The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  The morning was still young when she arrived for the second time at the upper room and stood in the doorway laughing into the dark den of gloomy disciples.

  Mary couldn’t help herself. It was his great grim mouth that drove her to it. She threw out her arms and ran to Simon Peter crying: “Simon, dance with me! Hug me and spin me around, because I have just seen the Lord. He is alive! Simon, Simon, he has risen from the dead!”

  III

  ON THAT SAME MORNING, the third day of their desolation, one of the disciples decided to go home and perhaps to stay there permanently.

  Cleopas told the others that he wanted to take his daughter out of harm’s way—which meant out of Jerusalem, away from the authorities that had arranged for the death of their Master. Besides, he argued: what should keep him here anymore? The wheel was off the wagon, the axle broken; it would not move again. Jesus was dead. Life itself was ashes now. Cleopas said that he was tasting the dry soot of futility in his mouth.

  What he didn’t say was that he was angry.

  If he stayed with the other disciples, he knew that sooner or later he would attack them. Words for sure, words of a monumental scorn for these blithering fools. But he’d hit them, too, and if he had a club in his hand he might very well break skulls.

  So he took his daughter and left.

  Their house was in Emmaus, about seven miles west of the city. It was one of the villages Pilate had ravaged in order to capture Barabbas. Oh, yes, Cleopas had a sort of singing fury in his heart. As they went, he found himself reviewing all the things that had happened since they had come to Jerusalem.

  Each detail was new tinder to the fire.

  His daughter, eighteen years old, walked quietly beside him, sometimes asking the question that kept him talking. She, too, had been a disciple of Jesus. By her own deciding. But part of that decision, Cleopas knew, was her desire to take care of him, her father. She was good at listening.

  “Abba,” she said, “you’re more than sad, aren’t you? You’re something else.”

  He stuck out his bottom lip. “I’m so angry I can hardly breathe,” he said.

  She said, “Why? Who are you angry at?”

  And he would have answered the question by naming a thousand names—but just then he realized that there was a stranger pacing them, walking the same road in the same direction.

  As soon as Cleopas glanced at him, the stranger said, “Friends, what are you talking about?”

  All at once Cleopas’ daughter stopped and put her head down and began to cry. Until that moment it had not occurred to him that she would be as sorrowful as he. Cleopas made a fist and growled, “What do you think we’re talking about?”

  The stranger shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Cleopas said. “Are you the only visitor who doesn’t know the things that have happened in Jerusalem these days?”

  “What things?” said the stranger.

  But his daughter answered before he could. “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth,” she said gently. “He was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. But the chief priests and the rulers condemned him to death. They crucified him,” she whispered. “He died,” she said. “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

  Cleopas, hearing such despair in his young daughter, suddenly realized who he was angry at.

  “This morning an idiot woman told us that the grave was empty and that Jesus was alive,” he said. “Simon went and looked. They were right. The grave was empty. But that means absolutely nothing. And he who caused us to hope has now become the death of hope! Jesus, Teacher, Messiah—pah! This is what that dead man taught me: to hate life because everything is vanity and nothing is more than a striving after wind!”

  Cleopas was furious with Jesus.

  “Ah, you foolish fellow,” the stranger said, “slow to believe what the prophets have spoken!”

  If his daughter hadn’t put her arms around him and held him so tightly, Cleopas would have hit the man.

  Softly, earnestly, she asked, “What did the prophets say?”

  “That it was necessary for the Christ to suffer these things in order to enter his glory.”

  “Abba?” she whispered. “Abba, let’s walk.”

  Cleopas obeyed.

  Then while they walked toward Emmaus, the strange man spoke, holding their attention, fascinating them both with the depth of his knowledge, and causing in them a rebirth of wonder. For, beginning with Moses and the prophets, he interpreted in all the scriptures the things concerning Messiah—how everything that had been prophesied was fulfilled in Jesus.

  Except the absence, Cleopas thought. Messiah would never have left us alone.

  It was near evening when they came to Emmaus.

  As they approached their own home, Cleopas’ remarkable daughter took the strange man’s hand and said, “The day is nearly over. Sir, stay with us. Let us prepare a meal for you.”

