The Chasm

Clouds have spread themselves in a low hanging blanket across the sky, and if I didn’t know any better I’d think the air tastes of anxiety. It has an undertone to it – the kind you never notice until after it’s gone. Metallic, full of an unpleasant, under-the-skin buzzing – like you’ve bitten the inside of your cheek raw. Every inhale comes with a small ache under my chest, thinking of all the things that are about to happen. Jesus crossed some pretty big lines in the past weeks and the Jewish leaders are calling for his death.

Even if no one else knows how this will play out, Jesus does. The others think we’re hiding out – giving the leaders time to cool off. But I think we came here to the edge of the wilderness… to where his dad spoke over him… to where John saw him for who he is, baptized him… so that Jesus can find the strength to face what’s coming. He’s girding his loins, pulling layers of love and faith and hope over his heart like a shield for the coming battle with the chasm of death and separation. Most of his loved ones are too busy sipping from that anxiety-tasting air to notice it, though. To see the way he’s already accepting the end. Instead they worry and wait and argue amongst themselves about how he’s going to get them out of this conflict.

All morning he’s been giving himself to those who hurt, those who need, just like always. He’s that underground spring for those who are thirsty – just like always. Everything is seemingly peaceful, if chaotic. The anxiety is only a low buzz as the disciples watch him go on with his healing as usual. Maybe they’ll make their lives out here on the outskirts and that would be ok, they think.

I keep looking over my shoulder, though, waiting, and sure enough, towards midday there are running footsteps coming from the west. I tense up because I know this story. At first, none of the rest see the distant runner, approaching in a weary, shambling jog that speaks of a long, desperate journey.

But Jesus does.

He straightens from a crouch where he’d been surrounded by kids wanting to touch his face and hear his jokes, show him their pockets full of treasures. He gently disentangles himself from little, patting hands. I watch as he turns his head, his expression losing its cheerfulness. He looks to the road, and his shoulders brace. His eyes tighten, his body stiffens.

He steps away from the crowd, and some of the men move to join him. He holds his hand up to stop Peter, wordless; shaking his head just slightly at John. They stay back, obedient, while he strides towards whoever it is that’s approaching, alone. They all recognize who it is, even if I don’t. A servant coming from the house of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Everyone worries now. They all know the history between those three and Jesus. How long they’ve known each other, how close–knit they are. I swallow as I see Jesus’s features take on that impassive, inner look of pain expected. The servant speaks, his throat dry from running, his voice a staccato of urgency – he can’t get the words out fast enough.

Jesus’s eyes blink closed. His head gives a tiny jerk backwards, like he’s been hit. A brief, barely visible, reaction of pain to the brutal punch of the servant’s words. Lazarus is sick; dying. I watch, my throat tight as I see him reach down for that steadfast will of his. He reigns himself in, even now aware of the need around him, and he squeezes the shoulder of the frantic servant, waves him towards the crowd, telling those nearest to find the youth drink, food, and rest. But he doesn’t turn back to the group. He stays facing away. He’s struggling with himself now. Hurting.

I walk over to his side, my heart lurching in my chest as I notice the strain in his body. I slip my hand inside his big palm. We’ve done this enough times that I know not to hesitate – that he wants me beside him even if I have nothing to give him but my presence. He squeezes gently, acknowledging me – never ignoring. But his eyes are trained on the distance where the man came from. His body leans. Almost quivering with the need to go. To be there.

“Dad.” I hear him beg under his breath, more groan than speech. Asking everything in just one syllable. His eyes stay trained on the hidden town, his voice – that one syllable – full of want as he fights himself to listen for his dad and not react just yet. Not take off at a run. Not whisk himself there like he could if he really wanted to. We stand still for a moment, the air heavy on our heads as he listens, as he waits, even though his white knuckles squeezing around my hand tell me he just wants to move. To get there before it’s too late.

There’s a raised murmur behind me as the group interrogates the servant, as they cast concerned looks in Jesus’s direction and bicker under their breath about what to do. He can’t go back, not now. Not with the hornet’s nest of Jerusalem poked and ready to swarm him. Not without losing his life. Their lives. They feel bad, and they give him space. They conclude that he’s stuck here, away from where his whole being longs to be. It’s the sad truth; the logical conclusion.

