I-YOUniverse

When John led Mary away from the cross, before they came through the city gate, suddenly she began to retch; all the long journey home the spasms continued, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth, tears in her eyes.

Friday night, Saturday, nothing seemed real. It was as if all life were a mirage.

Her thoughts kept going back to that place. If only she could have died for her son! One old woman, what did she matter compared to all the good her son had done, teaching and healing?

Friday night harsh dreams of soldiers, or priests, or the growling wind woke her. An ice sweat soaked her clothes through.

Saturday she felt useless and disoriented.

In the grand home of John’s uncle there was a maid to care for every need. Mary wasn’t used to being waited on. Or to warm scented baths, soft clothes, and silver platters heaped with quail, fish, dates, figs.

She wanted chickens to feed or laundry to pound! But she sat quietly, doing nothing.

Climbing that hill, listening to Jesus take each breath. Slow, hard breaths.

In the house there were so many passover guests!

Loud noises shocked her. When a servant dropped a bowl in the kitchen, Mary screamed. It sounded to her like the blow of a hammer.

Worst was the talking, laughing crowd.

She found herself staring at everyone as if they were the ones who shouted “Crucify him!”

So (she thought) this is what old Simeon meant, all those years ago in the Temple, when he said, “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

As the Law required, she and Joseph had just circumcised Jesus, sacrificing two small pigeons, all they could afford. A blood stain on the baby’s blanket embarrassed her.

At the cross she wiped Jesus’ wounds, her veil was drenched in blood. When they left Golgotha, It was raining; John wrapped her in a dry blanket and left her veil on the ground.

Now, in the cold light of Saturday, she looked at her hands. There was blood on them! No (she thought calmly) I have washed them again and again; they are clean. But it was so easy to remember what they had looked like.

What he looked like, dead, in her arms. As quiet as a baby sleeping.

He was only sleeping! Of course, after such a day! He was exhausted. She’d bathe his wounds, and soothe them with oil. She’d make him a warm broth.

 He’d wake up! He’d look at her, smile, call her, “Mother!”

The smile twisted into a sneer. The voice mocked, “Let him come down from the cross now and we will believe in him!”

“Eloi! Eloi! Lema sabachthani!” she heard Jesus scream.

Then, it was John’s voice, “Mother Mary!”

He squatted beside her, his hand stroking her face. “You’re dreaming! It’s just a nightmare.”

It took a moment for his face to come into focus.

Only a few days ago, he was a boy; in one day he had become a man. He’d seen what no one should see: torture, drunken indifference, pious hatred.

“How will I ever forget?” she sobbed.

John held her gently. “James is here,” he said a moment later. “He wants you to come home with him.”

“No!”

“Will you speak to him?”

Mary hesitated. She didn’t like to quarrel. She was afraid of what she might say.

“No!”

“Wouldn’t Jesus want you to?”

She nodded.

“Send him in,” John told a servant. “Do you want me to stay?”

“Yes,” Mary said.

James rushed into the room. “Mary—!” He noticed that John had stayed in the room. “Leave us alone!”

“No,” John said.

“Mary, tell him to go away.”

“No,” Mary said.

James was used to being obeyed. “Mary, this should be strictly a family matter.”

“It is,” Mary said. “On the cross Jesus told him ‘Here is your mother’; and, me, ‘Behold your son.’ I’m part of John’s family from now on.”

James’ eyes glittered with anger.

“I warned your son many times what would happen, if he kept on!” James said, his quiet tone shaking. “But he didn’t pay any attention. I’m the eldest, he should have obeyed me.”

“He obeyed his Father.”

“Joseph never—”

“Joseph was not his Father!”

James’ face hardened in triumph, as if vindicated after many years’ struggle.

“I knew it!”

“Adonai was his Father!” John said, moving to stand between James and Mary.

“This is none of your business!” James said to him.

“On the contrary,” John said, “it is my business. Mary is my mother—Jesus said so. You will speak to her with respect, or not at all.”

“Mary!” James’ tone softened.

“You and your brothers were in the crowd, shouting ‘Crucify him!’ weren’t you?” Mary asked.