  The man had steadfast eyes, utterly unthreatening and unafraid. He smiled his agreement. Cleopas surprised himself by feeling some pleasure at the stranger’s acceptance.

  But when they all sat down to eat, their visitor smiled and began to act as if this were his house and he were the host. He took the bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them.

  In the instant they touched the bread, their eyes were opened. As if just waking up, Cleopas recognized the features of the Lord, his eyes like polished amber. The stranger had been Jesus all along! But in that same instant, Jesus vanished. Cleopas and his daughter were sitting at the table alone.

  “Now I know,” the woman breathed, luminous with awe, so devout that it caused her father almost to weep. “Now I know why my heart was burning while he talked to us on the road!”

  They rose up—both of them, father and daughter, fresh with joy—and hurried back to Jerusalem to tell the disciples what had happened on the road, and how the Lord was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

  THAT SAME EVENING ten disciples were huddled in the upper room. The door had been locked more than three days now, the windows shut against spying eyes. The air was fetid.

  Thomas, irritated with the indolence of the others, had gone out to find food.

  Some of the men dozed on their backs on the floor. Some sat as if in conversation, though no one was speaking.

  The table where they’d eaten the Passover last Thursday had been removed. The side table remained. Two candles burned fitfully on either end of it. The room shuddered in shadow.

  Simon Peter was pacing back and forth like a lion behind bars. It was his restlessness that caused the candle flames to bow and gutter.

  Matthew said, “I’ve lost count.”

  James said, “Of what?”

  “How many times the rock-man has thrown himself east and west in our small country.”

  “The man’s a menace,” James said. “If he lands on someone, he’ll crush him—then there’ll be ten of us.”

  “Grim talk, James.”

  “Grim times, Matthew. We’re hiding here because the leaders want to blot us out. You know Simon has never been a tranquil man. But look at him now. He’s out of control. Who knows what he’ll do? Yes, he could get someone killed.”

  Andrew said, “Something’s troubling my brother.”

  “Oh, poor Peter!” James exclaimed. “As if there’s no trouble for anyone else! Jesus is dead. Does your tender brother mourn him more than the rest of us?”

  Andrew put his head down, near tears.

  Matthew, as dry as chalk, murmured, “No need for ridicule, James.”

  John said, “Maybe Jesus isn’t dead.”

  James turned on him. “Women talk!” he sneered. “The talk of hysterical women!”

  “I was at the tomb, James,” John said. “His body was not there.”

  Matthew spoke moderating words. “Absence is no proof,” he said.

  “A stolen corpse!” James declared. />
  John said, “But his windings were still there. And the cloth that had covered his face was rolled up in a place by itself. What, then, brother? Neat thieves? Tidy thieves?”

  James fairly shouted: “No need for ridicule, John! I’m just asking for proof. I haven’t seen any proof.”

  Andrew raised his eyes and whispered, “The curtain that hides the Most Holy Place in the Temple—when Jesus died it tore in two, from the top to the bottom.”

  “How did you know that?” James sneered. “Were you there?”

  “No,” Andrew murmured, withdrawing again into himself. “Simon told me. Simon was there.”

  James the son of Zebedee jumped up shouting, “What is the matter with you, stone-head? Don’t you have any sense?”

  Simon stopped pacing and looked at James. “What?”

  “Do you deliberately endanger us, or are you just stupid?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Ahhh!” James growled, turning away, “he’s another Judas.”

  Andrew gasped.

  Simon’s body snapped into a fighting posture. “James,” he bellowed, “explain yourself!”

  James whirled about and matched the bellow: “No, you explain yourself, you public spectacle! What were you doing in the Temple when Jesus was dying?”

  “Praying!” Simon shouted. He began to move toward James with his knees bent, his elbows crooked, his fingers like grappling hooks. “I was begging forgiveness.”

  James, too, lowered himself for the attack and spread his arms.

  Matthew began to stand, saying, “Brothers, there are other enemies—”

  At the same moment Andrew flew toward Simon and John rose up in front of James.

  But James, glaring at Simon, whispered with calculated spite: “Get behind me, Satan!”

