Jesus (46 page)

Once I realized how centered on the past I had been and how needlessly worried I was about stepping out of the tomb, I was ready to embrace new life. I wanted to leave the bandages of the false self in the tomb and step into the light.

T
HAT DAY IN
B
ETHANY
, I peered into the dimly lit tomb and tentatively started my climb down the stairs. When I imagined this pilgrimage, I had expected that the Tomb of Lazarus, the site of Jesus's greatest miracle, would be one of the most crowded of sites. But I was alone.

Even lit, the narrow stone stairwell was dim. As I descended, my footsteps echoed against the damp walls. In a few seconds I was in a small chamber, where there was barely enough room to stand. Perhaps, I thought, this was the tomb. But on one side of the room, cut into the wall was a small opening near the ground, perhaps three feet wide by four feet high. This opening led into another chamber: the tomb. To enter I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl through the tight space.

Standing up in the small, dark, grayish-green stone tomb, I wondered what it was like for Lazarus to hear Jesus's voice. What must it have meant to decide to “come out”? Lazarus could have stayed behind. And who could blame him? How frightening it must have been to die (after his illness, knowing he would leave behind two unmarried sisters, crushed that his good friend Jesus had not visited). And frightening to live again. Change of any kind can be frightening.

I knelt down again in the tomb and prayed out loud. No need to be embarrassed now. Who would hear me except God? I asked God to take away everything that kept me from becoming the person God wanted me to be. And I asked God for new life.

My voice echoed in the dim stone chamber.

Then I left the tomb.

T
HE
R
AISING OF
L
AZARUS

John 11:1–44

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

C
HAPTER
19

Jerusalem

“Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet.”

B
EGINNING OUR PILGRIMAGE IN
Jerusalem meant that the trip would start where Jesus's earthly life ended. Before leaving the States I briefly considered avoiding the sites associated with Jesus's Passion, death, and resurrection until after we visited Bethlehem, Nazareth, and all the sites in Galilee. In this way George and I might trace Jesus's life in sequence. But as soon as Father Doan told me that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was just a few minutes away from our residence, there was no question of waiting. I could no more resist its pull than iron filings can resist a magnet.

So around four o'clock on the first afternoon, George and I left our digs at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, swung open the iron gate that enclosed the Jesuit residence, turned left, and walked a mile downhill. After passing through the grounds of a tony apartment complex, we spied the magnificent cream-colored ramparts of the Old City.

After dodging cars on a busy street, we strode up the steep hill to the imposing Jaffa Gate, one of the Old City's eight entrances, which is flanked by two crenellated towers. As we climbed I understood why pilgrims were said to “go up” to Jerusalem. One of my favorite psalms came back to me:

And I remembered a favorite line from Thomas Merton's
The Sign of Jonas
, the journal of his first years in a Trappist monastery. After Merton complained about having to chant the psalms several times daily, his abbot offered the new monk some advice. “He said,” writes Merton, “I should think of Jesus going up to Jerusalem with all the pilgrims roaring psalms out of their dusty throats.”
²

Stepping onto the worn, almost glassy, paving stones of the Old City meant entering a jumble of places relating to the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. In these next three chapters, we'll look at the story of Jesus's “Passion” (the term comes from the Greek
paschō
, to suffer or to experience) through the lens of a visit to several sites in the Old City, some of them separated by only a few steps.

Before meditating on the last days in Jesus's life, let me offer the briefest of overviews of the events that led to his crucifixion, starting the day before Palm Sunday and ending with Good Friday. At this point it won't surprise the reader that the Gospels don't always agree on all the events of Holy Week. But, overall, the accounts of Jesus's last week follow the same general sequence.

On Saturday, around the time of Passover, after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, he spends time with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus at their home in Bethany, just over the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem. That night Mary breaks open a jar of costly ointment and anoints Jesus as a sign of his impending death. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark place this scene in the home of “Simon the leper.”
³
If that is accurate, it means that even as he neared death, Jesus was spending time with those on the margins.

