Mary Sees All: The Race to Save Jesus from the Cross

By Bill Kemp

Mary Sees All: The race to save Jesus from the Cross, is a fast paced Christian novel set near Jerusalem during the fateful week that Jesus was crucified. Mary of Bethany has a unique point of view, a lyrical voice, and a gift for drama. Both outrageous and outcast, she is an unforgettable heroine in this, the firs

• Language: English
• Publisher: Not Perfect Yet Publishing
• Release date: Jun 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9780999768723

Bill Kemp

Bill Kemp is the author of nine books including Holy Places, Small Spaces: A Hopeful Future for the Small Membership Church (Discipleship Resources, 2005), The Church Transition Workbook: Getting Your Church in Gear (Discipleship Resources, 2004), and “Going Home: Facing Life’s Final Moments Without Fear,” (with Diane Kerner Arnett, Kregel Publishing: March, 2005). He recently completed a six book series on specific church growth issues, which includes tittles such as Ezekiel’s Bones: Leadership that Rekindles a Congregation’s Spiritual Passion and Jonah’s Whale: Reconnecting the Congregation with Mission”(Discipleship Resources, 2007). These print books are available at www.notperfectyet.com - ebook versions will be coming out Summer of 2013.

Book preview

If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.

––Indy Racing Champion Mario Andretti

Contents

Prologue

I. A Jar for the Soul

1. Bethany has a Visitor

2. Nicodemus Takes a Lamp

3. Mary Takes a Jar

4. Lazarus Has another Day

5. Mary Sees Her Friends

6. Jesus Gets the Best Seat

7. Mary Burns the Bread

8. Just Jesus being Jesus

9. Lazarus shares his Grotto

10. Thomas finds Judas

11. Mary Dreams of Tamar

12. Simon is Alone

13. Martha Runs to Town

14. Simon’s Sends a Letter

15. Mary and Martha Together

16. Simon Gets a Second Opinion

17. Martha Cooks Another Meal

18. Jesus Gets Run Out of Town

II. A Labyrinth for the Lord

19. The Price of a Meal

20. Silver Coins Everywhere

21. The Setting of Traps

22. Lost in Jerusalem

23. A Room for Jesus

24. A Seat for Elijah

25. The Bitter Made Sweet

26. Visions

27. Men in the Darkness

28. The Man with the Red Chair

29. A Footrace and a Flying Snake

30. John at the Trial

31. Mary Sings of Judas

32. Martha Brings Up the Rear

33. Lower than a Valley

34. Mary in the High Priest’s House

35. Martha Takes Charge

36. The Other King has a Say

37. High Noon

38. Meanwhile In Bethany

39. Barabbas

40. Mary Sees All

41. Peter’s Story

42. Deeper than a City

43. Mary Awakes

44. Darker than a Tomb

45. Martha and the Way of Sorrows

46. Lazarus Does a Jonah

47. Nicodemus in the End

Afterword

The Author and Bethany’s People

Also by Bill Kemp:

Bethany’s World

Prologue

M ary! It is not a question. Martha exhales the name like a thirsty worker would at finding the break jar empty at noon. She has one of the two water jars that her thirty-something kid sister is to fill each day from the communal well—a simple task. And from outside the door of her home, Martha can pause, if she chooses, to watch her neighbors dotting the fields, children bent over, picking stones and covering seeds, adults carrying rocks, mending fence rows, and guiding ditches to share the meager stream and conserve the frugal remaining rains before the summer. The days are still short—there were flakes of snow in the breeze yesterday—and the work is more complicated than it looks.

She does not pause, but barks, Mary! Bethany’s streets are silent.

Martha holds the jar as though she needed evidence. Annoyance deeply furrows her face. Each time her sister forsakes her share of the work, another seed is sown in a long row.

Now the big woman returns to the darkened backroom. Mary isn’t hiding there. This is where they sleep, amid the knee-high heaps of leatherwork. Martha has shuttled between the two rooms of her house a dozen times this morning. She began the day with disappointment. She had taken a hide to her table and begun to lay out the cuts for belts and footwear, only to discover that it smelled raw. Going back, she found two more skins that would need to be tanned again, for they had been poorly worked when her brother became ill. Now she lifts her lamp, for the room is windowless. Mary is not in bed.

Soon Martha will be taking this same lamp and looking in every corner of her home for yeast. The festival of unleavened bread begins next week, and the preparations involve housecleaning and cooking—two joys Martha wishes to share with Mary.

Suddenly she turns. Thirty strides take Martha to the center of her village: a well, a communal bread-baking oven, and a narrow stone wall—not for sitting but for laying burdens upon, cooling bread, and corralling children. In other seasons, it is where women linger, exchange news, and reknit the bonds of Bethany life. They cook here, sharing their embers and rationing the scarce supply of wood.

Here, Martha calls out. She cups her hands, repeating her cry in each direction.

A woman too old to do anything but spin yarn comes to her door. She shakes her head. Mary is not in Bethany. The woman whispers, Mary follows demons.

