Not Undead
Matthew 27:50-53 (NIV
Then Jesus shouted out again, and he released his spirit.
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus' resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.)
Scholars and theologians aren't sure what to do with the passage above from the Gospel of Matthew. He offers us a tantalizing glimpse of peripheral crucifixion and resurrection events that aren't corroborated by any of the other gospels, nor are they referenced by any of the other New Testament writers. The events aren't mentioned in any historical documents from the first century. Some want to classify the passage as poetic language; figurative, not meant to be taken literally. Others want to say in those few sentences Matthew was writing in apocalyptic language meant to point toward Christ's second coming, when believers are to be raised to join him in the New Jerusalem.
There is a problem with those interpretations, however. The same style, the same usage of words and terms, is used by Matthew to describe the resurrection of Jesus himself, which is not intended by Matthew or the other gospel writers, or by historians of the time, to be portrayed as poetic, figurative, or apocalyptic, but as an actual, literal historic event.
Then there are those who like to refer to the passage as the Zombie Verses. It's a misleading label. The people to whom Matthew was referring were not undead.
Which brings us back to what to do with those last two verses…
The cold wind had stopped.
The mother of Jesus, Mary, exhausted and numb, stood with her sister-in-law Mary, and the Magdalene, and John, the only disciple who hadn't disappeared in the chaotic events of the day. Only a scattering of people remained on Golgotha after the very ground under their feet had heaved and groaned in the moment following the death of Jesus. John's own mother, Salome, had been there, but the earthquake frightened her greatly, and she had been among the first of those who left. Now Mary watched as three new Roman soldiers shoved their way through the dwindling groups of onlookers. Two of the soldiers, joining the two guards already in place, turned their backs to the men suspended on the crosses, and faced the remainder of the people. They held pikes in readiness as the third soldier picked up the heavy mallet used to drive the spikes through the wrists and feet of the condemned men.
"John, what are they doing?"
"I don't know." He was as exhausted as Mary.
The soldier, gravel crunching under his boots, walked to the first man on his cross, one of the thieves, naked, stained and filthy from the day's ordeal, his feet nailed one atop the other to a small, sloping wooden shelf that put them about even with the soldier's stiff leather cuirass. Without saying a word, the Roman lifted the mallet and with a full swing smashed it against the thief's left shin, breaking both bones with a sickening crunch. The man screamed and thrashed, trying with his arms and remaining functional leg to lift his weight and lessen this new and blinding pain. Without pausing, the soldier drew back the mallet and again with a full swing crushed the bones in the man's right leg in the same way.
All of the weight of the thief now pulled against the spikes driven one through each of his wrists into the roughly hewn crossbeam. His initial screams quickly turned to panicked, tortured wheezing because this new strain on the walls of his chest kept him from drawing a full breath to give voice to anything more. He hung like an empty sack flapping in a slight breeze, suffocating.
The soldier moved on to Jesus, but, with a glance up at his still form suspended on the cross and a quick, slanted look at the horrified women clustered around John, bypassed Jesus to the second thief and performed the same barbarous act, the only difference being that the man knew what was coming and tried in vain to move his legs away from the first strike. Therefore the soldier's first blow was a glancing one, not breaking the leg. He cursed the screaming crucified man and the next impact of the heavy mallet broke not only the bones but mashed through the meat and almost separated the lower portion of the leg from the rest of the limb. His blow to the remaining leg was almost as powerfully cruel, but excruciating pain had already taken the man's consciousness. His dead weight sagged again the crude, splintered wood of his cross.
By this time, Mary realized the reason for the violence—the bodies could not remain on the cross over Shabbat, which would begin at sundown. The soldiers wanted to hasten the deaths so the bodies could be removed beforehand.
The soldier with the mallet turned back and approached the cross of Jesus.
"He's already dead!" John cried out. The soldier didn't appear to care, hefting the mallet as he stopped next to Jesus and planted his feet for the first blow. "Please! His mother is here watching!"
The soldier paused, his eyes going again to Mary, and then lifting them to peer up once more at the still form of Jesus. After a moment he tossed the mallet aside.
John breathed a sigh that was closer to a sob. "Thank you."
