Chapter
Six
SCREENING her face with her dark, heavy veil, Martha gave her full attention to the sand-colored cobblestones passing beneath her feet as she walked home.
The rabbi continued his endless stream of comfort. "The psalmist has written," he said, " 'Such a man will never be laid low for the just shall be held in remembrance for ever.' "
Martha absently nodded and remembered a passage in Proverbs which reads, "The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot."
Our Lazarus was that just and righteous man, she thought, and his memory is blessed, but I shall never stop loving or missing him.
She turned her attention back to the rabbi, for he was saying, "If there is no resurrection, then there's no hope beyond this life."
Mary's eyes, red-rimmed from weeping, met the rabbi's gaze, and he continued, "A nation without hope, my child, is like a night without stars. And we do have hope, the blessed hope of eternal life."
He warmly encircled both women with his arms, and they continued their slow walk homeward.
When the procession of mourners reached the last turn in the street, Martha lagged behind Mary and the rabbi and purposely slowed her gait, letting others pass, until she stood alone.
The rabbi had picked up his one-sided discussion and was so absorbed in his own world of rhetoric involving beliefs in the Judgment Day and the resurrection that he and Mary had almost reached the iron gates before he missed Martha.
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Turning around, he looked back up the street into the dusky pink sunset and called, "Martha? Come."
"In a moment, Rabbi. In a moment," she answered.
"Are you alright?" Mary called.
Martha shook her head affirmatively and waved them on.
She was in absolutely no hurry to join them or even, for that matter, was she willing to listen to them as they consoled her. Desperately she wanted to deny this whole day, to put it out of her head so she would not have to deal with the painful, frustrating questions it had presented.
Martha had stopped in a favorite spot. From where she was standing in the street, just after the last turn, she could look down a short distance and see Josiah Ben Jochanan's magnificent house — her house, the house everyone called "Martha's." To her it was not Martha's house, but the house of her father, and she never tired of the splendid sight.
She stood alone as if she were a stranger to the area and watched the mourners moving by the front wall and entering through the intricately scrolled iron gates. Finally she gave her full attention to the stone dwelling beyond the gates and the people.
The great house had been built to her father's precise instructions, and because Josiah was both wealthy and well traveled, his home and furnishings reflected Roman, Greek, Hebrew, and even Assyrian cultures. In any case, the house was a far cry from any typical or common Palestinian residence.
When Martha was little, she pretended their house was really a luxurious king's palace and, indeed, to many of Bethany's townsfolk, it was exactly that. The size of the stone buildings alone substantiated Martha's pretending and the villager's surmising.
Martha lifted her veil off her face and laid it on her head. By squinting her eyes she could block out people, plants, trees, and other distractions, to see the house more clearly. She stood lovingly taking in the great structure. Actually, her home was more like three stone houses than just one, she observed quietly to herself.
The wide back building was two floors tall and flat roofed. Its
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windows were crisscrossed with delicately wrought wooden lattice work.
She could see that the richly carved cedar wood entrance doors had been flung open, and people were making their way inside. Each day for several weeks the massive doors would be open as word of Lazarus's death would travel over the countryside and mourners would come to pay their respects. Because Lazarus was so well loved, Martha knew any time alone with her grief would have to be postponed for a while.
She returned her full attention to the house. The main back section, its white stone now a deep orange from the setting sun, was flanked on its eastern and western sides by single-storied buildings which jutted out toward the street, forming a deep center courtyard.
Martha watched the people. They moved around the well in the courtyard, the trees, the shrubs, and on into the house, and she knew she could not linger too much longer. She would have to join them soon, but the sight of the house held her for a moment more.
The house, outer walls, and gates were all bathed in the dusky glow of early twilight. She could still see some glimpses of color in the courtyard. The trees were abloom with spring's first leaves, and here and there the masses of flowers against the black mourners' robes and the cool, whitewashed stone house were like splashes of color on a tapestry. Dearly she loved the house and gardens. "Perhaps," she said aloud, "I love this house because it is the one thing in my life which remains constant. It does not change, go away, or die."
"Martha?" It was Hannah. She cupped her hand to her mouth and called from the gate, "Martha, you must come now. Everything is ready."
