Fishers of Men

by Gerald N. Lund

  For a long, long moment, there was no answer, and Mary’s hope melted away. Her head dropped again.

  “Mary.”

  The sound of her name brought her head up with a snap. She stared at the man. She would have recognized that voice anywhere. She had heard Jesus speak her name countless times, with love and compassion and understanding.

  “Rabboni?” she cried. “Master?”

  With heart pounding, she started forward. Now there was no question about it. It was Jesus! Her mind refused to believe what her eyes were seeing. She had watched him die in horrible pain. She had anointed the cold, torn body, then helped the others wrap it in the burial shroud. And yet she could not deny. It was him! The joy was dizzying, almost choking off her breath.

  With another cry, she rushed at him. Jesus was alive!

  To her surprise, Jesus stepped back and raised a hand before she could reach him. She stopped, bewildered.

  “Mary,” he said, ever so gently, “touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.”

  He smiled at her, and in that one instant the darkness, the despair, the utter hopelessness of the past two days was banished. Gladness shot through her like a hundred bolts of lightning, causing her to tingle down to her fingertips.

  He went on, every word further enlivening her soul. “Go to your brethren and say unto them that I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.”

  Mary dropped to her knees, barely able to restrain herself from reaching out to him. The tears, now of unbelievable joy, streamed down her face. “Yes, Master,” she whispered, as she bowed her head.

  He said nothing more. Finally getting some control of her emotions, she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, then looked up. To her astonishment, he was gone. There hadn’t been a sound, but he was gone. She was alone again, kneeling on the ground outside an empty tomb.

  II

  Near the Garden Tomb

  “I can’t wait to tell Livia,” Miriam whispered. She and Deborah were slightly ahead of the other women. They were walking at a brisk pace, speaking earnestly to each other about what they had just seen.

  “And Aaron!” Deborah said excitedly. Then her face fell. “I’m not sure he’ll believe us.”

  “He has to!” Miriam cried. “Every one of us saw them. Seven of us. That’s testimony that will stand in any court in the land.”

  Deborah was not quite so sure, but then her mind was swept away again with the memory of what had just happened to them. “‘He is not here,’” she murmured, quoting the man with the infinitely gentle voice. “‘He is risen!’ Oh, Miriam! I can hardly believe it.”

  Miriam stopped dead, and Deborah nearly bumped into her. “What’s the matt—” Then she, too, went rigid. Up ahead, standing just off the path in the deep shadows of a tree, was a lone figure. It was a man, and he was watching them steadily.

  Deborah felt a clutch of fear and reached for her daughter-in-law’s hand. “It’s nothing,” she said, forcing a lightness into her voice. “It’s just someone coming down the path.”

  But he was not coming; he was just standing there, his eyes on the group of women. The others came up to them. “Who is it?” Salome whispered.

  Miriam shook her head.

  Anna sized him up quickly. He was clearly not a Roman. He wore the outer tunic that was worn by common people, so he wasn’t from the Sanhedrin either. He wore no head covering. He had a beard, and his hair, what she could see of it, fell down to his shoulders. But his face was in shadow. Like the others, Peter’s wife felt a sudden shiver of fear, but she forced it aside. “Come on,” she said in a low voice. “Let’s stay together. It will be all right.”

  Then Deborah gasped. The man took one step forward, into a patch of dappled sunlight coming through the trees. She gasped again. “Jesus?”

  The blood drained from Miriam’s head, and she felt her legs start to tremble. Blindly, she clutched at Deborah’s arm, but her eyes never left the face of the man who waited for them. And then, with a thrill ten times—a hundred times—greater than that which they had just experienced outside the tomb, she saw him smile. “All hail,” he called, and lifted a hand in greeting.

