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LIKE AN ICY GUST OF WIND, THE DEATH OF LAZARUS EXTINguished the zeal John had kindled in Jesus' heart, a zeal in which serving God and serving the people had become one and the same thing. After the first few days of mourning, when the duties and habits of everyday life were gradually resumed, Peter and Andrew went to speak to Jesus. They questioned him about his plans, asked whether they should go preach once more in the towns or instead return to Jerusalem for a fresh assault, the disciples were beginning to feel restless, eager to be doing something, We didn't part with our possessions, our work, and our families, they complained, just to sit around all day. Jesus looked at them as if in a blur and listened as if having difficulty recognizing their voices amid a chorus of discordant cries. After a long silence he told them they must be patient, must wait a little more, he still had some thinking to do, could sense that something was about to happen which would decide their fate once and for all. And he assured them he would soon join them in the camp, which puzzled Peter and Andrew, for why should the two sisters remain alone when the men still had not decided what to do, You don't need to come back for our sake, said Peter, who had no way of knowing that Jesus was torn between two duties, the first toward the men and women who had abandoned everything to follow him, the second here in this house, toward the sisters, duties similar yet opposed, like a face and a mirror. The ghost of Lazarus was present and refused to go away, he was in the harsh words spoken by Martha, who could not forgive Mary for having prevented their brother from being restored to life, nor could she forgive Jesus for not using his God-given power. Lazarus was present too in Mary's tears, for by delivering her brother from a second death she would have to live forever with the remorse of having failed to deliver him from his first. Like an enormous presence filling every space, Lazarus was also in Jesus' troubled soul, in which horses pulled in four directions, or four ropes coiled around winches were slowly tearing him apart, and the hands of God and the devil were amusing themselves, divinely and diabolically, with the remains.
The afflicted and diseased, hoping to be healed, came to the door of the house that had once belonged to Lazarus. Sometimes Martha would appear and drive them away, as if to say, There was no salvation for my brother, why should there be for you, but they would keep returning until they succeeded in reaching Jesus, who healed them and sent them away without once saying, Repent. To be healed is like being reborn without having died, for the newborn have no sins and therefore no need to repent. But these acts of physical rebirth, if I may call them that, although most merciful, left a sour feeling in Jesus' heart, for they were only a postponement of the inevitable, he who today leaves healthy and content will be back tomorrow with new woes that have no remedy. Jesus became so melancholy that one day Martha said, Don't you die on me, for that would be like losing Lazarus all over again, and Mary Magdalene, beneath the sheet they shared, whimpered like a wounded animal hiding in the dark, You need me now more than ever, but I cannot reach you if you lock yourself behind a door beyond human strength. Jesus answered Martha, saying, My death will embrace all the deaths of Lazarus, who will go on dying without ever being restored to life, and to Mary he said, Even if you cannot enter, do not abandon me, even if you cannot see me, stretch out your hand, otherwise I will forget life or it will forget me. A few days later he went to join his disciples, and Mary Magdalene went with him. I'll look at your shadow if you don't wish me to look at you, she told him, and he replied, I wish to be wherever my shadow is if that is where your eyes are. Loving each other, they exchanged these amorous phrases not only because they were beautiful and true, but because shadows were closing in, and it was time for the two to prepare themselves for the darkness of final absence.
News reached the camp that John the Baptist had been taken prisoner. Nothing was known except that he had been arrested and Herod himself ordered his imprisonment. Jesus and his followers were inclined to think that Herod had been provoked by John's prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, which he repeated everywhere between baptisms, He who comes after me will baptize you with fire, and between imprecations, O generation of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Jesus told his disciples that they must be prepared for every manner of persecution, because rumors had been rife for some time that they were preaching the same message, it was only to be expected that Herod would put two and two together and pursue the carpenter's son, who claimed to be the son of God, and his followers, for this was the second and more powerful head of the dragon threatening to topple him from his throne. Bad news may not be preferable to no news, but it was received with equanimity by men who had been waiting and hoping for everything but lately had had to make do with nothing. They asked one another, and Jesus too, what they should now do, stand together and resist Herod's wickedness, scatter throughout the towns, or retreat into the wilderness, where they could eat wild honey and locusts, as John the Baptist had done before he left to herald the glory of Jesus and, by the looks of it, to meet a miserable end. Yet there was no sign of Herod's troops arriving in Bethany to slaughter more innocents, thus Jesus and his disciples were considering carefully the various alternatives when another report arrived, informing them that John had been beheaded and that his punishment had nothing to do with the coming of the Messiah or the kingdom of God, he had incurred Herod's wrath by speaking out against adultery, of which the king himself was guilty, having married Herodias, his niece and sister-in-law, while her husband still lived. The news of John's death brought tears to the eyes of men and women alike, and the entire camp mourned, but no one believed that he had been killed for the reason given. Judas Iscariot, whom, you may remember, John baptized, was beside himself with rage, he said that Herod's decision must have had a more serious motive, How can this be, he asked the company gathered there, including the women, John proclaims the Messiah is coming to redeem people, and they kill him for condemning an adulterous marriage between uncle and niece, when adultery has been common practice in that family since the time of the first Herod. How can this be, he railed, when God Himself ordered John to proclaim the coming of the Messiah, it must have been God, because nothing can happen without His willing it, so perhaps those of you who know God better than I can explain to me why He should allow His plan to go awry like this on earth, and before you tell me that God knows even if we don't, let me tell you that I insist on knowing what God knows.