"Yes, I guess it would be," Martha responded to herself. She called down to Hannah, "I'll be right there." She knew in the short time it took for the company of people to reach the sepulchre, bury Lazarus, and walk back home, busy hands would have gathered special dishes of food together for the mourning family and friends to feast upon.
Martha embraced Hannah at the gate, and as the two women
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entered the main hall, Martha was not surprised to find everything attended to and definitely ready. What did surprise her was the manner in which she was treated. For suddenly Mary was at her side and both of them were escorted through the groups of people in the main hall of their own house as if they were honored guests or the governor of the feast.
Some mourners were standing clustered about in groups. Others were moving quietly among the gathering of friends. Even as she walked, she inhaled the deliciously fragrant aromas of an abundance of prepared food.
Here and there both sisters stopped briefly to say a word or two to the many friends assembled there. Martha's cooking ability and sense of smell combined at one point, and she distinctly identified the scent of baked quail. She guessed the fowl had been given by Nathan and Anna who lived on the edge of Bethany. They took special pride in their assorted birds, and their success in keeping chickens, geese, quail, and partridges was second only to the perfect way Anna spit roasted them.
Rebecca and Dorcus stood before the sisters with a basin and towel. Hannah guided them to a couch. Hesitantly, because usually in this house she was the hostess, Martha sat down gingerly beside Mary as Hannah and the others washed her feet.
When that task was performed, Hannah led them from the great hall, through an archway, and into the long dining room on the eastern side of the house.
Mary glanced at Martha and with a soft smile said discreetly, "One would think we did not know where the table is here in our own house."
"I was just thinking about that," Martha replied.
Between greetings and friendly but subdued salutations, Martha took in the large rectangular room with its dark sycamore-beamed ceiling, its gleaming white walls, and its highly polished table and noted with some degree of pleasure that the room was exactly as it should be. Everything was in order, and someone had done everything right — without her.
In each of the four corners the tall lamp stands were brimming with flaming oil, illuminating everything well. The long, low table, surrounded by its reclining couches which looked like the
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spokes of a wheel, was crowded with food dishes. The food seemed to pick up its own special glow from the two candelabra wedged in between trays and plates on each end, and the sight made Martha ravenously hungry.
There was such an abundance of food that someone had removed the bronze urn which usually graced the table as a centerpiece. Martha didn't have time to question its whereabouts as Hannah took her arm. Both Martha and Mary were led directly to the center couches of honor on both sides of the table.
Martha felt an uncomfortable, almost foolish shiver run up her back as she settled down on the very couch she had led honored guests to during past evenings' meals.
Most homes in Bethany did not have a separate eating place. The people simply took the meals at small, low tables and sat on wooden stools in the common rooms of their homes. Certainly no house boasted upholstered reclining couches, and long ago there had been a great deal of speculation in Bethany as to Josiah's whys and wherefores of eating.
Actually it was all quite simple to Josiah. He had made buying trips to many foreign cities and seaports. In the process, once on a trip to Rome, he had been befriended by a wealthy art merchant. Several times Julius Marcos had invited Josiah to take his evening meal with the Marcos family, but Josiah had always gracefully declined. Finally, Marcos's persistent, kind invitation and Josiah's own loneliness won out. Josiah swallowed his fears about the "barbarous" Romans and their nonkosher foods and gratefully, if not a bit apprehensively, accepted.
He was pleasantly pleased to find that the shrewd businessman, Julius,was at home, a warm and gentle family man. He was quick to note that Julius understood his concern about Jewish dietary laws, for the food that was served was good, yet plain and very much in keeping with Jewish tastes. Josiah felt more than a few pangs of guilt over his former inflexible attitude.
Josiah was even more pleased when at the first dinner he found that affluent Romans ate in a separate room made just for eating, but he was joyous to find that they ate their meals at a triclinium. Josiah never stopped marveling about how nice it was to lie down on couches and eat!
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He had said to Martha after returning from the Rome trip, "You know, Martha, the Roman occupational army rules us and our land with an oppressive, heavy hand; but we can learn from them in some ways."
Even though she was young, Martha had heard horror stories of Roman atrocities and torturing, and her prejudice and contempt for all Romans ran high within her.
Disdainfully she asked, "What could Israel's chosen people possibly learn from those heathen barbarians?"
