Jesus: A Biography From a Believer. (6 page)

Jesus had no way to prevent this miracle from being talked about, and no doubt it caused a stir. As a rule, however, when moved by compassion to cure, he took trouble that no one knew. In Bethsaida, a blind man was brought to him by his friends, who “besought [Jesus] to touch him.” Jesus “took the blind man by the hand,” separated him from his friends, “and led him out of the town.” Finally when they were alone he “put his hands upon him” and “asked him if he saw ought.” The man said, “I see men as trees, walking.” Jesus then again put his hands on the man’s eyes and asked him to describe what he saw. This time he “saw every man clearly.” So Jesus sent him home by himself, saying, “Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town” (Mk 8 : 22-26). It is notable that Jesus, moved by compassion and the faith of the suffering, preferred to cure the afflicted away from public view. When Jesus was in Nazareth, he was followed by two blind men who said, “Son of David, have mercy on us.” He waited until they followed him into his house, and they were alone, when he said, “Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him: Yea, Lord. Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it” (Mt 9:27-30).

Of course, the blind men, thus cured, could not resist telling everyone all about it. But Jesus was always anxious to show that a mere miracle of healing the sick was only a superficial proof of God’s enormous powers given to him. Earlier that same day in Nazareth, “they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed.” Jesus told him, “[B]e of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” Some scribes who were watching said to themselves, “This man blasphemeth.” Jesus, guessing their thoughts, said, “Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” According to Matthew, “he arose, and departed to his house” (9 : 2-7). On occasions when Jesus deliberately sought witnesses to a miracle, his aim was to expose the bigotry of his orthodox critics. It was one of their tenets that even to perform a miracle on the Sabbath day was sinful, since it was work, albeit with God’s power. At the opening of Mark’s third chapter, he says that Jesus entered a synagogue and found a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees were watching, waiting for him to heal the man, so that they could accuse him of breaking the Sabbath. Jesus told the man, “Stand forth.” Then he asked the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life or to kill?” They refused to answer. Jesus “looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.” He told the man to stretch out his hand, and when he did so it “was restored whole as the other.” The Pharisees left to report not the miracle but the breach of the Sabbath and the provocative behavior of Jesus. They “straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him” (3:1-6).

The fact is, as Jesus knew from the start, invoking God’s power through miracles, whether successfully or not, was dangerous in a country prone to religious hysteria, where the authorities, both secular and ecclesiastical, were determined to stamp out what they could not control or make use of for their own purposes. The high priests, the scribes, and the organized sects like the Pharisees were not convinced of Jesus’s sanctity by his cures. They suspected trickery, or collusion with the “sick,” or worse, the work of evil spirits. When Jesus cured disturbed people, believed to be possessed by devils, they accused him of working with Beelzebub, the prince of devils.

Nor was the hostility of the powerful the only risk Jesus faced. The fact that he could cure chronically sick people led to riotous behavior among those seeking relief and their anxious friends and families. When Jesus entered a place in Capernaum, and “it was noised that he was in the house,” a huge crowd collected, so that there was no room within. A man sick of the palsy, evidently wealthy, since he had four attendants who carried him around, came to the house, but his men could not get him in because of what Mark calls “the press” of the crowds. So, desperate and excited, “they uncovered the roof ” of the house where Jesus was, “and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay” (2 : 1-4). This was the occasion when Jesus forgave the sick man his sins, thus scandalizing the orthodox, before telling him to take up his bed and walk. The Pharisees were furious—and the man who owned the house cannot have been too pleased either.

A similar, but even more striking, tale of the inconveniences of miracles is given in Matthew 8 : 28-34 about the region around Gadara, east of the Sea of Galilee. Matthew came from this part of the country and therefore was able to identify the actual town, Gergesa, on cliffs overlooking the water, where the incident occurred. There, two men possessed by devils who lived among the tombs (one described as “exceeding fierce”) recognized and confronted Jesus. The devils begged him, if he should cast them out of the men, to permit them to go into a herd of swine that was feeding peacefully nearby. Jesus consented. The devils left the men and “went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.” The herdsmen, terrified, “went their ways into the city, and told every thing.” Matthew, for whom the incident was only too familiar, concludes: “And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.” As one would expect. The ways of a miracle worker were hard.

Indeed, as his ministry continued, Jesus increasingly avoided working miracles, except when entreated in such a way that he could not refuse. The fifth chapter of Mark (22-43) tells us about two of these cases. On the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee, the area where Jesus was best known, a prominent Jew called Jairus, “one of the rulers of the synagogue,” who had helped him to preach there, “fell at his feet, And besought him greatly.” He said his twelve-year-old daughter “lieth at the point of death.” He begged Jesus to “come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed.” Jesus went with him but was “thronged” by the mob. An old woman saw her opportunity to get his help. Hers was a pitiful tale. She had suffered for twelve years from “an issue of blood,” a common postmenstrual complaint, in an acute form. She had meekly put up with the fruitless efforts of many doctors, who had taken all her money in fees, “and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.” She had heard of Jesus, joined the crowd, and in the press of bodies contrived to touch his garment: “For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.” And it was true: “[S]traightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.” But Jesus felt it, too, “immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him.” Turning round in the crowd, he asked, “Who touched my clothes?” The disciples were puzzled. In that immense, pressing throng, how could anyone possibly tell? But the woman heard, and knew. “[F]earing and trembling,” she fell down before Jesus and told him the truth. He looked with kindness on her. Seeing she was old and trembling, he did not address her with the formal “Woman,” but said, “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.”

