Twenty-Two

They were near the village of Nain at the moment. It seemed that a tiny funeral procession had crossed their path. There were quite a few--almost a hundred--people around Jesus, when he stopped and signaled to the bearers of the stretcher on which the body had been laid, wrapped in in a linen cloth, with the napkin tied over the head. The mother was frantically wailing in despair beside it. There did not seem to be a father present.

Jesus went up to her. "Do not cry," he said.

"Oh, sir!" she wailed. "First my husband, and now him! It is too much! Too much! I cannot bear it! What will I do, alone in the world? How will I live?"

Jesus made no attempt to utter consoling words. He went past the woman to the bier, touched the wrapped body, and said in a matter-of-fact, quiet voice, "Young man, I tell you, sit up."

And he sat up.

Jesus freed him from the napkin and began loosening the shroud from over his head. Someone cried, "Here! Find him something to wear! He is naked under that shroud!" and one of the men took off his cloak and handed it to Jesus, who put it over the boy's head as the linen fell off.

Everyone was struck dumb as they saw him blink in the failing sunlight. Then they suddenly began shouting, "A great prophet has risen among us!" "Another Elisha!" "God has smiled on his people!" "Who would have believed it?" "Did you see? Did you see?" "How bewildered he looks!" "He cannot have actually been dead; I have heard of such things in the past." "Then how did he know of it? Everyone else thought him dead!" "Behold the mother!" She screamed and ran up to him, smothering him in her arms and weeping hysterically.

The boy looked a trifle embarrassed at all the attention, and his eyes for a moment looked over her shoulder as if to say, "What is all the fuss?" and then caught sight of Matthew, and his expression changed in an instant to a gaze of horror and disbelief. Matthew himself had turned to see if he had noticed anything behind him, and there might have been six or seven people that he could have seen. Obviously he knew nothing of the boy, who quickly recovered from his astonishment, and was asking his mother and everyone around him where he was, and what he was doing on this stretcher.

But John could tell that it was definitely Matthew that he was looking at, and it seemed that Thomas and Ezra both had that opinion also. That was fascinating. Had Matthew done something to him when he was collecting taxes? It was a possibility.

While he was firing questions at his mother about why he was there, he seemed to remember something, and his face lost whatever color it had recovered (he evidently had been quite tanned before he died; clearly a farm boy), and it looked for a moment that he was going to faint. He whispered something in his mother's ear, and she nodded tearfully, and then said "But you have come back! You are with me once again! Thank God! Oh, thank God! --And (to Jesus) thank you, Sir, so very, very much!"

"Your faith has brought him back to you."

"You are right! I could not believe I had lost him forever! I knew somehow he would come back to me! And you have done it!"

So he not only could cure the sick, he could raise the dead! And the boy must have remembered something either about what being dead was like or perhaps what had caused the death--and as to that, that red ring around his neck seemed to indicate that he had choked to death. Had he been hanged? Or hanged himself?

The boy whispered something else in her ear, and she said to Jesus, "You are Jesus of Nazareth, the prophet we have heard so much of?"

"I am."

"I was looking for you! I was praying I would meet you! I told myself that if I met you and you saved my son, I would join you. What else have I to live for?"

"Well, if you think you would like to come after me, feel free to join us. And you, child? What is your name, by the way?"

"David, son of Asa. Yes, I would join you also." He said this perhaps a bit reluctantly, but then cast a quick look in Matthew's direction, and seemed to come to a resolution as he turned back to Jesus.

"You may leave, of course, whenever you please; I realize that you are not in a state for making permanent decisions at the moment. --Nor were you, yesterday, is it not?"

The boy blushed. "It would seem not, indeed." Perhaps, thought John, he had hanged himself, and so was one of those Jesus wanted to keep an eye on.

"I trust, then, that there will be no more of that in the future."

"No, Master."

"You need have no fear. Your sins are forgiven."

The boy hung his head. "Thank you, Master."

The boy then said something to his mother and ran off, probably to get cleaned of the spices and dressed. Matthew had moved a bit apart to listen to Jesus speak of the fact that during the coming reign of God, they would have to change their way of thinking; but most of the people were too enthralled by what had happened to listen, and there was hubbub and confusion among them.

Another, clearer "sign," thought John. He had the power to raise the dead back to life by simply touching them. And who could do this but God himself? And what did this mean for "destroy this temple, and in three days I will rebuild it"? Was the final sign to be that he would raise himself back to life after being in the grave for three days? God forbid! That would mean that somehow the authorities would hate him enough to kill him, and that he would let them do it! He certainly could prevent it if he wished; when they tried to kill him in Nazareth, he simply was not there. But why would he do such a thing?