James glanced away, with no place to hide.

“Yes,” he answered.

“He was the Messiah,” Mary said. “Shaddai—not a Roman—Shaddai was his Father. Joseph knew it, that’s why he married me, though I was with child. Do you actually think your father, righteous man that he was, would have married a woman unfaithful even before marriage? No, he would not, and you know it.”

James stared at her.

“Joseph never broke the Law of Moses in his life!” Mary said.

Now James looked confused. She was right, and he knew it.

“It doesn’t make any difference now, Mary. Jesus is dead.”

“I think today is not the right time for this,” John said. “Perhaps, in a few weeks, when feelings have begun to heal.”

“There will never be healing!” Mary cried. She sank into a chair, and covered her face with her hands.

James moved toward her, but John blocked the much older man.

“Through that door,” John said, “a servant will show you out.”

Mary looked at John with gratitude. She’d forgotten that Jesus once named John and his brother (whose name was also James) Boanerges “sons of thunder.”

“I don’t want to be a burden to you,” she said. John’s branch of the family, fishermen in Galilee, were not rich.

“A burden?” John replied. “You are a treasure!”

“A grieving old woman—what good am I?”

“You know, Adonai cherishes people, especially. Solomon said, ‘The beauty of the aged is their gray hair.’ How old was Mother Sarah? How old was your relation Elizabeth, the fiery baptizer’s mother?”

“When you’re old, tell me then about the glory of the aged.”

“If I live to be 100, I won’t see anything more terrifying than what we have seen. I think I aged a dozen years yesterday.”

Mary shuddered, seeing again the body of her son stretched and torn, looming over her, and two other men on either side of him, in just as much torment.

“He used to say that in three days he would rise again,” John said. “What do you suppose he meant?”

Mary replied, “He also said that anyone who wanted to follow him must take up the cross daily.”

She sighed. Soon the sabbath would be end, night would fall. She hoped tonight she could sleep.

Perhaps one day she would understand. Now she didn’t, and she didn’t care to.

John walked arm in arm with her to the bedroom. She changed into cool fresh robes. A maid brought a bowl of milk with honey and spices. A small flame of a clay oil lamp burned on the table, filling the room with a slight fragrance.

Tonight  she felt calmer. Nothing could bring Jesus back. Her eyes closed, and she fell into a deep dreamless sleep….

Hours passed. Silence filled in the house. Here and there small lamps burned.

Very early Sunday morning, though dawn was more than two hours away, Mary had slept a long refreshing sleep.

The curtains at the window stirred. Moonlight shone in. Something woke her.

Or rather Someone, standing beside her bed, casting light as others cast shadow.

Was she dreaming?

He wasn’t a ghost, because he was warm. He reached out his hand and touched hers, to waken her fully.

“Mother!” he called her. She felt Love calling her out of the darkness. All the horror of the past two days dissipated, like a cloud of steam. The wounds of hate and fear were gone. Only Love remained.

“Jesus!” she cried.

“Yes,” he said, “I am.”

“Am I dreaming?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “and Yes. I am a dream that is true and real. My disciples and friends will find I am risen in a few hours, but you are first.”

“I failed you,” Mary said. “I should have—”

“No, Mother, you didn’t fail. You were there with me. My Father chose you to teach me how to be human. Your flesh is God-made-flesh in me.”

“James doesn’t understand. The family—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll bring him along! He’s stubborn, but stubborn for my sake is strength. All my brothers and sisters will believe soon. You’re responsible for that. You planted the seeds, even when you felt pulled between us.”

“Yes.”

“All the pain and lies are over. Just stay close to my beloved ones, John will care for you.”

“I’ll have to tell you’re alive.”

“No, Mother,” Jesus said. “I am in this moment yours alone. Only you are my mother. In the Father’s time and the Father’s way he will show the others.”

There was silence. The moonlight seemed brighter than before.

“Don’t leave me! I can’t bear to give you up again.”

“Wait in Jerusalem for my Father’s promise. I will not leave you desolate. Actually, when the Comforter comes, you’ll know him. For, he came upon you once before-remember?”

