When Jesus Wept (16 page)

“Through no fault of your own,” Jesus concluded.

“Not my fault? Then why has this calamity come upon me? I have been searching for the answer for a year. My sin? What is it?”

“Suffering comes to all men on the earth. It is a fact … from man’s rebellion and separation from the Lord in the Garden. It is written that one day you will see Messiah wipe away every tear—no more suffering and no more death. Meanwhile those who love God are not exempt from pain. But for the righteous man to suffer? Think of it! Only the wise vinedresser knows what will make the best wine. The vine is stressed—it reaches deep for the water, the shoots are pruned, the clusters are thinned, and in the end the fruit is richer and the wine is full of character and grace. Though the growing may be difficult, God will be glorified at the end of every righteous man’s story.”

I nodded, but the floodgates of my heart were open now and I could not be silent. “There is a young man, a beggar at the Nicanor Gate of the Temple. He’s been blind from birth. I heard some of my friends—religious scholars, not farmers like me—they discussed who had sinned to make this boy blind from his birth. They discussed this in his hearing as though blindness also made him deaf. It troubles me, this cheerful boy with his smiling face and his begging bowl. Jesus! I pray you answer my question! What purpose is served in their mocking and his suffering?”

Jesus smiled. “
Shabbat shalom
, my dear friend. Come with me to the Temple tomorrow.”

The Mount of Olives was packed with family groups gathered outside the walls of Jerusalem. The road leading past the Pool of Bethesda was jammed with worshipers going up to the Temple. They would celebrate Sabbath worship before returning to their camps to spend the night studying Torah, as was traditional.

The travelers coalesced around Jesus when he was recognized in the throng. “It’s him, I tell you,” I heard all around. “The rabbi from Nazareth. Let’s follow him.”

As the multitude pressed in, I was glad I had already mentioned Peniel to Jesus. It was getting harder to move with every step.

There were several locations on the Temple Mount where rabbis and other scholars assembled to instruct their disciples. A columned arcade called Solomon’s Portico was one such location. The Temple courts, which contained chambers for wood and spices, and containers to receive offerings, was another.

The building housing the Temple treasury was in the northeast corner of the Court of Women. It was on the top step of the entry to this structure that Jesus sat down to teach. Like waves spreading out from a rock dropped into a pond, concentric rings of onlookers knelt to hear him. The most eager shushed those behind and urged the slower ones in front to sit down so all could see.

“I’ll be right back,” I called as I parted from Jesus.

The blind beggar, Peniel, could always be found on the steps of Nicanor Gate, at the far western end of the same court. Like a lone fish swimming upstream in the face of the living torrent of those moving toward Jesus, I fought my way through the crowd.

I knew it was a Sabbath. I did not think Jesus would want to incur the wrath of the religious authorities by healing on a Sabbath. I just wanted the two to meet. I was certain Jesus would do what was right for the young man.

I could not see through the press of the worshipers, tripled in number as it was on this, the eve of Pentecost.

Behind me I heard Jesus raise his voice and begin to speak: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.”

At last I reached the shaded niche where Peniel most often sat. The man in the alcove was an older beggar missing his right leg and waving a crutch at the passersby. “Where’s Peniel?” I demanded.

“Who?” he returned.

“Peniel, the blind lad who usually waits in this spot.”

“I don’t know him,” was the reply. “I just got here from Joppa. And a long, weary journey it was too, kind sir, on just one leg and a tree branch. Since it’s the Sabbath, I cannot beg, but if you are moved to help, sir?” The cripple thrust out a wrinkled palm.

“You have not seen a young man, perhaps seventeen or eighteen … blind, as I say … anywhere about this morning?”

The cripple reflected. “The last blind beggar I saw was outside the Golden Gate.”

“Oh, yes,” I returned, feeling relief. “How long ago?”

“An hour. But sir, that man was older than me and could not be the one you seek.” Again the hand flipped over and back, calling attention to the empty, outstretched palm.

I was disappointed and confused. I had felt so strongly that I was being urged by almighty God to bring Peniel and Jesus together. Had I been wrong, or was this a test of the persistence of my belief?

It struck me that while I had come in search of one particular beggar, here was one also in need of meeting Jesus. Perhaps I had been brought to this moment for his sake. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Jabez of Antioch,” he replied.

“Have you heard of Jesus of Nazareth?”

“The charlatan from Galilee? Is that him over there?”

I looked across the plaza. On both flanks of Jesus’ audience were knots of hecklers: Pharisees in tall headdresses and brocade robes in one group; austere, thin-lipped Sadducees in another; a file of scribes, scholars in the interpretation of religious legal precepts, in a third.

“I assure you, he’s very real,” I corrected.

Jabez made a sour face. “Real or not, and I don’t admit he is, he’s offended the authorities. ‘Have nothing good to say about that Jesus,’ they told me, ‘or out you go.’ You understand my position, sir?”

My frustration was growing even greater. “Wouldn’t you rather be healed? At least see what he can do for you?”

“And lose my livelihood?” Jabez exclaimed. “Would you step aside, sir? The kind gentleman behind you is offering me a penny. God bless you, sir. God bless you.”

Disappointed, I drifted back across the courtyard. At the back of the crowd, Temple police were accosting listeners, demanding names, and making notes on wax tablets. Many of the curious onlookers moved away under the stern, disapproving glares.