  III

  Jerusalem, Upper City, House of Jephunah ben Asa

  Aaron was getting angry. Simeon was getting frustrated. Hava grew more anxious as tempers began to rise. Livia, Leah, Rachel, and Ephraim sat back quietly, willing to be no more than spectators. Fortunately, David ben Joseph understood perfectly what was going on inside Aaron’s mind and heart and decided to intervene. He held up a hand, cutting off another exasperated retort before it came.

  Aaron turned to him gratefully. “I’m not trying to be difficult, David. But I still don’t see why everyone thinks that what John saw is so significant. There could be a dozen explanations for it.”

  “Give us one,” Simeon said tartly.

  “Simeon,” David said, “let Aaron speak.”

  Simeon sighed. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t blame you for being frustrated, Simeon. I’m frustrated with myself. But I just don’t see it.” He turned to the women. “Does it make sense to you?”

  Hava nodded slowly, knowing she was only going to add to his aggravation.

  “Then tell me. You explain it as you understand it.”

  She took a deep breath, then began talking quietly. “When Mary came back and told us the body was missing, we all assumed it had been stolen. But that doesn’t make sense now. First of all, who would steal it?” She waved her own question aside, not wanting to be deflected. “Secondly, if they did, why did they leave the grave cloth behind?”

  “Perhaps Joseph of Arimathea decided the body had to be moved. Maybe he wasn’t satisfied with what preparations had been made the other night and decided they should start over.” Aaron stopped, knowing how weak his argument sounded even as he said it.

  “We’ve already talked to Joseph,” David said quietly. “He had nothing to do with this.”

  “I know that,” Aaron said, his impatience showing. “I’m just trying to show that there might be some other explanation.”

  “Let’s say,” Hava continued patiently, “that for some unknown reason, the people who took the body did decide to remove the linen. How would they do it? Let’s suppose their motive is evil. If they were in a hurry, fearing detection, wouldn’t they just rip it off or cut it off and throw it aside?”

  “Yes, yes, I see that. But you’re still speculating.”

  Hava gave him a look that silenced him. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Go on.”

  “But let’s assume that these people, whoever they were, were not bad. Let’s even say they were disciples. So they would treat the body with respect. Why they would unwrap the grave clothes, I don’t know, but when they did, they would do it carefully. Think about it. Once the cloth was off, what would they do with it?”

  He frowned. That was something he hadn’t considered. “I suppose they would fold it up or put it back into a roll.”

  “Exactly,” she went on. “But the cloth wasn’t tossed aside. Nor was it folded or in a roll.”

  He squinted his eyes. Finally, he was beginning to see where she was going.

  Simeon was amazed at Hava’s calm, deliberate approach, and though he wanted to clarify some things, he decided to let her finish.

  “That’s right, Aaron. There are really only four options as I see it: take the body still wrapped in the grave cloth, cut or tear the cloth off and toss it in a corner, roll it up, or fold it up. But none of those are what Peter and John found. The face napkin was folded and set aside, but the linen was not. That would suggest that no one took the body.”

  Aaron’s mind understood what she was saying, but he struggled to comprehend what it meant. Hava quickly extended one arm out straight in front of her. “Let’s assume that my arm here is the body of Jesus. And here, I have here an imaginary roll of linen. Now, I’m going to wrap the body. Watch what happens.”

  Sh
e began to wind the invisible cloth around and around her arm. “Notice how each time when I make the next complete circle, the cloth overlaps the previous layer just a little until the whole arm is encased.”

  Aaron was watching intently. “Go on.”

  “Now—” She drew her arm back slowly. “Suppose that somehow my arm was withdrawn without disturbing the linen wrapped around it. What would happen to the cloth?”

  “It would collapse upon itself.”

  “And that would leave the folds of linen in that same overlapping pattern, only now they would be flat.” Hava was very earnest. “That is what John saw, Aaron. The cloth had simply collapsed in on itself.”

  He thought about that for a moment, then began to shake his head again. “I know what you’re trying to say, and yes, I see that it makes sense. But it is just too fantastic. Poof! and a full-grown body simply dissolves into thin air?”

