And He Healed Them All: Second Edition

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “The one who brought healing and freedom to a crowd of several thousand now showed his own humanity. But the healing didn’t stop. Nor did his physical weariness cause him to struggle to heal. If anything, the miracles came more freely, more surprisingly.

  “In this condition, he stood over a woman who sat on the ground weeping, occasionally pounding the ground with her open hands and gasping for breath. Next to her lay the motionless form of a child. It appeared to me that the girl was dead, her face ashen, her body shriveled for one so young. Though it was hard to tell exactly, she seemed about ten years old. The uninhibited grief of the woman next to her led me to believe that this must be the mother.

  “The teacher paused above the still form of the little girl while the woman wailed. To my surprise, a great sob burst from the teacher’s lips. James turned sharply to him. Evidently, he too was surprised at this reaction. I glanced at John, however, who was also crying, tears trickling down his cheeks and into his beard. Perhaps the source of John’s sorrow was the nasty irony that this little girl had apparently died here in this crowd of people pushing toward the teacher, the greatest source of healing the world had ever encountered. In the presence of hope and healing, this little girl and her mother found death instead.

  “At the teacher’s sob, the woman looked up. For a moment she didn’t seem to recognize him, staring blankly at this man propped between two other strangers. But I think the way the crowd stood focused on the teacher and his followers awakened her to the identity of this man weeping sympathetically for her.

  “I wondered whether she could forgive him for failing to save her girl. Before her stood a man whose own body had begun to pay a toll for the long day. But all I saw from the forlorn woman was deep loss and sadness

  “The crowd had made room for the mother and child on the ground, leaving a void for the grief of this ultimate loss. They stood silently watching as the teacher waded into that pool of sorrow.

  “With two or three more sobs and some broken words and gestures, the teacher directed James and John to help him down next to the grieving mother. For a moment, the teacher sat next to her, making a matched pair of mourners, both looking at the little girl’s perfectly still body. In that moment, it seemed to me that this healer was not simply grieving the death of this one little girl. Perhaps he wept for other mothers and their dead, and dying, children over the whole country, even the world. Did he know them all? Did he grieve for them all?

  “Wiping away his tears, he gestured for his friends to help him back to his feet. As he stood, he said to the woman, ‘Pick up your child, Mother; she will be hungry.’

  “The mother looked up at him, a sob frozen in her mouth. She jerked her head toward her daughter.

  “From where I watched, it looked as if the ground had moved around the child. Not an earthquake, but a swelling of the earth, as if it took a breath and released it.

  “Blindly obedient, the woman slid her shaking arms beneath the head and legs of her fawn-like daughter. She drew the little body to her and startled as the corpse awakened to life. Instead of removing a body, she now embraced her living daughter.

  “The universe had moved and life had returned to wake the dead. And the girl didn’t merely make a small step back from death to life; rather, she received total healing from whatever sickness had taken her life. The once lifeless girl now hugged her mother vigorously. The mother’s weeping surrendered spaces for laughter and praise, while her little girl just held on and smiled. The crowd had erupted into cheers when they saw the child revive.

  “Beneath that din, the girl said something in her mother’s ear that halted her sobbing and laughter. They both looked at the teacher, who leaned on his friends. The mother released the little girl, who stood up and stepped over to him, reaching out to take his hand. He smiled at her and seemed to gain strength from her touch, her little hand in his. He stood taller. In a muted voice he said, ‘Thank you, my girl,’ and smiled weakly as he turned to address the next person waiting to be lifted out of despair. But the woman he turned to, out of the whole array of people standing there around him, looked rather embarrassed, avoiding eye contact and keeping her large, middle-aged face bowed toward the ground.

  “The teacher addressed her. ‘What would you have me do for you, sister?’

  “She glanced at the woman holding her resurrected daughter. ‘I don’t need nothin’ important, really. I just was hopin’ for my hair to grow back.’ She nearly whispered the answer. She lifted her head covering just enough to give the teacher a peek.

  “He leaned forward and gently kissed her forehead. ‘Then let it be so.’

  “When the teacher kissed her, her eyes got big and she giggled. Then she furrowed her brow and scratched her head through the covering. She poked her finger under the cloth then stuck her hand in. The rough veil fell away to her shoulders. A beautiful head of thick and healthy hair cascaded over her neck and back.

  “‘Oh, my!’ She cackled. ‘I never had hair like this even when I was young!’

  “Indeed, he had blessed her with a luxurious head of hair, lavishing on her an abundance. She shook her head so that the locks of new hair fell forward where she could see them better. Then she blushed quite red at this immodest display of her own beauty. I remembered then that it says somewhere in Scripture that long hair is a woman’s glory. That simple woman seemed to believe it and had new reason to celebrate it. But she mustered enough restraint to pull her head covering back into place before she thanked the teacher and turned to join the worshippers dancing nearby.

  “I had noticed the teacher looking at a barrel-chested man in the crowd before each of the last two healings. Now this man stood within reach.

  “The teacher addressed him. ‘Benjamin.’