The soldier stepped over to one of the other soldiers and, taking the pike from the man, turned back to Jesus, who not long before had prayed to Yahweh to forgive the jeering crowd and the men who were crucifying him. Before John could raise his voice again, the Roman shoved the spear point of the pike up into the ribcage of Jesus.
The women screamed and Mary fought back a surge of vomit, sagging against John as he struggled to support her. Blood and clear fluid drained from the wound in Jesus' side, brought forth by gravity, not a beating heart. He was indeed dead.
Turning away, Mary whispered to John, "Take us back to the house."
She did not look back.
The darkness following the death of Jesus had passed, and as the late afternoon sun painted gold the wall on the western side of the city, the small group, clinging to each other in their grief, made their way south along the gravel road to the Gate of Gennath, where the towers of Hippicus and Phasael watched over the road to Emmaus and Joppa, and the approach to the gate, where they re-entered Jerusalem. The Tower of Mariamne guarded the inner approach to the gate and the main causeway leading to Herod's palace.
After the commotion of the trial and scourging earlier that morning—had it only been that morning? It felt so long ago—the streets seemed more quiet than usual, the mood more somber. They hurried by the Praetorium, the site of the trial conducted by Pilate, and Mary kept her eyes fixed on the street. She refused to even glance at the imposing walls. She did not want to see.
The street climbed as the group approached the Western Hill—called Mt. Zion by some—where stood the house of one of Jesus' followers, yet another woman named Mary, lived with her young son, John Mark, and her brother, Barnabas, on the slopes of the upper city in the Herodian Quarter. The grand house of the high priest, Caiaphas, was nearby also. Its roofline was visible from the balcony on the north side of Mary's house. It was a wealthy area.
They arrived and once inside the house, Mary, John, and the two other Marys went to their various rooms off the main upstairs living area. As the mother of the Messiah, Mary had been offered a room of her own. The wife of Clopas and the Magdalene had a room with the other women of the group. John had a pallet in a far corner, as did the other men.
As drained as she was, Mary knew no rest would be possible, not right away. She didn't know if she would ever be able to sleep again for fear of nightmares from watching her son die so horribly. But she was a Jewish mother. She could not be idle. After pacing the room for a short while, she realized it was nearly night. Very little light came through the room's single window. She went back into the large room where a few coals still smoldered in a small brazier. Taking a lamp from a shelf, she used tongs to pick a coal from the brazier and lit the lamp before trimming the wick. She carried the lamp back to her room and sat down on her bed, where she pulled the tichel—the headscarf—from her head and with a shell comb smoothed out the tangles in her hair. The light from the lamp cast her shadow on the plaster wall behind her, huge and grotesque. Wrapping her hair again, she picked up the lamp and left the room.
She went downstairs to the main kitchen, the lamplight surrounding her as she went. Nobody was there. She supposed everyone was in shock and were sequestered in their rooms trying to understand the harrowing events of the day. She had an advantage over them in that regard—she understood perfectly well what had happened and the deeper meaning of why.
She gathered some dried fruit—figs and apricots—into a bowl, stacked some flat pita loaves on top, along with some sprigs of parsley that still relatively fresh, and a few leeks. There were some skewers of broiled lamb leftover from, she assumed, Barnabas and John Mark's midday meal, most likely prepared for them by a household servant while the house's owner, Mary, had been out witnessing the executions. Mary took the skewers and balanced them across the pita loaves. Lastly she scooped up a small cup of honey and a bowl of curds that might or might not be spoiled. She would find out. She balanced the lamp on her head as she had done as a girl, and the final thing she took was a small pestle that she managed to snag precariously between two fingers.
With her arms full, she went carefully back upstairs and found John, alone in the dark room, sitting at the table where the disciples had shared the Passover meal with Jesus just the night before. He was just staring, as if his eyes were fixed on something beyond the plastered walls of the room.
Mary carefully set the load of utensils and food down on the table, took the lamp from her head, and went about the room lighting more lamps, driving shadows into the corners. She returned and seated herself across the table from John, putting the lamp between them. In any other setting in Jerusalem, in all of Israel, it would be a serious breach of protocol. The strict etiquette that existed between Jewish men and women did not allow them to mingle with such familiarity, except within family households. That was exactly what the followers of Jesus had become—a family.