But did it also mean--if this was a "sign" of the way the world was to be when God (that is, he) began his actual reign--that in the Kingdom he ruled there would be no death? And presumably, no sickness? We would all live forever? How fantastic! But it looked that way.

He noticed Thomas and Ezra talking, it seemed about this David who had just been cured of death"--consistent with what the Master said to him--and his reaction to it."

"Ezra, you would make an epic poem out of a falling leaf!" laughed Thomas.

"I only hope it is not to be a tragedy. Attend."

The boy had run back, clean and in new clothes, carrying the cloak that had been loaned to him, while Matthew was speaking to Jesus, saying something about giving a feast. The boy heard him, and said to Jesus, "A feast? Then surely he will need help, Master! Let me go with him; I can do much, and will do it gladly!" John thought that he sounded far too eager, given the way he had looked at Matthew earlier. Something was wrong here.

Matthew answered that he would not trouble him, and he replied, "There is no trouble; and besides, I would prefer not to have people gawking at me and me and asking me what it felt like to be dead!"

Matthew accepted his offer, and Jesus stroked his beard, looking at the two of them, and nodded permission. Jesus clearly knew what the danger was--if he was God the Son, he had to know everything he needed as man to know--and realized that Matthew was not really going to get his head chopped off in his sleep.

Ezra, who seemed to have the same idea as John, said to Thomas, "Fascinating," as the two walked off together.

Neither Matthew nor the boy appeared the next day, evidently busy with preparations for the feast on the morrow. The boy had apparently decided to sleep at Matthew's house. His mother had fretted a bit, but Jesus assured her that he would be perfectly safe with Matthew and his slave. Evidently, thought John, Matthew also would be safe.

And sure enough, when they arrived at the--one could only call it mansion--the next day, there was Matthew, with the boy behind him, both dressed in fine linen, Matthew welcoming them in a kind of embarrassed way, as well as a number of what turned out to be tax-collectors, all standing by awkwardly, as if wondering whether the new guests had any idea what they were.

It was a fairly tense dinner, for that reason, among others, particularly at first, but John heard Nathanael, who knew wines, whisper in Thomas's ear (he was drinking water, of course, and looking on nostalgically) that the vintage was almost up to what Jesus had supplied at the wedding, and that Matthew had diluted it very little, probably to loosen tongues. It was excellent wine. A little more of this, and John might become a connoisseur. And, he thought, a little more than that, and he might turn into another Thomas, and need to drink only water for the rest of his life. He resolved to take warning.

From the influence of the wine, people they began to speak rather more freely after a short time, and the dinner could be said to be a success. Afterwards, people kept their cups and rose from the table, looking over the house and talking.

Suddenly, Jesus let out a piercing whistle and ran out the back, where the dogs (about which the guests had been warned) had been chained. Matthew sprang up and followed.

John, like all the rest, sat frozen for a moment in shock; there was definitely a commotion of some sort back there. Jesus seemed to have shouted something--a command to the dogs?--and of course Ezra tried to go out, but Matthew stood in the doorway, blocking the exit, as he watched openmouthed what Jesus was doing. (Ezra tried to see over his head, but could not do so without actually leaning against him, and gave up.) Interestingly, Nathanael was blocking the only window that provided a view.

Whatever it was did not take long, and Matthew came back inside, followed by Jesus and one of the tax-collectors, whose eyes looked as if he had narrowly escaped death, though there was not a mark on him or his clothes. When asked what had happened, he simply protested that he was fine, but that he thought that he should be getting home. He thanked Matthew perfunctorily, and went out the front, where a crowd had gathered outside the gate, to find out if it were really true that Jesus was consorting with tax-collectors and sinners.

Thomas went up to Nathanael, who had just spoken to Matthew, and asked, "What went on?"

"Matthew asked me not to speak of it, and so I cannot say, but it is probably what you thought it was."

Ezra, who was, as always, present, said, "So he is Master of vicious dogs also."

"He is Master of everything, it seems. Everything," and he added, "Thank God!"

A few days later, Jesus informed the group that his father had died. He took Simon, James and John, and, interestingly, Matthew, and went to his funeral, leaving Andrew more or less in charge.

John walked beside Matthew as they traveled to Nazareth, and said, "It seems, then, that you knew Jesus from before. Did you know his father also?"

"Yes," he answered. "They did the woodwork on my house, you see."

"Ah," said John. "They built a small boat for me and James when I was but a little boy. We still have it, but as a kind of trophy in front of our house."

