A Lineage of Grace (65 page)

“We have these pitchers of wine left, and then we have no more.”

“Perhaps Jacob has a store of wine in his house.”

The servant shook his head.

If the groom ran out of wine before the wedding celebration was over, he would be shamed before his guests. Poor Jacob would never outlive such embarrassment. “Come. I’ll speak to my son. He can help you.”

Jesus was deep in conversation with his friends when she approached. She entered the circle and knelt before her son, speaking softly. “They have no more wine.”

“How does that concern you and me?” Jesus asked, not unkindly. “My time has not yet come.”

She tilted her head and looked into his eyes with pleading. He knew as well as she that the lack of wine would pour humiliation on the groom’s head and diminish his reputation before the community. She knew Jesus would not ignore the plight of this young relative, especially when he had brought friends with him to join in the celebration and increase the strain upon Jacob’s supplies. Smiling, she took his hand and kissed his palm. Then she stood, stepped outside the circle of her son’s disciples, and spoke to the nervous servants waiting. “Do whatever he tells you.” Then she stood aside to wait upon Jesus’ decision.

Remaining seated, Jesus looked at six large stone waterpots set against the wall. They stood empty now, but would be filled for the custom of purification. “Fill the jars with water.”

Perplexed, the servants looked at one another. Mary could imagine them wondering what good that would do, for even the drunkest guest would know the difference between water and wine. However, they were so desperate they hastened to obey. They raced back and forth between the communal well and the big stone pots while Jesus returned his attention to his disciples. When the jars had finally been filled to the brim, the perspiring servants came quickly to Jesus.

“Dip some out,” Jesus said, “and take it to the master of ceremonies.”

Mary followed the servant, who dipped a pitcher into the water and carried it to the master of ceremonies. The water poured red into the man’s cup, and she felt a wave of exultation. When he sipped it, his eyes brightened. She was close enough to hear him speak to the groom. “Usually a host serves the best wine first. Then, when everyone is full and doesn’t care, he brings out the less expensive wines. But you have kept the best until now!”

Laughing joyously, Mary looked back at her son and saw astonishment on the faces of his disciples. Excited, the servants moved quickly among the guests, serving the new wine and spreading the news of what Jesus had done.

And Mary watched it all, tears of joy running down her cheeks.

Now they would believe! All the rumors that had surrounded her and Joseph would finally be laid to rest and her sons and daughters and friends would know the truth: Jesus was the one her people had cried out for over the centuries.

Jesus! The one who will save his people! Immanuel! God with us!

Soon, Israel would be free!

* * *

They all returned together from Nazareth and went to the synagogue to worship the Lord. Jesus sat near the front, his disciples around him. Mary, throat tight with excitement, strained forward to watch from the women’s gallery as the Torah was read and the men began to talk about the meaning of the Law of Moses. When Jesus rose, there was a hush, for many had already heard he had been preaching along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. And it was rumored that he had turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana.

The old rabbi held out his hand in invitation to Jesus. Jesus drew his prayer shawl over his head and stepped up to the platform. The rabbi handed him the scroll. Jesus unrolled it and began to read. “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor.’”

Mary’s heart leaped. She remembered Joseph’s words when, together, they used to marvel at Jesus’ reading of the Torah. “His voice,” Joseph would say, tears in his eyes. “His voice is like no other when he reads the Law. It doesn’t pass over his tongue by years of practice, but comes out through his heart.”

Now their beloved Jesus was proclaiming to all that he was the Anointed One, the long-awaited Messiah! Mary looked down at her other sons, sitting in the row Jesus had left. To her dismay, she saw their shoulders droop and their heads go down.

“‘He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.’” Jesus closed the scroll and gave it back to the attendant. Then Jesus stepped down from the platform and took his seat again. The silence was deafening, every pair of eyes fixed upon him. Mary’s heart was pounding faster and faster.

Jesus spoke with quiet authority into the pulsating silence around him. “This Scripture has come true today before your very eyes!”

