Thirty-Six

There was a soft noise in the room, which woke Andrew up. The women, who had the previous day prepared the burial spices and water and cloths, were about to leave to bury Jesus. It was the first light of dawn.

This would be the definitive burial, and Jesus's body, still so filthy, would be at last clean. Then Andrew suddenly thought, If there was a body! It was now the third day!

And lapsed back into despair. Let them go.

He noticed that Mary of Magdala went out after the others. To watch? What did she know of womanly chores? What difference did it make?

Simon, who had also waked, nodded to John, and they left, immediately after the women. John was definitely in no hurry, but the Rock was walking fast, and so he had to keep up.

And Andrew, fully awake now, waited.

And the longer he waited, the blacker became his despair.

Then, after forever, an excited knock came at the door. Someone opened, and the two men returned, dazed, John carrying what looked like the shroud Jesus had been buried in. "The tomb is empty!" they cried. "Someone has taken him!" Now what?

There was a knocking at the door. All started in fear, "It is we," said women's voices. They opened, and the women who had left entered, and said, speaking by turns and sometimes at the same time, "Jesus was not in the tomb! The stone was rolled away! The soldiers were unconscious! An earthquake or something that moved the stone away had stunned the guards.

"They are hysterical," said John's brother James; but the Rock and John simply listened, with mounting excitement.

"And then we saw this huge man--"

"It was an angel! He was all in white, and he glowed brighter than the sun that was rising behind him!" said another.

The first went on, "And he said, 'Fear not. I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has come back to life, as he predicted. Come up and see the place where he had been laid, and then tell his students that he has returned to life and will go ahead of you into Galilee!'

"And we hurried back, and there he was, on the way! And we fell down before him, and he told us to tell his brothers--"

"That was what he called you!"

The speaker frowned at the interruption, and went on "--That he had come back to life! And there was something about Galilee!"

"I think he said he was going there, or that we would meet him there, or some such thing. I was too excited to think! Imagine! We actually saw him!"

At this point Mary Magdalene came in. "I was not with the others," she said. "I saw--oh, there you are!--and walked back to the tomb after you ran there, and you were gone when I left. I sat there, looking in, wondering what they had done with him, and then there were two men in white inside the tomb that I had not noticed, and one said to me, 'Why are you crying, Madame?'

"I said, 'Because they have taken my Master away, and I know not where they have put him.' And then there was a man behind me, and he asked me also why I was crying. I thought he was the gardener, and, without looking at him, I said, 'Oh sir, if you are the one who took him from here, tell me where you put him and let me have him!'

"And he laughed! at me! And then said, 'Mary!' and I realized it was the Master, and I embraced his legs. And he said, 'Now do not be hanging on! I have not risen to my Father just yet! Besides, I want you to go to my--brothers--and tell them that I am going to go up to my Father and your Father and my God and your God!' And he vanished. But he had the marks of the nails in his hands and feet! So I came as quickly as it could."

And then, after the women had told all they knew, and the men had commented until they were tired, nothing happened, forever.

For the whole day.

After noon, the talk died down to morose silence. If he were alive, and if the women were not hysterical, where was he?

Toward evening, there was still nothing but moody silence again. It was all hallucinations!

And again nothing happened, forever.

"Peace to you," said Jesus, who in some unaccountable way was among them, though the door was locked. He had greeted them with the usual Judean greeting, as if nothing had happened. As was his wont. He had an amused smile on his face, as he looked at everyone, staring dumbfounded.

"Peace to you," he said again, as if they had not heard. Everyone stood up and began to move. He showed them his hands and side, but they still could not believe they were seeing anything but a ghost. Nathanael looked around for Thomas, and then realized that he was not there. He appeared to think that he was seeing a hallucination, as Thomas had.

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, "Touch me. A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as I have." No one dared to do so. Nathanael even shrank away from him.

"Have you anything to eat?" he finally said. Someone timidly handed him a fish, which he ate in front of them. "It is truly I," he said, in his old voice, and finally they believed. It looked like Jesus, and yet it did not look like Jesus; he was different. But who else would have wounded hands and side, and yet be walking as he was? The difference in his appearance was like the difference in a person one has not seen for thirty years; one knows it is the same person, somehow; and Jesus had entered a wholly new life.

And then he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven; if you hold him to them, they remain with him." And he disappeared as he had come.

"Bartholomew," said Ezra.

"Yes?"

"You can forgive sins. I cannot; I am a mere observer."

Andrew stopped listening to them. Obviously, this was something private.

Their murmured voices came to an end, whatever it was, and there was a silence for a while, and then Ezra said in a new tone something more to Nathanael, who answered, loud enough to be heard, "Ezra, I cannot! I--no, I cannot!"

"You must!"

"You go."

"I? I am no Emissary. Perhaps I can forgive sins because I was here when he said it. But I cannot remove the curse from a drunk." He added, growing heated, "Besides, what am I but a slave? Everyone still thinks of me in that way!"

"But--"

"You must go! You must! Or he will kill himself! And now he need not! You must!" Evidently, Ezra was sending Nathanael to Thomas--again--who was once again drunk.