With deft movements, she used the pestle to mash the fruit into a thick, fragrant paste. Dipping a finger into the lumpy curds, she put it to her tongue and tasted it. Eh, it would do. She added a dollop to the fruit paste and stirred them together, along with a little honey.
Her busy-ness roused John from his stupor. "You're fixing food? How can you eat?"
"You heard Jesus. I am now your Eema. An eema does not let her son go without eating."
"How can I eat after such a day?" he asked listlessly. "I am not hungry. I haven't washed."
"You don't have to be hungry, but you do have to eat." She tore a pita in two and scooped one of the pieces through the fruited curds and handed it across to John. "Here. Take this." She got up and crossed to where a wineskin hung from a peg near a shelf. There were glazed cups and plates on the shelf and she brought two cups and two plates back to the table along with the wineskin. She filled both cups and put one in front of him. He hadn't moved at all, still holding the piece of pita in front of him, as if it were a foreign thing with an unknown purpose. She took it from his hand and laid it on a plate, pushing it toward him.
She waited for John to say the bracha, the prayer, but still he stared at the wall. She sighed and recited a simple hamotzi. "Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth," and began to eat.
"What are we going to do now?" John asked, more of himself than Mary.
"We wait."
"Wait for what? Jesus is dead!"
"You think that means anything to him?"
"Nothing means anything to him. He's dead."
"You were there to see him raise the daughter of Jairus! You saw him raise Lazarus, raise him after four days—"
"Yes, but he did the raising! Who is here now to raise him?"
"You have not been listening." She touched the side of her faded blue tichel where it covered her ear for emphasis. "Several times over the last week, Jesus told all of you exactly what will happen."
"Yes, he said he was leaving. He said we won't see him for a little while, then we will see him. We will see him! He said he was going away to prepare a place for all of us, except now he's dead! How can he prepare anything?"
"In three days he will rise. He said that also. Can you still doubt him after three years?"
"I want to believe it. Nobody wants to believe it more than me!" He lifted his elbows and propped them on the table top before him, burying his fingers in his thick brown hair, his shoulders hunched as if he expected to be beaten. Huge tears welled out of his eyes, falling onto the table, making dark stains as they soaked into the grain. "Nobody wants it more than me."
The mother's heart within her melted. Reaching out, she touched the sleeve of his tunic. "You know, once, many years ago, Jesus sat at a table much the way you are sitting here now. We had come to Jerusalem as we did every year, as you and your brother and family did, and still do. As we all do." His sniffling slowed, but his eyes remained fixed on the tabletop. In her mind, the years fell away as she talked.
"Joseph had been helping a friend, a Gentile friend, fix a trough that he used for feeding his pigs." She shuddered slightly and made a face when she said pigs. "He came back to our room at the inn with a long sliver in the heel of his left palm. His hands were so calloused and rough that most splinters never went very deep, but this was a long splinter. But it was nothing he hadn't dealt with a dozen times before. He was able to dig the end of it free enough to grab it with a pair of tweezers he kept for just such things. He had to do it by the light of a lamp burning on the table in our room. As he worked on it, he talked, almost like he was talking to himself.
"'The trough looked very much like the one in which we laid Jesus that night those seventeen years ago,' he said. He grunted a little as he pulled the splinter out.
"The thought made me cringe. 'Ugh!' I said. 'I could not have let my newly born son rest in a trough used by pigs. I would've held him all night instead.'
"He just…chuckled quietly, and finished cleaning the small wound, then dressed it with a dab of honey and a few herbs, something he had done many, many times before. And that should've been that. But this time something was different."
She paused, suddenly reluctant to speak. John lifted his eyes to look at her, waiting. She took a long breath and let it go.
"In less than two hours, his hand became inflamed and started to swell." She held up her own hand and stared at it as if the injury had been hers. "Red streaks appeared, first on his forearm, then running all the way up to his shoulder. He had a raging fever that grew worse with each passing hour."
"Where was Jesus?"
"He was visiting his cousin, John. The two of them were going to be coming to Jerusalem from John's home. They hadn't arrived yet. And by the time they did, Joseph had been gone for more than a day. We were into the second day of sitting shiva."
"If he had been there, could he have…would he…?"
