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It was night. Marthe’s sitting room was still playing host to the celebration well into the middle watch, her siblings and the disciples running the gamut from ecstatic to reverent, then back to boisterous again.
Could she blame them? Her large, work-worn fists drove the bread dough so far into the table that she could feel the wood’s grooves under her knuckles. She stopped, staring hard at the mezuzah above the door.
It’s not every day your brother gets brought back from the dead.
Marthe wiped the sweat from her forehead. Simon-Peter’s braying voice echoed through the house as he led the guests in their tenth impromptu psalm of the night. She winced.
She needed some air.
Draping a wrinkled scarf over her head, she took three heavy steps out into the garden. The warm breeze bore a bouquet of sage and wildflower, and Marthe breathed in gratefully. Suddenly there was a noise, and she blanched like a startled fox.
In the cover of night, among the quiet stillness of the grapevines, the Son of God was sitting on the ground, weeping.
Bile rose up into Marthe’s throat. This was an intrusion of privacy: a breach, the pulling back of a veil. Propriety nagged at her to slip quietly back through the doorway.
But I’ve already seen him cry once today, Marthe reasoned, twisting her apron. And besides, if here was a man who could raise her brother from the dead—well, couldn’t he stop a woman from spying on him if he wanted to?
Before she really knew she’d done it, she was sitting next to him in the dirt. The son of Yosef and Maryam did not look up.
“Hello, Marthe.” His voice came out thin and hoarse from the sleeves where his face
was buried. His back was against a large rock, facing the only tree in the garden: an Aleppo pine. When they were children, the four of them (Marthe, Maryam, Lazarus, and Yeshua) had stood around the base of the tree to bury a little bird who had died. Marthe, the oldest, was the only one who had witnessed burial rites and so she was the one who spoke over the body, although she was female and therefore blasphemed in doing so.
“Peace be with you—“ she cut herself off, troubled. How should she address him? Rabbouni? Adonai? Great One? Her mind was an earthquake, folding and reforming itself in the wake of today’s events. Not ten hours ago, the words had flown out of her mouth as freely as uncaged doves.
Thou art the Christ, the Son of God.
Christ though he was, the gravel near his robes felt wet with tears. Marthe remembered the skinny little boy who used to duck around these vines with Lazarus. She shrugged off her uncertainty with a huff, and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Yeshua.”
He lifted his head and smiled, dabbing a sleeve at his eyes—one eye slightly lopsided and misshapen; just as Marthe remembered it.
“A long day!” He laughed and sat up straighter. “Thank you for feeding my disciples.”
Marthe snorted. “Some cakes and a few bowls of old dates. Scant thanks for the man who brought my brother back from the grave.”
Yeshua shook his head. “Marthe, feeding people is never ‘scant thanks.’” He looked at her with earnest eyes. “I mean it. Thank you for all you do.”
Martha’s soul filled with warmth, swiftly followed by a new and terrible awe. Yes; this was the Son-of-God thing. The way he could look into a heart and offer comfort before someone even knew they needed it. It was certainly nice. And she almost wanted to stay and bask in it; let him tell her what else she had done right today—but she hadn’t come out here for the Son of God.
She had come out here for Yeshua.
She clucked her tongue dismissively. “Fine, fine, I accept your thanks. You’re lucky I like your friends.” She cracked her knuckles and listened to the buzz of the insects for a few moments.
“Yeshua, Lazarus lives. Why are you weeping out here?”
“I’m not.” Her old friend smiled at the ground. Marthe surprised herself by rolling her eyes at the man who held life and death in his hands. “Well, perhaps I am. It’s a weakness of mine; I don’t want others to see me get emotional. Nor do you, I think—or isn’t that why you sequestered yourself to the kitchen?”
Marthe adjusted her slipping headscarf. “Very perceptive, Yeshua, but we were talking about you. ”
“Ah, yes.” He smiled and looked away from her. “We were.”
He kept his face turned. Moments passed. From the tree, a swallow let out a low, nocturnal whistle.
Marthe waited.
A soft shaking returned to the man’s shoulders.
The arrow-shafts of Elijah’s million angels seemed to be piercing her heart all at once. This poor boy. This poor man , she mentally corrected, feeling ashamed. This poor… Messiah?
He gently leaned his head on her shoulder as he sobbed.
No, I was right. She patted his back. Poor boy.
With a hand on his shoulders, Marthe felt grim surprise at how bony and thin her friend felt. A more reverent psalm poured out of the side window, Maryam’s cherubic soprano carrying it into the vineyard.
Yeshua sat up and cleared his throat. “It’s no secret I’ve always loved your family.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s a beautiful home. The laughter; the love.”
Marthe said nothing. The son of Yosef and Maryam had grown up around brothers who were unkind, and (from her point of view) perhaps even despised him.
“Anyway, with all the jubilation in there, I caught myself thinking how it’s the sort of home I’d always hoped to… to one day—” he broke off with a shaky laugh. “Ah, well.”
Marthe laughed too, but in surprise. This was what he was crying over?
“Oh please, Yeshua, you needn’t give up hope! True, you’ve lived nearly two-score, but there are plenty of years in a lifetime! Just think of Father Abraham.” She winked, patting his back more joyfully. “Once you’ve finished your travels, perhaps you’ll find the time to—”
She trailed off. Her old friend was looking across the garden at an Aleppo pine tree, under which they had once gathered together to bury a baby sparrow with two broken wings.
Oh.
Oh, no.
Realization sank into Marthe’s stomach like a sack of stones from the river. It had only been this morning that her eyes had been opened to the weight of this man’s divinity. Now it was like she could see a sinister sable curtain looming over his luminous shoulders, eager to drape a dark conclusion over a too-short, miraculous life.
“It can’t be.”
Yeshua turned to her with a tired smile.
“Marthe.” Steady hands caught her shoulders as the Savior of the whole world looked into her face. Though his eyes shone brighter than the moonlight and his pleading face was more radiant than the stars, it didn’t change the fact that her kindest childhood friend was about to die.
And he knew it.
The singing from the house got louder; the apostles’ voices fast and joyful. Marthe shuddered.
“Do they know?”
“Denial is grief’s most powerful ally. I believe that Simon knows, for he changes the subject each time I mention it.” He gave another smile, looking as wise and ancient as Methuselah. It makes Marthe feel like throwing up.
“How? How?” Her vision began to swim and tremble with rage. “How can you just sit there with a calm smile knowing full well what God is asking you to do?” She tasted blood in her mouth. “It’s completely unfair!”
“Marthe.”
She was the one sobbing now, her words so thick they were almost choking her. She’d been angry at God this morning when He’d stolen her brother; now she was angry all over again.
“Why would He take you now? You’re what everyone needs right now! The gentlest heart; the kindest friend; the worker of neighborhood miracles!”
“ Marthe. ”
“Why ? Why? When you’re here reversing death, commanding the winds and seas, comforting little children, burying baby birds—?”
Marthe.
Marthe came to herself with a jolt. The breeze had died. The insects were silent. She couldn’t hear the singing from the house. Though her head was pounding and her eyes were bleary with tears, Marthe knew that something strange had just happened. The voice she was hearing was not coming from the man next to her, who sat with closed lips.
Marthe, Marthe. My little daughter.
Don’t you know? He’s not doing it for me.
He’s doing it for you.
Marthe gasped.
Yeshua’s eyes crinkled with a smile.
“Oh, good.” He laughed. “You can hear Him, too.”