by John Smelcer
I smiled as I witnessed his delight when another shooting star raced across the sky.
“Did you see it?” he asked. “It is beautiful.”
And it was beautiful.
Then he turned to me with a radiant grin.
“Love much,” he said. “Laugh often.”
Abruptly, the benevolent smile on the rabbi’s face changed into a scowl of consternation.
“Anyone who abuses my message to obscure or impede truth, or who exploits my message to sow hate and intolerance, does not love me or God, though they swear they do,” he said almost angrily, biting his tongue. “You think you look different and sound different from one another, but mankind is all the same to God, a Multitude of One. There is no We. There is no They. Such prejudice oppresses love and denies the inmost self. Where have I said to hate or to exclude? Did I not include women in my ministry, as well as adulterers, slaves, criminals, lepers and the lame, the demon possessed, the rich and the poor, the clean and unclean, and even those whose profession allows them to steal from the labor and sweat of others? Did I not show mercy to all who stood with me and against me? Did I not forgive my executioners and those who sent me to my execution? Have I not said to love even your enemy? Have I not commanded that it is wrong to judge others, lest you also be judged? Did I not caution against throwing the first stone of judgment, for once it is thrown the stone cannot be taken back?”
“But do we not have laws?” I interrupted, thinking about a woman in a nearby village who was stoned to death last year for adultery. “Is it not our place to judge and to punish those who violate the laws?”
In answer he said, “How often are the innocent condemned out of treachery or prejudice or false witness.”
It was not a question.
I remembered how the husband had at first praised the judges for upholding the law and his honor. But later it was revealed how he had boasted to a friend that he had lied about his wife so that he could marry her younger sister. Even though the truth eventually came out, the faithful wife’s life could not be restored. What use were praises sung to her bones? The thought that the scriptures had been used in such a vicious and calculated injustice made me angry. I wondered how many innocents had been killed in the name of upholding laws written by the fallible hand of mankind.
“No one is righteous in the eyes of God,” continued the teacher. “Therefore, how can any person’s judgment be righteous? Only God perceives everything. That is why it is written you must not kill, for each person is a unique and beloved creation by God. It is the sin that must perish, not the sinner. It is also why it is written that you must not bear false witness against others.”
It dawned on me that those who judged the woman and those who eagerly cast the fatal stones were as guilty of murder as the conniving and lecherous husband, though I was certain they would each justify their wrongdoing in the belief they had done God’s will and were therefore blameless.
In my mounting anger, I gritted my jaw and clenched my hands until my knuckles turned white.
The rabbi saw my apprehension.
He bent over and reached a cupped hand into the stream, and then he raised it for me to behold. As I watched, he splayed his fingers, letting the water spill away.
“Before setting off to judge others,” he said, “know that your own sins issue from you like water pouring from an open hand. Do not be so eager to judge or to condemn others. No one is righteous in the eyes of God. Not a one. The book of my life must not be used as a sword or as a mallet with which to strike at others or enslave others or as an instrument of intimidation or prejudice, for I will judge those who do so. I will ask them when it is their time, ‘Was that not you I saw who abused and mistreated another of my beloved children?”
I remember that I was struck by his use of the word I. Surely he meant God.
Perhaps I had heard wrong.
“To be my follower is not a privilege,” continued the rabbi. “It is a responsibility, a responsibility to love others, for God made love to be shared. The love you give to others is the only love you keep. It is only from loving others that you find your second self. Whatsoever you do to the least and most vulnerable of my brothers and sisters, you do to me. The Kingdom of Heaven will be built of love. That is why God created you with the desire to love and to be loved, a yearning felt deeply, especially in moments of stillness and in the quiet recesses of solitude where one can also discover the true self, unfettered by deception. Silence is like sunlight that illuminates the soul. But in the silence and emptiness can also be found the fullness of God.”
For all his talk of love and compassion, I heard nothing that suggested this man could have incited insurgence or sedition as he had been sentenced. What violence or crime was there in his message? What was to be feared from this man? Was compassion unlawful? Was love treasonous? And yet this man suffered a brutal execution for it.
Suddenly, I thought about my daughter’s suffering and about the woman who had been stoned to death and about whole peoples slaughtered off the face of the earth out of hatred, but also of the agony the teacher suffered at the hands of the soldiers who scourged and flayed him and hammered rusty spikes into his flesh. So much pain.
“Will you answer a question?” I said.
“If I can.”
“You talk about God’s infinite love and mercy. But if God is all-powerful and loves us so much, why is there so much suffering and evil in the world? Why doesn’t God intervene and stop it?”
The rabbi looked up at the dazzling rainbow-colored sky, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then exhaled slowly. Then he opened his eyes.
“I wondered when you would ask that,” he said without looking at me. “People always ask me that.”
He hesitated before continuing, first taking another deep breath.