She shook her head. "The time for him to be revealed was years away still. But he sat at the table much like you, and he cried, oh, he cried." Her voice cracked with the emotion brought back by the memory. "But even though it wasn't time, he sat and he looked at me and, I tell you, John, in that moment I knew he could've healed Joseph, could've raised him even then, two days later, and through his eyes he was asking forgiveness. Not for being too late, but for watching me be crushed with grief and not putting me above his purpose for being here. Does that make sense?"
"I don't know. I think so. It must've been very hard for him. And you."
"The day he raised Lazarus, when he wept? Remember? He sounded just like that seventeen year old boy. Maybe he was reliving that long ago day when he didn't raise his father."
"He's been more emotional during this last week," John offered. "Even for the last couple of months. We should've been more help to him instead of being…idiots, asking for places of honor in his kingdom."
She scrubbed her face with her palms as if trying to wipe the memories and thoughts away. "Augh! Enough of that! I feel like I've missed so much about everything that happened last night and today. What can you tell me?"
"I'm not sure I'm able to talk about it," John said. "I can't accept it. It's a nightmare from which I can't awaken."
"I know." She laid a hand on one of his for a moment, trying to comfort him even in her own pain. "I know." She let go of his hand and picking up a piece of pita, scooped it through the fruited curds. She thought a moment for a place to begin. "We saw Judas leave in the middle of the Seder. What was that about?" She put the bite of food in her mouth.
"I didn't know at the time. We thought maybe Jesus sent him out on an errand. When we left here, remember, we said we were going to Gethsemane." She nodded. "When we got there, Jesus took Peter, James, and me a little farther, and then he left us and went still even a little farther by himself, to pray. He asked us to pray too…" and his eyes dropped to the tabletop again. "…but we were so tired."
"It was getting pretty late by then."
"If we had known what was coming…well…at some point Jesus came back and woke us up, just in time for a mob of rabble—temple guards and priest's servants—to show up carrying torches and weapons."
"Caiaphas." The deployment of temple guards and servants was a sure sign of the high priest's involvement.
"Yes! And guess who was leading them!"
"Who?"
"Judas! He brought them right to us!"
One of her hands covered her mouth in disbelief. "Are you sure?"
"We watched him do it! They said, 'Jesus, you're under arrest!'"
"Just like that?"
"Yes! And Peter, well, you know Peter. He whipped out a sword and tried to cleave one of them from head to crotch, excuse my language. He almost succeeded too! The blade sliced the man's ear from his head and would've kept going down through his body, but Jesus was as fast as Peter. He caught Peter's wrist as easily as you might catch a pomegranate someone tossed to you. He stopped the sword before it could finish the stroke."
Mary gasped. "Peter cut off his ear?"
"Yes! The man fell to the ground and was writhing like a fish on the beach. Jesus was eye to eye with Peter, hanging onto his wrist. He pulled him in so close that their noses almost touched, and he said in a tone we have never heard him use, 'Put. Away. Your sword. Do you not understand I could ask my Father to send twelve legions of angels to deal with all this?'
"He let Peter go and Peter stepped back, staring at Jesus. Then he looked at his sword as if he'd never seen it before, and cast it aside.
"Jesus turned to the mob and said, 'What, I'm leading a rebellion?' and he gestured at us as if the idea was ludicrous. 'You come after me with swords and clubs? Every day I was in the Temple courts teaching and you never laid a hand on me, but now you come by night, by darkness?' and while he's talking he's kicking around on the ground with his sandal, and he says 'Ah!' He bends over and picks up the severed ear! He brushes it off a little and puts it back on the side of the man's head! And it stays there!"
"And after all that, they still took him?"
"Yes. They tied him up and he didn't resist. It seemed like he was expecting it, in fact. And they looked like they were going to take us as well. We didn't know what to do, so we split up in eleven different directions."
"You left him." It was not a question.
John hung his head once more. She barely heard his voice. "Yes."
There was silence in the room for a few moments.
Then John lifted his head and fixed his eyes on her. "But I followed him. I followed them back through the city to the house of Caiaphas." He nodded in the direction of the high priest's sprawling home. "Somewhere along the way I noticed Peter had joined me."
Mary said nothing, her eyes on his face.
"When we got there, I knew one of the servants at the gate and kept following as they took Jesus into the inner courtyard, but Peter had to wait outside.