The moonlight faded. “Mother, I love you,” he said. The words echoed forever in her heart.

###

Regarding the perpetual virginity of Mary. (1) It’s always good to respect others’ views. (2)  Protestants don’t know for a fact that Jesus’ siblings had Mary for their mother. (3) In the case of this fictional narrative it heightens the tension between James and Mary if she were his stepmother.

“Mary, you’re not to go out to see him,” James said  earlier that week. “It’s dangerous for a man, for you— I forbid it!”

She had promised herself she wouldn’t weep. And she didn’t.

James was ten when she married Joseph, the son of his first wife, who died in childbirth with her sixth child. Mary felt Joseph’s first family never approved of her. Though they never said so, she thought they even believed the rumor that she was pregnant by a Roman soldier.

 ”He’s acting crazy. Parading into Jerusalem like some kind of Messiah! Turning the Temple upside down—the Temple, Mary! Driving out the lambs and the pigeons! Or was it the traders, even the priests, that he imagined on the tip of his whip! Who does he think he is!”

She’d heard that whiny criticism all Jesus’ life. Joseph’s first family  were jealous of him. Deep down, they knew he outclassed them. The more gentle and humble he was, the more sullen and hostile they were.

“You remember Joseph’s brothers?” she said. “You’re no better!”

“Don’t set one foot out of this house!” James insisted.

After all the men had gone, Mary knew she had lost precious minutes.

Though, James had a point. Jerusalem wasn’t safe, especially with the people aroused as they were now, especially for a Galilean, an older woman who weighed scarcely 90 pounds. She didn’t know the streets of the Holy City well. After Joseph died she had stayed in Nazareth during passover.

No matter. Jesus was not going to die alone!

The sun began its ascent above the horizon; clouds crowded the skies, as if all heaven were gathering to watch him die.

The Son of God.

Her son.

Where are the angels now, the warrior angels, the angel of death who saved a whole nation from the Egyptians! she wondered.

Send twelve legions of angels! she prayed silently. He is your Son, isn’t he?

She didn’t know these streets. They were supposed to…

She wasn’t demon possessed, was she? All these years, a hoax of the devil?

Smaller and smaller steps led her into a maze of narrow stone roads, walled with houses all around her. She didn’t recognize them. She turned one way, then another, until at last she simply laid her face against a wall of peeling, dirty plaster.

*Shaddai!” she sobbed. “Why are you silent? I can’t, I can’t—”

“Mary!”

It was a soft voice, it was John, the young boy whom Jesus loved best among the disciples, she thought. Although Jesus had no favorites—he loved them all, especially young John.

Anguish darkened his tone. ” Mary! What are you doing here! We’ve been frantic to find you!”

Confused, Mary looked around. Nothing was familiar, except the boy, now a man, but to her, a boy.

“Where is this place?” she asked.

“You want to be with him?”

Stifling pain and exhaustion, she jerked her head. Of course, where else would she be?

“Come, then.”

He led her along narrow alleys and tracks made by animals and slaves. Not far she heard sounds of the mob, jeers and cries, shouted curses, harsh orders.

Then, John led her into the main road, through the gate of the city to a place that beggared imagination for its horror.

Heaps of garbage, from which came thick oily smoke. The picked clean carcasses of dogs, possums, hare, the feathers, claws, skulls of birds.

Beyond them a hill. She shuddered, imagining in the rock before her a massive forehead, the eye sockets of a skull. Golgotha. She’d heard her sons speak of this place, but she thought they were exaggerating, trying to scare her.

John  whispered to a slave, who disappeared in the crowds that gathered in clumps. Priests and scribes here. Pharisees there. They had slaves rake the ground before them, to keep from being contaminated by the litter of death all around them. On three crosses were stretched the bodies of men who had been human before they were tortured; remains of other crosses lay about on the ground.

In a few minutes the slave returned, escorting a woman Mary knew well: Magdalene. And with her were others.

They surrounded Jesus’ mother as she drew near the cross.

John approached the centurion. “This is the mother of Jesus of Nazareth.”

The sun-hardened centurion eyed her. She imagined that compassion flickered in his eyes, then it was gone. He was his mother’s son, after all.

