A.D. 33 (25 page)

But that numbing ache didn't stop in my leg. It slammed into my hips and gathered at the base of my spine, then flashed up my back and sank deep into my mind.

Never had I felt such intense pain. I threw my hands to my head and gripped my skull, wailing in agony. But worse than the physical pain was the darkness.

The darkness of unfathomable shame. I knew then how it felt to loathe myself. I had always been transparent and naked to my Maker in this garden, but now nakedness filled me with shame and self-loathing.

And I knew then that the serpent had deceived me when it said I would not die, because I
had
died to the Father's realm by becoming my own god, mastered by my own will.

Retching, I staggered for the trees and threw myself behind the foliage, terrified that I might be seen in such a state of shame. I crouched there in my own horror and self-loathing for a long time, desperate to undo what I had done. But I had no means to do so, for I was my own god of death now.

“Who told you that you were naked?”

Immediately I recognized the gentle voice, and I caught my breath. I had heard his voice always, for as long as I had been in the garden. It was the same voice I'd heard in Jerusalem—then as a thunder in my very bones, now as a gentle rain filled with compassion.

“Who opened your eyes to see that you were naked?”

I knew…I had. I had by eating the fruit. Though I had always been naked, now I was filled with shame. The fruit had changed my perception of myself and the world.

There was no more green grass visible to me. I could no longer see the light. I had been separated from the light and from love, leaving me aware only of a deep shame and self-loathing. I was in a death of my own making. Surely I deserved nothing more. I that moment, I despised the serpent as much as my own self.

“The serpent deceived me.” I wept.

“And so you have entered deception and death. In this death you cannot eat the fruit of life.”

It was true! How could death create new life? I had become a god of death. I was bound to suffering forever.

My surroundings shifted, and I saw that I was no longer in the garden. Now I was in a vast, dark wasteland of my own making. And there I wept bitterly, swallowed by remorse and loneliness, because by my own will I had separated myself from my Creator.

When I could bear my self-loathing no longer, the voice spoke again, now like a warm breeze that drifted through my mind.

“What is your name, Daughter?”

I blinked in the darkness, straining to see.

Again: “What is your name, Daughter?”

Daughter.
How sweet was that word in my ears. How deep my shame for having entered darkness.

“Maviah,” I whispered through my tears.

“And what does this name mean?” he asked.

“Ancient life,” I said. “Eve.”

But of course…I was a part of the story that Judah had once told me. It came back now, fleshed out with new understanding here, in my dream.

In the beginning, the Creator had glorified his name by making man in his own likeness. Adam was the son of God, as it was written. And so I too was Eve.

The children of the Creator, Adam and Eve, had no knowledge of good and evil, only of beauty and love. There, Eve, meaning “life,” and Adam, meaning “man,” lived in perfect communion with the Father without any thought of judgment or grievance. Love, joy, and peace were their ever-present companions.

But deception had come in the form of a serpent, and they had chosen their own will over their Father's. Eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, they had found the knowledge of light and darkness and were separated from the garden of the Father's eternal life. So blinded, they lived in death.

I too had eaten this fruit. I too was filled with the knowledge of good and evil.

“What is the knowledge of good and evil, Maviah?”

The answer was perfectly plain to me, a woman who now judged herself as loathsome.

“Judgment,” I said, trembling.

“More,” he urged gently.

“Grievance and offense.”

“More.”

“Shame.”

“More.”

What more could there be? But then I knew, because I had once known only good. “Without the knowledge of good and evil, I would know only your glory.”

A moment of silence passed.

“And so you will share my glory again,” he said. “I will take your shame and your judgment and your offense upon myself and undo what the first Adam has done, and so I will glorify myself in you once more.”

By first Adam, he meant me as much me as Adam. Adam and I were the same.

“Have mercy on me, Father!” I sobbed, desperate to be restored. “I have fallen short of your glory and am blind to your eternal life! I am lost.”