"Psh, the whole thing at the house of Caiaphas was a sham! There were false witnesses perjuring themselves left and right, even contradicting each other. This went on for a little while, but then I heard a commotion outside the courtyard gate. I heard Peter yelling. Not just yelling—swearing—like he used to back during our fishing days in Galilee.
"I stepped over to the gate to see if there was anything I could help with, but whatever happened was over and when I turned back to the proceedings, I could see that I'd missed something. They were already leading Jesus back out again. He glanced at me but his main attention was on Peter. Peter was as white as a ghost, just staring back at him. I didn't know what happened. Before I could squeeze past everybody to get to him, he had disappeared in the crowd."
"Peter disappeared?"
"Yes. That's the last I saw of him."
They heard footsteps on the stairway. Andrew came into the room, accompanied by Phillip.
"Have you seen Peter?" asked Andrew. The two of them sat down wearily at the table.
"We were just talking about that. He was at the house of Caiaphas last night, but since then he hasn't been seen that we know of."
Phillip, ever practical, took up one of the lamb skewers and began eating, also without washing his hands.
Mary asked, "Have you seen any of the others?"
Andrew replied, "We saw Nathaniel, Simon, and Thaddeus. They should be here soon. Things being what they are, we didn't want to be on the streets in a group, so they took a different route than us."
With more men in the room and the promise of more arriving, Mary was uncomfortable at the table. Yes, they were a family, but old ways die hard. She got up and went to prepare more food. No sooner had Andrew finished speaking when Nathaniel and Thaddeus entered, looking as beaten as the rest of them. He asked them, "Have either of you seen Peter?"
They looked around the room, shaking their heads. "We thought he would be here."
The creaking of wood drew the attention of the people at the table to a ladder in the corner of the room. The ladder went up to the roof through a hatch. The hatch was open and somebody was climbing down it. It was Simon the Zealot.
"How long have you been up there? Did you use the outside stairs?"
Simon, ignoring the questions, reached the floor and came over to the table. He looked at the food, then turned and crossed the floor to the wash basin where the meals were prepared and washed his hands. He shook the water from them, dried them on the front of his robe and came back to the table where he picked up a lamb skewer and with his teeth pulled a bite of meat from it.
Andrew asked him the same question he'd been asking the others. "Have you seen Peter?"
Simon, his mouth full, grunted and pointed back over his shoulder with his thumb. He swallowed the bite of lamb. "He's on the roof. He doesn't want to come down. And he no longer wishes to be called Peter. He says he is no rock."
"What does that mean?"
"He says he is unworthy."
"Why?"
"I don't know, Andrew."
"What about Matthew, and Thomas, and the others?" Mary looked around the table at the men seated there. "Do any of you know if they're coming back here?"
"They may be afraid," Phillip answered. "With Jesus gone, the Pharisees may convince the Romans to sweep the city clean of his followers. It would be like them. We should stay out of sight for a while."
Simon spoke up. "I don't like the sound of that. If someone tells them where we are—someone named Judas—we'll be like figs waiting to be plucked from the branches."
Andrew leaned forward and slapped his palm on the table top. "I am not running away again!"
"You'd rather wait here for the mob to drag us to Golgotha too? Do you—"
"Stop it!"
It was Peter, slowly descending the ladder. He moved stiffly, like a much older man. Like he had aged thirty years overnight. Once both feet reached the floor, he turned and faced the rest of them. His eyes were red and puffy, and bits of straw clung to his coat. His dark hair was disheveled, sticking out in odd clumps. His shadow on the wall behind him wavered as the lamps flickered.
They waited for him to speak.
"Andrew's right," he said. "We wait here."
"What about the others?"
"They might come back on their own, but if they don't, we'll send John Mark out to find them." He swayed as he stood there looking at the group around the table. "I don't want to be called 'Peter' any more, by any of you."
"Jesus gave you that name," Andrew said.
"All the more reason I'm giving it back."
"Why?"
"I don't want to talk about it. Just don't call me that."
Mary approached him, slowly, because she saw turmoil on his face. She thought he might fly out the window like a frightened bird if she wasn't careful.
"Simon, what happened?"
He couldn't meet her eyes. He turned to the side, staring down at the floor. "I don't want to talk about it." He moved as if to climb the ladder back to the roof.
"Simon, wait!"
