Chapter Nineteen

Verse One

I walked this sick land with Jesus nearly fifty years ago now. Tying together these broken and faded images is like weaving a tapestry in the dark. We may have decided to take a course for Nazareth, or we may have been going in the other direction, but these events seem to connect more easily if we were near home when my younger brother Joses found us. He was in the road ahead of us, and when he was close enough to recognize Jesus and me at the front of the group, he ran to us. He was dirty with matted hair and stained garments; he must have walked for days.

“I went the wrong way to find you,” Joses said. “I’ve searched so many villages, each time hearing that you had just been there.” Jesus and I hugged and kissed him as he continued to chatter like a child proud of his accomplishment. “Either I was repeatedly sent in the wrong direction or you had no planned route. Yesterday I—”

“Joses,” I said, “why did you seek us? Are things well at home?”

Joses stopped speaking and surveyed the group. I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or disappointed by the number of followers, or maybe he expected something more than a collection of peasants who looked as bedraggled as he. “No, Brother. Things are not well.” He turned his face as if he would not reveal the secret to us. I grabbed his cloak and spun him around. Jesus touched my arm to settle me.

Peter made his way to stand beside us, his jaw clenched and tilted high like a solemn guard.

Joses rubbed his palms together, then bent his head as if speaking into his hands. “Our father is dying.”

Before I could press Joses for details, Jesus continued walking north as if we had hesitated for only a momentary rest. The others in the group—three hundred?—followed him without command. Some may have heard Joses’ news and understood Jesus’ urgency or, even though he usually gave some indication of his intentions, they needed no instruction to fall in behind him. Some were from the region and surely did not need to be told that we were on the way to Nazareth, as had been the plan weeks before when these meanderings began. Perhaps they thought that a new stage in the project was approaching.

Joses and I joined the others. He had the innocence of a much younger man. As a child, the other boys his age had often tricked him, and Joses fell victim to all such tricks: eating a turd he was told was lamb, trying to ride a goat that nearly bit off his fingers, attempting to jump over a fire that he fell into and singed off half his hair. Several times Jesus and I would find the pranksters and punch them in the stomach, only to have their angry fathers confront Joseph, who would scold us. (I always suspected he was proud of us.)

Joses filled me in as we walked. It was difficult for him, clearing his throat and stuttering as if he half-doubted what he was saying or expected me to call him a liar. Joseph had taken ill three weeks before. Mother had found him slumped by the door with a blistering fever and soiled clothes. He lay in bed for a week, taking little food and waking for only seconds at a time. James feared the worst and had sent Joses to find us.

“What of Mother?” I asked.

“Crazier than ever,” said Joses. “Traces patterns on his face. Marks his chest with ash. Speaks in some language I have never heard.”

“The others?”

“James runs the house, and not so badly. He has a child now, born a few months after you left. The others are the same as they always were. We have sheep. Simon and I tend to them. Deborah spins the wool. We’re all about the same, except for Father, who may be dead by now.”

We all assume that our parents will die before we do, but that does nothing to prepare us. Unless we were far too late, I expected to find an unpleasant home—neighbors washing and preparing the body in the inane ancient manner, Mother wailing, and James giving orders and trying not to show that he was walking on the edge. He adored Joseph and would in time probably break down and weep uncontrollably, but James had always claimed that, as a Judean, he was nobler than the rest of us and thereby in more control of his emotions. I could not imagine how Jesus and I would abide him if his grief made him even more arrogant.

A few furlongs up the road, I leaned close to Joses. “Have you seen Leah lately?”

“Who? Oh, wait, yes, Leah. A week or so ago, near Samuel’s, the baker.”

“Was she alone?”

“No. She was with somebody. Why?”

I looked around to see if anyone was listening. I’m not sure why I should have cared. “Who was she with?”

Joses cocked his head. “I think it was her mother. Why?”

“Never mind,” I said. I guess I should have felt a bit guilty, although I didn’t, for having heard that my father could be dying, I was still focused on a woman who, for all I knew, might not care one grain of salt’s worth about me. The least I could do was ask about him. “So, do you really think Father is dying?”