In the way dreams work, as if my words had made it so, I found myself in the clearing again. I caught my breath. There were no trees, no animals, no life that I could see. But the serpent was still there, writhing slowly on the sand, beady eyes on me, forked tongue licking at the air.

A light came, this time not by a star, but as a white, innocent lamb without blemish that now entered the clearing.

And then I remembered the words spoken by the Baptizer in Galilee:
Behold the lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world.

Then I knew! The innocent lamb is Yeshua! He comes to undo my separation from God's glory. He comes to reunite me with my Father in the eternal realm! If I, the guilty, am the first Adam, then Yeshua, the innocent, is the second Adam, as it was written.

But how? How would the second Adam restore that garden of union in me?

Memory of the garden of Gethsemane flashed through me. Gethsemane, the second garden. The two gardens and the two Adams.

In the first garden, the first Adam, me, had said,
Not your will, but mine
, and eaten of the knowledge of good and evil, which was judgment and grievance.

In the second garden, the second Adam, Yeshua, had said,
Not my will, but yours
, and surrendered his life.

He had undone the choice of the first Adam. He was undoing the knowledge of good and evil that I had found by eating the fruit! This was a great reversal!

All of this I thought in a single moment, and my heart leaped.

The voice spoke again, gently. “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. Would you be forever alone, Daughter?”

The seed. The seed of the Father. Which is the Son.

“No,” I whispered, weeping again. “Have mercy on me, Father.”

Before I could say more, the serpent streaked toward the lamb, spread its jaws wide, and sank its long fangs deep into the lamb's foot.

Immediately, the world filled with a scream and I clenched my eyes and screamed with it, terrified that the lamb would die as Yeshua had, leaving me without hope.

Wind whipped at my face, thunder crashed over my head. I was on Golgotha as the storm gathered to mock the fallen Son of God.

I threw my hands to my mouth and whimpered, eyes shut, afraid to see what I feared.

“Open your eyes, Daughter.”

When I did, I saw that the lamb was now Yeshua, in the flesh. He hung from a cross, bleeding. Nails like serpent's fangs piercing his feet. And as I watched, heartbroken, the second Adam—Yeshua—gave up his spirit and died.

The world sputtered once, then winked out, leaving me in utter darkness once again.

Silence.

And then I saw that I too was dead. I knew that I was dead because I was beneath the earth, on my back, in a grave. I, the one who had united myself with the knowledge of good and evil and so became a god of my own making separate from my Creator, had died.

How could this be?

I lay perfectly still, horrified.

I cannot express the dread I felt in that moment. If Yeshua had failed to restore me to the Father's realm, I had no hope. My whole body trembled.

There, above me at my feet, I could still see the serpent slowly writhing, staring at me with yellow, beady eyes, hissing. I could see nothing else, only the serpent, now becoming more frantic, searching the darkness for something.

Suddenly the ground began to tremble, then quake violently. I saw the serpent dart away, but a blazing white fire erupted from the ground where the lamb's cross had been planted, shattering the stillness with a roar.

For a moment, my vision was filled with blinding light.

Then I could see again and I saw a man's foot, still bloodied and pierced, crushing the serpent's head in one blow.

His foot…Yeshua's. Yeshua stood before me now, foot planted on that serpent's head as its body quivered for a moment before going still.

“It is finished,” he said, staring at the dead serpent.

Then he slowly lifted his eyes and they met mine. A knowing smile formed on his face as he stared at me through tangled locks.

“The Father put mankind in the garden,” he said. “Now…he puts the garden in you. And so he glorifies his identity once more, in you.” He stretched his hand out, down into my grave, and seized my hand. “What you were has died with me. Now arise with me and glorify the Father's name once more.”

Immediately I felt myself, the ancient one, being pulled up. Light flowed around me, into me, through me. I was there again, in the Garden of Eden with grass under my feet and a warm breeze in my hair, standing before Yeshua, who was smiling.

He had undone what I had done! I was restored into the Father's realm. I was whole once more, swimming in his love there in that garden.