"For one thing," Josiah stroked his beard, "we could study their water system with its aqueducts, cisterns, and clay pipes and also the way they build their houses and take their meals."
"Take their meals, Father?" She had looked at him, her brown eyes popping with the wonder of how he knew of their ways.
"Yes... take their meals," he repeated. Then he told her all about the Marcos family, their dining area, and their couches. He had found that Roman women ate with the men, and Josiah liked that whole idea much better than the Jewish tradition of the women eating by themselves in the women's quarters.
"Just think of this, my daughter," he gestured with his hands. "In the house of wealthy Romans, everyone takes his meals in a room dedicated to the purpose of eating. The table is low, and perpendicular to the table are the reclining benches or couches. You simply lie on the couch on your left side, head towards the table, and eat as usual with your right hand. It is both practical and pleasant!"
"Ah, yes. Practical and pleasant! I've seen Adoniram's cows reclining in the fields, chewing away at their cuds, and that is exactly how they looked — practical and pleasant."
Martha smiled to herself as she remembered because here she sat on a couch in the very same room her father had designed for them. It was a Marcos room to her, and she had come to love it as her father had.
This night they were using all the couches and had added as many stools as the room would allow so most everyone could eat together.
The table talk was low, intimate, and friendly; yet it was not
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easy for Martha to wholeheartedly enter into things. It was especially difficult to remember she was, at this feast, a guest. She looked across the table at Mary and admired the way her sister could open up her heart and mouth with such grace. Mary never seemed to have any trouble listening and aptly commenting. Tonight Mary was responding graciously to each person, and Martha was even more aware of her own stiff responses.
"I would be much more comfortable standing and serving with Tabitha and Leah than lying here all 'practical and pleasant,' " she muttered to herself.
When she had first smelled the luscious aroma of baked quail, she had been instantly hungry, but once at the table, she lost all desire to eat and absentmindedly picked at her food. Listlessly Martha took a bite of pale yellow cheese, dipped a crisp cucumber slice into the wine vinegar and oil bowl, noting its freshness, and even bit off a tasty bite of baked quail, but she had no appetite or incentive for eating.
From the moment she had entered this room there was a growing apprehension about the whole evening. Unable to eat and feeling more edgy by the moment, Martha knew her mood was due to more than fatiguing events of the past few days or the death of her loved one.
For a while she concentrated on Mary's lovely face and gracious manner, but imitating it was a futile gesture. Martha settled down on her couch and resigned herself to simply being quiet.
It was just as Deborah took Martha's cup to refill it with wine that Martha snapped into alertness and was able to see what had been troubling her about this room.
"Ah, besides my being a guest here in my own house, other things trouble me about this room," she said to herself, and a trickle of energy ran through her veins.
This room, this very couch, the food, the servants coming and going, the pouring of the wine..., her thoughts raced. This is the very place where I have served Jesus and his men. Tonight I am troubled — no, angry — that for all my times of serving Jesus, he did not come when I needed him. How often have I set plates of food before him, poured wine into his cup, and removed
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empty dishes from this table for him and his men? she wondered. The memory, like a sharp needle, picked steadily at her. Where was he? What had kept him away? Why had he not come? Over and over the questions surfaced and raised their ugly heads in her mind.
The long meal, the first of the traditional thirty days of mourning, was friendly but without gaiety. It seemed to drag on endlessly like the dry heat of a summer drought.
Once she inwardly admitted her source of anger, Martha rallied a little. She even managed several polite conversations and a somewhat hospitable countenance.
When the final course was served and consumed and the last guest spoke his shalom of farewell, Martha heaved a grateful sigh of relief. They would be back in the morning, but for now Martha could mourn privately.
She turned from the street and iron gates, and in the moonlight she said to Mary, "Let us go in and help the servants with the last of the cleaning up. Maybe that way we can all go to our pallets a little earlier tonight."
Without a word Mary moved from the gates, down the courtyard, and into the main doorway. There she stopped, turned, and idly looked back out into the empty yard. Gently Martha touched her arm, bringing her into the house, and shut the massive doors behind her.
"Come," Martha said affectionately. But Mary did not respond. She stood by the doors, head bowed, toying with the hem of her head veil.
Martha looked down intently into Mary's face and questioned, "Are you feeling ill, my sister?"