  “‘Yeshua,’ Benjamin said in return. He moved toward the teacher but hesitated briefly. The teacher held open his arms. They hugged like reunited friends.

  “‘How are things in Nazareth?’ the teacher said.

  “‘As before, of course. You know that nothing changes in Nazareth.’

  “The teacher laughed. ‘It’s good that you’ve come. The power to heal is here today, as you can see. This remote place is at the center of God’s eye, and you are, of course, welcome to all that the Father has prepared for us here.’

  “Benjamin raised his right arm a few inches and reached across to that shoulder with his left, a grimace enveloping his face. ‘This is all the motion I have in this shoulder. I can’t farm like this.’

  “The teacher grabbed hold of the ailing shoulder and I heard a crunch. Bystanders winced at the sound, but Benjamin laughed a high-pitched laugh. ‘Hee, hee, oh, that’s much better!’ He rotated the shoulder.

  “Even as the teacher smiled back, Benjamin’s face straightened. ‘You should come back and give them another chance.’

  “‘I will do that when the time is right. Pass my greetings to friends and family back home.’

  “The men embraced again before Benjamin merged back into the crowd.

  “A woman tapped the teacher. A girl about fourteen years old stood with her. ‘My little girl had the most beautiful singing voice—’

  “The teacher interrupted her by touching the girl’s cheek, just one gentle touch.

  “The daughter clutched her throat. ‘It’s hot.’ She trembled from head to foot. Her mother startled. She scowled at the teacher, as if somehow put off by the hasty manner of the healing.

  “As the mother doted on her daughter, the teacher turned to a man and woman standing nearby. They wore ragged clothes and were very dirty. They held on to each other, for courage or strength, I wasn’t sure. The woman said, ‘Sir, my husband has been out of work for a long time, because he can’t seem to keep his mind on anything long enough to do any kind of work.’ The man nodded, but his expression flashed from childish glee to consternation and back again.

  “The teacher took the man’s head in his hands and looked at the wild questioning eyes in the sunburn
ed, dirty face. ‘What is your name?’

  “The man hesitated, but the fluctuation from one extreme facial expression to another ceased. His newly steady eyes examined the teacher, as if he had finally found what he was looking for. ‘I’m Mordechai.’ His voice was almost childlike.

  “‘You are free now. Go home and take care of your wife’

  “‘Yes, sir, I will. Thank you.’

  “His wife stood still, looking from the teacher to her husband and back, clearly trying to confirm that something had changed. Finally she focused on Mordechai and met his eyes. The look on her face reminded me of a school girl blushing with affection for a new love. The husband and wife left through the crowd, arm in arm, the wife petting and clinging to Mordechai.

  “The girl who had just received healing in her throat began to sing. She sang a song of praise that sounded to me like one of the psalms. Her voice silenced a widening pool of chattering people around her. They stopped to listen and absorb the sweet rain of her voice falling on them. Gradually, other voices joined hers. They sang a poignant song of celebration, perfectly suited to this day so full of joy and restoration.”

  From the expression on his face, I could easily believe that Walter was still hearing that song as he sat across from me, his feet up and head back in the comfortable recliner. He only managed to break away from that memory for my sake, I think. He lifted his head from the back of the chair.

  “It’s hard to come back,” he said, acknowledging what I had suspected.

  After a few moments of resituating himself in his chair and pushing his glasses into place, he seemed to head toward the periphery of his experience, as if in search of some distance.

  “One thing I wasn’t prepared for is the wide variety of methods, as well as the myriad reactions, to the healings.” He spoke as if he was answering a question. “That variety speaks to me of a personal connection. It’s as if the teacher knows each person so well that he knows exactly the best way to reach them and to heal their particular injury or sickness.”

  “In this dream you had another kind of variety,” I said. “He raised a little girl from the dead, and then followed that by healing a woman’s hair loss. Do you think he really cared about something as minor as baldness?”

  Walter laughed and rubbed his bald head, leaving the wispy strands that crossed his shiny skull ruffled and half standing up. “What do you think? Maybe my baldness gets healed when the stroke is all done?”

  I grinned, a bit embarrassed at having made the baldness comment.

  He answered seriously. “I don’t think it’s the exact nature of the need that matters. I wish you could see the welcoming intensity that I see in the eyes of the teacher. He looks at everyone as if he knows them, every bit as warm and excited as a father returning home from work greets his toddler.” Walter seemed to leave me again, with that transparent look focused on some horizon beyond my perception. “Besides,” he said suddenly, “the Bible says ‘he healed them all.’ That has to include the profound as well as the incidental, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it does,” I said. I hadn’t been trying to argue a particular point. I was just reaching into that picture of unbounded love that Walter painted, hoping to get a little of it on my hands.

  Walter paused a moment and then turned an unexpected corner. “I’ve been thinking about what to do with these dreams, after I’m gone from this life, I mean.”

  Some childish vestige in me spoke without editing, as I often did with Walter. “You’re not going anywhere any time soon.”

