“He fed a hundred on the hill.”
“Not a hundred, you can barely count. It was thousands.”
“Four thousand.”
“At least five thousand.”
“He took a loaf of bread, like this,” a man demonstrated with an imaginary loaf, “and he blessed it and put it in the basket, and then out of the basket he fed… well, if it was five thousand it was five thousand men plus wives and all the children.”
“I heard him say feed them yourselves. Some of his men were going to send us away to towns, but he said feed them yourselves.”
“Son of David, have mercy on me!”
“Son of David heal me!”
“Blessed his he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Give us a good word!”
“Give us a good word, Master.”
“Give us a good word!”
“Back off, back off!” Peter shouted. “Away!”
“Some breathing room, yes!” James cried. “Let him breathe.”
“Let us breathe.”
Judas gazed about giddy, and gripping Jesus’s shoulder said, “The only way forward is through.”
And in the midst of these crowds, shouting and crying, who were not the people of Capernaum after all, they heard someone shouting, “Make way! Make way!”
Was it a Roman? But no.
“Make way, make way for the Lord Jairus!”
In their lavish robes and headdresses they came, and John recognized them, the leaders of the synagogue, the elders of the community, and in their midst, in rich red and black, though looking more ragged than John had ever seen him, looking most frayed and humble, was Jairus of the House of Nahum, a man who had never been a friend to Jesus. But now he surprised them all, by hurling himself at Jesus, and before John could kick the assailant, the old man grasped Jesus’s feet, bowing before him, and all were amazed except for, maybe, Jesus. What he was was hard to tell these days.
“Sir, my little daughter is dying,” Jairus cried, trembling, his eyes on Jesus’s feet.
“Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.”
That was unexpected.
Jesus said, “Take me to her.”
Jairus rose, nodding, and the men around him pushed the crowds away as they were leading Jesus toward the large house in the middle of town. The crowd was pressing about him, and the disciples and Jairus’ men could just barely keep them away. Everyone wanted to touch Jesus or someone near him, and suddenly Jesus stopped as one struck by lightning, and it was Jairus’s men who looked surprised.
“Rabbi, what?” Jairus demanded. He had put all of his dignity aside to trust in one last effort to save his daughter, this strange man.
“Who touched me?” Jesus demanded.
“You see the people crowding against you,” James answered in mild irritation, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
He had come to follow Jesus, but he was tired, and tired of all strangeness, of multiplying loaves and walking on water. Even as he adored he was annoyed by this most frustrating cousin. But Jesus, true to how he had always been, ignored James, and kept looking around to see who had done it.
And because the crowd had now stilled, and it did not seem as if Jesus would move until whoever had touched him came forward, the crowd parted and a rumpled, tired woman knelt down at his feet, as had Jairus, and clasped them.
“Daughter,” he murmured, reaching down and lifting her chin to meet his gaze.
“I thought,” she murmured, “if I touched you I would be healed…. If I touched but the hem of his garment...”
And then she burst into her whole story, how she had bled twelve years.
“And so many physicians, so many midwives and cure alls and holy men, and none of it did anything. And I am so tired, and I thought I would die, And … And…”
She was ritually unclean, for sure. Whatever business she did, she would have had to break the ancient laws of all lands. A menstruating woman was an unclean thing, and one who never stopped, more unclean still. The blood that flowed out once a month and prepared a woman to bear children had flowed and flowed for years. Magdalene thought of the pain of unending bleeding, of the times when there was no last day, of the embarrassment, the exhaustion.
This poor woman, whom she wrapped her arm about even as others backed away, had suffered under the false words and failed works of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better only grew worse.
“And when I heard of you,” the woman continued, “I came here, and when they said, this man, this man in white, I moved through the crowds. I moved through them to touch your mantle.”
There was an anxious look on Judas’s face, the same look on the men surrounding Jairus.
“His daughter is dying! This is urgent,” Judas hissed from between his smiling teeth.
“And are the needs of Jairus less than the needs of this woman?” Magdalene whispered back.
“I thought,” the woman said, “if I just touch his clothes, I will be healed. And… Immediately my bleeding stopped and I felt in my body that I was freed from all my suffering.”
Now she wept again, pressing her face into Magdalene’s chest, and Jesus, pushing back her veil to touch her hair, said, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
Judas had seen new men approaching, and while Jesus was still speaking, Judas realized these were from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. They had never wanted their master to come out on this fool’s mission to beseech a charlatan, and now they gathered around him.
“Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”
Before Jairus could throw back his head and howl, Jesus’s own head snapped back, eyes flashing. And then, even as he had one hand on the weeping woman, he placed another on the howling Jairus and said, tenderly.