Thomas is the most worried. His feet shuffle uneasily. He reads Jesus’s body language and he’s guessing already at what he might do.

After a long period I feel Jesus’s body loosen, his shoulders slump from their tense place up by his ears. I didn’t hear what he said, but I know his dad spoke into his heart in that low, steady, rumbled whisper of his.

“Ok.” Jesus answers his dad, still looking towards that distant town. “Ok.”

He inhales then. Shakes himself out of that inner listening. Out of the grief he can sense even from here. He turns his head to me, smiles that almost shy, boyish smile – the one that always comes after he’s talked to his dad. The smile that says he feels peace even if it doesn’t quite light up his eyes. That he’s somehow been given safety, and comfort, in the goodness of his dad. And that he remembers who he is. Right in the midst of what is the worst kind of news. It’s how it always goes between them. And because of it he’s going to trust his dad over what his body tells him to do.

He looks at his brothers, their anxious faces. He swallows back the pain in his throat. He looks at the servant, his voice reassuring. “It won’t end in death. Dad’s got a plan. For me and for Lazarus.” He turns back to the crowd, and I can see the effort it takes as everyone else falls back into rhythm. As more sick are brought forward and Jesus begins to heal them, his eyes full of compassion, his attention generous even as every part of him is aware that he’s healing them rather than the one he loves just down the road. The one who is dying without him. His eyes stray now and then, to that road. His body half turns again and again, before he reminds himself of what his dad told him. Of why he should wait.

Two days pass. Two endless days. He’s trusting his dad, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel the strain of it. Knowing Lazarus passed through a great veil alone. Knowing what the girls are going through, waiting for him, not understanding why he’s not there while they face that awful pit – that endless tear in the fabric of their family, alone, without him.

Finally, finally, he feels the pressure ease. The ok given. He speaks to the servant who’s been waiting on tenterhooks for him to move, sends him running off ahead to tell the girls he’s coming.

And he claps his hands, immediately. “Let’s go.”

There’s an instant reaction from the disciples. “You can’t!” Peter says.

“Did you forget about the stones waiting to meet your head in Judea?” Thomas asks, half joking, half incredulous.

They all fall in around him, clamouring over each other in protest, trying to make him see reason while he quietly, adamantly, tells them it’s time. He insists Lazarus needs him, that he’s fallen asleep, that he needs to go wake his friend up.

“Sleep is good.” James argues back, too exasperated to see the obvious double meaning, “He’ll recover, then!”

“Lazarus is dead.” Jesus’s voice is flat; blunt. A crack in his calm, the glint in his eyes flashing pain.

He’s shocked the others crowded around him with plain speech – the kind he so rarely uses. Silence falls over them all. Dismay too, because Jesus isn’t the only one who loves Lazarus and his sisters. Jesus keeps speaking into the silence. “I am glad for your sakes,” His voice is quiet, enigmatic once more, “so you can see – so you can believe. But no more arguing.”

They all stare at him in shock, in distress at the choice before them.

“Let us go and die with him.” Thomas pronounces grimly, quietly, to those around him, exchanging nods with Peter, John, and the others. He’s been expecting this ever since he saw Jesus’s expression when the servant came.

It doesn’t take long and they’re all on the road. Jesus’s strides are long and quick and steady. He’s focused. Determined to get there as quickly as he can. The day passes with little speech and far less ribbing each other than usual.

Martha is the first to appear on the road. I watch Jesus take a long inhale, bracing himself at the sight of her, striding towards us. I watch him fight for calm. He knew what had happened – he had felt glimmers of it, but there’s a difference between knowing and seeing.

Martha’s angry. It’s the best way to shove aside her grief. To brush past the desolation that waits for her. To pretend it’s not there. To hold everything together like she always does. And she speaks before he can. Challenging him, baiting him, lashing out at him.

“If you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.” Her lips are a straight line, her face calm, but her eyes those of a wild animal spitting rage at him. She watches her words land a straight blow to his chest. And so she keeps going, the fire inside her soothed by the hurt she’s inflicting, because if he’s hurting then she doesn’t have to.

