The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (45 page)

“We will be careful,” Joseph promised. “And be sure God will bless you for warning us.”

Mary and Joseph followed behind the litter as it was borne down the hill by four strong men of his uncle’s household and across the city to a tomb hewn from the rock in the corner of his garden. Mary’s hand stole into Joseph’s as they walked in the dusk of later afternoon behind the litter upon which lay the body of the man they knew now to be the Son of God. “Do you still believe He will rise, dear?” he asked gently.

“I know He will,” she said confidently, “for He once said: ‘They will mock Him, and spit upon Him, and scourge Him, and kill Him; and after three days He will rise.’”

Those of the followers of Jesus who had dared to watch His death followed the litter with their Master’s body. They stood around the entrance to the tomb while Joseph arranged the body upon a clean white cloth and applied the spices and herbs that were customary until it could finally be prepared for burial after the Sabbath, which would begin in a few short hours, had passed.

The wounds were painfully evident on Jesus’ body as Joseph prepared it for burial with his own hands. All who watched could see the prints of the nails in His hands and His feet, and the tiny prick marks of the thorns where the cruel crown had been pressed upon His forehead until the points penetrated the skin. The slight gash on His wrist where the irons had cut was also visible, and in His side was an ugly gaping wound made by the mercifully intended spear of the Roman soldier.

Joseph had almost finished, when a commotion arose outside and a big man rushed in to throw himself on the stone floor beside the bier upon which Jesus’ body lay. At first Joseph did not recognize Simon Peter, for his clothes were torn and covered with dirt and he was sobbing wildly. He continued to weep while Joseph finished preparing the body, and when he was through, the young physician lifted the big man to his feet and led him from the tomb.

“Jesus has promised that He will rise, Simon,” Mary said comfortingly, putting her arm around him as they left the tomb. “We have that assurance still before us.”

A great retching sob shook the big man’s body. “But I denied my Lord,” Simon groaned. “I denied Him thrice in the courtyard of the high priest last night.”

“Perhaps it was not Jesus Himself you were denying, Simon,” Mary said with that strange insight of hers in regard to the Master that seemed to come from the depth of her great love for Him.

“But I was looking at Him myself,” the big man protested. “And still I denied Him.”

“You were denying the same thing that Judas denied when he betrayed Jesus,” Mary explained. “The thing that you wanted Him to be, not what He really was. Now you know what the Christ really means and why He came.”

Simon Peter looked at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, then a light of hope, almost of joy, began to burn in his eyes. Seeing it, Joseph said quietly, “The centurion warned me that our lives may be in danger, Simon. You were the leader after Jesus. Call the others and we will go to Nicodemus’s house at Emmaus where we will be safe.”

It was a new man who turned to the little group of huddled figures there in the shadows and spoke to them. And like sheep following the master, they fell in behind the tall, commanding form of Simon Peter, their new leader, as he started along the road to Emmaus.

“If I did not already know why I love you, Joseph of Galilee,” Mary said softly, “I would know it now.” With fingers intertwined they followed the new leader.

As darkness fell and the Sabbath began, the scattered followers of the crucified leader remained in Jerusalem.

Early on the morning after the Sabbath, Joseph and Mary, with some of the others, set out for Jerusalem for the final tribute to their crucified Master, the embalming and preparation of His body for final burial, after which the tomb in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea would be sealed. There had not been time on the night of the crucifixion to carry out these final details, for according to Jewish law they could not be done on the Sabbath.

Mary was no longer downcast as they walked toward the garden tomb, for flowers were blooming everywhere and the trees were putting forth the first green leaves of spring. “I see now why Jesus chose this time for His death,” she said softly. “Like the seed that is sowed in the spring, He had to die in order that He may rise again to show everyone the way to eternal life through Him.”

Joseph looked at her, startled once again by her insight where Jesus was concerned. “But what if He does not rise again?”

“He will,” she said without hesitancy. “He has promised us that He will, and the Son of God cannot lie.”