He stopped.
"Tell us what happened. Please."
He turned back. Not to her, but to the men at the table. "I told him I would never desert him. But I did. Just as he said I would. I denied him. Three times I denied him!" His voice cracked. "I'm not worthy to be a rock. I'm not fit to even be a disciple."
"We all left him," John said.
"But I said I didn't even know him. I cursed when I said it! No, no, I'm finished. How can he ever forgive me?" He raised a hand to one of the rungs of the ladder.
"Peter!" He stopped at Mary's use of the name Jesus had given him. "Peter, look at me. Please."
After a long moment, he turned toward her, but his stare was fixed on her feet.
"Look at me."
Slowly his eyes lifted to meet hers.
"Peter. How many times should I forgive someone who sins against me?"
He knew the answer. He had asked the same question of Jesus. But he couldn't get the words to leave his mouth.
"Don't you think he would heed what he told you?" she asked.
It started in the corners of his mouth. They twitched and turned downward. His face melted in anguish and with a wail he sank to his knees, bowing forward until his brow pressed into the rug on the floor. He grabbed his head in his gnarled fisherman's hands as sobs wracked his shoulders.
Mary knelt next to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't you think he knew what would happen?" she asked. "Do you think his sacrifice was big enough to carry the weight of all the sins of the entire world, past, present, and future, but somehow your denial is too much to be forgiven?"
"Why did he ask me to follow him?" His voice was muffled by his robe. "He said I would be a fisher of men, but I'm only a fisher of…of disappointment." Slowly he raised up on his knees, hands on his thighs. "Of betrayal."
"Shh, shh, that's not true," Mary said.
Andrew came over and knelt on one knee on the other side of Peter, putting an arm across his shoulders in a half-hug. "We all disappointed him last night."
"Not like this. Not like me." He shrugged off Andrew's arm and pushed to his feet, turning back to the ladder.
"Wait, where are you going? Don't go back up on the roof!"
"Last night we were gathered around that table—" Peter pointed for emphasis "—that table right there, and Jesus made a vow to not eat bread or drink wine until we can all eat and drink it together with him in his Father's kingdom." His eyes swept over the other disciples. "So all of your questions and fears about him being gone are almost as damning as my denials! Of course he's coming back! And when he does, I don't deserve to be in this room after the things he did and said here last night, and after what I did and said out there!" And with that, he climbed the ladder up through the hatch and vanished from their sight.
It was a long night, and dawn found almost everybody in the house in various stages of anxiety or ill temper. Mary watched all of them as they struggled with their fears and questions. Some of the disciples were still unaccounted for, and Barnabas enlisted his nephew, John Mark, to go out and see if he could learn anything of the whereabouts of the missing men. The boy was still a few years away from his bar mitzvah. If he rallied a few of his friends, there was almost no place in the city a small gang of scruffy boys running about wouldn't be able to explore to varying degrees. They would be nearly invisible due to the simple fact that they were children.
Mary Magdalene and some of the other women had gathered some oils, herbs, and spices that they intended to apply to the wrappings around the body of Jesus, but as it was still Shabbat, they would have to wait until the following day. As the weather outside warmed, the subtle fragrances of the spices came and went in the upper rooms as the wind quartered around the house and found different windows through which to enter and carry the whiffs and tangs to all corners. Along with the breezes came the normal din of city life. Voices calling out, a bit of music here and there, an occasional braying of a donkey from a nearby stable, and a few times, the tramp of marching feet. All of the sounds were normal, but the disciples were so keyed up that every voice that cried out was crying out to point the authorities to their hiding place in the upper room of the house. Every footstep, especially those of troops of soldiers, belonged to the men coming to arrest them. But as the day wore on and nothing happened, their anxieties began to diminish somewhat.
After sundown, all of the Marys together prepared a fresh meal. A few more of the disciples had been located and they began to straggle in, but they had no news of anything, other than that Pilate had sealed the tomb and set a guard before it. Instead of being dissuaded by the report, the Magdalene and other women, with the exception of mother Mary herself, were even more determined to anoint the body of Jesus as soon as the sun had risen enough to allow them to make their way through the streets back to the Gennath gate, and from there to the tomb of Jesus outside the city.
