Afterwards
The question is always, “What happened?”
The question is never, “What next?”
People always want to know where I went during those four long days; but I cannot tell them. I fell into the deepest sleep – but not a sleep that I had known before. This was not darkness, but colour; not passivity, but action; not silence, but music; not separation, but community. I knew all of this, for those brief moments (four days to them; only seconds to me – or was it a lifetime? – I had no frame of reference). Then I came back to the monochrome world of light, and all that I had known slipped away.
My heart beat out a rhythm
My breath rose and fell, rose and fell
My blood fanned out to face, fingers, toes: roses bloomed there once more
And my memories atrophied, becoming small and wizened in my mind’s eye.
Now, all I had to do was to rise, cautiously and unsteadily, from my resting place; to put one foot in front of the other, and shuffle in a trembling gait towards the aperture – towards the voice that had commanded me to ‘Come Forth!’
Afterwards, the hours stretched out into a jumble of questions, sideways and suspicious looks, the press of people all around me:
“What happened?”
“What happened to you?”
“Where did you go?”
“What was it like?”
I was the explorer, come back from a far off land where no human footprints lay; yet this was a land where each of us would go, alone, one day. No wonder they wondered! No wonder they persisted with their questioning, pushing me to give details, to lend some definition to their vague imaginings. I wish I could have comforted them. I said that it was, I believed, good; but since I could give no details, I could not qualify that notion. I was like a visitor to a great noble’s hall who had merely crossed the threshold, and had not even wiped the dust off his sandals before being sent back to his ordinary life – and yet I was expected to tell of the gold and the marble, of the feast prepared, of the words of welcome spoken by my lord. I could not; I would not.
And in all their questioning, no one ever thought to ask me what came next. What I felt about the rest of my life, gifted back to me – was this the time I was always meant to have, or was it in some way borrowed? – in which case, what was expected of me, now? I had been where no person had travelled – what significance did that have? Must the whole of my life, the life afterwards, be coloured by an event that had slipped from my grasp? I felt bogus, a trickster, one who plays on the darkest fears and the dearest hopes of others. I was also cast outside by these events – beyond humanity as a whole but also specifically outside my circle of friends, the other followers, my own family. I was the only one, you see; the only one who knew. Except I didn’t.
Oh, I had sympathy. Martha, forever checking my forehead for signs of the fever returning, and lying with her head on my chest to hear the reassurance of my heartbeat. Mary, looking longingly in my direction, wishing that she could somehow unlock the treasures that I had lost. Some jealousy, too, I fancy: more than one of Jesus’s closest followers had appeared quizzical, wondering no doubt why this brother, this occasional devotee, had been favoured with grief and restoration. They had seen so much, you see; yet this door remained implacably closed to them.
And what of Jesus himself? He who had wept at my graveside, and shouted out my name; he who had watched my first fumbling steps, and who had commanded the onlookers – those who were afraid to come close, terrified by the sight of a dead man walking – to loosen my wrappings and let me go: what did he do next?
He embraced me as a brother, even as the smell of death still clung to my skin; weeping more tears and saying my name over and over, softer and softer, the susurration dying in my ear. As he did so the syllables became indistinct, such that he could have been saying my name or his, intertwined as they became. We were the same now, somehow - each knowing the fear of impending death. Each catching glimpses of something beyond this world, but confounded by human memory and inarticulacy. Yet I had gone before him – his trial was yet to come - as it was for everyone standing around us, but perhaps not so immediately.
That was what I read in his embrace at the time, anyway; or maybe I have extrapolated the meaning after subsequent events. Maybe his grasp was purely one of relief, and love. But there are things I know now that influence my understanding. Firstly, that Jesus delayed his coming. The message from my sister arrived, telling him that I was sick, and asking for his attendance: yet he waited, in full knowledge that the journey would take two days. After another two days he instructed his followers to break camp and they set off. He was not to know that I had already died, even as the message reached him – he could have set out straight away and perhaps healed me, as he had done for so many others. Or perhaps he did know? – some of his followers certainly seemed to think so. Whatever the truth, the fact is that he waited, and that meant four days of death and decay for my body. I was truly dead – there could be no question – and it seemed that that was the way Jesus thought it should be.
Secondly, his followers remember that he told them he was glad he wasn’t with me before I died – that this would help them to believe. My death and restoration were to be an illustration for the doubters in their midst, an aide memoir throughout the difficult days ahead. Perhaps I should not feel aggrieved – after all, each of us had said that we were ready to die with, and for, this man – but this was not the death that I had envisaged. There was no glory in succumbing to a sickness; it seemed like an old man’s death. I had said that I would gladly lay down my life for this man, and yet I felt affronted when it was taken from me – despite that it was offered back.
Thirdly, it seems that my death was not about me at all. You would think that one would be the focus of one’s own wake; yet, even as Jesus’s footsteps turned in the direction of Bethany, the attention shifted towards him. He was like that. He talked about laying down his life; and he lived a life of poverty, simplicity and servanthood. And yet, you could not take your eyes away from him, and your ears would itch to hear every word that he spoke. Even when he challenged you, as he did to Martha and I so many times, you would want to come back for more. So I don’t regret that he stole my thunder, even as I lay wasting in the tomb. He spoke about death and life in a way that no other dared to do; he made promises that didn’t feel empty. “I am the resurrection and the life!” he told my sister – “Do you believe? Do you, Martha?” And she knew, then, that he was no longer talking about me, and my solitary death, but it was bigger and all-embracing and for always. The passage from life to death was falling asleep, for him, not falling into an abyss; and after sleep came waking, the most wonderful waking of all.
So when he whispered my name or his name in my ear, I believe it was all of us he named. He was made of the same dust as us all; but did not see that dust as our final resting place. Yet there was still sorrow in his voice, not triumph, and I could not understand it at the time. Now, looking back over the years, I think I do. My ordeal was over; his was just beginning.
Time has shifted for me, since that day. There is before, and after; but the after has not yet really taken place. There was a glimpse of it, which faded but has not left me entirely. It is my pearl, buried in a field that I have almost forgotten. These are the inbetween days, the here but not yet. I have travelled, and seen many wonders. Though Jesus no longer visits my home or walks along the way with me, in other ways he is as close and closer than ever. I find myself pondering and re-remembering everything, with an expression that resembles my sister Mary more and more. I have become known as the man who does not smile, to those in my neighbourhood – but in my old age I am too busy remembering the past and looking forward to my future to spend time smiling in the now. I am the only human being past and present to live out a life between two deaths, and that makes me both solemn and deeply, deeply content. One day soon it will be time to retrace my steps; to find the borders of that forgotten field, and to take a shovel to the hardened soil. I will dig up that buried pearl, and claim it as my prize.
Comments