"They were excellent carpenters. But of course you know that. I asked to see Joseph when I heard that he was ill, and Jesus took me to him. I spent quite a while with him."

"Ah, yes. So that is where you went to that day. Did you know that you simply disappeared from our view?"

"In truth?"

"In truth. Ezra--the black man, who used to be Bartholomew's slave (Matthew raised his eyebrows)--"even tried to follow you to see if it would happen, because once in Nazareth--in fact, on the day you were in the synagogue--the townspeople caught hold of him to throw him off the cliff, and he disappeared. Evidently he did not wish to be followed--so I supposed I had better not ask what happened on that visit you had."

"You are very acute, John. Yes, I was told--many things--that I have no authority to reveal to anyone."

"I assumed as much. You seem, shall I say, not overly surprised by what you have seen Jesus do."

"Let us just say that it is consistent with what I heard, and confirms that what I heard was almost certainly factual."

"But I have been wondering why he did not cure Joseph. It seems it would have been no trouble for him to do so."

"Oh, as to that, last night I asked him about it, and he said, 'He knew that after he had spoken with you, Matthew, he had completed all the tasks that were left him on this side of the grave, and he was eager to begin the tasks that faced him on the other. He is (he used the present tense) a worker, and the enforced idleness of these last few months disturbed him greatly. Last evening, when I left him, he said, "May I go now, please?"'

"And so he let him go." The two were silent after this, pondering.

Neither Jesus nor his mother appeared to be in great sorrow, which was certainly consistent with who they were. John himself could not really grieve either. After all, he had almost never seen Joseph since the boat was built, and so there was no real loss on his part--if it had been Mary, it would have been a different story; she was almost as much a mother to him as his own mother. So the ceremonies were gone through, and Joseph began whatever work he now had, which would presumably last until beyond the end of time. John wondered whether in the new Kingdom, if everyone stayed alive, he would come back, and resume a life with a new heart that had no trouble beating. Would he once again engage in carpentry, if it had been what his life was all about?

And what would John do, forever and ever? Not fish, he thought; that John was dying fast, though it was a nice life; but it was more like the life of John-the-embryo, not the John who now existed. Perhaps he now was the child of John-the-prophet. Well, whatever he was growing into, it was interesting, to say the least.

After Jesus and the others returned, they happened to be in Cana for something-or-other, and a military officer, accompanied, interestingly enough, by the soldier who was with Matthew at the tax-booth, approached Jesus and begged him to go down with him to the city and cure his son, who was very ill and about to die.

"You people!" said Jesus. "Unless you have proof and see miracles, you do not believe!" Jesus had not been performing cures during this period, perhaps out of respect for the memory of his father, but John thought there was something more going on here. The man was a Gentile, after all, in the first place, and probably had heard a rumor that Jesus could cure people, but was not too sure about it.

But he was obviously desperate. "Master, please!" he said. "Go down before my son dies!"

Jesus looked at him, stroked the beard on his chin, and answered, "You may go. Your son will live."

The man opened his mouth as if to make a protest; but closed it when he looked into Jesus' face, thinking better of it, and turned and left.

The soldier gave a glance back at Matthew, as he pivoted to go. John thought that this seemed to confirm that he would not cure anyone, or perform a "sign," unless the other person gave a sign that he believed it would be done. The officer, John thought, had given that sign when he did not protest. Or had he given up, and dismissed Jesus as a mountebank?

The next day, the soldier returned alone, finding Jesus, to whom he gave a rather substantial gift from the father, remarking that the father had met a slave on the way home, who told him that the fever had left his son, and he wanted to waste no time in thanking him for restoring him to health. He had himself continued to his house to be with his son. Jesus accepted the gift, and handed it over to Judas for the group.

Another step, thought John. Now it was clear he did not even need to touch the person he cured; if he simply declared him cured, it happened, even if he was at a distance and Jesus had never seen him. Who could do this but the one who was "one and the same" as the Father?

It was a pity, really, that so few were with Jesus all the time. The signs were mounting up rapidly, but very few knew of them.

The soldier, dismissed, then sought out Matthew. They had a rather extended and earnest conversation that Ezra tried to learn about; but he was not "invisible" to the soldier and was warned off. (Matthew had never so much as acknowledged that he existed, for some reason).

"Well, Longinus, I wish you well," said Matthew finally, loud enough so everyone could hear.

"And I you, Levi-Matthew, in your new life," replied the soldier.

"If it lasts."

"Oh, it will. You are hardly a fanatic, but I see the signs."

"Well, we shall see about that also." And the soldier left, humming quietly in his cheerful way.

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