  “Not dissolves,” Leah said softly. “It is resurrected. That’s what John is saying, Aaron. That’s why he was so excited.”

  “Then where did it go? Where is Jesus now?”

  “In heaven,” Leah answered. “Where we all go when we die.”

  “When we die, we don’t take our bodies with us,” he burst out. “They stay in the grave. Of course, I believe that some part of Jesus, the spirit part of him, is still alive, just as the spirit part of us will live after death. But I can’t believe that he took his body with him. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

  Livia had remained aloof from the discussion, watching but not saying anything. “But if he did, Aaron, think what that would mean for us. If he kept his body, maybe we will keep ours when we are resurrected.”

  He wanted to lambast that idea but didn’t because he knew that Livia was thinking about Yehuda, whose body lay in a grave not too far from where they sat.

  Simeon was thinking of Yehuda too. “It would mean that we are not some amorphous, shapeless, spiritual mass up in heaven,” he suggested. “If we receive our bodies again, then it seems like we will keep our uniqueness, our identity.”

  Aaron just shook his head. “That’s all well and good, and a comforting thought, but what proof do you have of that other than a collapsed piece of cloth?”

  David gave his brother-in-law a thoughtful look. “I know it’s become popular among our people to speak of the resurrection only in spiritual terms, but that’s not what some of the prophets believed.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Didn’t Ezekiel see a valley of dry bones come together with sinew and flesh coming upon them? And didn’t the Lord then say that he would open the graves of Israel and cause the people to come out of those graves?”

  Aaron was taken aback by that example. “Well,” he said defensively, “the greatest of the rabbis interpret that metaphorically, meaning the House of Israel will receive new life in the latter days.”

  “It doesn’t sound metaphorical to me,” Rachel said.

  Leah came in. She knew they were ganging up on her uncle a little, but he was being especially difficult at the moment. “What about Job?”

  “What about him?” Aaron shot right back.

  “I can’t quote it, but he said something like . . .” She stopped, trying to remember exactly how it went.

  It was Ephraim who began to quote it. “I know that my Redeemer lives and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though after the skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God.”

  Aaron was trapped, and he knew it, but he never got a chance to wiggle out of it because just then he heard the sound of the gate opening. He turned and was surprised to see Mary Magdalene come inside as the servant guarding the gate held it open. Her face was radiant, in such sharp contrast to her demeanor when she had left that he barely recognized her.

  Off to one side of the courtyard, Peter jumped to his feet. “Mary? Are you all right?”

  She turned and gave a little cry of joy. “Oh yes!” she exclaimed. “Peter, I have seen the Lord. He lives, Peter. He lives!”

  IV

  Aaron stood near the back of the crowd that pressed in around Mary Magdalene. He listened intently, searching her face for any sign of—he shook his head. Of what? Madness? He realized what he was doing. There were only three possible explanations for the remarkable change in this woman. Perhaps she was deliberately concocting a story—a possibility that even in his cynicism he could not accept. Though he didn’t know her well, he sensed that Mary Magdalene was a woman of the deepest integrity. And the change in her was too dramatic, too complete to be an act. Every part of her was infused with joy.

  The second possibility was, of course, that she was telling the truth, that she had just experienced something far too wonderful and incredible to comprehend. That left Aaron even more troubled. How could . . . he shook it off.

  The third possibility was that somehow she had been deluded. This made some sense to him. He knew she had been so distraught, so near to mental collapse, when she left. Could she have seen something she thought was the risen Jesus? Maybe the play of sunlight and shadow. The eyes could play wonderful tricks on you, especially when the heart and mind were so desperately longing for something.

  “How close was he to you?” Aaron was startled when he realized he had spoken out loud.

  Mary turned, not sure who had spoken. Aaron recoiled a little. The pure happiness in her eyes and in her countenance filled him with guilt. Did he really want to take that away from her? But he had to know. He lifted his hand to identify himself. “Were you very close to him?”

