The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  “Keepers of the law, are you?” He repeated the phrase like a refrain. “Excellent keepers of every visible law, yes. Washing the outside of the cup and the dish, washing your bodies so perfectly clean, both finger and chin.”

  Suddenly Jesus threw up his right arm. His eyes flashed, and he shouted, “You fools! Inside you are full of filth! He who made the outside, didn’t he make the inside, too?”

  Here it came. Thomas knew the signs and he feared the consequences, but nothing would stop Jesus now.

  “Religious legalists! Hypocrites—woe to you!” he shouted. “For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, but you neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. Blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!

  “Woe to you, hypocrites! You make your phylacteries broad and their fringes long. You love the place of honor at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, honor in the marketplaces, being called rabbi. You are like whitewashed tombs, outwardly beautiful but full of dead men’s bones within, full of hypocrisy and iniquity!

  “Woe to you! You load the people with burdens hard to bear, but do not touch the burdens with one of your own fingers.

  “Woe to you! You build tombs for the prophets whom your fathers killed. Yet you do again what your fathers did before. You serpents! You brood of vipers! How are you going to escape the devouring fires of Gehenna? Therefore the Wisdom of God says, I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute—so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundations of the world, may be required of this generation! I tell you, all the blood, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, shall be required of this generation!”

  Suddenly Jesus fell silent. The entire multitude seemed to be holding its breath. The day itself was still and windless.

  Thomas looked at the face of the Master and was also moved to an aweful silence. The fires were out. Suddenly Jesus was pale and sad and very tired.

  Slowly the Lord descended from his stony platform. Slowly he began to walk downhill toward the Jordan, staring again into the distance, due west.

  People pressed backward, making a path for him.

  Jesus began to speak again—scarcely above a murmur; but yet by a mystery everyone heard him. From the front of that congregation to the very back, every heart heard his words and every mind remembered them:

  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he mourned, “killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings, and you would not! O my people, your holy house is now forsaken. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

  Jesus walked down to the Jordan and out into its waters. There he stood with his back to the crowds, waist-deep in the river, neither speaking nor turning around.

  It was as if the sun had blackened. The people dispersed. They withdrew to their cities in Perea and Judea and Samaria: Bethabara, Qumran, Jericho, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Emmaus, Lydda, Joppa, Sychar. They went home and did not come back.

  By evening, only the disciples remained.

  Mary Magdalene cut a pomegranate into halves and walked out into the water and stood next to Jesus a while.

  Andrew said to Thomas, “That is the exact spot where John baptized him. And they killed John. What do you think they’ll do to Jesus?”

  Judas was beside himself, actually relishing the situation. At one point he said to Thomas, “Do you have any idea how many people go up to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover?”

  Thomas said, “What’s the point? Why do you want to know?”

  Judas said, “I know! I already know how many.”

  “Then,” snapped Thomas, “why did you ask me?”

  But Judas could not contain himself. “One hundred and twenty-five thousand!” he cried. “Add to that the population of the city, and what do you get? One hundred and eighty thousand!”

  “What’s the point, Judas?”

  “The point, Thomas, is that even a hundred Roman legions can’t survive such a force.”

  From the river Thomas heard singing. He turned from Judas and strolled down to the banks of the Jordan. Mary, in a thin uncertain voice, was singing ancient verses meant for dancing, a common thing, very familiar:

  Catch us the foxes,

  the little foxes

  that plunder the vineyards:

  Our vines are in blossom—come!

  She fell silent, and after a while she returned to the other women in the small camp of the disciples.

  The closer one gets to the Dead Sea, the fewer fish there are in the Jordan. Simon Peter and James and Matthew therefore spent the afternoon snaring small fowl for supper. Joanna and Susanna and Mary Magdalene plucked the birds, dressed them, put them on wooden spits, and began to roast them. The meat sizzled and sent a pleasant odor into the air. The moods of the disciples softened.

  Though he did not understand the changing times any better than before, Thomas saw the fires and smelled the roasting meat and felt consoled. The homely business of supper comforted him.

  Near dusk Philip and Andrew came back from a trip into Machaerus. They had purchased several newly forged swords, each about two feet long with sheaths concealable under a tunic. Judas had given them money from the common treasury.

  After night had fallen Jesus joined the band again, and everyone was together.

  They arranged themselves on the ground. Jesus looked up to the dark heaven and gave thanks, and then the food was passed around.

  While they were eating Jesus began to speak. “I know how you feel,” he said. “You’re right. Nothing will ever be the same again. But listen to me, my friends: Never fear those who can kill the body only. Rather, fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into the fires of Gehenna, too.

  “But aren’t five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten by God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore, fear nothing at all, for you are of more value than many sparrows.

  “When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious how you are to answer or what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.

  “Fear not, little flock. It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

  After that Jesus became quiet again. Then, when they were done eating, he went off by himself alone.

  Thomas saw that Jesus’ words had caused Mary Magdalene to cry.