"Ezra, I--I cannot! I could not bear to face him that way again!"

"What? Will you be the death of both of them?"

Nathanael shrank as if stabbed, and then turned and left the room.

Both of them? Was Nathanael somehow responsible also for the death of Samuel?

John, after a while, left the room also, and then went back to the room, where Ezra met him. "Bartholomew is out finding Thomas," he said.

"I assumed that from what I heard of your conversation. Believe it or not, Samuel met me and told me that all would be well."

"I am so glad! I knew he would be able to do it."

So John saw Samuel--presumably, the real Samuel--who assured him about Thomas and Nathanael. Andrew wondered what Nathanael felt like the second time he saw Thomas about to die from drink. He had acted as if he would die if he had to go through that again. But it seemed that he had been able to do so. In not too long a time, they would once again have Thomas among them. And he would see Jesus also--though it would take some convincing to make him believe it was not a hallucination.

So things were beginning to resolve themselves. And indeed, Thomas was among them on the following day after the Sabbath, when Jesus appeared again. Jesus beckoned to him to come and put his fingers into the holes in his hands, and his hand into his side. Thomas did not want to do it, but finally managed. Nathanael whispered to someone, "He said that he would not believe until he had done this." And the answer came, "How like Jesus to make him do it!"

But Simon still had not been forgiven for his treason against Jesus. Andrew wondered if he ever would be. But Jesus would not let such a thing go unresolved.

But he did, for weeks. But finally, when they were in Galilee, Simon declared, "I think I will go fishing." He looked at Andrew, who nodded. Why not? Jesus appeared among them only sporadically, and they had to do something to while away the time.

That evening, they borrowed their old boat from their father, who gladly lent it to them, and several of them--Simon, Andrew, John, Thomas, Philip, and, interestingly, Nathanael, who seemed to have conquered a good deal of his fear of being in a boat, embarked, with Andrew, of course, rowing.

His muscles complained at every stroke, but he would not let anyone know how he had deteriorated. He wondered if he would be able to move on the morrow. Simon cast the net, rather unskillfully, and caught nothing. "Move on somewhere else," he whispered, and Andrew once again took up the oars. His arms were a little less rusty now.

Again nothing. The others in the boat were looking around to see if there was any sign of fish, but they all seemed to have deserted the place.

Andrew went to his very favorite spot, but the fish were not there either. It was one of those nights.

Toward morning, they came back again, discouraged, and were annoyed when a voice came from the shore, shouting, "Boys! Have you caught anything worth eating?"

"No!" they shouted back.

"Throw the net over the starboard side, and you'll find some!"

"Go ahead," said Andrew. "Perhaps he sees something."

And Simon threw out the net, and then could not even drag it into the boat, it had so many fish in it. "It is the Master," cried John. Simon looked up from where he had been standing, naked, and suddenly threw on his robe, and dove into the lake. The other students came over in the boat, which was not far from shore, only a bowshot or so, dragging the net full of fish.

When they landed, they saw a charcoal fire there with fish roasting on it, and some bread. Jesus--it was Jesus, was it not?--told them, "Bring over some of the fish you just caught."

Simon Rock waded in and pulled the net to the beach; it was full of a hundred fifty-three large fish, and yet was not broken, even though there were so many.

"Come and eat," said Jesus.

None of the students dared ask him who he was, since they knew that it was the Master.

Jesus then came and took the bread and handed it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was the third time Jesus appeared to his students after coming back to life.

After they had eaten, Jesus asked Simon Rock, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these people?"

"Yes, Master," he said. "You know I am your friend."

"Feed my lambs," he said. Andrew wondered at the reply Simon made. It was as if he did not dare say that he loved Jesus, still less that he did so more than the others, after that hideous night in the courtyard.

And then Jesus said again, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" As if to say, "Do you love me at all?"

But Simon answered again, "Yes, Master; you know I am your friend."

"Shepherd my sheep," he said.

A third time, he said, "Simon, son of John, are you my friend?" As if he was willing to accept even the affection Simon was willing to admit to.

The Rock was shaken when he asked him for the third time whether he loved him, and he said, "Master, you know everything; you know that I am your friend." He could still not say that he loved him. He probably thought, "How can I say I love him if I betrayed him?"

"Feed my sheep," he said. There was a pause. Simon had admitted three times that he was a friend of Jesus, just as he had denied three times that he even knew who he was.

But that was evidently enough for Jesus. The love, which was really there, could come out later. "Amen amen I tell you, when you were younger, you put your belt round you and walked where you pleased. When you get old, you will hold out your hands, and someone else will take hold of you and lead you where you do not please."

"Follow me." He was forgiven. And he did not make effusive protestations of how much he loved him; he was honest and humble. What more could one ask? At least, Jesus asked no more.

Simon went after him, and saw John. "Master, what about him?"

"Suppose I were to want him to stay until I come back; what is that to you? You follow me."

And then Jesus disappeared. Andrew went over to Simon, who was shaken by the encounter, put his arm over his shoulder, and said, "You did well." Simon began to relax.

John came up, and Andrew put his arm over John's shoulder also. His best friend, and his brother--who had his faults, but did not we all?

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