Late in the day, Matthew and James came back to the house. They had heard a rumor. A body had been found hanging by the neck from a tree above the Kidron Valley, below the Temple Mount and directly across from Gethsemane. The rumors said it was one of the followers of Jesus. The only two disciples who remained unaccounted for were Thomas and Judas.
Andrew climbed the ladder to the roof to tell Peter. After a short time, both of them came down the ladder. If anything, Peter appeared more tired and disheveled than he had the night before. His tunic was rumpled and creased. Dark circles cupped his eyes.
"Tomorrow…" He cleared his throat and announced in a voice hoarse from thirst and from not speaking to anyone all day, "Tomorrow, three of us will go and see if the rumors about one of Jesus' followers being hung have any truth. I will be one of the three. Who will go with me?"
Simon the Zealot immediately raised a hand. "I'll go." James, the son of Zebedee, also held up a hand.
Peter nodded. He started to turn back to the ladder, but paused. Instead, he crossed over to where the wineskins hung from pegs in the wall. He took a cup from the adjacent shelf and a wineskin from a peg, and filled the cup. He drank it all, gulping it down, his head tilting back as the cup emptied. He sighed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The others watched him. Feeling their eyes on him, he faced them, studying them for a moment.
"You all look terrible," he said. "Get some rest." With that, he put the cup back on the shelf, took a small loaf of bread left over from supper, and went to a dark corner of the room where sleeping mats had been laid out, and with a grunt lowered himself down and, rolling on his side to face the wall, settled himself there, clutching his loaf of bread.
At dawn the next morning, golden sunlight breached the horizon to the east, crossing the barren tablelands of Perea beyond the Dead Sea, which still lay in shadows. The light reached Herod's Temple, and the upper city of Jerusalem, and shone through the window of Mary's room, painting the opposite wall with warmth, highlighting the bumps and ridges in the plaster there.
In her bed, Mary opened her eyes and lay there on her back, listening. The city was quiet. Only a few bird calls and the soft coo of a dove broke the early silence. But there was something more, something different that she had only heard once before in all her life. The night she gave birth to her first son, the heavens had burst forth in light and song—thousands of voices lifted in praise. When the chorus ended, the last notes lingered in the air. She heard that sound again, like glorious music that had ended, yet could almost still be heard.
She heard Mary Magdalene and Mary the wife of Clopas talking quietly in their room as they readied themselves with their spices and oils for the walk to the tomb of Jesus. In a very short while, they left the house and their voices floated up through Mary's window. They were asking themselves how they were going to move the stone in front of the tomb. Would the Roman soldiers help them? They would have to break the seal Pilate had ordered to be placed on the stone. That was not likely. Their voices faded as they walked away from the house.
Mary stretched her arms out and flexed her hands. She should've been up already. The disciples had talked long into the night, discussing many things about what to do moving forward. Their agitated voices had kept her awake.
She rose and dressed for the day, going about her morning routines as quietly as she could, not wishing to disturb anybody who still needed rest. Going out to the main room, she prepared some food and set it on the table. A servant had already been to the closest fountain and brought back water for the day and she boiled some of it to steep some ginger root shavings for tea if any of the disciples needed it to settle their stomachs after drinking perhaps a little more wine than they should have as they discussed and debated into the night gone before.
After a while, Peter got up from his pallet and, without speaking to her, went up to the roof. A few minutes later he came back and went straight to the brazier where the tea was still steeping. He leaned over and sniffed it and grunted. Using a handle that lay next to the brazier, he picked up the pot and poured off some of the tea into a cup and took it back to the table where he sat down, staring at nothing and sipping the tea. Mary set some bread and a few pieces of dried fish on the table. He didn't appear to notice.
After a little while, John rose from his pallet and mirrored Peter's earlier actions, sitting down across the table from him. The other disciples began stirring as well. None of them spoke to anybody, although John's brother, James, punched John's shoulder before sitting down next to him.
A breathless voice calling from outside broke the mood.
"Mary! Mary!" It was Mary Magdalene, still some distance from the house, but running. Peter pushed back from the table and stood. Mary went to a window to see what was happening, and the Magdalene burst into the room from the stairway.
"He's gone! He's gone!"
"Slow down, slow down!" Peter said, grabbing her shoulders. "Who is gone?"