  He went to her and said, “What’s the matter?”

  She looked at him from her bruised eyes. “What’s happening, Thomas?” she said. “Jesus is like a man in a thunderstorm—but no one else can see the wind or the rain. Thomas, where is he? What’s happening to us?”

  Thomas said, “He has gotten too angry these days. It’ll get us into trouble.”

  Mary said, “No, I don’t think Jesus is angry.”

  “Didn’t he just rage at the Pharisees?”

  “I think he’s worried, Thomas. I don’t think he hates the Pharisees. Maybe he’s so sad it sounds like anger.”

  “Maybe,” said Thomas. “But I get very nervous when he tells us not to be afraid.”

  ON THE NEXT DAY a man came to the disciples and asked where Jesus was. He said he had a message for him.

  Simon Peter said, “Give me the message. I’ll take it to him.”

  The man said, “I’m a friend of Martha and Mary in Bethany. They say: Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

  After that the two men engaged in conversation for about an hour. Thomas listened. Judas, too, stole close and listened.

  Simon questioned Martha’s friend about tensions in Jerusalem, movements of troops, the mood of those in authority, rumors regarding the provinces. Though the man was but a plain citizen of the city, gossip ran strong, and he could tell Simon what the people were saying. He said that eve
ryone knew the name of Jesus there, and that most people had some sort of opinion.

  Judas said, “They like him, right?” He clapped his hands and answered the question himself: “Yes, yes, Jesus is the darling of the common folk. They adore him!”

  When Jesus returned that afternoon, Simon gave him the message: He whom you love is ill. Jesus sighed. His face grew the more sorrowful, but he said nothing. He went and sat by the river and said nothing at all.

  That day passed and the next day, too. Jesus was a ghost among the disciples. Once while he was sitting and staring westward, he allowed Mary to comb his long hair with slow strokes: Catch us the foxes, the little foxes—Suddenly she began to wash his clothes for him. It caused all the disciples to wash their garments, so that by the morning of the third day the bushes along the Jordan were covered in a festival of white robes, drying.

  At noon Jesus said to the disciples, “Let’s go into Judea again.”

  Simon’s eyes darted among all the disciples as if looking for someone to say something. No one did—so he blurted the thought in his head: “Rabbi, they want to kill you there! Don’t you know that? We’d be walking straight toward disaster.”

  Jesus said, “Aren’t there twelve hours in the day? Those who walk in the day don’t stumble because they have light. But those who walk in the nighttime stumble, because the light is not with them.”

  Simon Peter just blinked.

  Thomas, too, did not know how that saying applied to Judea.

  Then Jesus said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. I am going to awaken him out of sleep.”

  Simon nearly exploded. “If he’s sleeping, let him sleep! The man’s on the way to recovery.”

  Jesus said, “Peter, he’s dead. And for your sake I’m glad I wasn’t there, so that you may believe. Please, let’s go to him.”

  Dead! Lazarus was dead. Of course that required some honorable response. But Jesus was talking about Judea, where hatred and danger waited for them. Torn between friendship and fear, no one had a thing to say.

  Finally, it was Thomas who spoke, that blunt hunter, simple Esau.

  “I don’t understand it, so I can’t explain it,” he said to the other disciples. “And I’m afraid of the consequences. But I think we should go with the Master. I think we should be ready to die with him.”

  IV

  Martha

  IT WAS SPRING, almost the end of the rainy season. In two weeks the fields near Jericho would be ready for the barley harvest; two weeks after that the lowlands would be ready, and in a month the higher fields and the mountains.

  Dreariness was nearly over. The sun was ruler of the day. The land was fat and rich, the crops abundant, the early green figs full on their branches.

  Shepherds were preparing to lead huge flocks of yearlings toward Jerusalem. Soon hundreds of thousands of sheep would be bought and sacrificed at the Passover.

  And those Jews who lived in foreign countries—Parthia, Mesopotamia, Asia, Crete, Cyrene, Egypt, Arabia—had already set out for Judea and Jerusalem and the feast.

  There was an energy in the weather, a heightened excitement in people generally.

  But for Martha of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, there was no goodness in the season nor any kindness left in the world.

  She was sitting in the corner of their sleeping room, her bedding rumpled and soiled. She didn’t care. Her poor hair was unbrushed. She was herself unwashed. The creases in her heavier flesh were damp from the motionless sweat of long sitting. Periodically, people looked in through the door. She didn’t care what they saw. They asked if there was something they might do, bring her food or sit and weep with her. Martha didn’t even respond. She didn’t care.

  Ten or fifteen friends were sitting with her sister Mary in the large room. Sometimes they raised their voices and wailed. It irritated Martha, who kept her arms folded and made no sound at all.

  Lazarus had died in this room. On her pallet.

  He had lain sick for seven days. In seven days his force wasted away. He grew yellow and gaunt. The flesh of his face retracted from the mouth and nostrils and eye sockets as if someone were tightening it. Then he died. Four days ago he died.