“Even now,” She throws down her gauntlet, “I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Her words are a challenge, and they’re full of biting resentment. Because God didn’t listen to her. Not through any of the sleepless nights she’d spent tending her brother, watching him fight and slip away anyway. She doesn’t actually expect Jesus to do anything – it’s too late after four days, she just wants to make him feel her pain. To admit his betrayal. To acknowledge his inability to act on their behalf. There’s a hidden part of her wondering, desperately, if she can make him do something purely by pushing him too far.

“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus says after a moment, gathering himself against the pain she’s hurling at him like a spear. His voice gentle, only his clenched fists giving away the way she’s hurting him, and his desire to reach for her, soothe away the anger.

A snort rips out of Martha, one that sounds too close to the beginnings of a sob. She fights herself, fights down the grief and rolls her eyes. She won’t let him in. She won’t let him see the agony ripping through her. “Sure, yes, the resurrection on the last day. I know.”

”I am the resurrection.” Jesus’s voice is steady, but it’s a little louder, a little more steely. “I am life. Do you believe me, Martha? Those who believe in me, even when they die, will never truly die.”

Martha studies him. Fighting her resentment. She knows he’s being serious. But like always he’s not giving her a straight answer. What is he really telling her? Her rage whips through her again at it – that he would still not speak plainly. She thinks he’s trying to comfort her, that he’s offering the knowledge that after death there will be no barrier to their souls. But she sees something in his eyes, something that she was waiting for. The crack. Her heart starts to beat again. “Yes.” Her voice is ragged. She forces the words out, past the resentment, that he’s asking her, now, of all times – when he should be comforting her. “You know I believe in you. I have always believed in you, Messiah, Son of God.” She uses his full formal title, putting distance between them, her hurt showing through her words, despite herself.

She becomes aware of the disciples then, and she whirls away, needing to flee the intensity in Jesus’s eyes before he makes her cry, uncomfortable with any kind of emotional display. Jesus’s voice stops her before she takes a step,

“Martha,” he asks, speaking to her back, his voice hesitant, raw. “Where is Mary?”

“I’ll get her.” She strides away.

Jesus lets out a long exhale, his heart raw from the anger in the fiery woman who’s so let down by him. He tells the others to go ahead, to enter the house and rest. And he waits where he is, just over the rise, the sun just now lifting behind him. They traveled through the night, and he is tired, but he can’t rest yet. He won’t. Not until he sees Mary. Not until he goes to Lazarus.

It isn’t long before she’s coming – running. There’s a crowd following behind her, but she doesn’t notice them and though he sees them, his gaze is only for her. His eyes trace her features as she gets close enough. Halt on the too slender cheekbones where the sight of him has sent tears streaming down in messy, never-ending paths.

She doesn’t care how she looks, and she would throw herself in his arms if she could, but in this culture and time such things are not to be. So she throws herself at his feet instead. Her hands clinging to his sandals, to the hem of his tunic. She cannot speak around the boulder on her chest. Her eyes finally drag themselves up to his. From my place to the side, I feel his whole body tense.

“If you had been here,” Her voice is only a ragged whisper, run through with his betrayal, “He wouldn’t have died!” Her words are the same as Martha’s but worse, somehow, ripping him open. Sobs shake her shoulders then, shudder through her slight frame. Her fingers move along his hem and clutch at his feet, unable to stay still. Grasping for something to hold onto. She weeps, her head bowed, hardly able to breathe between gulps. There’s a silent question vibrating through the air between them.

Where was he when she called for him?

She’s so bewildered at why he didn’t come. Agony all tangled up in her voice, punching gaps and stutters in it at the way he carved a hole in her chest. She needed him. And he hadn’t come. She can’t understand it. It’s swept the ground from under her – sent her into a place where nothing feels real, where no air exists. Lazarus is sorrow, Lazarus is grief. But Jesus not coming is the end of her, is the chasm she can’t climb out of.

I watch as it breaks him. Her question. Her pain piled on top of Martha’s. He fights himself, and he stares down at her head for a moment, his face a mask of anguish so deep I can barely look at him.

