And He Healed Them All: Second Edition

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “The man opened his shirt, exposing a festering sore near his breast bone. “I have these sores all over me.’ He pulled up the hem of his garment to show a smaller sore on his calf.

  “The teacher beckoned the man closer. ‘Let me see that one on your chest again.’ At the same time he scooped a small handful of dust off of the rock. When the man showed the sore, the teacher held open his hand and blew the dust onto the sore.

  “When the man instinctively brushed the dust off of his exposed chest, the sore disappeared with the dust. He looked further down inside his shirt, where other sores must have been. He pushed up his sleeves, but I saw no sores. Then he looked at his leg. ‘They’re gone!’ He laughed. ‘They’re all gone!’ And several people praised God in response as the young man thanked the teacher and pushed back into the crowd.

  “Those who remained, pushed forward. Peter, Andrew, and Bartholomew pressed back, positioning themselves directly in front of the teacher. He lifted his feet up beside him to keep them from being crushed against the front of the rock. He leaned on the armrest his friends had built. Many of the people who pressed against the three men could reach the teacher still. He obliged by touching any hand presented to him.

  “A woman with a misshapen face looked over the arms of the bodyguards so the teacher could see her. Her face was nearly flat on one side and rounded on the other. The distortion to her nose most likely hindered her breathing, but I wonder if that motivated her as much as a natural longing for beauty. The teacher leaned forward and cupped her face in both hands. When he let go, her head shook rapidly, throwing her to the ground. The people around her lifted the small woman above the crush and passed her limp body to the teacher’s friends waiting on one side, where two of the women received her and found a place to lay her. Those women, along with me, were the first to see the new and improved face the woman had received.

  “The teacher continued to touch heads and hands in rapid succession. Many of those healed tried to leave, shoving through the dense mob. But swimming against the forward press overcame many, and they lost their balance, though they couldn’t properly fall to the ground. Again, strong arms lifted some of the smaller people up to the top of the crowd and passed them from hand to hand to a less heavily packed part of the hillside. I thought that this must be similar to the mosh pit at a rock concert. The process of people stopping to help move the previous supplicants out of the way before reaching the teacher lessened the forward pressure somewhat. James and John repeatedly waded into the crowd to make sure that no one was trampled. These were rough, work-hardened men, but they displayed a measure of gentleness, even for crowd control, in the service of the teacher.

  “The teacher touched babies and small children held up by half a dozen parents, who appeared to have banded together and pushed through the crowd as one. One baby girl with a withered arm, barely half the size of the other, hung suspended over Peter and Bartholomew, held in strong hands. The teacher touched the little girl and her withered arm immediately grew to match the other. Because of the intense press of people, few enjoyed the sight of that little arm expanding to normal size.

  “In this context—failing light, the teacher’s growing weariness, the crowd pressing in on him—I suddenly feared for the teacher’s life. Without warning, it entered my mind that the remarkable healing of the baby’s arm was not the only thing that would be undetected in that throng. Then I noticed a tall man with a long, jet-black beard, who was wedged in among the broad variety of people seeking the teacher.

  “As I focused on this man, I noticed that he made eye contact with two of the teacher’s followers, Judas Iscariot and Simon the Zealot. As I reflected on the dream later, I thought of what I had learned long ago, in graduate school, about a group of patriots known as the Sicari, Jewish nationalist assassins who used the cover of a large crowd to dispatch Romans and Roman collaborators. I caught a small movement of the stranger’s hand as he adjusted something hidden up one sleeve and then another under his belt. My attention was drawn to these movements, as if I was supposed to understand who this man was.

  “The teacher’s bodyguards kept their master from being crushed by an enthusiastic crowd, but would they be able to protect him against assassination attempts? I thought too of what scholars have said regarding Judas and Simon’s possible association with those rebels and assassins, and I wondered about their eye contact with this ominous stranger.