Mary's answer was barely audible, and Martha leaned forward to hear.
"No, I am not ill. I think I'm just tired, or maybe, to be more honest, I am disappointed. I was so sure the Lord would come," her voice trailed off into nothing.
Martha felt she was gifted in making the best of every situation and most of her solutions to problems involved doing something; so with the old vigor in her tone, she said, "Then, let's help the servants. It will occupy our minds and our hands."
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Martha was halfway across the main hall before she realized Mary had not moved. She stopped, turned around, and with low-keyed deliberation in her voice, said sternly, "Mary, I am not only disappointed about Jesus, I am angry that he did not come, but it is over. Lazarus is gone. He rests in God's arms tonight, and I pray he is no longer in pain. We must pick up the pieces of our lives. Now, come with me, and we will busy ourselves with the tasks at hand.
Still Mary did not move. She stood leaning against the main doors, totally absorbed in her thoughts.
Martha's well of patience had never been too deep, but at this moment it ran bone-dry, and sharply she said, "Mary, I have gladly taken care of you, Lazarus, and this whole household. I have supervised the spring planting and the summer harvesting of our fields and vineyards. With Joseph's help I have seen to the raising of our sheep and other livestock. Very seldom have I asked you to serve, to take part in the housekeeping, or to work at some dreary task. It is beyond my comprehension that when I need you — really need you — you withdraw, or worse, you disappear, leaving me with the whole burden of the tasks at hand. Or, like now, when we both are confused and hurt by Jesus' actions, we should pledge ourselves to tasks. Even simple ones would help to ease our troubled minds."
Martha did not expect or even wait for an answer. She turned on her heel and headed briskly for the cooking area.
Mary could not see her sister go for the scalding tears which were streaming down her face, but still she did not move.
Martha reached the cooking area, and it was dark except for the light of one small lamp. The neighbor women and servant girls had done their work remarkably well. Everyone was gone and everything, except for one basket, was in its proper place. Even by the light of the small hanging lamp in the corner, Martha could see that things were in excellent order. She turned around and decided to give the dining room one final check before she retired.
When she left the cooking area and padded silently across the carpets of the main hall to the dining room, Martha knew, before she looked, that Mary had gone to her room without bidding her
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a good night. Martha felt a twinge of guilt for the tartness of her tongue, but she quickly rationalized that it was not the first time Mary had failed to see to the tasks.
Why should I expect anything else? she wondered. My sister is not given to menial work or serving. Mary is gifted in singing, in needlework and embroidering, in listening and laughing, in just ... she searched for the elusive word. "Ah, in just being," Martha finished aloud. I must be more tolerant with her, but she is so different from me. Martha's thoughts continued until she reached the dining room.
There were no lamps lit so Martha retraced her steps, and taking a small burning lamp from the great hall, returned and lit one of the large lamp stands in the corner.
She stood looking at the long, low table and couches which were all illuminated by the lamp's glow and said to herself, "My sister is like this room with its soft golden look — so alive to life. She is always 'being,' whereas I seem to be always consumed by 'doing."
The tabletop shone because of someone's careful polishing, and Martha noticed the large bronze urn back in its place of honor between the two candelabra.
It was in this room and at this very table, Martha remembered, she had learned firsthand about the vast difference between Mary's creative 'being" and her own inescapable urge toward "doing."
One evening, just at sunset, Martha and Mary had washed the feet of Jesus and seven of his men who accompanied him.
Then, taking Jesus by the arm, Martha led him into the house and held a ceremonial robe out for him to wear as the guest of honor.
Both Mary and Martha escorted the group to their places at the table. It was not the first dinner they had taken together, but routinely Martha personally seated Jesus at the couch which was exactly midway in the long table. Each dinner she did that so everyone could see and hear him at the best advantage.
Martha remembered how they all marveled at this man called Jesus from Nazareth.
His looks completely startled her. They certainly caught her
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off guard the first time she saw him coming through her gates. It was as if she had seen him before in a dream or a vision, though she could not immediately tell why.
He was irresistibly winsome and incredibly handsome of face. His skin, tanned and golden from the Galilean sun, was unblemished and his short, dark beard framed his symmetrical features with a manly grace.
Jesus' eyes were not the same bright azure of Mary's but were of a softer, paler, grayer blue, given to subtly changing with his words or moods.