I was weeping with gratitude already, desperate to throw my arms around him and fall at his feet, because that dream felt more real to me than any waking moment.

I dropped to my knees and leaned over to anoint his feet with my tears where he stood, but then he spoke.

“Wake up, Daughter.” He slowly turned to my right. “Saba.”

And with that command, the world changed again. Because this time I knew his voice wasn't from my dream.

Startled, I sat upright and gasped. Saba jerked up from the sand beside me, breathing hard, and I knew that he too had heard Yeshua speak his name. And now we saw more.

It was already morning. The fire crackled five paces away.

There, squatting on one heel, tending to that fire, was Yeshua.

In the flesh.

MY HEART POUNDED.

It was him, I knew that it was, even though he looked somehow different. Not different in his body, but transcendent. Yet there in the flesh, five paces away from me, squatting by the fire with a stick in his hand. He had been stoking the fire.

He saw through me, and his gaze embraced me with the same bright eyes I had longed to look into at every opportunity. His smile was gentle, knowing, worn by one about to reveal great secrets to beloved friends.

Neither Saba nor I could move. For a moment, I dared not believe, afraid I was still dreaming. I had
seen
his tortured flesh on that cross. I had
heard
him give up his breath. I had watched the Roman soldiers shove a spear into his side. I had stood by while his friends sealed his body in a tomb.

And yet I was seeing him now, six or seven weeks after his death, alive as any other man. With new breath.

I must be delirious!

But no. Saba was seeing him as well. I knew this because he was seated beside me, rigid except for a tremble in his always steady hands, breathing hard.

Yeshua dropped the stick by the fire and stood, brushing his hands together to wipe away the ash.

Saba scrambled to rise, and I as well, pushing off the ground with my right hand, trying to get my feet underneath me, and then I was up, clinging to Saba's tunic.

Yeshua walked toward us, chuckling. So now I heard him as well.

“I did not mean to frighten you, my friends. Only to show you.”

Saba rushed forward and flung himself to his knees.

“Master!” he cried.

I was too overwhelmed to speak or move, and without Saba to hold on to, I thought my weak legs might give way.

“I now call you friend, Saba. Rise.”

But Saba did not rise. He was too overcome, sobbing now.

Yeshua looked up at me and for a long moment, we held each other's gaze. His presence had touched me deeply in Bethany, but now I could barely remain standing in the flood of love and awe washing over me.

He stepped forward, cupped Saba's chin, and kissed the top of his head. “Rise, my son. That day has come.”

Saba grasped Yeshua's fingers with both hands and stood with his back to me. He kissed Yeshua's hand. “You have overcome death.”

Yeshua offered him a nod. “As have you, my brave warrior.”

“We were dead?”

“Are not all? But no longer.”

He stepped past Saba and approached me, smiling. “Daughter,” he said, extending his hand.

I dared to take it. To feel the warmth of his flesh against my palm. And when I did, I could restrain myself no longer. I stepped into him and wrapped my arms around him, laying my forehead on his chest. And there, I wept with gratitude.

His hands rested gently on my shoulder and the back of my head. He said nothing, but I could feel the rise and fall of his chest, filled with living breath. This, not his words, was what I so desperately needed in that endless moment.

When I finally stepped back, he was still there, in the flesh, fully alive.

Yeshua had been raised from the dead. All of his promises were suddenly and unshakably true to me.

“You…” I said dumbly. “You're…” How could I say what was so obvious?

“Alive?” He took my hand, nodded at Saba, and walked toward the fire, eyes on the flames. “But
I
did not die, Daughter. Only this body, which I surrendered willingly as the atonement for all. I am not of this world; neither are you.” He released my hand, crossed to the other side of the fire pit, and squatted again, picking up the stick he'd dropped.

Tears marked Saba's dusty face. He looked like a boy stunned with wide-eyed wonder.

Yeshua poked the fire twice, then gestured to the stick in his hand.

“One day they will learn that this stick is as much the fire as it is the wood.” He tossed it into the flames. “Both can be here and gone at once. But love”—he looked up at us—“love never ends, because God is love.”