  Simon howled like a wild beast, his face distorted by violent emotions. He stumbled backward a moment, then he gathered his body into a low projectile and prepared to launch himself at James. There was such a haunting in his eyes that the disciples instinctively fell away from him.

  Suddenly a beam of blinding white light split the room at its center.

  And then it was no light at all, but the bright figure of a human, standing among them, standing directly between Simon Peter and James.

  And then the figure was Jesus.

  He said, “Peace be with you.”

  Simon dropped to the floor, sitting with his legs straight out in front of him. James gaped. No one spoke. Andrew knelt down and covered his face.

  Jesus allowed his eyes to travel over each man in the room. He was so clean!—his clothing radiant, his arms like rounded gold, his body an alabaster column. He opened his white robe so that they could see the scar in his side. He showed them, too, the spike scars at the ends of his arms.

  John breathed, “It is you, Lord.”

  The eyes of the disciples began to shed fear and to glitter at the sight before them: “O Lord, it’s you!”

  Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you,” and nodded to make the word personal unto each one of them. Then he said, “Friends, you know that the Father sent me into the world. In the same way I now send you. Not just disciples anymore—I make you my apostles.”

  Jesus stood over Andrew and placed his hands on the shy man’s head. The breath that descended from the Lord’s nostrils seemed scented of myrrh. Andrew smelled myrrh as Jesus touched him and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

  Likewise, Jesus placed his hands on John’s head and breathed on him: Receive the Holy Spirit. And on James, on Matthew and Philip and Nathanael and all the disciples. Last, he came to Simon Peter.

  Throughout this gentle ceremony Jesus was saying: “If you forgive the sins of the people, their sins will be forgiven. If you hold their sins, they will be held fast.”

  Then, with such civility that it seemed the right and proper thing to do, Jesus departed, and no one tried to stop him.

  All ten men remained motionless, enshrouded each in his own wonder.

  James whispered: “Mary Magdalene was right.”

  Andrew said to himself: “Judas should have waited.”

  Simon, in a corner alone, muttered, “What am I to do? O God, what am I to do?”

  Suddenly the door banged open and all the disciples jumped up, ready to protect themselves. Who had left the door unlocked? But in came Cleopas, pounding his right fist into his left hand and crying, “We have seen the Lord!”

  His daughter behind him nodded with shining eyes, “Yes, it’s true. We’ve seen the Lord.”

  A WEEK PASSED. Stories about the Lord’s appearances began to spread privately among his people. Lazarus and Mary and Martha heard them. So did Joseph of Arimathea. Well, it was his tomb. Someone had to tell him that it had not been robbed in the manner he thought.

  A man named Nicodemus searched out the disciples. He was a member of the Sanhedrin. James met him, then, in secret and with much caution. But the fellow confessed an ever-growing fascination with Jesus; and now that there were stories of his resurrection, Nicodemus could not stay silent any more.

  “Is it true?” he begged of James.

  James said, “Why do you want to know?”

  Nicodemus said, “Three years ago he told me I had to be born again to enter the kingdom. Born again, he said, of water and the Spirit. If he’s alive after dying, you see, then his word is true. And he said, Whoever believes in the Son of man may have eternal life.”

  James the son of Zebedee said to Nicodemus, “Yes. It’s true. Jesus was raised from the dead.”

  “Ah!” The member of the Jewish Council couldn’t contain himself. He plucked at his robes, he rubbed his chin, he smiled and frowned, he looked glad and bewildered and transported. “See?” he said. “Oh, sir, do you see? This is what I know. This is what I was told, that God loved the world so much, he gave it his only Son, and those who believe in him will never perish. They will have eternal life.”

  As the stories of the Lord’s appearing spread, so did remembrance of his teaching—and so did joy.

  Shobal, whose name means Basket, the odd fellow out of whom Jesus had cast an evil spirit, suddenly walked into the upper room and started to laugh. A drooling, lank sort of laughter. He tried to stop, but he couldn’t. He laughed and laughed, and the first one to laugh with him was Mary the mother of Jesus, who had not laughed in many a year. Mary and Shobal laughed like children together, holding hands and turning circles. And most of the disciples became infected with this dithering joy. They barked and bellowed and giggled and roared.