It was weeks after she first met him that Martha suddenly realized why she felt she had known or seen him before.
Long ago, when she had been memorizing the psalms with Lazarus, she had pictured in her mind how the beautiful "comely" King David would have looked.
Jesus, with his blue gray eyes, noble nose, and superb features, matched her mind's image of David perfectly. It had given her chills when she finally put it all together.
Everyone was attracted to him. Martha and Mary often discussed and agreed that it was the first glimpse at his fairness of face which arrested one's attention, but it was definitely his penetrating way of returning one's look that held and transfixed one. It was also Mary who first remarked on the faint circles under his eyes, which gave a look of sorrow to his face in spite of his comeliness.
Noisy children became quiet around him and shyly crept close, simply to be near him. Children of soft-spoken natures took his hand, warmed to him, played little games on his fingers, and spontaneously giggled in noisy delight.
Young people cocked their heads to sharpen their listening skills so they would not miss anything he said. And no one, old or young, was immune to his dramatic way of telling a story.
"But always," Martha had remarked to Mary as they were sewing one day, "there is the way Jesus looks at each person."
"Yes," Mary had answered, "and I could easily lose myself in that gaze."
Jesus' strong intelligence and straightforward honesty reminded
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Martha of her father; yet his tenderness and ability to be creative were like the traits she saw and loved in Mary and Lazarus.
Jesus, though tall and slim, was a man of unbending strength. His years at his father's carpenter's bench vigorously wielding the tools of his trade had toughened and strengthened the sinews and muscles of his limbs. But while he was iron strong, he seemed flexible and unhardened.
He seemed stubbornly dedicated to principles; yet he was pliable and tender.
Martha loved his bluntness of speech, the way he never wasted words, and his honest, truthful directness; yet she was touched beyond belief by the utmost kindness which framed all his conversations. He was obviously filled with authority; yet he was human, warm, and touchable. Martha always thought of him as the most whole and healthy man she had ever seen. It seemed to Martha that Jesus, teacher and rabbi, was a most complete man.
When he was in her home, Martha found herself unable to do enough for him. She was skilled in serving, treating, and even healing others; yet his presence in her house inspired her to unbelievable heights of giving and doing. Jesus' slightest gesture or look was met by Martha's immediate consideration, and off she would fly to fulfill his need. She could not put her finger on the exact reason for her desire to serve him, only that it was so. It was as if he had touched a responsive chord deep within her being and serving him became her most compelling urge.
Whenever word reached her that Jesus was teaching in Jerusalem, she went into a flurry of frenzied activity, for she knew he would come for a visit. It was such a short walk from the temple courtyard in Jerusalem to her front gate that Jesus rarely spent his evening meal or night's lodging any place but in Martha's spacious house. It was an unspoken agreement between them, and it was these visits which deepened the loving friendship between Martha, Mary, Lazarus, and Jesus.
With Jesus' visits, Mary grew pensive and quiet. "It is as if," she told Martha one night as they climbed the steps to the rooftop,
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"I want to store everything in my heart. I dare not miss a thing he says or does. I have the feeling I will someday wish I had listened more."
Martha smiled in the darkness as the reached the roof, because if Jesus' friendship made Mary quiet and reflective, it did just the opposite to Lazarus and her.
Lazarus, always lethargic from the long debilitating effects of his lingering illness, would become suddenly alive with a restless stirring of life whenever Jesus was near. Martha called Jesus' influence on Lazarus "a medicine which doeth good!"
So it was. Lazarus would find strength from somewhere and energetically begin to question Joseph about the sheep and goats, the barley fields, or worse, he would ask Martha what needed repairing in the house. Once when Jesus was there, Lazarus, in his usual short burst of good health, determined to fix the hinge on a small, priceless wooden cabinet. Jesus watched Lazarus struggling with the delicate bolts for as long as he could, then laughing and shaking his head he said, "Not only are you going to break the hinge even more than it is already, but you are attaching it upside down, and it may never work."
Lazarus picked up the pieces of hinge and the cabinet, and in a voice replying with mock seriousness, he laid it ceremoniously at Jesus' feet saying, "It seems I have forgotten you have earned your master skills in carpentry; so I bow to your abilities." He would have said more, but both men were absorbed in their laughter.