  “Even as the assassin neared the front of the crowd, Judas and Simon moved stealthily toward the teacher. I realized then that, from where they stood, they could see people before they reached the teacher, watching perhaps for just such a threat as this man.

  “Judas reached Andrew just before the assassin did. Simon managed to make eye-contact with Bartholomew, who was directly in front of the teacher, and thus Bartholomew was alerted to some threat just as the assassin reached out his hand among the many hands stretched toward the teacher. Simon, Bartholomew, and Judas rushed into the crowd and attempted to seize him.

  “Peter was the lone remaining bodyguard between the teacher and the crowd. Andrew had followed Judas, Simon, and Bartholomew once he saw their target. The task of holding back the crowd, however, became easier after the defenders rushed the assassin. The front line of the crowd collapsed backward when the four men lunged in. The guards knocked the armed man to the ground and Judas and Simon each held one of his hands. They also each seized one of his concealed daggers.

  “The disciples apparently discovered that the assassin’s hands were empty, his hidden daggers having to be retrieved from their sheaths. And they must have realized that they had not thwarted an assassination attempt, as they assumed.

  “‘Simon, Judas, let him up.” The teacher shouted above the din.

  “The two men, holding the daggers, released their captive. Andrew and Bartholomew kept their grip on the stranger, but did so to help him up off the ground. The sight of the five disheveled, dusty and sweaty men—two of them holding weapons—shocked the surrounding crowd into silence.

  “The teacher took command of the situation. ‘Bring him to me.’

  “The crowd moved back, allowing the assassin and his escort room, though Peter stood between the assassin and the teacher. I had seen Peter hit at least one man that day already, and I could see his fists clenched again.

  “‘It’s all right, Peter. You can step aside,’ the teacher said. To the assassin, he said, ‘You’re not sleeping at night.’

  “The sad looking man put his hand on his stomach. ‘My stomach bothers me most nights, and I can’t get much sleep.’ His voice was plaintive and mellow.

  “The teacher leaned forward and put his hand in the middle of the man’s chest. The man moaned and drew his shoulders up. Then he relaxed and let out a heavy sigh. He wavered slightly before righting himself. Thanking the teacher, he backed into the crowd, who opened up to let him pass, then closed the gap, swallowing him up.

  “The sudden violence underscored the extent to which the teacher was sacrificing himself for the people during this long day of intense emotions and physical strains. This latest event seemed to settle the crowd’s previous frenzied push. In spite of the approaching night and many still hoping for healing, the crowd let up their press to reach the teacher that night. Perhaps they could tell that he wasn’t going anywhere.”

  Walter told us about this dream in two parts, the second part after dinner. I had stoked a fire in the fireplace and the lasagna sat heavy in our stomachs, topped off with a chocolate cake that Jillian brought over. With all that, and telling the second half of the dream, Walter had begun to sink into the recliner, surrendering to the warmth and weariness of the evening.

  In the brief silence after Walter had finished, Jillian sniffled. I looked in time to see her swipe at a tear. She smiled at me, perhaps remembering our conversation that morning about my suppressed emotions.

  “Obviously, these dreams have become very real to me,” she said with a little laugh. She dabb
ed her nose with a tissue. “I feel the teacher’s openness to everyone, his desire to touch and heal everyone. In my mind this seems right, just like I would expect, but it’s reaching something deep inside me. I guess I’m riding on the realization that if he loved all of them, then it must be true that he loves me too.”

  My instant thought was, “How could he not love you?” But I held that back, allowing myself to absorb her explanation instead.

  Walter laughed a churlish laugh that I would almost call a giggle. I looked sharply at him to try to figure out what he was doing. He sensed the apparent impropriety and apologized.

  “I’m popping my cork over here, trying to contain what I came to realize earlier today, as I prayed about the significance of the dreams. They’re not just for me, as I’ve said. But they’re not just for James either.” He looked directly at Jillian when he said this, though he barely moved his head, so comfortably ensconced in the voluminous chair.