  “Shobal,” cried Philip, “however did you get here from Capernaum?”

  But Shobal only winked and nodded and laughed.

  Simon Peter stood to the side and smiled, but he didn’t laugh. He couldn’t. It wasn’t in him to laugh these days.

  Thomas was downright peevish in the midst of such groundless gladness.

  “You’re living in some illusion!” he growled.

  Simon answered him: “No, we really have seen the Lord.”

  “Just like Mary Magdalene saw him, right?”

  “She did,” said Simon.

  “People want to believe he’s alive,” Thomas said. “I don’t blame that. It’s natural. But it is not natural to turn your wants into your reality. That’s dangerous.”

  Simon Peter had no heart for the debate. But James did. Vigorously he proclaimed: “He was here, Thomas, in this very room, while you were gone looking for food. Jesus appeared, even though the doors were locked, and showed us his scars and blessed us, each one of us!”

  Thomas, the “blunt hunter,” got very specific then. “If I can’t see it, I can’t believe it. Tell you what, James, let me touch the scars from the spike; let me put my hand in his side, and then I’ll believe it.”

  On Sunday night the disciples were again gathered in the upper room. Again, candles were burning at either end of the table. There was a general quietness among the people there, repose before sleep. Softly Si
mon Peter was murmuring prayers—psalms, by the sound of it. He looked dark and forbidding. He hadn’t shaved for ten days now.

  But Thomas felt himself to be alien here. Everyone else seemed bound together by some ethereal experience which excluded him. His mood was sour. He was planning to leave these people and this place but he hadn’t yet decided where to go. Certainly, he didn’t feel like sleeping now.

  Then someone directly behind him said, “Peace be with you.”

  The voice was murmurous and personal. Thomas began to turn around—then leaped to his feet, all his nerves singing.

  It was Jesus! Between two candles on the table, there stood Jesus, solemn and erect! Candlelight brushed the sides of his face with an orange warmth and shade. He was looking at Thomas, though the other disciples, too, were rising now and forming a semicircle.

  “Come here,” Jesus said.

  No one moved. Thomas sent furtive glances left and right, but all the men were waiting on him. Jesus was speaking to none but him: “Thomas, come here.”

  Slowly Thomas approached.

  As he did, Jesus opened the palms of his hands and said, “Reach out your finger. Examine my wounds.”

  Thomas wanted to say, No need, no need, Lord. But he was crushed and couldn’t speak.

  Jesus opened his robe so that his flesh was visible from the ribs to his hip. “Reach out your hand and put it into my side,” he said.

  But Thomas wrapped his arms around his own chest and began to sink down to his knees. No need, Lord.

  “Thomas, once and for all I tell you: Do not be faithless but believing!”

  The poor disciple, now completely bowed down before Jesus, whispered, “My Lord and my God!”

  Jesus put his hands on Thomas’ head. The scent of myrrh spilled through the room, and Jesus said, “Have you believed because you’ve seen me? Hear my final beatitude: Blessed are those who have not seen and who nevertheless believe.”

  IV

  Simon Peter

  I LET MY BEARD grow back. The first days I was too sad to shave. Didn’t think about it. But then the Lord Jesus rose from the dead exactly as he said he would—exactly, you see, as he said, which is part of the problem, because I never really paid attention to that saying, because I didn’t believe he would die, so how should I even consider that he could come back to life again?—but he did, exactly as he said he would, rise up from the dead and he appeared in person before us, and I was astonished, I was speechless, I was so glad for him and so overjoyed for the whole world, but yet at the same time I was sick inside myself. I can’t describe this. It’s impossible. Nothing is greater than this. God is here. God is in Jesus. The kingdom of God begins in Jesus! And as much as I know that, as much as I love and believe it, that’s how much I loathe myself. That’s how horrible I feel. Because I’ll never enter that kingdom. I don’t deserve to. I gave up my right. I denied my Lord. I rejected him to save myself. Do you understand this? It’s at the time of crisis that the truth comes out, and I…I’m the one who swore he didn’t know Jesus. So after the first days I let my beard grow on purpose. It would be hypocrisy to think that I could be like my Lord anymore.