  He died late in the evening, when the tiny family was alone. By Martha’s desiring, Lazarus lay on her pallet all that night while she and Mary stayed in the same room, anointing him with a sweet-smelling oil, weeping and whispering together, trying to remember things.

  At dawn they announced the death, and the mourners gathered. Many, many people began to lament, tearing their garments, sobbing, sometimes uttering screams so shrill that Martha’s jaw would snap shut. This is the reason why she had wanted the night with her brother and sister alone: quietness. Plain quietness.

  Certain women then wrapped Lazarus in long linen strips. Men brought a new bier. A procession formed at the door of their house—good friends carrying the bier and the white corpse high at their shoulders—then Mary and Martha went forth in front of a sad company, walking out of Bethany to the tombs some distance from the places where people lived.

  Three days ago, then, Lazarus was buried.

  And the mourners all came back to their house. And Martha took to her room, yesterday and today—tomorrow, too, for all she cared. She had ceased to care about anything.

  His face. They had even wrapped her brother’s face in the white cloth. He had gone faceless through the town to the crypt, and now he lay behind a stone with neither face nor feature of any sort, a rough-hewn slab of rock, the door forever shut.

  An elderly woman looked into Martha’s room. She whispered something, then turned and started to go, but Martha became suddenly alert.

  “Wait!” she called. “What did you say?”

  “I said that Jesus is coming. He’s on the road from Jericho.”

  “Ha!” It was a flat, sarcastic laugh. They had not received so much as one word from him before Lazarus died! Even their messenger, when he returned from his mission to bring the Lord back, had no communication from Jesus.

  Martha came up from the floor in a swift, pumping motion, then lowered her head and fairly ran through the large room and out the house.

  “The road from Jericho!” she shouted aloud. “Yes, and how long ago didn’t we send friends down that road, begging help! Ha!”

  Martha had a short stride. Neither was she a light woman. Nevertheless, she was strong. She moved at a steady pace until she saw Jesus ahead of her, then she broke into a lunging run.

  Jesus stopped and waited.

  When Martha got to him she made two fists and began to beat him on the chest. She hit him and hit him and for the first time since Lazarus died she burst into tears.

  “Why weren’t you here?” she wailed.

  Jesus stood watching Martha with golden eyes.

  “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!”

  Now Jesus grabbed her fists in his own hands. Martha stopped struggling. She put her forehead against his chest and sobbed.

  “Even now I know,” she said, “that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”

  Jesus said softly, “Your brother will rise again.”

  “I know,” Martha whined. “I know, I know—in the resurrection at the last day.”

  Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, yet shall they live. And those who live and believe in me shall never die. Martha?” Jesus stepped back so that she had to look at him.

  “Martha,” he said, “do you believe this?”

  She nodded. She looked up and allowed her eyes to enter the halls of his endless gazing, and whispered, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.”

  Jesus released her wrists and laid his hands on Martha’s head. Then, smoothing her fierce hair with many strokes, he said, “Go tell Mary that I would like to see her.”

  So Martha hurried home again. Jesus was right: her hair was unkempt. Her clothing
was dirty. Even her mouth tasted foul. She should cook. She should wash herself and make cakes.

  She ran through the courtyard, into the house, still filled with people, and knelt beside Mary and whispered, “The Teacher is here. He’s calling for you.”

  Immediately Mary rose up and the two women went out together. Martha led her to the Jericho road to Jesus, and all the mourners followed. All of them.

  As soon as Mary saw Jesus, her face collapsed and she started to cry all over again. She came toward him and fell at his feet. “Lord,” she said, “if you had been here my brother would not have died.”

  Jesus drew a heavy breath. He lifted his eyes to all the grieving people.

  “Where have you laid him?” he said.

  Mary whispered, “Come and see.”

  Suddenly the tears began to stream from the Lord’s eyes. He was weeping.

  “See?” a woman said to Martha. “See how he loved your brother?”

  Now the whole procession followed Mary and Martha and Jesus by a winding path to the tombs east of the village. Jesus did not speak. Martha and Mary walked on either side of him.

  “There,” Martha said, pointing to a small cave with a slab of new stone covering the front of it. “That’s where we buried my brother.”

  Jesus moved ahead of the rest, close to the tomb. He ran his finger along fresh gouge-marks in the stone, then turned to the mourners and pointed to three men. “Please,” he said, “come and take the stone away.”

  Martha was shocked. “Lord, it has been four days since he died!” she said. “There’ll be a horrible odor.”

  Jesus looked directly at her and said, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

  Martha had no answer.

  Jesus turned and watched while the stone was removed from the grave. Then he lifted his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I know you hear me always, but I say this for the sake of these people—that they may believe it was you who sent me here.”

  All at once the Lord Jesus cried out in a ringing voice: “Lazarus! Come forth!”

  Martha gasped and began to pant. The sound of his cry had caused her heart to hurt within her.