“Would that I had your faith, dear,” Joseph said with deep sincerity.

She smiled and squeezed his hand. “You do, Joseph, but where I believe what I know in my heart is true, you believe what your senses and your mind tell you is true. Do you doubt any longer that Jesus is the Son of God?”

“No. I know that beyond any shadow of a doubt.”

“He will rise from the dead,” she said confidently. “And you will be just as certain of His rising when He chooses to reveal it to you.”

They walked on a little while in silence. Then Joseph said a little hesitantly, for he feared what the answer might be to his question, “What about us, Mary, now that Jesus has been crucified?”

“He has fulfilled His purpose,” she said simply, “and no longer needs me.” Then she smiled. “See, the flowers are blooming, the leaves are coming out again, and we are together—just as I promised that we would be.”

“Will our lives ever be the same as before?” he wondered.

Mary shook her head. “No one can follow Jesus and ever be the same again, Joseph. But who would want to be after what He gives to us?”

Joseph looked around him at the city of Jerusalem as he pass through her narrow streets. To a pilgrim approaching Jerusalem, fired by the adoration with which every devout Jew regarded the Holy City, it must have been a sight next only in magnificence to the throne of God itself. But he knew only too well what lay behind that glittering façade of marble and gold: the lust for power and greed for wealth; the misery and the suffering; the rapacity of those who were rich in goods but poor in spirit; the exploiting of pilgrims in the name of a corrupt temple hierarchy whose greedy fingers reached out to exact tribute even from the lowliest seller of curios in the outer Court of the Gentiles; the false pride of the Pharisees who debased the worship of God into the worship of rule and cant and creed; the scribes who spent endless hours in fruitless arguments when they might have been serving their fellows—all these made up the Jerusalem seen by the adoring eyes of the pilgrims. And those same men had crucified the Expected One who had come to show them again the higher purpose which had been gradually lost during the centuries since the Jews had smeared the blood of the paschal lamb above the lintels of their huts so that the avenging wrath of their God upon the people who oppressed His children might be fully vented.

“Would you like to go back to Galilee and start anew?” Joseph asked suddenly.

His answer and his reward were in the glory that shone suddenly in his beloved’s eyes. “I was hoping you would say that, Joseph,” she said, reaching out to take his hand in hers. “But we will not really be starting anew. We will be merely turning back to the beginning of the road we started to travel on a day like this in Tiberias.”

At the gates of the city Joseph left the others and went on to the shops of the spice sellers to buy the things necessary to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. He made his purchases quickly and turned his steps toward the tomb where the body of Jesus lay.

Nor was he at all sad at the thought that this was one of the last times he might be walking through Jerusalem. The memory of the green jewel of the Sea of Galilee, the rich vineyards and groves of Gennesaret, the leaping schools of fish that shoaled before Bethsaida, and the brightly colored sails of the fishermen coming home in the late afternoon was a far lovelier picture than anything that now met his eyes. And of course with Mary there, nothing would be lacking.

As he turned into the gate of his uncle’s estate with his bundles, Mary came running through the garden from the tomb, her arms outstretched, a great glory shining in her face.

“Joseph!” she cried. “It has happened! Jesus is risen!”

It was a simple story that Mary told of the miraculous thing which had happened, while tears of joy streamed down her face and the light of a glorious knowledge burned in her eyes. She and the women had come to the tomb, wondering who they would get to push aside the stone for them. But the stone was already rolled away, and when they found the tomb empty and the body of Jesus removed, some of the women ran to get Simon Peter. He also had looked into the tomb and had seen only the cloth upon which Jesus had lain.

The others had gone on into the house then, but Mary had remained by the tomb, weeping, afraid that Caiaphas, or perhaps Pontius Pilate, had stolen the body in order to exhibit it later as proof that Jesus was not able to carry out in death the promise He had made in life to rise from the dead.

