Thirty-Four

Instead of returning to Peraea, Jesus decided that they would go north of Jerusalem into the deserted country around Ephraim, not too far from where Matthew's mother lived. Matthew supposed that Jesus wished to be more available to enter Jerusalem during the Passover, a month or so off. He also seemed to feel that his preaching and announcing that the reign of God was about to start was over, because he had given enough proofs now that he was the Son of God, especially that there were quite a few prominent Judeans at the tomb when Lazarus emerged. If the people did not know now, it was because they had no wish to know. So his strategy evidently was to let the dust settle, and give people time to think.

There was no question but that what he had done was going to be thoroughly discussed--by everyone, not simply the Judean authorities. And here, Jesus was out of the way. Those who wished to find him probably could, but since he was not causing trouble, probably they would wait for a move from him before they did anything.

After they had stayed there a few days, David asked Matthew for permission to go back to Bethany to see Judith, who, it seemed, had been as much in distress as everyone else in that household, and David had some hope that he could call attention to himself by consoling her.

"After all," he said, "if Lazarus has been dead and then come back to life, she cannot despise him, and so she might not think it is such a disgrace for me to be as I am."

"Well, I hope you are right," said Matthew dubiously, "but women's reasoning is a mystery beyond anything we have experienced these many months."

After four hours, David returned, so much a picture of despair that it would have been comic to behold, were it not so tragic--well, pathetic.

"Your quest was not successful?" Matthew asked gently.

"Oh--the fool is in love with Lazarus!" He stomped around in a circle, looking down at the ground. "What enters the heads of such people I will never understand! She still had no use for me because I had been dead, but, though she does not say so, she worships Lazarus--who has been dead!--and by the way, he now merely sits and mopes because people have seen him 'in a compromising position.' I know well what that is! But I overcame it. Why cannot he?

"And if he does, he will not even look in her direction! She is but a servant! And he is far too important a person to think that servants are any more than animals! A pox on all of them!"

Poor David ranted and raged for a full hour before he could calm down; and Matthew knew of no way to console him. How could he, since he realized that Mary, if she ever recovered from Judas--Judas, of all people!--would never look on him with interest.

They had been there quite some time, when Judith came running up, panting, "Master! Master!" Jesus came over, and she gasped, "Martha told me to tell you to come--come at once! She said that raising Lazarus was noth--nothing in comparison with this!"

Matthew wondered what calamity had occurred now. Had Lazarus gone mad?

Jesus put his hands on her houlders as she tried desperately to breathe, and said in a calm voice, "I understand what is the matter. Be not distressed. You may tell them that my time has arrived, and that I will come to dinner there in two days, and that you should invite some friends of Lazarus, as you had planned. And you must assure them that there is no cause for concern."

"I do not understand. Invite? Planned?"

"They will know."

Judas, who had been listening as soon as he caught sight of Judith, said, "Are we all to accompany you, Master?" He seemed a bit nervous to Matthew.

"The Twelve, I should think," said Jesus. They could not suffer an invasion of all of us." He looked over at Chusa's Joanna as he said this, and she reddened and fled when he caught her eye. "Tell them to be ready in two days. It is little enough time for them to prepare, but if I know Martha, it will suffice; and I think it not prudent to delay longer. Now go when you have caught your breath; they will be wanting news as soon as possible."

Judith did not wait, but ran off before she had fully recovered. David looked after her with a mixture of desire and contempt, and then looked, his eyes narrowed, over at Judas.

Matthew eyed Judas suspiciously also. There was something about his question that did not ring true. Something had happened; he was not acting his characteristic detached self. He had looked almost afraid of Jesus, for some reason, and was visibly relieved when he replied as if what he asked were something innocuous--as it was, on its face. But there was a hidden meaning behind it, and Matthew could not imagine what.

He had nothing to do for the next two days but ponder what might have caused the emergency, and why it was not really as pressing as Judith and apparently Martha had thought. He hoped it did not involve Mary. But it might involve her if Judas was concerned enough to ask if all were going there. Had he tried to seduce her and she had refused?

Or had she accepted? Matthew's heart froze.

But no--in that case, Jesus would have gone alone. If Mary had sinned, then Martha would have sent for him to forgive her once again, and the emergency would have been to prevent her from running off with Judas. But then why would she have planned to invite Jesus to dinner with all the Twelve, obviously including Judas?