A man came to his feet. “These Scriptures are about the Messiah! He blasphemes!”

Mary saw the one her son called Peter jump to his feet, his face flushed. “If you ask what he means, perhaps . . .” He was drowned out by the rising voices.

“I hear he’s performed miracles . . . water into wine . . . tells stories about seeds and sparrows . . . has great wisdom. . . .”

“Where does he get his wisdom and his miracles?”
a man in the shadows mocked.
“He’s just a carpenter’s son. What makes him so great?”

Mary felt her face heat up, for she could feel the glances of the women around her as the mocking words roused in the minds of the Nazarenes the foul rumors about her and Joseph and how Jesus was conceived. “No,” she said softly. “No, no.”

“We know Mary, his mother,” someone joined in.

“And his brothers—James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude.” Her sons, mortified, were pointed out.

“All his sisters live right here among us!” another called out.

Mary glanced back and saw Sarah blush and cover her face and Anne withdraw until she was near the doorway leading down and out of the synagogue.

“No . . . no . . . no.” Mary shook her head, feeling eyes of pity and condemnation upon her.

She turned away, only to hear a woman whisper, “And I always thought Jesus was such a nice boy . . . so good to his mother. . . . She’ll never live down the shame of this day.”

Jesus remained seated. “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown.”

“Now he’s calling himself a prophet!” a man shouted angrily.

Jesus looked down the row at his cringing brothers. “And among his own family,” he added. He stood and faced his accusers. “Certainly there were many widows in Israel who needed help in Elijah’s time, when there was no rain for three and a half years and hunger stalked the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a widow of Zarephath—a foreigner in the land of Sidon. Or think of the prophet Elisha, who healed Naaman, a Syrian, rather than the many lepers in Israel who needed help.”

“Who does he think he is, speaking to us like this?!”

“He’s a blasphemer! Stone him!”

“No!” Mary screamed, seeing men laying hands upon her son, seeing the disciples enter the fray. She pressed through and raced downstairs. “Let him go! Let my son go!” The men below rose and pulled and shoved Jesus and his disciples from the synagogue. She tried to reach him as the mob propelled him up and up toward the brow of the hill on which the town had been built. “No!” she cried out. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

A man shoved her back so that she fell to her knees, scraping her hands on the rocky ground. Gasping in pain, she scrambled to her feet and hurried after the crowd. Suddenly everyone stopped, and a strange hush fell over the mob. As Jesus walked back through their midst, each moved back from him as though being pushed back by unseen hands.

Panting, tears streaming down her cheeks, Mary ran to him and fell into step beside him, his disciples following. “Open their eyes, Jesus. Make them see. I know you can. Make them understand who you are!”

He stopped at the edge of town, on the road leading down the hill toward the Sea of Galilee, and looked at her. “They’ve hardened their hearts, Mother.”

“Then soften them. Please, Jesus. For me.” Never had she seen such sorrow in his eyes.

He reached out and tenderly cupped her cheek. “Mother,” he said gently, “Nazareth is no longer my home.”

Confused, she searched his eyes. “But, Jesus, how can you say that? I’m here. Your brothers and sisters . . .”

Jesus drew her into his arms and held her tightly. She inhaled the scent of her son and put her arms around him as she had done so many times in the past. But now something was different. She felt engulfed by his love, upheld in it, and yet felt him withdrawing from her. She held on tighter, but he took her hands from behind him and stepped back. He spoke in a still small voice. “Each must choose.” He searched her face for a moment and then turned from her.

As Jesus walked down the road, only his disciples followed.

* * *

Mary gathered her sons and daughters. “Your brother has left Nazareth and he won’t be coming back.”

“Even if Jesus wanted to come back, I doubt he’d be allowed back inside the synagogue.” James was downcast.

Mary grasped James’s hand and looked at the others. “He took the road down to the Sea of Galilee. I think he’s going back to Capernaum. We should go there.”

“It might be a good idea to leave Nazareth for a few days,” Joseph said solemnly. “And let things settle down again.”

“And we can talk to Jesus,” James said.