He nodded, and turned away.

Magdalene and John supported her on either side, as she drew near to the cross.

At eye level were his bony feet, secured to the wood with a massive nail.

From somewhere deep within she gained strength to stand alone, and gently she shrugged the others off. Without flinching she looked up at the body, bruised and torn, blood blackened in strips, welts, across the rib cage.

She had to do this alone. Who but she could grasp the horror of her son dying a death designed to be slow, with maximum torment!

Close to the crosses the soldiers had made a small fire, which sputtered in the wind. Drops of rain stung as if flung from a slingshot.

The squad on crucifixion detail were allowed to drink. They cast bones for the condemned man’s seamless tunic. Others, sober, several arm’s lengths removed, stood guard to protect them from the crowd.

By now there was no light but the torches, blown to dim tatters by the wind, and the soldier’s fire.

Clouds had put out the sun. Deafening cracks of thunder exploded in the sky, the ground shuddered. But there was no lightening.

Above the shrieks of the wind, Mary heard Jesus scream, “Eloi! Eloi! Lema sabachthani!”

Mary couldn’t have prayed even that cry of agony because she couldn’t make sense of God any more.

She had often wondered if she had dreamed the angel who startled her with, “Hail, thou art highly favored!” Surely Joseph’s stubborn loyalty to her was no dream, his quiet pride at the birth of her firstborn son—what would he think now? She couldn’t think of the rest, the others who gathered at his birth. A strange foreign face, a language she couldn’t understand, bowing; inside a golden case a jar of myrrh. Who’d give such a thing to a baby! Skies full of angels she saw but couldn’t hear in memory. A few weeks after the family returned to Nazareth, the women laughed when she came to the well “You know who he looks like, your Jesus?” they said “That Roman who was so-o-o smitten with you that goy! what was his name!” Laughter— but guttural slurred from thick lips of a helmeted face

yourkid aRomanbastard? somebodysaystome, lookit! Isays therebetweenhislegsthebastard surelooksjewishtome hahahaa

The centurion stood between a red puffy face in armor and her. “Back to your post!”

Nosir’struesomeguytoldme’spaterwasaRomanhonest

The centurion shouted, “Back to your post!”

The soldier turned about, too drunk to perform the maneuver sharply.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the centurion said to her.

“My son!”

The Roman caught John’s eye. “Take her home,” he said.

Even the sober staggered in this dark wind.

Mary could no longer remember a time when clouds had not roiled overhead, choking off light, or crosses had not groaned in the wind. She couldn’t remember anything, but that moment. Looking at John, when he stepped forward at the centurion’s bidding, she couldn’t remember who he was.

“Woman.”

Gently in grave pain, Jesus spoke to her.

He might have called her, Mother. But somehow “Woman” was what he needed to call her. She felt, though he clearly meant her,  he was speaking to her for the sake of all women. That was what she felt, because she couldn’t think.

The pain was still there, the dark, the sneers, the Romans.

But she felt saved from all the dangers that had been threatening her all that day.

His eyes moved from embracing her alone, and now included John. “Here is your son,” Jesus said. He had difficulty speaking. He couldn’t get much breath. But she heard him plainly.

To John he said, “Here is your mother.”

That’s why, when she left there, she went home with John, and stayed. Never returned to the house of James and the other brothers.

She passed the remainder of that day sheltered by the five words Jesus spoke to her: “Woman, here is your son.”

The worst had passed, but terrifying moments were still to come.

When, with the centurion overseeing, they lifted the cross from its hole in the rock-hard, slick ground and laid it down. When they pried the nails loose from Jesus’ hands and feet. When they laid him in her arms.

“My son! My son!” she cried, rocking him as best she could.

She took her veil, wet with the rain, and wiped his body, wiped the blood from the wounds of his flogging and of the nails,  and of the spear run into his side.

She didn’t notice how long it was before Joseph and Nicodemus urged John to take her home. If she wondered, “How can that young boy be strong enough to pull me from the body, to lift me and carry me,” she didn’t remember.

He did. So they told her. She didn’t remember anything, but Jesus speaking from the cross to her.