How long had he been alive? I wondered.

“The grave swallowed me for two nights,” he said, looking directly at me. “On the third day, I was raised from that death.”

So long ago! Did the others know? Surely they must.

“They have all seen me. More than five hundred.”

All of my thoughts were bare to him!

“They fear death no more.”

“What of Stephen?” Saba said. “He's…”

Yeshua laughed, delighted. “Stephen is like a child overcome with revelation and joy. My precious brother knows no limitations. Nor do the others.”

“Mary?” I asked, thinking of the women.

“Like so many of the women, she was among the first to understand and embrace truth. She lives from the heart, as you know.”

He looked between us, one to the other.

“But now,” he said, standing, “I came to tell you what I told my disciples, and what others will one day write, because it's true. Do you have ears to hear?”

A glint of daring lit his eyes.

“Would you move the mountains, Saba?”

Saba's voice was ragged. “I would.”

“Would you walk on the troubled seas of this life, Maviah?”

“Yes.”

To both of us: “Would you give sight to the blind, and trample on serpents?” He slowly swept his arms wide. “Would you find joy in all that my Father has created for you here on earth, relishing each breath while you still live?”

I thought of Talya and I blurted my answer even as Saba whispered the same. “I would! Yes, I would.”

“Would you walk in eternal life while you still draw breath on this earth?”

I was too overcome to answer aloud.
Yes! Yes, I would!

Yeshua lowered his arms and winked at me.

“Then know what will be written.”

An eagle screamed from the cliff high above us, but he paid it no mind.

“To see me is to see the Father. I and the Father are one. You know about me, but do you
know
the Father? Do you
know
me? This is eternal life.”

He was talking of my experience of him.

“At times,” I whispered. And I knew that when I did know him, I experienced eternal life, but when I knew only myself, I suffered, and deeply.

“But have joy, Daughter,” he said, smiling. “Even when you are blinded and feel forsaken, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate you from my love.”

Memory of having eaten the fruit filled my mind. But he was saying I would never again be separated…

He dipped his head. “The first Adam, son of God, became a living being. Even so, the last Adam, I, became the life-giving Spirit. And just as through one man sin and death entered the world, in the same way through one man, me, life was restored to all men.”

“My dream,” I said, astounded by his decree. “You undid the fall of the first Adam, which filled us with the knowledge of good and evil. You did this by dying and rising in Jerusalem…”

He smiled at me. “I was slain before the foundation of the world. And even before the foundation of the world, you were already chosen in me. Because I redeemed you from the curse of the Law by becoming the curse for you, my daughter.”

His eyes twinkled.

“But there is more. Your old self was crucified
with
me.”

With him. What seemed impossible suddenly made sense, because I had experienced it all in my dream. I—the old me who had eaten the fruit—had died with the innocent lamb, Yeshua.

He grinned at Saba. “And there is even more. You were raised
with
me, and are now seated in the heavenly realm in me.”

Saba's attention was fixed on this mystery.

“How is this possible?” he asked.

“It is no longer even you who live, but
I
who live in you. For you to live now
is
me.”

“Then…” I was grasping for truth, and it rose from within me. “I am no longer Maviah?”

His brow arched. “Are you?”

“We are in this world but not of it,” Saba said with wonder. “Like you.”

“Like me,” Yeshua said. “Because of me. In me. I am in the Father and the Father is in me. In the same way, you are in me, and I am in you.”

His words sank into my mind, but they made no sense.

“How can I be in you and at the same time, you be in me?” I asked. “How can milk be in a bowl and the bowl be in the milk at once?”

“In the same way you are risen and seated in the heavenly realm even now. This truth is revealed to infants but hidden from the wise and the intelligent,” he said, tapping his temple. “Instead”—he put his hand on his heart—“may the eyes of your heart be enlightened to know.”

He lifted his hand, finger raised.

“Then you will know that I have given you the glory that the Father gave me, so that you may be one
even as
we are one.”