“My husband needs me, Mother,” Anne said. “I can’t go without his permission.”

Sarah looked as aggrieved as her sister. “After what happened at the synagogue, how do any of us dare go?”

Mary was stunned by their faithlessness. “Have you ever known your brother to lie?”

“No, Mother.” James’s eyes darkened. “But then, he never claimed to be God before.”

“He
is
the Son of God.” She saw how her children stared at her. She told them again how the angel of the Lord had come to her. She told them how she had conceived by the Holy Spirit. She told them how the angel of the Lord had appeared to their father in a dream, telling him that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and how he had married her and kept her a virgin until after Jesus was born in Bethlehem. She told them about the star over Bethlehem, the visit of the magi, King Herod’s decree to kill the children. When she finished, she looked from face to face and drew in a sobbing breath. “Why won’t you believe me?”

James leaned forward, clasping his hands tightly between his knees, his face haggard with concern. “We know how children are conceived, Mother. He’s our brother and we love him.”

“You think I’m lying.” They preferred the lies of gossips to the truth she spoke.

“We think—” he looked at the others and then back into her eyes—“that you’re deluded.”

Anger and hurt rose in her. “Deluded? How? By whom? Your father, Joseph? Other than Jesus, have you ever known such a righteous man so eager to please God? And Jesus. Hasn’t he always done what is right and true and noble and . . . ?”

James hung his head. “Just because he’s obeyed the Law doesn’t mean he’s God.”

She stood. She was angry, but she was even more afraid for them. What would become of her children if they rejected the Messiah? “We will go to Capernaum. Your brother will make things clear to you.”

* * *

James and Joseph rose early one morning to speak with Jesus, but they were told Jesus had already gone off on one of his habitual solitary walks. “The men he calls his disciples refused to tell us, his brothers, where he went. They act like bodyguards!” they complained.

Mary had hoped that her sons and daughters would recognize Jesus’ true identity when they heard him preaching. But instead they were even more confused by Jesus’ parables about wheat and weeds and choice pearls and mustard seeds. They were offended when Jesus did not separate himself from the others and treat them with more consideration than the hodgepodge band hanging around him day and night. There was never time to be alone with him because so many were pleading for his attention. Furthermore, they were frightened by the approach of priests and dismayed when Jesus welcomed
everyone
. He even ate with prostitutes and tax collectors!

Mary’s daughters and sons-in-law left after two days, taking Simon and Jude back home with them. James and Joseph stayed another day, and then urged Mary to come home with them. “He doesn’t need you, Mother. He’s got a dozen men following him around like lost sheep.” She felt torn between Jesus and her other sons, and was finally swayed by their arguments.

Passover was fast approaching, and she must prepare for the yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Surely, Jesus would join them for the journey to the City of David.

It wasn’t until the family came down from Nazareth that they heard from others that Jesus had gone on ahead without them.

* * *

“Your son is in the city already,” Abijah told Mary when she arrived in Jerusalem with her family. “He’s been teaching in the corridors of the Temple.” The elderly man wore a frown.

“Everyone has been talking about him,” his wife, Rachel, said. “He seems to have a following.”

Abijah shook his head. “The Pharisees are not pleased with his teaching.”

“The Nazarenes weren’t either,” Joseph said grimly.

“I’ve heard that his disciples transgress the tradition of the elders.”

“How?” Mary said.

“They do none of the ceremonial washing of hands before eating. It was on that very matter that the Pharisees questioned Jesus, and he called them hypocrites.”

The hair rose on the back of her neck. “Hypocrites?” she said weakly, unable to imagine Jesus losing his temper.

“My friend said he told them straight to their faces that they honored God with their lips, but not their hearts. Your son said they worship in vain because they’re teaching the doctrines and precepts of men.” Abijah’s face grew more and more flushed as he spoke. “Of course, the unwashed mob that follows him loved it.” He glowered at Mary. “Where did your son get these ideas? You should speak to your son, and remind him of the respect due the men who take our sacrifices before God!”