When Jesus Wept (17 page)

Chapter 16

I
wandered about Jerusalem, lost in my thoughts. Who was this man from Nazareth? Who, in his right mind, would claim he was older than Abraham? That he was, in fact, divine, equal to the I AM?

I also reviewed what my own eyes had seen: the transformation of water into wine, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, walking on the surface of the sea and calming the storm … bringing Jairus’s daughter back to life again.

Surely he was more than a charlatan. All these events could not be staged, could they?

I heard his teaching. I had seen the transformation of my sister Mary’s heart—itself a greater accomplishment than changing water into wine. I already believed him to be a prophet sent by God.

What was the phrase used by the prophets to describe when God appeared to men as a man?
The Angel of the Lord
—that was it. He had visited Father Abraham, wrestled with Jacob, appeared to Joshua, guided Gideon, proved himself to Samson’s father. He was Almighty God, referred to as an angel but looking human.

But Jesus was human. I had eaten with him, tasted wine with him, walked beside him when he had to stop and pull a pebble from his sandal.

What could it mean?

I scarcely knew where I was going and did not know where Jesus had gone. Perhaps he had already returned to Bethany.

Eventually I discovered I had crossed the viaduct into the western city. I needed someone to talk with, and that sent me to find Nicodemus. If there was anyone with whom I could pour out my confusion, it was the learned Pharisee who was also wrestling with the same issues.

As it happened, I located Nicodemus and Jesus together. Deep in conversation and accompanied by a ring of Pharisees not yet convinced Jesus was more than a fake, they were outside the wall of Nicodemus’s home, near a famous gardenia bush now grown as large as a tree.

I also found Peniel at the same moment. The blind man sat in the shade of the gardenia, his cloak spread out to gather alms, should any be offered.

One of the Pharisees singled out Peniel to challenge Jesus, to see what the rabbi would say. It was a familiar argument that made me cringe to hear: “Being born blind is about the worst thing that could happen to anyone. So who sinned? This man or his parents?”

What response would Jesus make? I felt myself holding my breath. Much, it seemed, depended on his reply.

Stooping beside Peniel, Jesus touched the beggar’s forehead, brushing back a lock of the young man’s hair. It seemed as if the two of them communicated without speaking. Then Jesus said: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. This happened—”Jesus straightened and answered his challenger by addressing Peniel—”this happened so the works of God might be displayed in your life. As long as it is day, I must do the works of him who sent me.”

The antagonistic Pharisee bristled visibly at the word
work
. I remembered suddenly that it was the Sabbath day. Nicodemus put out a restraining hand. Let Jesus continue, the gesture suggested.

Jesus knelt again, stirred up a pile of earth under the gardenia bush with his fingers, and spat in it. As he mixed it into mud, he said, “Night is coming, when no one can work. While I AM in the world, I AM the light of the world.”

There it was again! Claiming the authority of God, claiming equality with God!

With a gentle touch, Jesus applied the clay first to one of Peniel’s eyelids and then to the other. He took his time, smoothing away wrinkles and folds until he was satisfied with the workmanship.

Standing, Jesus brushed off his hands. As if he had no audience, he spoke to Peniel alone. “Now go. Wash in the Pool of Siloam.”
¹

Peniel rose to his feet, trembling. Putting out a shaking hand to locate Nicodemus’s wall, the boy took two hesitant steps, then steadied himself and walked purposefully away.

I suddenly realized he might need assistance locating the pool of which Jesus spoke. It was below the Temple Mount toward the south. “Peniel,” I called after him. “Can I …”

It was Jesus who touched me on the arm. “Let him go. I want you to stay with me.”

We chatted together for about two hours, sitting in Nicodemus’s courtyard. It was an amiable discussion, despite the efforts of a couple Pharisees to catch Jesus saying something in opposition to the Law of Moses. They were clumsy, and he was clever.

Toward the end of the visit, one grew exasperated and accused Jesus of trying to become famous and popular with the common people.

Jesus replied, “I am not seeking glory for myself. But there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me.”

The Pharisee harrumphed at these words, and it looked like there would be another explosion when an out-of-breath messenger tumbled into Nicodemus’s yard with a summons. “Master Nicodemus, you must come at once. Joseph of Arimathea asks for you.”

“Where and for what purpose?” Nicodemus returned. “You see I have guests.”

Truthfully the courier’s eyes bulged when he recognized Jesus, so he stammered and said, “There is an urgent meeting of the Pharisee brotherhood in the Chamber of Hewn Stone.”

“And the subject of this urgent meeting?”

“I don’t …” The messenger cast a worried glance between Jesus and Nicodemus as if unsure whether he was violating a confidence.

“Speak plainly,” Nicodemus urged. “We are all friends here.”

Visibly swallowing his nervousness, the messenger answered, “There is a man … ” Stopping, he corrected himself. “It has been reported that a man born blind …”

“Go on, man, out with it!”

“This blind man … can now see! He says he was healed today, on the Sabbath! He is being brought to our council to answer questions about how it happened. We need to investigate whether it’s fraud or sacrilege!”

Nicodemus muttered under his breath, “And those are the only two responses the learned council can imagine?” He stood, dismissing the courier with a curt, “Tell Joseph I will come at once.” To me he added, “You should come and witness this, David. I would like someone besides myself to hear and report fairly.” Next he faced Jesus but said nothing.

With a shrug, Jesus offered, “I don’t think my presence will be wanted at your council, friend Nicodemus. We will visit further later.”