He could not fathom what was going on, and was not helped by the fact that David, who still was watching Judas like a hawk (he had reported what seemed to be further cases of embezzlement) told him, "I saw him leave a few days ago, Master, and I thought he was going back in the direction of Bethany, but it was dark, and I lost him. I tried to go to Bethany to see if I could find him, but he did not seem to be in the house. No one seemed to be there. So I returned, and after several hours, so did he. I should have stayed. Perhaps I was there before him."

"Well, you did what you could, David. :Let us hope that Judas was not responsible for what made them send Judith back here."

"I would not put anything past that man. Anything."

"Well, we will see soon what the situation is."

And so Jesus and the Twelve set off for Bethany, and for some reason did not collect a crowd as they traveled. Matthew conjectured that Jesus had "arranged" this somehow; perhaps they were invisible to any people around them, as Jesus himself had been able to make himself invisible when he needed to escape. But then Matthew thought that the simpler explanation was that they simply did not happen to be noticed by the people who were busying themselves with preparing for the Passover, which was to take place in six days.

As they arrived, a number of people from Jerusalem were already there, friends of Lazarus, talking with him and pointedly avoiding mention of the gauche event that had happened, but simply making small talk, which Lazarus took almost no part in, merely giving one-word answers when he had to speak. He was obviously in the depths of despair--a fact which was as manifest and as ignored by everyone as his death and return to life--and was finding it a supreme effort behave with even minimal politeness. Fortunately, the people surrounding him were of the upper class in Jerusalem, and, given Lazarus' personality, insulting them by his demeanor was out of the question.

Martha, who was in the room, was looking with concern and pride at his effort. Mary, as usual, was not visible.

As soon as everyone saw the Twelve and Jesus, the atmosphere, if possible, grew even more tense. Though Martha and Zebediah had made careful selection among the guests from Jerusalem to be certain that there was no one who would immediately rush out and denounce Jesus on sight, it was still common knowledge that his whereabouts was to be reported to the authorities as soon as he set foot in Judean territory, and there was always a danger that someone might do something untoward. But no one made a move. Martha had been most judicious.

Lazarus greeted Jesus politely--what else could he do?--but since Jesus was not high society, he looked at him with a loathing that made his position on resurrection perfectly clear, and nodded perfunctorily to the twelve Emissaries (to whom he had always paid scant attention in any case), and then turned back to one of his banking companions from the city, evidently resolved to act as if Jesus were not there, and letting Martha who was responsible for this debacle, make the best of it she could. Martha's attitude indicated that what she wanted was for the Emissaries to be present for some reason, and for the presence of those from Jerusalem had prevented Lazarus from rushing away as he might well have done in other circumstances.

Fortunately, neither Jesus nor--what was more perilous--any of his Emissaries started any controversial conversation; and the others put a face on things whenever it was necessary for any in the two groups to mingle, which they did as little and as briefly as possible. There was a certain bemusement on both sides that the two groups would have been invited together; both thought it was a social blunder on Mary's part, who presumably had wanted to unite those who had come to the tomb with Lazarus' savior, not realizing that what had happened at the tomb was as forbidden as mentioning the name of the One who had effected the deed.

Mary had come in, rather shyly, around this time, and helped Martha to place the guests on the dining-couches , with those from Jerusalem lying at all the high places around the outside of the U of the table (the serving was done from inside)--to the left and right of Lazarus, who would, of course, as the master of the house, be at the center of the curve. Matthew rather resented the fact that Jesus and the Twelve were seated in the lowest places at the table, but given what Jesus had taught about such things, they were not in much of a position to complain.

At least Jesus was lying at the arm of the table in front of Lazarus (though it meant that he had to tip his head to look at him); it would have been a distinct insult if Lazarus had not been facing in his direction. Matthew was in this position, in fact, directly opposite Jesus on the other arm of the table; but since he had little use for Lazarus, he did not mind.

Martha and Judith with the servants served the dinner; and again Mary absented herself. Matthew had tried to catch her eye earlier, but she had been very preoccupied with something-or-other, and left as soon as she decently could. Matthew told himself that there was really no special reason why she should pay him any attention, but he did not believe himself.