“My answer is twofold. First, God created all things each with its own nature. A serpent cannot be anything other than a serpent. It is its nature. Neither can a scorpion or a spider be other than what they are. So too did God instill in Humanity its nature, which includes the kindled flame of good as well as the spark of evil. But out of love, God created you to enjoy complete freedom of choice.”
“You mean it is up to us? We can choose to act out of goodness or out of evil and hatred?”
The rabbi nodded.
“It is never God’s grace or mercy that is absent from the world,” he said, “but humanity’s . . . Always humanity’s.”
Then he tossed a small twig into the stream. We both watched as it drifted away.
“Secondly, and perhaps more important, Humanity’s understanding of God is like a small boat adrift in the middle of a vast and tempestuous sea. You see only what is before you, the way the boat’s prow cleaves the ceaseless waves as it blasts through each foaming crest, blown aimlessly by gales into the cloud-strewn horizon. But beneath the tumultuous sloshing sea, deeper than the highest mountain, lies a dark and unknown abyss, boundless and unfathomable, where leviathans lurk mindless of the storm above. The hapless craft is but a dust mote upon such thing. Such is your understanding of God. In your arrogance and near-sightedness, you think God’s Nature and God’s Will have been revealed to you and have ceased to be hidden. But God’s infinite Being does not cease to hide, not ever, not under any condition, not for anybody. It is not in your nature to comprehend the fullness of God’s Mystery.”
I tried to imagine the tiny boat tossing on the wild sea. I wanted to understand. I was just about to ask another question when the teacher stood up from the boulder.
“My time has come,” he said. “I must go now. But know that I go because of you, because you helped me to fulfill a promise. But I also go for you, because of God’s infinite love.”
I felt an overpowering desire to stay. The yearning was so consuming that I almost forgot my wife, my sons, and even my dying daughter. All I wanted wa
s to be in his presence in this wonderful place.
“May I go with you?”
“None that live can go where I am bound,” replied the teacher, with an expression that showed unease.
“Please do not leave me,” I pleaded, grabbing the sleeve of his robe.
“I am with you always,” he said. “I am as close to you as your heart. Every beat is the impulse of God’s Will.”
I took his hand and pressed it against my coarse cheek and then kissed it.
“Remember what I have told you,” he said tenderly, his face beginning to glow. “Love one another. Laugh. Be joyous and allow others to find joy. Love kindness and humility. Love justice and seek it out. Strive for peace in all things, for blessed are they who revere peace. Forgive others, for there can be no love or peace without forgiveness. No one is undeserving of forgiveness.”
As he spoke, his entire body began to illuminate, as it was when he first appeared.
“Do not embolden ignorance and backwardness. It is no sin to reason. The pursuit of knowledge and Love of God are not contradictory, for God created you with a keen and curious mind. Know yourself and you will know God, for you are within God and God is within you. Love without fear, for love is the fulfillment of my message.”
He was so radiant I could barely look upon him.
“Love God with all your heart. Life without God is empty and barren and rootless, laden with fear and futility and strife, and consumed with want and need for something of substance to fill the abyss of meaninglessness with a vital faith that is charged with the presence and love of God. The greatest sin is to refuse God’s love.”
Then he gently rested his shining hand on my head.
“Bless you, Simon,” he said, his voice growing faint. “Your faith has healed you and your household.”
I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of his touch, but also feeling lighter for it. When I opened my eyes again he was gone, and I was once again alone amid the splendor. Gone too was the tree. Instead, the cross that I had helped to carry stood in its place with the rising, golden sun crouched behind it, the long shadow falling over me.
Just then, the largest crow I had ever seen alighted atop the cross. With a steadfast glare of his black eyes, he cawed and cawed at me.
I took it as a sign.
Then I awoke.
For a long time, I lay in the darkness beside my sleeping wife feeling an unfathomable lonesomeness, as if I were separated from part of myself. More than anything in the world, I yearned to return to that sacred place in his presence. Finally, exhausted from my travails, I fell back into slumber.
I will tell you this about the vision: no matter how many years have passed, I have never been able to forget even the smallest part of it, as if the memory of it were engraved in stone. Never again did he visit my dreams, though I longed for it. Sometimes I wept from the longing. Often in my imagination, I returned to the refuge of the dream, though I do not fathom all of its meaning.
Perhaps you will do better.
Do not presume to find fault in what I have told you, for if it was but a dream, you cannot begrudge me what my mind does during sleep any more than I can begrudge you your dreams. If it was a vision, neither can you begrudge me that which was imposed upon me by another.
Saturday
Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
There is no greater commandment.
(Mark 12:31)
I awoke in the morning to the feeling of something or someone crawling over me. When I opened my weary eyes I could not believe what they beheld.
It was Avigail!
“Good morning, father!” she exclaimed, and she hugged me around the neck and kissed me on the cheeks.