“A doctor looked him over and left a powder to mix with milk,” Joses said. “He said the mixture would ease the fever some but that he could not do any more for him. He suggested we pray for a miracle.”

That gave me a terrifying thought, and I took Peter and Andrew aside to tell them that Jesus might wish to heal Joseph. We had to figure out what to do if he tried.

Verse Two

We were closer to home than I realized, and when we neared Nazareth, Joses ran ahead to tell the family we were coming. I had the uncanny feeling that I was returning home a stranger, and although the village looked the same as it always had when we arrived a day after Joses, I noticed features otherwise discernible only by an outsider. The houses were smaller, the people slower, the cows thinner. The children darted about the streets in odd gaits, as if the earth was unsteady beneath their feet. Old men whose names I could no longer recall watched us with curious expressions of both recognition and suspicion. Perhaps they thought us mad to return to this place, and madder still for bringing others to witness the despair.

“If Father dies,” I said to Jesus, “James will probably leave. You know how he’s always acted as if we were not his real family, and he’ll feel no obligation to care for Mother. He’ll probably go to Jerusalem.” Two thin dogs ran barking across the road as if they were pursuing game. They almost collided with us. Jesus stopped to watch them scamper behind a house as if he had not heard me. “Can Joses and Simon take care of her? Jesus, do you think that you or I have to stay here with her? Or what if James says that he now owns the house and tries to send everyone else away?”

Jesus cocked his head the way one does when trying to trace a distant sound.

Mary took his arm as if offering support to a sick man. “Jesus, what’s the matter?”

“Joseph is dead,” Jesus said. He turned to me and gave a slight nod.

I shook my head. “You don’t know that. Let’s go. Either way, Mother needs us.” I suspected that he was right, and part of me hoped that he was, but I was not sure if this would aid or harm his reputation. If Joseph were indeed dead, would he now be seen as a seer, and followers would expect more predictions? Maybe they’d treat him like an oracle. “Master, how will I make my fortune?” “Rabbi, will I ever find a husband?” Their petty, selfish concerns would be all they would think of, not the deliverance of their nation.

More worrisomely, would Jesus try to raise Joseph from the dead? I doubted he would try something so audacious. Despite the ruses I had helped him pull off, he didn’t think of himself as a miracle worker or magician and considered these healings in terms of treating social ailments, not curing physical diseases. At least that’s what I hoped.

But what if his “miracles” had gone to his head? Andrew and I had already discussed this possibility, but we could not decide how we would handle things if Jesus stood over Joseph and mumbled some incantation. Just the attempt to overcome death might cause some people to consider him demonic. Would he need to pronounce that the Lord had explained to him in a dream that trying to raise the dead was not blasphemous? Those who would believe him would then expect more dream messages.

If Jesus was wrong, and Joseph was not dead, how would that affect things? Would his pronouncement be seen as a spiritual failure, or simply a minor embarrassment? “Master, how could you make such a blunder?” “Master, you were just preparing yourself for the worst and spoke too quickly, right?” Some might try to wring a metaphorical meaning from his words. “Rabbi, I understand now—your father’s illness was a test, and now he is better and his old self is dead.” Maybe he would try to heal our father, and I could only hope that the old man rallied at least until we left Nazareth. But what about the inaccurate premonition? Perhaps he could say that he began the process of resurrecting Joseph at the moment he divined him dead.

Whether Joseph died or not did not mean much to me. He was my father, but he had hardly been more than just there. How his death or survival was handled by Jesus, or translated to the crowd by me and Andrew and the others, was what mattered at the moment. I tried to convince myself that regardless of what happened, we could weave a narrative that would work to our favor. That would be the real miracle.

If only Judas were here.