  After a few seconds of silence, I addressed practical considerations. “I think it’s time to get you back to your place.”

  Walter’s head rolled from side to side as if it floated there above his resting body. “Wish I still had that wheelchair,” he said. “This thing doesn’t have wheels on it does it?”

  We both laughed with him and helped him slowly rise out of the chair, once we pushed the footrest back down to the floor.

  Taking him back home that night, we continued to talk, Walter’s aged baritone massaging our hearts and minds out of the darkness in the backseat.

  Even so, my mind tripped back a few months to the urgent call I’d received from the hospital, telling me of Walter’s stroke. I remembered the nighttime drive to the emergency room. And I recalled how little like Walter that inert old man in the hospital bed seemed.

  On this night, five months after his stroke, Walter was as peaceful and affable as I had ever known him to be. I smiled at the irony that now too I found it hard to recognize the moderate intellectual who had mentored me through college and the early stages of my teaching career. The mystical dreamer that had replaced that old Walter left me quietly amused, and deeply uncomfortable.

  Chapter Fourteen

  At the End of the Day

  On Tuesday afternoon, I called Walter and found that he hadn’t yet had another dream. Jillian had invited me to come with her to meet her mother and help with some small chores around her mother’s apartment. I arranged to see Walter the next day, whether he had a dream that night or not. It’s funny how we had come to expect the next dream, like a new episode on TV. I guess we had been conditioned by their regularity, coming every couple of days.

  Meanwhile, I welcomed the chance to see another side of Jillian. Beyond the obvious opportunity to meet her mother, and perhaps to see something of Jillian’s future, I was interested to learn how she treated the woman who had raised her, but who now depended very heavily on her.

  We ate a quick dinner together after work. Her mother would have liked to have cooked for us, but a severe fall and a failed hip replacement had limited her mobility. She also had dietary restrictions that made sharing a meal too complicated for my first meeting with her. At least, this is what Jillian had concluded. I was learning that she liked to keep things simple, a refreshing contrast to my own tendency to get tangled up in complications of my own devising.

  Jillian’s mother, Carol, lived in a fairly new apartment building with heavily padded carpets in the hallways, which seemed to suck sound right out of the air. The first word I spoke seemed to stop dead, six inches from my mouth. Somehow this inspired me to lower my voice still more.

  Jillian led the way to the plain wooden door with number 406 on it, opening it with a key on her key ring, sparing her mother the walk to greet us there.

  She called out as soon as she opened the door. “Hello, Mother.” Somehow it felt as if her voice could carry more than a couple of feet inside the apartment. We could certainly hear Wheel of Fortune on TV from where we entered.

  “Hello, Dear.” Her mother’s slightly shrill voice floated from the other room. I could tell from the sound of the last word, that she was starting to get up to meet us.

  “No need to get up, Mom. We can come and see you where you’re sitting.” We had passed through the narrow hallway to the living room, where and I looked over Jillian’s shoulder at a woman in her late seventies slowly rocking left and right in her seat, gradually scooting forward so she could stand. Jillian handed me the storage container of soup she had been carrying so she could catch her mother.

  “It’s okay,” she started to say, trying to correct her mother gently.

  But Carol said, “Well, I want to greet your guest properly, don’t I?” She sounded slightly contentious, though perhaps not genuinely perturbed, as she insisted on doing things her own way.

  Instead of resisting, Jillian helped her mother to stand. “Okay, Mother. I understand.”

  With a full open smile, Carol Moore greeted me. “Oh, James I’m so glad to meet you.” She offered her right hand as Jillian supported her left arm.

  I took her hand in mine and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Oh, my, yes.” Her smile turned sweeter, like a girl pleasantly surprised.

  “Mrs. Moore, such a pleasure to meet you,” I said, still holding her hand.