  Walter frowned and ran his hand over his bald head again, this time settling the few hairs that had continued to reach for the sky. “Actually”—he drew out the word—“I feel pretty sure that I’m not gonna be here much longer, and I don’t think that’s just something I came up with on my own. I’ve been praying and asking God about a few things, and getting what I feel like are some pretty clear answers.”

  I guess I would have expected that Walter prayed, in general. I would have expected him to pray about things that troubled him, or big decisions he needed to make. But I had never heard him refer to prayer as something that was interactive. That idea was a big adjustment to my thinking.

  “How do these answers come?” I was truly curious, perhaps even ready to believe him.

  “Oh, mostly just ideas that seem too wise and selfless for me to feel like they originated in my head. Just like I get ideas that seem so perverse and destructive that I know they also didn’t originate with me.”

  “Walter, you’re stretching me again.” I laughed, but I felt anything but humor.

  Walter rocked forward, forcing the footrest in his recliner to settle down so that his feet planted firmly on the floor. He leaned forward a bit, a move that used to be beyond his capabilities. Then, to top it off he stood up and held his hands out at his sides, palms up, drawing my attention to his posture. “After this, my whole worldview has stretched to the point of tumbling down like a house of cards. And that’s about what it was, I’m beginning to believe, just a house of cards.”

  Of course, this was Walter’s testimony, but it stung me. If his faith before the dreams was a house of cards, what was mine? Maybe just a pile of cards, neglected by some kid who forgot to clean up after himself. Walter rescued me from having to go on confronting my disheveled faith.

  “What I was starting to say, earlier,” he said, sitting slowly back in his chair, “was that I’d like you to consider writing these dreams in some form, for a wider audience than just the three of us.”

  I let “the three of us” comment distract me for a minute. To some extent, my emotional universe had narrowed to that same trio: Walter, Jillian, and myself. But then I switched to considering what he was saying about getting the story of the dreams onto paper, to a wider audience.

  I nodded and shrugged my shoulders. “I’ll consider it. I do think the story should be told. But I think you ought to be the one telling it.” I wound up for another appeal. “As you pointed out a minute ago, you’re recovering your physical strength, and you’re as sharp as ever. Why don’t you start writing?”

  He tipped his head slightly and waggled his eyebrows. “I don’t think they’re done yet, so it’s too early to start writing an unfinished story.”

  His response avoided answering my question directly, but I didn’t want to press him on the point.

  “I wonder if you’ll know for sure when it’s all over,” I said, referring to the dreams, but choosing my words poorly.

  Walter smiled. “I think it’ll be clear when we get there.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Signs of Passing

  Jillian and I visited Walter the following Saturday. Jillian had invited me to a concert, ironically hosted at the big church I used to attend. I agreed, with the caveat that I wanted to see Walter about a dream. She said she had a bit of work to do, so I met her at her office and walked with her down the hall to Walter’s room.

  She nodded a greeting to one of the nurses as we walked past.

  “How often do you come in here on a Saturday?”

  Before she could answer me, a pale old man in a wheelchair waved her down, as if stranded on the side of a deserted road late at night. I stopped abruptly and shooed away a bit of resentment as I watched her address him with a steady smile and firm, uninterrupted attention.

  “Hello, Mr. Perkins. How are you doing today? Recovered from the surgery?”

  I couldn’t hear what the old gentleman said. His voice was like gravel in a cement mixer. The movement of his mouth was hindered by a stroke or something, but Jillian leaned in close and seemed to understand his answer. She pulled a stray lock of hair back behind her ear as she bent toward the plaintive patient. He seemed to have some concern about his foot. Jillian followed his bony, shaking hand, which came to rest on his knee after spending another ounce of energy to point to his right foot.

  By the time Jillian had satisfied Mr. Perkins’s concerns, I had accumulated a small pile
of self-rebukes for impatience, resentment, and even a bit of jealousy, as if the watery-eyed old gent had stolen my girlfriend by feigning some kind of health problem at the age of ninety-three. When Jillian turned from Mr. Perkins, she winked at me and put her arm through mine, my hands stuffed into the pockets of my jeans. Could she sense all those ratty feelings I had been chasing away while she worked a bit of overtime caring for a needy old man? I just smiled weakly, avoiding a smoldering thought that she was too good for me.

  We walked the remaining yards to Walter’s door. When we looked in he was standing by the window, using the late afternoon daylight to read from an old hardcover book.

  “James!” He greeted me with a smile that distracted me from my self-condemnation. He smiled at Jillian and gave her a friendly nod. “Doctor.”

  Then he said the words that I longed to hear during those days. “I had another dream.”

  By this time, I had developed a bipolar feeling about the growing number of dreams. On the one hand, I wondered how long these could go on. And, on the other hand, I hoped against all likelihood that they would never stop. Of course, this hope probably had something to do with wanting Walter to live on forever.

  “So how are classes going?” He asked, as I started to help him walk back to his chair and then remembered that he didn’t need my help anymore.

  I shook my head. “The students are so alien to me, so different from when I was in school.” As soon as I said that, I realized how reminiscent it must sound to my old professor.