"Jesus! The stone is rolled away and the tomb is empty! I don't know what happened!"
Peter pushed back from the table and ran to the stairs, almost toppling headfirst down them in his haste. John leaped up and followed him. Mary heard the smack and grunts of two bodies colliding in the stairway, then Peter's head reappeared. "Simon, take James and go see about the hanged man!"
He vanished again. There was chaos in the room for a few minutes as the disciples peppered Mary Magdalene with more questions and then divided into two parties. One group went off to determine if the hanged man actually existed and to see if it might be Thomas or Judas. The rest of the group followed the Magdalene down the stairs and headed off at a run toward the Gennath gate and the tomb of Jesus.
Mary was left alone, standing with a towel in her hand in the middle of the room.
She moved to the table and righted a couple of cups that had been knocked over in the commotion, wiping the spills with the towel. In a patch of sun coming through one of the windows, a loaf of bread and some scraps of fish lay on the floor, having been dropped and trampled underfoot in the exodus. She sighed and fetched a straw broom from a corner. She began sweeping the debris. Dust motes swirled in the sunbeams.
Now that it was quiet again, the sound that was not quite a sound of voices lifted in song reached her ears, and she realized it had been there all morning, heard only by her. Nobody else had mentioned it. She almost knew the tune; it was elusive, but familiar. She tried to hum a bit of it. She was humming to herself, at peace with the moment, when a shadow fell across the patch of sunlight on the floor.
The song ended.
She stopped sweeping. Her head lifted, but she didn't turn.
"Eema?"
She closed her eyes, squeezing out tears that had immediately welled up at the sound of that oh-so-familiar voice.
Then a voice she hadn't expected spoke her name.
"Mary?"
Her breath caught in her throat, and slowly she turned, suddenly afraid.
Before her, backlit by the light from the window, stood Jesus.
And, yes. Next to him stood her husband.
Joseph.
Both of them alive. Jesus in a white robe, Joseph in a new tunic and cloak as if he was dressed for a journey or had just returned from one.
She didn't know if they moved, or if she moved, but she found herself in their arms, the three of them in an embrace that had never before taken place in all of history. They swayed back and forth, nearly losing their balance more than once in the joy of their reunion. Mary finally worked her arms free to cup their bearded faces in her hands, and cry and laugh and gasp and sigh and feel so, so much gratitude.
If asked, Mary could not have answered as to how long they remained in that embrace. At last Jesus stepped back. Husband and wife were now free to wrap both arms around each other. Joseph lifting her from the floor, holding her tightly as he spun her around.
Jesus laughed. "It's not too often I get to surprise you, Eema, hm?"
Joseph lowered her back to the floor.
"No, it's not. Thank you," she said, wiping away tears and pulling Joseph close again.
"I have to tell you something though."
Joseph shook his head. "Let me tell her."
Jesus nodded, and Joseph turned Mary toward himself.
Mary didn't need to be told. She saw it in his eyes. "You can't stay, can you?"
"Only for a short time."
"How long?"
Jesus answered. "Both of us will be here for another forty days. In that time, I have many things to do and places to go, but he can stay with you for the entire time."
She studied her son's face for a few moments, then pulled Joseph to her again for a kiss and another long hug. "Then we will live a lifetime in those forty days." Looking up at her husband, she said, "We have much to catch up on. Do you know anything about what you have missed in the last seventeen years?"
"Nothing," he said. "And wait until you hear about where I have been! You won't believe the people I've talked with. And our son! I saw him face down the Accuser of men and laugh in his face. Ah, you would've been so proud!"
"I am already proud!"
Jesus interrupted them by touching each of their shoulders. "I will leave the two of you to get reacquainted, but I will be back tonight to talk to my disciples. I would've talked to them at the tomb, but they saw it was empty and went running off again. So much running! I did speak to Mary though. She should be back shortly."
Mary remembered. "Oh, Peter is so upset. He is sure he has lost your blessing."
"I know. I will speak to him. It will be fine."
"Where are you going?" Joseph asked.
Jesus sighed and shook his head. "I need to speak to cousin John right away to ask him if he really thinks it's a good idea to go marching back into Herod's palace to present himself there with his head returned to his shoulders."
Mary grimaced. "He can be so stubborn. We will be praying for you."
But Jesus was already gone.