  Carol stood at least six inches shorter than Jillian, I guessed that not all of that difference could be accounted for by aging and a bad hip replacement. Apparently Jillian had inherited her height from her father. But her mother’s face clearly looked like a projection of Jillian in thirty years or more. Paler, grayer skin, with wrinkles around the eyes, and puffiness in her cheeks masked Jillian’s beauty, which had certainly once been Carol’s.

  “So you teach philosophy?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Not much else you can do with that besides teach, huh?” she said, as Jillian shepherded her back to her recliner.

  I laughed. “Not much.”

  “So what would you do if you didn’t teach?”

  “Well, I like to work with my hands. I’ve fixed up my old house on my own, and I’ve imagined doing that for a living.”

  “Oh, really? How did you get into that?” She scooted back into her seat as Jillian took the container of soup to the kitchen, smiling at me out of her mother’s view. It wasn’t quite an apologetic smile, maybe sort of a “Welcome to my world” kind of smile.

  “I worked for my dad’s construction company in high school and during the summers in college. I learned about carpentry then.”

  “Oh, that’s nice, and so handy to know, isn’t it?”

  By this point I noted that each sentence ended in a question mark, and I wondered how to turn the conversation. Jillian returned from the kitchen and bailed me out.

  “Mom, you’ve used up quite a few of your twenty questions already, you might want to save some for later.”

  Her mother shrugged. “Just getting to know James. There’s nothing wrong with being curious, is there?”

  I smiled at Jillian. “Does that one count?”

  Jillian caught my joke, but Carol missed it, so I settled down, not wanting to bypass her in the conversation.

  In all, I’m sure she asked more than twenty questions, and I asked a few of my own. We did get to know each other pretty well for one evening. Carol insisted that I eat nearly a whole plate of chocolate chip cookies, a bigger sugar infusion than I would normally have taken, but well worth the sacrifice.

  When it came time to leave, and Carol again insisted on exercising her painful hips by standing up to say good-bye, I gave her a big hug.

  “It was grand to meet you, Carol.” I addressed her as she had requested, by her first name, in hopes of preserving a measure of youth, I suppose.

  “Oh, you were good to come see me and put up with all my questions.” She glanced sideways at Jillian with her head bent slightly.

  “Don’t worry about the questions. How else are you going to
find out what you want to know?” I said.

  Jillian and I left together to ride back to my place in her car. A work night for both of us we said goodnight and parted on the driveway, the moderate day reverting to piercing cold under an occasional clear patch in the clouds. We agreed to talk on the phone the next day.

  In fact, I called Jillian that next afternoon after talking to Walter. For the first time he actively urged me to visit in order to hear his latest dream.

  “I really want you and Jillian to both be here tonight, if you can. It would mean a lot to me,” he said over the phone.

  That was far more ardent than any of his previous invitations, and from it I gathered that this was a particularly significant dream. I wondered if this might be the last one. The story had progressed to the latter stages of that day in Jesus’s life, and it felt to us that the dreams would not continue beyond the close of the day.

  As it turned out I was right.

  ***

  “I wanted you both here because this is the last one,” Walter said.

  Jillian and I absorbed the news.

  Walter narrated this last dream sitting in his favorite chair, as usual. His growing belief that receiving and passing on these dreams represented his life’s final purpose seemed to add a bit of formality to his tone. Jillian and I sat in our usual places that late February evening and listened to Walter tell us his last dream.

  “The day had faded, the sky darkening from light to medium to dark blue. The sun left a thin stain of red and gold along the horizon. People started campfires on the hillside and rolled out bedding. A few even setup tents. Others assembled makeshift shelters out of whatever they had with them.

  “Many who had been healed that day had not remained; therefore, the crowd had thinned somewhat. Others stayed, although the teacher had already touched them. Thousands more waited to receive healing or to assist someone they had brought to the teacher. New people arrived every hour, as word continued to spread around the countryside that the teacher from Nazareth was on this hill next to the lake.