Even as…In the same way…

Yeshua used his finger to demonstrate, pointing to himself and to me. “I in you, and you in me. As I said, Maviah, for you to live now
is
me. In this the world will know that the Father sent me and loves them even as he loves me.”

His proposition staggered me. He was saying that I had been crucified with him and been raised with him and was even now seated in the heavenly realm, I in him and he in me, in the same way he was in the Father and the Father in him. Like a bowl of milk in which the two were one.

That for me to live now was him so that I could love even as he loved.

As him? Was I then his body?

The voice I'd heard from heaven near Jerusalem echoed again in my mind.
I have glorified my name.
He'd glorified his identity by making man in his likeness. Like him. But then he said more.
I will glorify my name again.
By remaking me in
Yeshua's
identity. The Father restored me to his likeness through Yeshua.

Now restored, I shared in the Father's identity and he shared in mine. This is surely what it meant to believe in his name—to join with his identity.

“When the Spirit of Truth comes you will know that I am in you and you are in me. Only through the Spirit can this be known,” Yeshua said. “Only then can you love as I love. Only then will you know that it is no longer you who live, but I who live in you. That in me you are a new creature, that old things have passed away, that all things have become new.” He paused. “Would you hear more?”

“Yes,” both Saba and I said as one, drinking in his truth.

“As such you have already been made complete. Is there any more completeness that can be added to what is complete? There is therefore no condemnation for you. You are now clothed in me.”

He was feeding us with news too good for the common ear. And yet he was alive, in the flesh, so it was true. All of it.

Yeshua spread his arms wide, lifted his smile, and cried to the sky. “Oh what great love the Father has lavished on you that you should be called the son and daughter of God!”

He pointed to us. “Do you hear me, my friends? He has sent forth my Spirit into your hearts crying, ‘Abba. Father!'”

He lowered his arm, eyes fired with zeal and wonder. My pulse was pounding in my ears. I was taken back to the dream of Eden. A smile as wide as his was fixed upon my face.

He paced now, thrilled with his own news.

“The kingdom of God isn't coming with signs to be seen, here or there, because the kingdom of God is already here and within you. And now all of creation groans inwardly for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed.”

We stood rooted to that ground, unable to speak in the wake of such earth-shattering good news. This is how and why we would ask anything in his name and see it be done. This is how and why we would move mountains and find perfect peace in the midst of the storm.

This is how we would turn our cheek to the evil man and return love to any enemy.

And yet…And yet we were still here, on the sand, dressed in cloth…

“You see, Maviah,” he said, smiling at me. “You see how the accuser already whispers, demanding to know how you can be clothed in me if you stand there clothed in a tunic. Yes?”

I felt exposed, but without shame, because I only wanted to know how to reconcile this truth with my flesh and bone.

“Have hope,” he said. “Have faith even when this isn't apparent to you. Now you see through a glass dimly, but then you will see face-to-face. Now you know in part, but then you will know fully, just as you have been fully known.”

Saba sank to one knee and looked up at Yeshua. “I saw all of this in my dream, master. I saw how you came as the light into all darkness and undid the fall of the first Adam by taking him to the grave and rising in glory. I saw how I rose with you and am now in you even as you are in me, as one.”

He took a breath.

“And yet I find myself in this body walking this earth. Tell us, then…How can we walk this earth free of fear while being the sons and daughters of the Father?”

This was the question that had battered both of us. But now he offered us a soft chuckle.

“Yes…Yes, this is the question, Saba. You would move the mountain without fear and walk on troubled waters and see peace in the storm as the sons and daughters of the Father—on earth as in heaven. You would walk this path that so few find, much less follow, and find joy even in your suffering.”

Saba blinked. “Yes.”

Yeshua gave him a single nod and spoke with utter resolve.

“Then have this mind in yourselves that was also in me, who, although existing in the form of God, I emptied myself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Then must I too take up the cross? Must I too empty myself?

And which self? The one clothed in him or the one clothed in a tunic?