“Indeed we will … Lord.”

When Nicodemus and I reached the Chamber of Hewn Stone on the Temple Mount, an uproar was already in progress. Peniel, eyes wide open with bewilderment, was at the center of an inquisition.

Eyes … wide … open!

Astonishment overwhelmed me! In place of wizened flaps of skin covering useless, flattened sockets, bright eyes sparkled and gleamed. Like a bird in flight, Peniel’s gaze flitted from ornament to ornament, lamp to lamp, tapestry to chair to mosaic tile to the face of the man in front of him.

From that moment on, Peniel concentrated his study on faces, as if he were searching for someone.

But how could someone who had never, ever, seen anyone’s face before possibly know when he had located the one he sought?

“Who are you really?” one of the Pharisees demanded.

“I’m Peniel, the potter’s son,” the boy responded. “I beg at Nicanor Gate.”

“Liar!” another shouted in Peniel’s face. “That fellow was
born blind! Since the world began, no one has ever opened the eyes of a man born blind!”

Peniel shrugged. He was not belligerent, but neither was he intimidated. “And yet I am he.”

“Perpetrating a religious fraud is a crime akin to stealing,” the first interrogator bellowed. “Or else it’s blasphemy. Now which are you guilty of?”

“Neither. I have been blind all my life … until today. Here in the room with me are my parents and some of my neighbors. They all know me. They know I’ve always been blind.”

“Then how do you explain the change?”

Peniel reflected before answering simply, “A man put mud on my eyes. I washed, and now I see.”

“It’s a hoax,” the first questioner muttered.

“And it’s sacrilege,” the second intoned. “Healing on a Sabbath? Whoever did this, he can’t be from God. He doesn’t keep the Sabbath. Sabbath-breaker! Lawbreaker!”

Peniel closed his newly functioning eyes. He stood completely still. He had retreated, it seemed to me, into a place of safety in familiar darkness. Out here in the light was beauty but also anger.

Peniel had been born blind. Through no fault of his own, he had lived cut off from much of the world. He had lived a gracious, gentle life, bearing up under a weight that would have crushed a guilty man, let alone an innocent one.

And now that he was healed?

Peniel was still not guilty of anything. He had not caused the healing. He had not demanded that anyone break the Sabbath laws. Blind or healed, Peniel was still guilty of nothing yet judged by the Pharisees to be guilty!

If the veins in the necks of the Pharisees had not bulged so
badly already, I would have laughed at them with scorn! How could they be so completely wrong on both arguments? The evidence that Peniel had been blind and now could see was right before their willfully blind eyes!

So their alternate challenge was, “Even if this is true, it’s still a sin! It should not have been performed on a Sabbath!”

One was a deliberate, stubborn refusal to face facts.

The other was arrogant, self-serving self-righteousness.

Nicodemus was even more incensed than me. He roughly shouldered between the two inquisitors and planted himself in front of the boy. Leaning close to Peniel’s ear, he said reassuringly, “Peniel. Open your eyes.”

Speaking to the boy as if the two were alone instead of in front of a hundred onlookers, Nicodemus gently inquired, “How did it happen?”

“The man who put the mud on my eyes …”

“Jesus of Nazareth,” Nicodemus supplied.

“Yes!” Peniel’s face lit up with joy. “He told me to go to the Pool of Siloam.”

“And after?”

“Afterward, I went home, seeing!”

The two Pharisees flanking Nicodemus could not be restrained any longer. Darting at Peniel from either side of Nicodemus, they demanded, “What have you to say about him? This sorcerer?”

“Yes, what? It was your eyes he opened. What do you say?”

It filled me with angry amusement to watch these men, who believed themselves to be scholars—lifelong, pious students of Torah—awaiting a reply from the potter’s son. The whole room leaned forward to hear what the formerly blind beggar of Nicanor Gate would say.

“Well,” Peniel said, “he must be a prophet. How else could he perform such a miracle?”

Both of Peniel’s antagonists threw up their hands in disgust. One swung around and leveled an accusatory finger at Peniel’s father and mother, hustled to the front of the mob, and cowered there. “Is this your son? Is this the one who was born blind? How is it that he now can see?”

I saw tension and sorrow creep into Peniel’s face, and I shivered. He was afraid his own parents would betray him for fear of the Temple authorities.

“We know he’s our son,” Peniel’s father said slowly, as if by stating the obvious he could escape some sort of trap.

Peniel’s mother added, “Yes, he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. How could we know? We weren’t even there, were we?”

If Peniel’s father was a man of few words and less courage, his wife made up for any lack of verbiage while managing to still disown her boy. “Why ask us? He’s of age. He’s a man. Ask him. Go on, ask him. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

Peniel gazed at the floor with the bitter knowledge that his mother and father would not speak up for him. They would sacrifice him to preserve themselves. Nicodemus grasped Peniel by the shoulders and gave him an encouraging squeeze.

Through gritted teeth the prosecutor said, “We … know … the man … who did this … is a sinner.”

He managed to make it sound so vile and hateful that I expected Peniel to also recoil and denounce Jesus.

Instead, he lifted his chin to the light and raised his beautiful, clear, brand-new set of eyes toward heaven. In a voice that rang throughout the chamber and carried even beyond the door to the plaza outside, he declared, “Whether he is a sinner or not,
I don’t know. One thing I do know: I was
blind
… completely, totally, and utterly blind …
and now I see!
”