I nudged Rachel who was still asleep.
When my wife saw who was in our bed, she burst into tears and scooped up our little daughter and held her to her chest, kissing her head over and over.
“You are hugging me too tight!” Avigail cried, struggling to free herself.
I joined in, kissing both their heads and weeping.
We took a good look at our daughter. No longer did she look like she was at death’s door. Her flesh looked healthy, her hair lustrous, her eyes full of vitality, as it should be with a child of four. Even the fever was gone.
“I’m hungry,” said Avigail. She wriggled free of our embrace, crawled over me again, jumped out of our bed, and ran to the window to peer outside.
“It is a beautiful day. Can I play outside? Please!”
Rachel looked at me in disbelief and elation.
“It is a miracle!” she said. “How is this possible?”
Just then our sons awoke and saw their little sister standing before the window. They too couldn’t believe it.
Avigail ran to their bed and jumped onto her brothers. They tickled her until she pleaded for them to stop.
“Let us go outside!” she begged, catching her breath and brushing her hair from her eyes. “It is so beautiful.”
“After you eat something,” said Rachel.
“Can we eat outside? Please, Mother. I want to feel the sun.”
Rachel looked at me.
I nodded.
“Very well,” she said, with a cheerfulness in her voice that I had not heard in a long time. “Let us get dressed first.”
I sat up in bed, stretching my arms behind my head.
Rachel shrieked, startling me.
“What is it?” I asked, looking behind me, expecting to see a scorpion or a serpent.
“Your back! The welts are gone.”
Rachel ran her hands across my back, not believing what her eyes saw.
“They are gone,” she said again.
I reached around to feel where the lowest lash had been. I felt only smooth skin. I felt my calf. It too was healed.
My wife and I sat facing one another, dumbfounded.
“Avigail healed . . . My welts gone?” I said.
“How is this possible?” asked Rachel.
I shook my head.
“I do not know,” I replied slowly, though my first thought was of the man I had abandoned at the cross, and who had visited me in my dreams.
Who was he? I wondered.
After our morning meal, I told Rachel that I was going back to Jerusalem. “I should return before nightfall.”
“But why, Simon? Stay here with us, with Avigail.”
“I must learn who the man was.”
“Why?”
I told my wife of the astonishing vision I had during the night. Rachel was amazed by my description and by the completeness of my recollection.
“It sounds beautiful,” she said when I finished. “But why must you go?”
“I feel he is somehow the cause of these miracles. I do not understand it myself,” I said, shaking my head. “I cannot explain it. I only know that I must go.”
Before leaving, I hugged Avigail goodbye and told my sons to continue to work on the goat house.
“Lay two more courses of stones. Use a plumb when you frame the window and door to keep the lines straight.”
As was our tradition, my family watched as I walked down the road until I vanished over the hill.
My eagerness emboldened my steps.
I arrived in Jerusalem in good time.
The city was already bustling.
I began my inquiry with the guards posted at the governing house of Pilate. I thought the centurions who scourged and whipped the rabbi must know who he was.
I found three soldiers sitting and casting dice. They stopped and scowled at me. I recognized one of them as the scar-faced centurion from the day before.
“What do you want?” the man with the scar asked in crude Aramaic.
Most citizens of Jerusalem spoke some of the Roman’s
language, and they spoke some of ours, if only to command us.
“The man who was crucified yesterday,” I said humbly, bowing my head slightly in deference, knowing that the centurions were quick tempered.
“What of him?” jeered one of the other centurions.
“Can you tell me his name and his crime?”
“What is it to you?” asked the scar-faced man, rising to his feet with one hand on the hilt of his sword. “Are you one of his followers?”
“No. I was the one who was made to carry his cross.”
The centurion relaxed his menacing stance.
“I remember you now,” he said. “I admired your strength.”
I have to admit I felt a little proud that a centurion admired my strength.
“Go away,” barked one of the other soldiers, taking up the dice.
“Please,” I said. “What was his crime?”
“You’re interrupting our game. Go away.”
I persisted.
“Tell me and I will leave,” I replied, a bit too haughtily for a Jew in the Roman Empire.
The third man, who had not spoken, looked at me sharply.
“They said he was King of the Jews, so I made him a nice crown.”
The other two centurions sniggered.
I remembered the crown of thorns pressed into the rabbi’s head, the deep gouges, and the blood-mopped hair. I wanted to jump on the man and pound his grinning face with my fists. But I held my anger. I hadn’t come to Jerusalem to be arrested.
“His name,” I said calmly. “Do you know his name?”
The scar-faced soldier shoved me brusquely.
“Enough!” he shouted. “Go away!”
I backed away for my safety, bowing and begging pardon for my intrusion. I would have to search elsewhere to learn the rabbi’s name. But I had learned something from the soldiers.