Joses burst from the door of our house when we arrived. I expected him to announce that our father was dead, but he just stood before us as if we had a message for him. Jesus and I entered the house. James stared blankly at us. His wife Sarah sat on the floor with a drooling child of a year or two on her lap. Two women, neighbors, kneaded dough at the table. Slowly, our siblings, including James, came and hugged us. Deborah pressed my cheeks with her hands and kissed me, then did the same to Jesus. Simon told us that he had prayed for us to return home, where we belonged. Over their shoulders, I could see the bed: Joseph stretched out like a corpse, Mother curled beside him, mumbling. I went to the bed and took Joseph’s flaky, skeletal hand. Mother’s eyes were closed, and she appeared not to notice us. She held Joseph’s head.

Jesus put his arms around Mother and whispered something to her.

Without opening her eyes, she wailed and sat up as if she had been startled from sleep. She clasped her hands, moved her arms in circles like stirring a large pot, then looked at Jesus and pulled her hands apart as if releasing a bird into his face. She spoke gibberish—“hunkoi hunkoi”—and Jesus nodded in mock understanding. This seemed to give her great joy, and she leapt from the bed and pushed Jesus into her place.

She ran around the bed to embrace me. “Thomas! Thomas, you have brought him back!”

I did not, and still do not, know why she spoke normally to me and not to Jesus (and she never again lapsed into babbling), but I saw clearly that to her, my true and full identity was as my brother’s keeper. I suppose she was right, in a number of ways.

“We are all here, Joseph!” Mother proclaimed. She went about the house touching everyone on the head and counting. She did not stop with family, but included the women in the kitchen. When she looked around and saw that no one was left to count, she left the house to count people in the street. My brother Simon ran after her, found her in a neighbor’s house counting children, and led her back. On the way, he said, she’d counted chickens.

Jesus, meanwhile, sat staring at Joseph. I brushed the old man’s forehead, and his eyebrows fluttered but his eyelids remained shut. His breathing became more rapid, and I took this to mean he was aware that someone else was with him. Whether or not he could recognize our voices, I did not know. I also didn’t know what Jesus thought of his incorrect pronouncement that Joseph had died.

“Father,” I said. “It is Thomas. Jesus is here, too. Father, can you hear me?” His hand moved, maybe voluntarily, or maybe it slipped.

“He’s been this way for three days,” James said. “Sometimes he will move his head or moo like a cow, but he does not respond, at least not in any clear fashion.” He looked toward the door. Mary, Andrew, Peter, James, John, and a few others stood there. I motioned for them to enter, and they squeezed in and gathered around the bed. Mary pushed by the others to stand by Jesus. She was crying.

Jesus stood and began to sing. “O Joseph, you are going, going into darkness, where Abraham has gone, where Moses has gone . . .” I cannot recall more, but what began as a dirge transformed into a sort of children’s memory game in which a list of items is repeated: “where David has gone” and “where Isaiah has gone” and so forth. Then Jesus added lines about Joseph: “Joseph held the hammer, hammer” and “Joseph split the stones, stones.”

To me, this may have been Jesus’ most amazing talent, that on the spot he could compose a melody for any situation. People came in and filled our tiny house, and more stood just outside, and all sang. Everyone sang the first line, then Jesus would point to someone who had to sing the next line, then he’d point to another person, and so on, and soon we were laughing at ourselves for forgetting items in the list when we repeated the lyrics.

Abarrane, the old midwife who’d brought Jesus and me and nearly every other Nazarene child into the light for the past forty years, sang, “Joseph split the Amos, Amos,” and we laughed so hard that we could no longer sing. James kissed his laughing wife’s forehead. Peter threw back his head and guffawed as he punched Andrew on the shoulder. Mary clapped her hands and did a gleeful hop. I think it was the only time I ever saw solemn old Abarrane laugh.

Jesus made his way toward the door and motioned for the others to do the same. He began singing a different song—“We all take this happy journey, but alone, all alone”—and led us to the middle of the street, where he motioned for us to sit. Most of the Nazarenes joined us, including some of the old men who fancied themselves scholars and stood in the back pulling at their beards.