Martha had stood in the doorway quietly observing the deep, loving friendship which was forging together before her eyes. How good it was to hear her brother laugh, to see him try to do things, and to see him so much better, even if it were a temporary time of well-being.
She understood well this burst of enthusiasm for life when Jesus was visiting, because it happened to her as well.
Martha was always seized with pride that this gifted rabbi would make her home his choice, and her hospitality knew no limits. Nothing was too good or ever spared for Jesus and his men. The willingness to serve him was so strong in Martha that it overflowed to each person he had brought with him. She never
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knew exactly how many people it would be for the evening meal or how many floor mats for sleeping she would lay out; only that never, in the two or three years, did Jesus ever come alone. It was all an incredible challenge to Martha's skill and sense of devotion to duty. She took to it like an experienced eagle soaring into tumultuous, stormy winds.
The dinner she remembered the most was the one with Jesus, his seven men, and five hastily added neighbors. It was not one of the biggest groups she had served, but Naomi was ailing and both Deborah and Leah had been scalded by the boiling of soup as they had lifted the pot from the fire; so the work load was lying heavy on Martha's shoulders.
After seating Jesus and serving the first course of cracked-wheat cakes and cucumbers which were dipped in the bowls of oil and vinegar, she had gone back to the cooking area to do what she could about salvaging what was left of the barley soup. To her relief, not much of it was gone although the girls, holding their burned hands in basins of cool water, were sure all the soup had spilled on them.
"Mary?" Martha called, looking past the girls and out to the back court. "Are you out there?"
There was no answer, and Leah ventured, "I think she is with the guests."
"I see," said Martha as she poured the soup into a large bowl and carried it on a tray to the dining room.
When she reached the room, she placed the tray on a small chest by the wall and wiped her hands on a towel as she looked for Mary. Martha almost missed her, because Mary was on the floor between the couches of Jesus and her gladdened brother. When she caught sight of the top of Mary's red hair, she called out, "Mary!" and instantly regretted the ugly impatience in her voice.
Everyone fell silent as if her call had been not one voice but a flourish of trumpet blasts at the temple. Everyone turned to look at her, and some of them hid their smiles as they watched the red stain of embarrassment creep up her neck and spread over her cheeks.
She was definitely obliged to explain; so she stammered, "Ah,
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excuse me, friends, honored guests, but ...." Then, looking directly at Jesus, she lamented, "Master, do you not care that my sister just sits here while I do all the work?" She did not wait for an answer but plunged boldly on, "Tell her to come and help me."
If the room had quieted down before, when she had called out Mary's name, it now was as if everyone suddenly stopped breathing. Without sound, they waited for Jesus' reply.
No one missed his words or message, thought Martha; no one but me, she remembered sadly. All she could recalled of the moment was that there was no look of condemnation on his face and no threat in his tone of voice, but his answer mystified and confused her thoroughly. He said, "Martha, Martha, dear friend, you are so upset over all these details." He waved his hand over the dishes before him. "There is really only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and I won't take it away from her!"
The gentle friendship of his spirit reached out and touched her, but to Martha his frustrating remarks left her with precisely the same work load plus more questions.
She looked at Jesus, and Mary, still seated beside him, shrugged her shoulders and mutely concentrated on picking up the vinegar and oil bowls to make room for the barley soup.
Cold soup — by the time I get it served, Martha's thoughts pronounced.
Routinely she managed to get all the guests served without mishap, until she got to Andrew. There, between the table and Andrew's couch, Martha's foot caught itself in her robe, throwing her off balance, and every drop of lukewarm barley soup spread itself over Andrew's head and robe. She was horrified at her clumsiness.
"It's alright, Martha," Andrew said as he jumped up on his feet. "In fact, it wasn't hot; so I'm not burned — only wet. See?" He was laughing and making the best of the situation.
Martha groaned inwardly and then mumbled to Andrew, "Come with me. I'll get you a clean tunic!"
They left amid the guests' growing chorus of chuckling and
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laughter. No one could recall seeing Martha embarrassed in a year's time, much less twice in one evening.
Disgusted by the way the whole day had gone and her cheeks burning with indignation over her inept hospitality, Martha hurried out ahead of Andrew. online books christian books