  She turned to Peter, who stood beside her, then took three steps back. “When he spoke my name, I was perhaps ten or twelve paces away, but when I realized who he was, I ran to him. When he stopped me, I was no farther away than this.” She indicated the distance between her and Peter.

  “Did you touch him?” Aaron knew he had no right to ask these things, but he had to know.

  Her head lowered a little, and her cheeks colored. “No. I was so overwhelmed, I wanted to throw my arms around him, but he told me not to touch him. He said he had not yet ascended to the Father. So, no, I never actually touched him. But I don’t have to touch Peter to know that he is real.”

  “So it could have been a specter, an apparition, a ghost of some kind.”

  Mary just looked at him and didn’t answer.

  Leah was embarrassed for her uncle and caught Mary’s attention. “Mary, where are the other women? Did you see my mother and Miriam and the others?”

  Mary seemed momentarily startled. “No. Now that you mention it, no, I didn’t. Did they go to the tomb then?”

  Leah nodded, a trace of anxiety showing in her eyes. If Mary hadn’t seen them, nor Peter and John, where had they gone?

  That thought crossed Aaron’s mind too, but he was too focused on Mary’s report to give it much thought. As other people started firing questions at Mary, wanting to hear every detail of her experience, Aaron leaned in so he could hear better. When he felt a touch on his arm, he turned and found himself face to face with his wife. She searched his face for a long moment, and there was some sense of chastisement in her eyes. Finally, he shook his head and looked away. There was nothing to say. He needed time to sit down and think all of this through. The shocks were coming like a stormy surf at high tide, one battering wave after another. He had to sort out what it all meant.

  Hava’s disappointment was clear, but she simply stepped back to let him pass. And at that moment, once again, heavy knocking sounded at the courtyard gate. Worried about the absence of her mother and the others, Leah started swiftly toward it. The servant pulled the gate open and Salome and Anna stepped through it, followed by Deborah, Miriam, and the others. Aaron was relieved. So they were back.

  Then Aaron stopped. He was looking at Deborah’s face. It had that same strange glow of happiness he had seen on Mary Magdalene’s face. It was then that he realized he was about to be hit by the biggest and most incredible wave
of all.

  V

  Miriam watched Simeon’s uncle with a sense of great love and understanding. How could she condemn him for not believing when she could scarcely believe it herself for joy? It was like a dream, a wonderful, incredible, fantastic, marvelous dream. Her entire body was still filled with a comforting glow, a warmth that pushed aside every sorrow, every concern, every desire to criticize.

  “Aaron?”

  He turned to her.

  “You don’t have to decide anything now. Just think about what we have told you.”

  “That’s right,” Deborah said. She reached out and took his hand. “How I wish you could have been there.”

  His head came up. “Did you actually touch him?”

  Deborah nodded solemnly. “When we realized who it was, we fell at his feet. We bathed his feet with our tears. It was like nothing I have ever experienced before, Aaron. Nothing!”

  Miriam spoke, her voice hushed and reverent. “We saw the wounds, Uncle Aaron.”

  His head came around slowly.

  Miriam nodded. “Yes. We saw where the nail had gone through his feet. We saw the marks in his palms and in his wrists.”

  “But—” he stammered. “Maybe it was just a spirit. Maybe you were so overwhelmed with the experience that you—”

  Tears welled up as the memory flooded back in Miriam’s mind. “We touched him, Aaron. We touched his risen body. It was flesh and bone.” She squeezed her own arm. “It was as real as my own. We saw and felt those cruel wounds that took his life and yet knew that he is alive again. He is risen, Aaron. With all the power of my soul, I tell you, Jesus is risen from the dead. I know that with my eyes. I know that with my ears. I know that with my hands.” A sob of joy broke off her words. She swallowed quickly, then finished. “And I know that with all my heart.”