“Be joyous with me!” Jesus said. “I see before me my beloved family, my friends from my childhood in Nazareth, my friends from all quarters of the Galilee, and even some from beyond there. I think we have a few Samaritans and perhaps”—Jesus looked about slyly—“even a Judean or two.” Everyone, except the droll old men, laughed. I suspect they were in no mood for a young man’s sarcasm, or anything else from the younger generation. Maybe they felt a challenge to their delusional self-importance any time someone else got attention. “This is a day, as all days should be for us, not for thinking of our regional and accidental separations, but for rejoicing in being subjects in the empire of the Lord.” The longer-term members of our group erupted into cheers, soon followed by the newer members.

“As we move about, so moves the empire. For what is an empire? Is it the soil within territorial borders? Is it the force of a throne armed by swords and chariots? Is it a mass of people who happen to dwell in an area? Or, is it the people united by a spirit?” More cheers, applause, and shouts of “The people!” and “A spirit!” It was amplified this time by most of the population of Nazareth, who had sat down simply out of curiosity but were soon caught up in Jesus’ spell. I saw them sidling in the back, trying to look nonchalant, talking in hushed voices to their companions, probably saying, “It’s that Jesus. Hasn’t he been gone? Wonder what he’s carrying on about this time.” Soon, though, they moved closer and joined in on the exuberance. I knew most of them, of course, and was happy to see that they were so welcoming of Jesus.

“A uniting spirit, one that holds a people together as the parts of our bodies are held by sinews. But this holding-together is more than mere strings of flesh. It is a harmony, an attunement that runs deeper than the marrow of our bones. It runs through the depth of the body and through the breath in the throat and joins the body to the very air and earth that give it life.”

He continued about “the depths of things” and “the body of God,” and more than ever before, his speech became like a song, with its own distinct elements of tone and rhyme and rhythm. I felt vibrations, as when a chorus sings in a marble amphitheater. He was as masterful as the singing poets of Anatolia who hold audiences in their power for hours with just the sounds flowing from their mouths. Jesus’ words lost their sense for me, or else made a higher sense that needed no attention but instead seeped in like rain into a garden. I saw the others swaying. We were all charmed like the serpents who dance to music that I saw later in India.

Mary stood. She was at the very front, where all could see her. She held her arms above her head as if supporting a falling roof. She began to rock slowly, first from side to side, then in a figure-eight pattern. She dropped her arms and flattened out her palms to look as though she were pushing herself up from the ground.

Andrew stood and rocked. Then Philip. In fives and sixes, others joined in until we looked like rows of grain succumbing to gentle breezes.

I moved from the crowd and nearer to Jesus to get a better look at the event. I wanted to remain fully in the experience, yet witness the whole as well, which is not really possible. Once, years later, I spent a week at the home of a philosopher in Alexandria. Much of our discussion was about the elusive nature of experience, and he pointed out that, even though the same world is available to us all, we are each shackled to one inescapable perspective on that world. Once we attempt to extract ourselves from our perspective to try to get a new view of it, we add another sort of experience to the original experience, like a layer of oil placed on a watery surface. As you peer down through the oil, the water no longer looks natural.

I asked him if he thought that God was beyond this predicament. He said that if so, then we can have no understanding of God and, worse, God can have no understanding of us.

As I struggled to stay in the euphoria of Jesus’ voice, I noticed some movement in the crowd. It parted slightly in the center, the way stalks of wheat lean away from each other, then fall back when an animal walks through a field. In the front, Peter and Andrew stepped aside, James carried his child, and Mother emerged.

James handed the child to Jesus, who kissed and rocked it and continued to recite his poetry. Mother took her place in front of Jesus and threw open her arms. The crowd parted again, and out came the Zebedee brothers, carrying Joseph on a berth of sheets tied across two staffs. They rested one end of the berth on the ground and stood it upright beside Mother.

The sermon and the swaying and the occasional outburst of cheering and crying lasted much of the day. Finally, this body of God dispersed to bake bread, feed sheep, and carry on in two empires, one of sorrow and one of hope.