Eight

We 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, evidently a widow, was frantically wailing in despair beside it.

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 sometime 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 seemed to catch sight of Matthew, and his expression changed in an instant to a gaze of horror and disbelief.

So we now knew that Jesus not only could cure the sick "by his own power," but raise the dead--at least if they were just recently dead. "I tell you, sit up." Again, what worried me was his increasing use of "his" power as if it were really his. How could I convince him that he was simply a vehicle for a Power that was infinitely beyond him?

And then there was the boy's reaction to Matthew, as if he had some reason to hate him--as if he had been responsible for his death. Matthew turned to see if he had noticed anything behind him, and there might have been six or seven people that he could have seen. Clearly, if Matthew had been responsible for his death, he was totally unaware of it--which left him in considerable danger, if the boy wanted to take revenge.

The boy, meanwhile, recovered from his astonishment, and was asking his mother and everyone around him where he was, and what he was doing on this stretcher.

In the middle of his questions, 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!"

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. That confirmed my suspicion. He seemed to be joining the group so that he could be near Matthew and could then kill him at a suitable opportunity.

"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?"

He made it clear to the youth that whatever happened to him--and was that not a red welt about his neck?--was due to a rash act on his part. Had he hanged himself?

The boy blushed. "It would seem not, indeed."

"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." Another case of forgiveness of sins. Though the boy seemed to be contemplating at least one more. And when he said to Jesus that there would be "no more of that" in the future, he seemed to be acting the young Pharisee, saying that he was not going to try to kill himself again.

He hung his head. "Thank you, Master." He was doubtless unaware that harming Matthew would be all but impossible with Jesus watching over them--and evidently knowing what was going on in his mind.

Be that as it may, the boy spoke to his mother, telling her that he would go home and bathe and dress in decent clothes and then return, and, with another glance at Matthew, he ran off.

Jesus, meanwhile, was telling people to put on a new way of thinking, because the reign of God was about to begin, and was advising them that things were going to be very different from now on. The people were beside themselves, very few actually listening to what Jesus was saying, because they were too busy discussing whether the boy had actually been dead or not, and whether it made any difference one way or the other, since even if he were merely in a coma, Jesus' knowing it and his intervention was clearly miraculous in bringing him out of it.

Some seemed to want to question the mother about his death, but she was obviously distraught, looking off in the distance to see her son return, and Jesus shielded her from questions which would have upset her greatly. Of course, the skeptics saw this, and concluded that Jesus wanted to keep them from uncovering the conspiracy to make him look like a miracle-worker; but even they were afraid to incur Jesus' wrath by trying to approach her.

Matthew took this opportunity to approach Jesus and ask if he would mind if he left to see to the feast on the morrow--and as he was saying this, the boy David came back and overheard 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!"

Matthew, somewhat surprised, said that he would not trouble the boy, who turned to him and answered, "There is no trouble, and besides, I would prefer not to have people gawking at me and asking me what it felt like to be dead!"

"If you are certain you would prefer it, then," said Matthew, "I think we might be able to use you. I suppose that my slave Gideon has hired some help, but I imagine that another person would not be unwelcome. I will pay you whatever the others are paid. Gideon knows."

Jesus, who suspected--no, knew--what was going on far better than I, stroked his bearded chin thoughtfully for a moment--a custom of his--and then nodded approval, and the two turned in the direction of Matthew's house. After traveling in silence for a while, I heard the boy said, "I need no pay, Master."

"God forbid that I should be your master!"

"I meant nothing by it, Sir. It was merely a manner of speaking."

"You do not know that I am the least--" and by that time, they were our of earshot. They seemed to be getting along well enough; perhaps I was mistaken, but it still seemed to me that there was something there.

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, 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, but Matthew (or more likely his slave) had been astute and diluted the wines (which were excellent, but not up to the standard Jesus had set at the wedding) very little, and so tongues began to loosen.

There was an incident shortly afterward; something happened out in the back where the dogs were chained up. Jesus suddenly let out a whistle and dashed out, but no one observed what was going on, except perhaps Nathanael, looking out a window, and Matthew himself, at the back door. I myself did not pay much attention, since I was engaged in a rather fascinating conversation with one of the guests, who seemed receptive to my views on Jesus.

In any case, shortly afterward, one of the tax-collectors came in, evidently frightened, but, from what I could see, not harmed in any way. Perhaps the dog had barked or growled at him. He spoke perfunctorily to those who were near him and left, and everything settled down.

A few days later, Jesus informed us all 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. I suppose, since I now had the office of treasurer, I was not chosen for this task.

Neither Jesus nor his mother appeared to be in great sorrow, which was certainly consistent with who they were. And if, as some of the Pharisees held--and Jesus seemed to intimate--there was a life after death of reward and punishment, as the Book of Wisdom indicated, then Jesus's parents had very little to worry about.

I myself was of two minds on the subject. True, our thoughts were spiritual, and therefore, one would argue, not subject to decay as our bodies were; but Plato and Plotinus seemed to conclude that all our spiritual acts were absorbed into the "consciousness" of the One, in which case, we would share, in some sense, in Its happiness, but not as the individuals we are here on earth, since matter is the source of individuation. Still, the Scriptures at least hinted that our personal lives--whatever that might mean--would continue after death.

Jesus himself had spoken obliquely about "eternal life," but up to this point, he had not made himself very clear. Perhaps the Force in him did not reveal to him what happened to a person after death. I would have to pay attention; he would have first-hand knowledge, so to speak, if he said anything on the subject. We did know already, of course, from the restoration of David to life, that personal life did not cease at the moment of death, and even physical life could be restored, at least if the death was recent.

After Jesus and the others returned from the funeral, we 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 the man was a Gentile, who had probably 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. 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 me for the group.

I was receiving many gifts now; it was certain that we were never going to want for whatever we needed. I actually mentioned to Jesus that if this went on, we would be quite wealthy, and he dismissed the whole idea of wealth and poverty as not worthy of consideration.

Well, if he felt that way, I was not going to concern myself either. But the interesting thing about this cure was that apparently Jesus did not need even to be in the presence of the one he cured--and presumably, as long as there was someone who could be said to "believe," the actual beneficiary did not even have to know that Jesus existed. Of course, this was perfectly consistent with Jesus as a channel of a Force that was in fact the Force that created and governed the whole universe.

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. Interestingly, Matthew seemed to have the same attitude toward this Ezra as I had; he barely existed for him, 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.

I hoped that the soldier was right; I had a certain affection for Matthew, in spite of his disgusting past.

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