Martha had just taken in some dish to serve, when Mary, with a look of anguish and sorrow, rushed into the room, looked about as if distraught, and said, "Master! Forgive me!" and rushed to his feet, breaking the neck of a bottle of nard and pouring it over them, kneeling and wiping them with her hair. At first, she made weeping noises, and then the tears became all too real. Matthew was paralyzed with shock. This was a reenactment, for some reason, of what everyone knew had happened at the house of Simon the Pharisee in Magdala. What was she up to? She certainly seemed genuinely remorseful. Had she sinned? But why this drama?

The scent of the perfume filled the whole room, as it must have done in Magdala, and once again there was total, stunned silence, except for her weeping, as he had been told there had been then.

"Why this waste?" came a scornful voice, shattering the stillness. It was Judas.

Mary froze and now there was not a sound. "Why was this perfume not sold?" he went on. "It would have brought three hundred denarii, and we could have given the money to the poor."

"Let her alone," said Jesus sternly. "Why are you pestering her? She has done a me a great kindness." He looked down at her. "She is preparing me for my burial. You always have the poor with you; you will not always have me." Then he looked around the room. "Amen I tell you, whenever the good news about me is reported in the whole world, what she has done this day will be told in memory of her."

As he was speaking, there was a sudden stirring. Mary looked up, and everyone's eyes focused on Lazarus, his face ashen, rising from the table and rushing out of the room. Mary leaped up and ran after him. In the room, people began getting up and there was general consternation.

There was a movement to try to follow him, and then people began to think better of it, and a few blocked the door. And then, from the other room, suddenly there were women's screams and sounds of fighting, which went on for a considerable time. Judith had apparently attacked Mary, from what Matthew could gather, and Martha had joined in.

After what seemed an hour, but was probably only a few minutes, Lazarus' voice rose above the tumult. "Judith! Judith! Judith! Stop! Stop!"

Immediately, everything ceased. There was a dead silence both in the room where the fighting had been going on and in the dining room.

Lazarus' voice came again, too soft for words to be audible, and then there was the sound of Judith sobbing and muffled words, as if she were speaking into cloth.

After another, rather briefer silence, Lazarus spoke again and she answered, more distinctly now but still too faint to for anyone to understand what was being said. :Lazarus said something else, rather more at length, and then she replied, with something that sounded like, "Dear dear Lazarus, I did not dare!"

Judith? "Dear Lazarus?" So David was right. And apparently Lazarus had realized it and accepted it. If that was what it was, here was a miracle almost as great as raising Lazarus itself!

And it must be confessed that the Lazarus who emerged after a short interval was an entirely different person either from the one who had entered that room of mayhem or the one they had seen earlier in the day. He was--of all things--secretly elated about something, and announced to all that he was sorry to have disturbed the party, but that there had been a slight accident that he had been able to take care of, and now everything would be all right; that no one was really hurt, but that it was better, all things considered, for the women to remain in seclusion for the rest of the day--and, in short, he begged their pardon for suggesting that it might be well to put an end to the festivities.

They all pronounced that they understood perfectly, though not one of them could make head or tail of it. What bewildered them most of all was the contrast to what he had been just moments before. All, including Jesus and his Emissaries, left with a minimum of fuss, a few of the banking friends asking Lazarus when they would see him in Jerusalem, to which he replied, "Soon. Soon. Very soon, in fact." They seemed gratified with his response.

Matthew was stunned. So it was all "arranged." Jesus had allowed Lazarus to die and brought him back to life to shock him out of looking on him as a curiosity but someone who was "not quite." But instead of its curing him, it seemed to have driven him into a despondency at the fact that people had seen him in what he regarded as a disgraceful position. And then Mary had restaged her drama of remorse--though she seemed quite sincere, oddly enough--to shock him out of that, and the result seemed to be that somehow Judith by fighting with Mary and Martha at what they had done, had also broken through his haughty refusal to notice her. The change had to be that he realized that he loved her. Amazing! Astounding! Ingenious beyond belief, if Jesus had planned it all! Divinely ingenious!

And then he remembered that he had wondered what the reaction of Lazarus would be when he discovered who and what Mary had been, and he had voiced his concern to Jesus just after Mary had met Lazarus for the first time--and Jesus had said, "Did I bring David back to life?" and he had asked what that had to do with it, and Jesus had answered, "Be patient. Some day you will recall this conversation."

Perhaps the evil things that happen are necessary to bring about the good that people long for, in God's plan. There was yet hope! But that meant that Jesus was indeed God!

Incredible!