“Do not be afraid.”
Jairus stopped, and looked at him.
“Do not,” Jesus repeated, “be afraid. Only… believe.”
Jairus took a deep breath. After all, he had seen Jesus heal this woman, and he had seen these people claiming he had fed five thousand people on a hill, and he was just beginning to hear something about him walking on water. He had not seen his dead daughter. He wanted to believe. Believing was like being in a whole new world. And so he nodded and said, “Yes.”
“Bring me to your home,” Jesus charged,
And nodding, Jairus obeyed.
But at the house the mourners were already weeping, women in black, tearing at their hair, doleful shawms whirring as Jesus entered behind Jairus, and the members of the family and the servants were weeping for the child. They must have been hired before the girl died, and Jairus’s wife and his sisters were throwing back their heads, weeping and wailing, The entire house was a riot, and as if it made absolutely no sense, Jesus cried out, “Why all this commotion and wailing?”
They stopped. Her head buried in her sister’s bosom, Jairus’s wife looked up at Jesus, her eyes wide with rage, rimmed in bleeding kohl so that she looked like a raccoon.
“The child is not dead,” Jesus insisted, “but only asleep.”
“How dare you….” Jairus’s sister in law began, and a man stepped forward laughing at him.
“This rabbi is as great a fool as he is a blasphemer.”
And those who were in rage, mourning, turned to laughter, scorning.
“So he thinks we do not know the difference between death and life!”
“He has not even seen her, but he thinks we don’t know she’s dead.”
And the house was filled with bitter laughter, and someone threw a fruit at Jesus and John and James looked at each other and then John said, “Let us leave this rude house, and all these fools to their misery.”
“I am the light of this world,” Jesus said, simply, “and while it is day, there is mercy.”
And then, while they were still laughing, in quite a different voice, Jesus said: “Get out!”
“Get out?” someone echoed in disbelief.
But much as he had in the temple, he deliberatey took off his belt and wound it around his wrist and struck the floor, causing those directly in front of him, to leap back, yelping. So when they knew he was serious, “Get out!” was all they needed. The great room was empty, and some had retreated to other parts of the house, and then Jesus turned to Jairus and said, “Where is she?”
Jairus pointed in the direction of the room, and those with Jesus followed him. As he came to the darkened room, suddenly, Jesus turned and said to James and John, “You and you, come with me.”
He searched out his companions and said, “Peter, you too.”
Magdalene, and the newly healed woman, he took by their hands, kissed and said, “I will talk to you soon.”
The doorway with the closed curtain felt just like the entrance to a tomb and, making a brief sign of reverence, Jesus bowed, pushed back the dark curtain, and entered, followed by John and James and Peter.
Jairus’s wife let out a shudder, putting her hands over her face, and Jairus took her hand. He could not explain it, but he believed in Jesus, and Peter, for his part, was shook by how heavy the form of a dead little girl could be, laid out in that dark room, barely visible.
Jesus went to the window and pulled back the curtain and when the light shone on her, she seemed even more dead, and looking at the darkness about the eyes, the lifelessness that was so different from sleeping, John’s heart sank into sadness even as Jesus bent down, kissed the child on her cold forehead, and taking her little dead hand in his, said, gently, but firmly, “Talitha cum.”
“Rise,” James murmured, “little girl.”
And just like that, so that a scream came from Peter’s mouth, her eyes fluttered, and as she turned her head, yawning, the shadows about her eyes, and the greyness of death and of lingering fever were no more. She was just a little girl in a red gown, fresh from sleep, and she was laughing as she rose and embraced Jesus.
Jairus and his wife simply stood there, hands to mouths, shaking, and Jesus, as if he were any doctor, said, “She is hungry. Give her something to eat.”
As he and James and John were leaving the astounded house, and family members were walking back in, shouting, crying out, there was already a crowd gathered on the streets.
“What in the seven hells is going on?” James wondered, and coming up to John, Judas asked, “What happened?”
“He…” John gestured to Jesus, “brought her back to life.
“But what is happening here!”
There was rioting and shouting and soldiers were out.
Symeon, one of the leaders of the synagogue came out of the house and demanded, “Master, these men, from the towns around, what do we do with them?”
A day ago, Symeon would never have called Jesus Master, but things had changed. There was dead girl who was alive and so Jesus nodded, and led them all up the incline to the great synagogue in the center of town. They spilled into the courts around it. and the upper levels, and Jesus forsook the bema to stand on the rooftop while they shouted to him
“You were across the sea!”
“You were on the other side of the lake.”
“We saw you go into the hills.”