On Sunday, Jesus rides in triumph into Jerusalem, on a small colt that he has apparently instructed his disciples to reserve for him. Enthusiastic crowds blanket the streets of the holy city with their cloaks and with palm branches, the latter a traditional sign of celebration in Jewish circles and triumph in Roman ones. The colt is a sign as well, alluding to a passage from Zechariah, in which the “king” enters the city on just such an animal.
⁴
At this time, the city would have been thronged with pilgrims for the holidays.

The next day Jesus enters the Temple precinct and overturns the tables of the merchants, appalled by their doing business in “my Father's House.” The Cleansing of the Temple, along with the Raising of Lazarus, is most likely a precipitating factor in his death.

According to some Gospel narratives, on Tuesday Jesus preaches in Jerusalem. At this point in various Gospels, we find Jesus preaching the parables of the Rejected Stone, the Wedding Feast, the Talents, and the Sheep and the Goats; Jesus also answers questions about his ultimate authority. On the same day Judas Iscariot, one of the apostles, bargains with some Jewish authorities to betray Jesus. Wednesday seems to have been a time of rest for Jesus in Bethany and perhaps an opportunity to plan for the momentous days to come.

On Thursday, after Jesus washes the feet of the disciples in a large room in Jerusalem, the location of which he has apparently pre-arranged, he celebrates a Passover meal with them, the Last Supper. During the meal, after Judas leaves to carry out his betrayal, Jesus offers a long discourse, or passage of preaching (at least in John's Gospel). Jesus and the disciples visit the Garden of Gethsemane, located just outside the city walls, where he prays for guidance, is confronted by Judas, and is captured by the Roman authorities. This sets in motion his execution.

Friday's complex timetable is the source of some scholarly debate and the basis for the most serious of questions: Who was responsible for Jesus's death? The most straightforward answer comes from Father Harrington: “Pontius Pilate, with some cooperation from some Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.”
⁵
The day will include (again, depending on the Gospel) Jewish trials—before Annas, Caiaphas (two “high priests”), and the Sanhedrin (the Jewish assembly or council)—and Roman trials—before Pontius Pilate, Herod, and Pilate again. After his condemnation and torture at the hands of Roman soldiers, Jesus starts his long walk to the hill known as Golgotha (Aramaic for “Place of the Skull”; in Latin,
Calvaria
), where he is crucified and hangs agonizingly on the cross, uttering a few final sentences. Jesus of Nazareth dies around three o'clock in the afternoon. Later his body is removed from the cross and laid in a tomb provided by a friend.

After spending so much time with Jesus in his ministry in Galilee, such a shorthand description of his painful death may seem shocking to readers. Cold, even heartless. I felt the same way after I returned from four days in Galilee, after tracing the path of the energetic Jesus in his public ministry—preaching, walking, healing, dining, sailing, exorcising—and walking into the chapel at the Pontifical Biblical Institute. Kneeling down on the chapel's terrazzo floor, I closed my eyes to pray for a few seconds, then looked up and saw Jesus on the wall, crucified.

On a large wooden crucifix outlined in gold, Jesus hung, peering down at his mother, Mary, who stood by him, mourning. Jesus inclined his head toward her with a look of infinite sadness. Here was the lively, active, joyful person I had spent so much time with, nailed to a cross, dying. It was shocking.

T
HE SHOCK OF THE
disciples was infinitely greater. For in the space of less than a week Jesus's friends move from elation over his triumphant entrance into the city, when they may have anticipated his being acclaimed as king, to despair over his shameful death. And although Jesus seems to have known, even predicted, his end, the disciples, as they have before, seem not to have understood what was awaiting them in Jerusalem.

There were predictions throughout the Gospels. As early as the eighth chapter of Mark's Gospel, shortly after the Feeding of the Four Thousand, while the disciples are on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus asks them, “Who do people say that I am?”
⁶
A surprising question for the disciples—and the one that began this book.

It seems to catch them off guard. They offer their answers: John the Baptist, Elijah, or “one of the prophets.”
⁷
The responses are not unexpected. Jesus had been baptized by John and most likely brought some of John's followers under his wing, so the identification with the Baptist is natural. And the Book of Malachi refers to the coming of Elijah as the forerunner of the “great and terrible day of the Lord.”
⁸