, the beauty and splendor of Adonai?”

  She rose to her knees and lifted her hands in prayer. She prayed, “O Lord my God, King of the Universe, I bless you for you have enlightened my mind on this and have given me peace. Blessed are you, O Lord.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “They’ve taken Stephanos before the Sanhedrin,” Miriamne said in distress as she came into Yochanan’s house. “On a false charge of blasphemy.”

  Miriam looked at Miriamne for a long time without saying anything. The tears in the other woman’s eyes broke her heart.

  Given the tense mood in the city, she wasn’t overly surprised at this. Over the last year, since the resurrection of her son, the larger the community of believers grew in Yerushalayim, the more of the Temple priests became believers; the more the parushim and the scribes had become upset. She wasn’t surprised they had taken action against one of their community.

  Stephanos along with Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, Nicholas, and Philip, had been chosen as servants of the community in Yerushalayim, deacons. The others had been as active in teaching and serving as Stephanos had been. But Stephanos had drawn the wrong kind of attention from the wrong people.

  “He’s the first of our number to be taken. I doubt he will be the last,” Miriam said, with resignation in her voice. “Yehoshua warned us that this would come. Remember when he said, ‘You will be hated by everyone because of me.’”

  Miriamne’s tears became more intense.

  Miriam turned to Shlomit, Yochanan’s mother, “I need to find Yochanan.”

  “He’s gone to the Temple, as usual.”

  “Walk with me.”

  So, Shlomit and Miriam began to make their way to the Temple. They met Yochanan after only a few minutes, as he was hurrying home.

  “You’ve heard?” he asked, lowly so not to be overheard by passersby.

  “Yes, Son. We’ve heard,” Shlomit said.

  “They’ll take him outside the city walls and stone him. The Synagogue of the Freedmen has arranged for too many false witnesses against him for the Sanhedrin to acquit,” Yochanan replied, keeping his voice low. “I want him to know he’s not alone. I am going out to see this from a short distance from the execution party. I want to pray for him and his killers while this is going on.”

  “I will come with you,” Miriam said.

  “Are you sure? It will not be a pretty sight,” Yochanan asked, obviously trying to discourage her. “It could be dangerous. The stoning party could turn on us as well.”

  “Stephanos is a good man. I want to be there for him. I want him to know he’s loved,” Miriam said. “I need be there for him.”

  “Then come with me, Emma Miriam. There isn’t much time to spare.” Then he spoke to his own mother, “Emma, go back home and stay safe, I beg you.”

  Shlomit looked at both of them. “Very well. Stay safe, my son. And bring Mariam home safely.”

  The two of them made their way out of the city. They went to a nearby hill where they could see, but where they were likely to be out of immediate reach of the stoning party.

  It wasn’t long until they brought Stephanos out of the city gate. They were far enough away that they couldn’t hear what was being said. They did see Stepahanos.

  “That man holding the cloaks of the stoning party,” Yochanan told her, “that’s Stephanos’ kinsman, Saul of Tarsus.”

  Miriam looked on as stones flew. She began chanting the mizmor they normally chanted during burial processions. Yochanan joined her in praying that psalm. She saw Stephanos kneel. It was only a few more moments of vicious pounding with the stones until he lay lifeless on the ground.

  “Yehoshua, my son, receive the soul of this your servant into the realm of eternal life,” she prayed aloud.

  “Amein,” Yochanan replied, his voice choked up.

  “We need to acquire his body and see it buried,” Miriam said.

  “They’ll be looking for us to do that. Already, see, they’ve posted a sentry, to prevent his body from being taken. They want to use him as an example to us.”

  “We will need to come by night, then, and take the body for a proper burial,” Miriam said.

  “We’ll go back to the house and make plans.”

  When they returned to the house, Gamaliel and Nicodemus were there, waiting.

  “You know what has happened, Emma?” Gamaliel asked.

  “We saw Stephanos die,” Miriam said. “We must see to his burial.”

  “Leave that to me,” Gamaliel offered. “As soon as we can make the arrangements and spirit the body away by night, I will see him properly buried. I’ll take him to my own estate. I’ll bury him in the cave se
t aside for my family burials. It will likely be tomorrow night. Tonight, they’ll be watching carefully. By tomorrow, his death won’t be a novelty and the sentry will be less enthusiastic tomorrow night, if there at all.”

  “You have my gratitude,” Miriam said. “I just wish that you and Nicodemus could have prevented this.”

  “We did speak for him,” Nicodemus said, his voice tight and pained. “Gamaliel, myself, and Yosef. There was no reasoning with them.”

  Miriam sighed. “No. I don’t imagine there was. Stephanos’ own kinsman, Saul, was in the crowd, holding the cloaks of those who murdered Stephanos.”

  “Saul of Tarsus?” Gamaliel asked, in clear surprise.

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t even know he was in Yerushalayim. He was one of my students. A brilliant young man,” Gamaliel said. “Very dedicated to Adonai.”

  “My son said that there would be those who believed that they were doing the work of Elohim in killing those who believe in my son,” Miriam said. “We are beginning to see that, now. Stephanos was the first one murdered. He won’t be the last.”

  “No,” Nicodemus replied, “there will be more. Stephanos was an example. They want to put an end to the Way. They see us as a threat, particularly as we are inviting the Goyim to share in the holiness of Yisra’el.”

  Miriam shook her head. “It’s a futile effort. There can be no end to the Way. Gavriel told me when he came to me so long ago that my son’s kingdom would have no end. The good news must be shared with all, and disciples must be made of all people throughout the world. This is our charge, our great work.”

  Nicodemus gave a small smile. “You always manage to encourage us.”

  “Stephanos will not be forgotten,” Miriam said. “His soul has gone to stand before the throne of Avinu. In the Greek, and it’s appropriate as Stephanos was Greek, we should call him martys, a witness, for he bore witness to Yehoshua even at the cost of his own life.”