“Rabbi, when did you get here?”
“When he walked across the lake in the middle of the night,” Nathanael murmured, and Matthew whispered, “You’re not helping.”
But Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.”
John thought of Jesus, leaving the house, telling them to feed the little girl, imagined even now she was sitting down to something modest. Meanwhile Jesus continued:
“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal.”
Then someone asked him, “What must we do to do the works of God?”
“The work of God is this:” Jesus spoke now that the crowd was becoming silent, “to believe in the one he has sent.”
“What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you?” someone shouted, and John wanted to swing out and hit him. As if this had not been a day of signs, dizzying signs, too many really.
“What will you do?” another shouted. “Our ancestors ate manna in the wilderness.”
But now it was not only those who had followed him across the sea, the men from Jerusalem who were always coming were here, the hecklers who accumulated around Jesus, and one shouted, “As it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
Now Jesus cried back, more energized than weary, “Amen, Amen I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” some said, “always give us this bread.”
And some meant it. Some bowed their heads and went to their knees, but others were laughing, as if just a day ago they had not seen him lift a loaf and feed thousands, as if a girl had not just been called from the dead. John shook his head and understood. The whole world was full of the mercy of God, and men chose not to see it.
So Jesus called out:
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
But what was this, all this mention of the Father, and of his Father? Yes, the God of Israel was like a father, was the Father of the World, but this was something different, and no one called God their own personal father. What was this? Was he Hercules, and did he think the God of Isreal was Zeus? And the people were grumbling and arguring amongst themselves because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
“Is this not Jesus?” one demanded, “the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
“Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus roared. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’”
Some had never heard him speak this way. Many believed he was a prophet. But here he was, the Prophet, declaring things no one had a right too. Some had even thought to make him a king, but here he was decided to be THE KING, and even the disciples, even John and James and Peter, who had seen him walk on the water and raise a girl from death, shook as he said, “Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me!
“No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God! Only he has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.”
But, no matter how mad it was, how could they not believe? How could they not believe when the light shone full on him, though the sun was fitful in the sky, when he glowed with the light of his words?
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus asserted.
“Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
But they did not respond to him, they just shook their heads and murmured back and forth.
“What in the hell is he talking about?”
“Flesh to eat? How can he say this?”
“Flesh to eat. Is he a cow? Is he the sacrifice?”
“Behold,” John murmured, “the Lamb of God.”
And around him, the voices of the crowd rose sharply.
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
And yet, madly, Jesus did not relent, but pressed on.
“Verily I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Magdalene would remember that later it would be written that, on hearing this, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” and some were horrified. In those last months, many had gathered around him, but none had heard him speak like this. There were some who said Jesus knew all things and all men and everything he did was with intent, but she could not believe that, for the Jesus she knew was, though more than a man, still a man. She believed, and always would, that on that day, Jesus could not longer keep silent, and his words and his power rose to their greatest height because he knew it was time to say everything, to shout all of his message. She believed he knew himself better at that moment, on the roof of the synagogue, and on that day chose to separate the wheat from the chaff, the hanger ons from the disciples. Whether he knew it then or not, the death of John had sent a fire through him, even as the arrest had, nearly a year before.
Aware that the crowd was now grumbling, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit. And life. And yet….. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.”
Even as people were walking away, the synagogue emptying of would be followers as well as angry detractors satisfied by this self sabotage, Jesus continued.
“This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
As the crowds were leaving, almost fleeing his madness, some of the elders in their black robes, said, “See, he rose so high, so very high, and then like the boy in the Greek story, he flew too close to the sun with his words, and now he’s losing them. Now this is the end.”
“Not so,” others said, “he knows exactly what he’s doing.”
“He’s learning who will say,” Symeon said, “and who will not last.”
Jesus came down from the rooftop, and he came into the courtyard where were Magdalene and John, James, Peter, Philip, Andrew, Cleophas and Rachel beside Simon Zelotes and Nathanael Bartholomew, the Alphaeus brothers, Uriah, the man Jesus had healed of madness, The little boy who had brough the loaves and fishes, Thaddeus and Joses, Thomas and Judas and the woman he had healed this morning. Outside you could hear the dwindling, disapproving or disappointed crowd The crowd, crying as they walked away:
“Eat my flesh! Drink my blood!”
“Show us a sign! Where are his signs?”
Jesus looked on all those left and said, “Will you too also leave?”
And it was Simon Peter who answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”
Magdalene pushed off her veil so her black hair fell down. She knelt at Jesus’s feet and clasped his knees.
“Lord,” she said, “you have the words of eternal life.”
END OF PART TWO