After awhile—as Mary told the story to Joseph—she had looked again into the tomb and seen that it was still empty. But when she turned around a man was standing beside her. “Woman, why are you weeping?” He asked. “Whom do you seek?”

She did not recognize Him and, thinking that He might be Joseph of Arimathea’s gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him and I will take Him away.”

Jesus had spoken to her in His own voice then and she knew Him and cried, “Rabboni!” But when she would have touched Him, He said, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

When Joseph reached the tomb, he saw that the stone had indeed been rolled away, although it had taken several strong men to put it into place blocking the entrance when they had laid the body there. And the print of Jesus’ body was still upon the cloth in which Joseph had wrapped Him, while the marks of blood from His wounds still stained it.

None of the others besides Mary had seen Jesus, and Joseph knew that no court of law would accept her unsupported evidence that she had seen Him, for she was known to have loved the Master deeply and to have been firmly convinced that He would return. Whether or not, in her intense desire to know that Jesus was not dead, she had seen a vision, no one could say. As for himself, Joseph was tempted strongly to believe that she had indeed seen Jesus in the flesh, but deep inside he felt the same lingering uncertainty he had experienced concerning the Messiahship, until it had come to him with the blinding light of a revelation as he watched the Master Himself at the trial.

“You think I saw a vision,” Mary said quickly, “as mad people sometimes see things that are not there.”

“I know that Jesus was there for you.”

“But not necessarily in the flesh?”

“It is the way others will think,” he pointed out.

“But if He could appear to me,” she cried, “He can make Himself visible to any of us when He wishes.”

“Let us pray that our faith be given final strength then through Him,” Joseph said simply. “Meanwhile we must protect you.”

“Protect me? From what?”

“The others are already running everywhere in the city proclaiming that Jesus is risen and has appeared to you. Think what this will mean for Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate.”

She caught her breath. “Since I am the only one who has seen Jesus—”

“They must silence you at all costs. For if the people come to believe that Jesus has indeed risen from the dead, they will know without question that He is the Christ and will insist upon crowning Him king in Judea.”

“But He will not remain here,” Mary objected. “His words to me were, ‘Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ Jesus is leaving the earth, Joseph. He told me that Himself.”

“Will Pilate and Caiaphas believe it without seeing Him in the flesh themselves?”

“No,” Mary admitted sadly. “You are not sure of it yourself, so we could not expect them to understand.”

“There is only one thing to do,” he said urgently. “You must leave Jerusalem before word of this gets to Pontius Pilate and he sends to arrest you.”

“But what of the others? And you?”

“You are the only witness to the resurrection of Jesus in the body. Until He appears to the rest of us, we will be in no danger.”

“Come with me, Joseph,” she begged. “I don’t want us ever to be separated again.”

“I will settle up my affairs in the city and come to Emmaus this afternoon,” he promised. “Tomorrow we will go on to Galilee. If Herod Antipas will not give us refuge, we can go on to the territory of Philip or even to Antioch. The legate there will protect us; he is in debt to me for curing his son of distemper.”

“But I have committed no crime,” Mary protested. “Why should I hide like a criminal?”

“You possess a knowledge that can set the world afire,” he pointed out soberly. “And we must guard that flame lest it be quenched before it can begin to burn more brightly.”

“I will go back to Emmaus and wait for you at Cleopas’s house,” she promised then. “But be careful, Joseph. I would die if anything happened to you now that Jesus is going to the Father.”

All day long the city hummed with the news that the man who had been so shamefully crucified had risen. Hundreds came to the garden to see the empty tomb with the cloths still upon the bier showing the print of His body and the marks of His blood. Some scoffed, naming it a trick to make them think the dead had been raised. But many who had known and loved Jesus believed and were convinced that He was the true Messiah whose coming had been predicted by Isaiah.

It was late afternoon before Joseph was finally able to leave for Emmaus. Cleopas went with him, and as they walked along they talked over the exciting events that had occurred within the past few days.