I arrived in time to hear Jesus repeat the core theme of his message: “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

A man at the back of the crowd shouted, “I am a descendant
of
Abraham
!” He tapped his barrel-shaped chest with a meaty thumb. “I’ve never been a slave to anyone. What do you mean, I can be set free? I
am
free!”

Looking right at the man, Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth: everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”

The critic dropped his head and blushed, then scowled when the crowd laughed.

Resuming, Jesus said, “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet here you are, ready to kill me because you have no room for my Word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, but you do what you have heard from
your
father.”

“
Abraham
is our father!” the heavyset man roared with exasperation, recovering from his momentary shame.

“That’s right!” another heckler added. “Who do you think you are, going on about our father?”

“What are you trying to say?” demanded a Levite in the robes of his duty at the Temple.

There were a number of opponents planted in the group surrounding the steps. Some were there merely to heckle. Others were present to prod Jesus into making incautious remarks for which he could be arrested … or worse.

Suddenly I was afraid for him. If they accused him of blasphemy they might try to stone him. The authorities might kill him and blame it on an angry mob, even if the first stone was flung by someone paid by Lord Caiaphas. I hoped he would be cautious, judicious with his choice of words.

“If you
were
Abraham’s children,” Jesus said quietly. By lowering his tone, he forced the mockers to be still as well to hear what he said next. “If you
were
children of Abraham, you would do the things Abraham did.”

What did that mean? Abraham was known for a life of faith and obedience, even against all human reason … even to the point of trusting a God who asked him to sacrifice his only son.

“As it is,” Jesus continued, “you are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the things your own father does.”

The connection to the depth of Abraham’s faith was overshadowed by the last challenge. A growling rose from the rabbi’s opponents. Even his closest followers looked uncomfortable.

“We are not illegitimate children!” challenged a Pharisee. “The only Father we have is God himself!”

“If God
were
your father,” Jesus replied, “you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say: you belong to your father … the devil!”

There was such a roar from the crowd that Jesus’ words were drowned out. The biggest disciple, Peter, and two muscled fishermen, stood to form a protective screen between Jesus and the mob, but the Teacher pushed them aside.

He did not let up. “He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. He who belongs to God must do what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

As the rank of Temple police closed in, the rings of listeners scooted out of the way and the crowd started to dissolve.

Someone shouted an insult, “You’re a Samaritan, aren’t you?”

Another amplified the abuse: “You’re a Samaritan,
and
you’re demon possessed!”

“I am not possessed,” Jesus called back calmly, “but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. I tell you the truth: if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

That statement rocked me to my core:
Never see death?
What did that mean? Even if Jesus was a good man, a fine teacher, a great philosopher, and a gifted healer, who could say such an outrageous thing? My wife and child were beyond that very veil. Never see death?

Who was this man?

Jesus’ critics verbalized and amplified my doubts. “Now we know you are demon possessed! Abraham died—”

“That’s right, and so did all the prophets!”

“Yet you claim that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death?”

“Are you greater than our father Abraham?”

This was very, very near dangerous ground. Making oneself out to be greater than Abraham was almost blasphemous and certainly sacrilegious, given the reverence in which Father Abraham was held.

“Who do you think you are, anyway?”

“Yes, tell us! Who?”

Jesus made some other remarks I could not catch amid the bellows of rage and animosity, but then some words again came through clearly: “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad.”

“What?”

“Preposterous!”

“This is a madman!”

“Lock him up for his own good!”

“You’re not even fifty years old, but you claim to know Abraham?”

“You’ve seen him? He lived … twice a thousand years ago! What are you saying?”

What
was
he saying? My heart was pounding in my chest.

Was Jesus about to be stoned or gathered up bodily and thrown from the pinnacle of the Temple to the rocks below?

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said.

In other words, listen and I’ll answer your question. Give me a chance to speak. Hear me out. Pay attention.

“I tell you the truth …”

And then he spoke the fatal, unmistakable words, words that echo down through time, ringing in my ears to this very day. The unequivocal statement that Jesus was himself divine. No good teacher, no wise philosopher would ever, ever speak these words in Hebrew: “Before Abraham was, I AM.”

He had said it! The very title almighty God spoke when Moses asked by what name the God of the children of Abraham chose to identify himself. God said: “Say this to the Israelites: I AM THAT I AM. Tell them, I AM has sent me to you.”

My worst fears were being realized. With a collective howl of rage, while families scattered in all directions, scribes and Pharisees and Temple officials clawed out cobblestones. Prying loose the pavement with their fingertips, they prepared to stone Jesus to death! Jesus had saved my sister from this very fate.

Who would save him now?

What could his small band of followers do to protect him? What could they do but die with him?

“Where did he go?” the burly heckler demanded.

There was a rush up the steps of the Treasury, but Jesus was not inside.

“Toward Nicanor! After him!”

But Jesus was not by the bronze gates either.

Somehow he had slipped away.
¹

Each of the angry enemies stood pivoting in place until,
feeling foolish, they dropped their clods and rocks and broken chunks of tile and departed.

Baffled and exhausted, so did I. No one could assert Jesus never claimed to be divine. I saw it. I heard it. He was almost stoned to death because of it!