Meanwhile, one of Jairus’s family arrived to tell him there was no point in troubling Jesus further: the little girl was dead. But Jesus insisted on going to Jairus’s house. There he found a crowd of relatives, servants, and minstrels performing the funeral dirge—“making a noise” as Matthew puts it (9:23). He commanded silence, saying, “[T]he maid is not dead, but sleepeth” (9:24). He ordered them all out of the house and, accompanied only by the girl’s parents, Peter, James, and John, went into the room where she lay (Lk 8:51). “[H]e took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi,” a phrase in Aramaic meaning “Little girl, get up” (Mk 5 : 41). The girl arose and walked. Then comes the small detail that lends touching authenticity to the story. Jesus loved children and understood them. The little girl had been given nothing to eat while she lay in mortal sickness and the doctors fussed around her bed. Now she was up, and Jesus knew she must be hungry. Luke says that his first instruction was that she must be given something to eat.

But his next was to command all those people present that they say nothing. As always, he wanted to avoid at all costs being known as a miracle worker. He detested being thought of as a kind of holy magician. In none of the four Gospels is there a single instance of his using his powers of healing to attract support—just the opposite. But sometimes publicity was unavoidable, and it could be dangerous, as well as irksome, to a profoundly thoughtful man and speaker who was eager to convey his message by reason and not by “signs.” It became clear, as his mission proceeded, that the Jewish authorities were increasingly anxious to destroy or at least to silence him. To them, the fact that he had unusual powers was an added reason to eliminate an outsider who challenged their authority. For them, the crisis became acute when it was shown he had power to wield. This point is made particularly clear by John in his Gospel, which is the only one to describe the raising of Jesus’s friend Lazarus (11:1-57).

We are told that Jesus was very fond of Lazarus, though we do not know why, for he never speaks in the Gospel accounts and is not strongly characterized like his sisters Martha and Mary. They lived in the town of Bethany, on the eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives, to the east of Jerusalem. Jesus had other friends there besides Lazarus and his sisters, and often stayed there when visiting Jerusalem. But he was watched there as a suspicious character “known” to the Temple authorities, who once raised a mob to stone him out of the town. John 11 describes how, toward the end of his ministry, while Jesus and his companions were over the border in Samaria, messengers arrived from Martha and Mary to say that Lazarus was sick. Jesus waited two days, then announced he was crossing into Judaea to go to Bethany. He explained, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.” But, after delaying for two days, for reasons which are a mystery to us, he announced that Lazarus was dead: “And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.” The disciples said, “Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?” Thomas, known as Didymus, believed Jesus was going to his death, and said to his comrades: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

When they arrived, Jesus found Lazarus had not only died but been put in his tomb four days before. The town was full of Jews who had come out from Jerusalem to console Martha and Mary, for Lazarus was obviously a popular and highly esteemed person. Mary stayed in the house, weeping. But Martha came out to meet Jesus, and the following conversation took place.

Then she went home and called her sister Mary “secretly” and said, “The Master is come, and calleth for thee.” Mary immediately ran to where Jesus was waiting outside the town. The Jews from the house followed her, saying, “She goeth unto the grave to weep there.” Mary, seeing Jesus, knelt at his feet, and said, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” She wept, and the Jews with her wept. Jesus “groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.” He said, “Where have ye laid him?” and they replied, “[C]ome and see.” John adds: “Jesus wept.” The Jews said, “Behold how he loved him.” But others said, “Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?” Jesus groaned again, until they came to the tomb, a cave blocked by a stone. He said, “Take ye away the stone.” Martha, always the direct and practical one, warned him, “Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he has been dead four days.” Jesus reminded her that if she believed she would see the glory of God. Then the stone was lifted up, and Jesus raised his eyes to heaven, saying, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.” In a loud voice he cried, “Lazarus, come forth.” Lazarus did so, “bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin.” Jesus said, “Loose him, and let him go.”

This was by far the greatest of Jesus’s miracles. There was no way he could avoid it and no way it could be kept private, according to his rule. It was witnessed by many pious Jews, some of whom were converted on the spot and were sure now that Jesus was the Son of God. But others went back to Jerusalem and complained to the Pharisees and to the Temple authorities that some kind of devilry was taking place, and soon there would be rioting. The chief priests called a council meeting. They asked one another, “What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.”

The chief priest for the year, Caiaphas, was scornful: “Ye know nothing at all.” He said it was expedient that “one man should die for the people” and that Jesus was the appointed man: “Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death.” In this account John showed the double-edged effect that miracles had—only Jesus’s own attitude to them was so ambiguous. Miracles convinced the people that Jesus was a special person, but they also aroused the hostility of the Jewish authorities. Despite the truth of the miracles—indeed, precisely because they believed, or half-believed, in them—the priests, the scribes, the Pharisees and other pious and orthodox observant Jews decided Jesus was a threat both to them personally and to the Jewish community. It was the miracles, and their obvious success and truth, which persuaded these men to put Jesus to death. For they drew attention to the real threat—Jesus’s teaching, which promised to overthrow all their traditional, ancient, exclusive, and hieratic values. What they really feared was what they saw looming: a new moral world. To that we now turn.