I’ve heard many explanations about this part of his story. I’ve even heard preachers say how he was angry at the fake mourning, at the show that’s happening behind Mary in the crowd. That that is why he’s “troubled” so deeply. There’s a translation that says he was indignant. At all the sin. At death. And maybe it’s part of it. If he’s angry at anything it’s the distance that keeps him from those he loves. The chasm that keeps being shoved in front of him – the one that he is determined to fill in. The one that keeps him fixed on what he’s doing.

But.

His gaze right now is caught up in Mary. I don’t think the mourners, whether they’re fake or real, register in the profoundness of Mary’s pain, of his pain. No, that’s not what’s going on here. At least, I don’t think so. I look away from the family and friends as it niggles at me, that question of what’s going on inside him. I turn my head back towards him. A rock settles in my throat. Hard and jagged.

He’s weeping.

Standing still and struck through. His breath coming in sharp, short pants. Silent tears that drip steadily into his beard, his whole body clenched in suffering so deep I can’t bear it, and I look away. I feel like it should just be him and Mary here in this intimacy.

But my gaze is drawn back to him, against my will, because I can’t bear to look away, either. And he turns his head and meets my gaze. Lets me see it, the brokenness there. The silent, tearing grief. I can’t breathe as I see him. And yes, there’s indignation. He hates that he wasn’t there. My lungs seize and my heart squeezes like a vise in my throat, in my chest. I want it to stop. I want to run at the enormity of it. Lazarus is one of his best friends – of course it hurts. Just because his dad already showed him a plan doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel the pain of it all, the trauma and extremity of what the girls and Lazarus faced. But it’s not that he’s resenting what his dad has him doing. He has too much trust in his dad for that. And it’s not just Lazarus that’s tearing him apart.

As I stare into those grief stricken eyes, I have this thought, this small idea, that he’s aware in this moment of how many times those he loves will cry out for him that silent question. And it’s hammering at him. The sound of it slicing into his soul. Where are you? He’s suddenly face to face with what will happen in a few days. Because this is just the first time she will feel this.

It’s going to happen again. Only it will be him that she loses. That they will all think they’ve lost.

Mary is going to need him then, too. She’ll ask him where he is, she’ll call for him, and he won’t come that time either. He won’t be there to pick her up, physically, hold her close when she mourns him. And it’s tearing him apart.

Yes, he knows it will be better, after. But it’s not better now. He isn’t just blasé about it because there’s a final resurrection coming. Life is a gift. He’s aware of every molecule of oxygen trickling into his nose, down to his lungs. He’s aware of the presence of each one of those he loves in their various spots in the crowd. He knows their quirks and habits and their imperfections. And he loves them. So much.

It’s killing him how much they’re going to miss him. How much it’s going to tear into them, losing him the way they’re going to lose him. His time on earth is almost done. No more walking down the sandy road, part of the jokes and bickering and tiredness between his men, no more sharing of his favourite meals, all huddled close together in the firelight or at a table. And he aches with it. That he must let them go through it. That he will be torn away in the most physically traumatizing way possible.

Between one blink and the next he’s kneeling in front of Mary, his whole body bowed inwards towards her as if he could shelter her from the storm of grief – both the one now and the one he’ll cause soon with his own death. His hands gather hers, the smaller ones that are still reaching and grasping for something to hold onto and he holds them tight to his chest. He scoops her up in his arms, gathering her close as she weeps silently into his shirt.

His eyes meet Martha’s in the crowd. Sees the vulnerability she tries so desperately to hide from him. Let’s her see his own.

“Show me where you laid him.” His voice a rasp. Raw. The best way to comfort her is to show her. Show them what his dad has planned. Let her feel and see that there’s more to come than death. That his dad and he will conquer that chasm with Spirit. Fill it up and walk over it so that he can gather them all in to him once and for all. He reaches for his dad, that wordless cry for comfort. And he feels the answer, he feels the rock beneath his feet. His dad is ready to show him too. That he’s not alone. That that chasm will not stand.

And they lead him eagerly to Lazarus’s tomb. Not knowing they’re showing him his own death.