(to be continued)

If she’d been at home, that day would have begun like any other, but sabbath: up early, she splashed some water on her face, scattered grain for the chickens, milked Jael and Jezebel the goats, baked bread for her sons and grandsons. Twice the usual amount, the day before sabbath.

There were 16 in their families. As the oldest mother, it was up to her to get the day going.

The men had to work construction—had to, mind you—in Sepphoris, the Gentile town nearby. They would have preferred to work in Nazareth.

But jobs weren’t so easily come by in Jewish Nazareth, where most lived at or below subsistence. The prosperous and prominent shunned Mary and her brood.

It was the old story. She’d gotten so used to it by now, she hardly noticed when people snubbed her. Long ago, she had learned to go about her business and pay no attention.

But she wasn’t at home. Not today, a bad dream from which she could not awake.

This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not to her son.

This punishment the Romans dealt out to murderers, rebels, misfits. Her son was a gentle soul who…

When he was little, her firstborn son kept birds. You wouldn’t  find these in palaces—they were just sparrows, and the chickens she kept for eggs and the occasional feast. In his clothes she’d constantly find a bit of dry bread that he’d saved for the birds.

He never lost his love for animals. They sensed it. His hands, now big rough carpenter’s hands, always were stroking a cat or scratching an old plow horse behind the ears or gently bringing home a stray.

She saw him (must have been four), his hands barely big enough to hold his prize, his black eyes sparkling with curiosity, his hair mussed. He had found a bird’s nest containing two speckled brown eggs, and was pleading to place it in the bushes so that the mother bird could hatch them.

Then, she remembered one day years later, he asked if he would ever marry. His friends were being betrothed. But his parents had never broached the subject with him.

Not handsome, but hard working, intelligent, loyal, he would make any of the young girls of Nazareth a fine match.

There was a girl Jesus liked. He managed to be at the well every morning about the time she appeared to get the day’s water.

But, the year passed when others Jesus’ age were betrothed, and Joseph still waited.

“Wouldn’t Adonai appear to me in a dream, like before?” he insisted.

Jesus asked them both, Joseph and Mary. It was the last real conversation he had with his father.

“Will I get married?”

Joseph had learned his oldest was different. He did his chores, he learned the trade as well as any of them, but his heart was in the holy books.

He spent hours with the rabbi; and when the boy was occupied with a scroll, the old man’s face would light up with joy. Every rabbi longed for one student like Jesus in his life.

Joseph did not reply to Jesus’ question right away. With a stick he poked at the fire, which had died out. Once its flames were again snapping and popping in the green wood, he asked, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” the boy replied. Then, he wandered off into the hills by himself. Gone a whole night and all the next day.

Then, when he was back at the crowded table with his sisters and brothers, some of them not far from marriage, Joseph looked at him, an eyebrow raised the only hint of the inquiry.

Jesus shook his head. So slight a movement, only Mary and Joseph saw it. They never spoke of marrying again.

A few months after that, a drunk Roman drove his chariot off the main road through Nazareth. The horses, struggling to keep the chariot stable, trampled Joseph, walking home late from work.

“Who can finish such detailed inlay?” Joseph’s Roman employer complained. “No one but Joseph.”

After the funeral Jesus spent the next two days in Sepphoris completing his father’s task.

The eighth day Mary and Jesus went to the cave in the hillside, where Joseph’s body had been laid. In the harsh light, Jesus’ face shone with tears.

“He wasn’t my father,” Jesus whispered, “I mean, physically?”

“No,” Mary said. Nothing more.

They never discussed such things. Besides, though he was only fourteen, both were aware that Jesus knew exactly who his Father was.

In Nazareth they called James and Joseph and Simon and Judas the sons of Joseph; but, Jesus, in ordinary conversation, the son of Mary.

Everyone in Nazareth could count.

At least she was in Jerusalem. But this year that was no comfort.

Why wasn’t Joseph here! Mary screamed at heart. She flung across the room the water dipper she was holding.

Tears of anger stung her eyes. Fear choked in her throat.

She felt abandoned by God and utterly alone.

(To be continued)