Martha goes to the grotto, where their brother, Lazarus, sits on another low stone wall. This one is carefully laid, broad and square, its top stones smoothed by mourners. For four generations, though legend says more, the bodies of those who have died in this village have been laid here. Friends gather to walk in slow circles around the body. They chant funeral songs from evening through sunrise. Some of these same songs are being muttered in the fields now by the men who cast out their seed in hope. They were taught by their fathers that unless a seed dies as to being an individual seed, it cannot rise as a fruitful plant. Unless the grain is gathered and ground by affliction, the women cannot bake bread. And if we don’t break the bread and share it with those in need, there will be no strength in the community to plant the fields.

Circles are common here. For the people of Bethany are am ha’aretz, or people of the land. They don’t mind being called that, even though in cities from Damascus to Alexandria, the word am ha’aretz is used to mock those who live closer to the dirt than to the Holy One’s elevated words inscribed on skins and scrolls.

The rock face in front of Lazarus rises fifteen feet from the grotto floor. There are a half dozen caves dug into the limestone. With the exception of one that Lazarus knows well, these are crude hollow clefts barely three feet high, which follow the natural soft veins and fissures in the rock. The bodies of the dead are placed there. A stone seals the grave against animals. If the family is fortunate, a year goes by. By then, only bones remain, and these are gathered to rest with the ancestors in the back of the cave. Space is then made for another traveler. Embarkations are frequent. The grotto’s whole east wall is bent like a bow to release the fleeing generations—or perhaps, like a mother’s arms, to receive those who die too soon.

Without turning, Lazarus answers, I didn’t see her go.

Useless! Martha spits.

Miles away, Mary is walking. The noontime sun warms her face. Most mature women in this land wear a scarf to hide their hair. Mary’s long reddish-brown locks fly free. There is a single gray-white streak running down the right side. It makes her easy to spot in a crowd. Children stare. Adults pass wide. Mary has always seen more than normal people do. In fact, those who seek her out call her a seer.

Occasionally, Mary pauses. She closes her eyes and turns, trancelike, back toward Bethany. Martha has always been hard for Mary to interpret. Mary says that Martha doesn’t feel family, but like a limb that has been amputated. Martha is the mandatory mother of all obligations. Mary is the orphan, at home with homelessness, shackled only by her wits, or if she loses those, her visions.

Lazarus turns to face Martha and, seeing the empty jar, brightens. It is as if something he has been puzzling about all morning has suddenly become obvious.

That’s why they pass us by.

Who? Martha asks.

The pilgrims going to Jerusalem. From here I can see them come up from Qumran, En-Gedi, Masada . . . Lazarus trails off. They pant with thirst, yet they keep going west, to the Holy City, because they want to drink of her waters before nightfall. They don’t know that Bethany has the same water.

Is that where Mary went?

Lazarus is blank, his voice even. Mary knows not to go to Jerusalem. Jesus warned her.

"Where else would she go?"

He shrugs. Wherever Jesus is.

Part I

A Jar for the Soul

Terracotta Alabastron

Chapter 1

Bethany has a Visitor

Jerusalem is like a whirlpool for the mad. Her seven gates are yawning portals to a maelstrom. Through them, travelers are cast overboard into a frenzy of street vendors, dripping awnings, irregular steps, and countless black-robed priests, sometimes working in concert with armed soldiers. The streets funnel everyone onward, into the barrel-vaulted gullet. Somewhere in the midst of her—yes, this city is a woman—there is an auditory illusion. It is heard at an inflection point, where the echoing corridor flattens, turns, and then rises a step. By now, the pilgrims have traveled far enough together that their sandaled soles have fallen into a single subconscious cadence. Hidden like Jonah in the whale, they lurch forward, longing for their baptismal plunge to end.

Listen, someone whispers.

Woosh-lub, woosh-dub, woosh-lub . . .

Hear the maternal heartbeat of God. They pause, and it fades. They continue, and it goes with them.

Once having heard it, no one can believe any other explanation than the fact that Jerusalem is the navel of the world. Can she also be the gateway to the next? This city is as unforgettable as childbirth, as nurturing as milk. A great incense cloud rises from her at sunset so that even the surrounding hills smell red with her passion. To look at her from Olivet is to see Herod’s temple as a single pearl set within an alabaster shell. Its marble glows like distilled mystery. To walk her stone streets is to grasp the one question that unites all of humanity: How can anyone survive death?

Countless priests and scholars live in the city. Seventy elders guide the pilgrim trade with efficiency. There is also the high priest, who enters the holy inner sanctum of the temple, a rope tied around his waist so others can pull him out if he faints before the high altar. These drones surround the sweetness. They lead the worship. They collect the fares. They are to be honored, but they are just men. Even the richest of them will grow old and die. The meaning of Jerusalem eludes them. So when a prophet finally does come into this region, he shouldn’t be expected to stay in one of their homes. If he does a miracle and raises a man from the dead, it won’t necessarily be one of them.

Four days ago, Jesus of Nazareth came to nearby Bethany and called Lazarus out of the grave. No one has bothered to return the gravestone to its place in the grotto where Lazarus now sits. Who knows? He might die again.

In another week, the Passover celebration will reach its climax. A week from Thursday, the luckiest, wealthiest pilgrims will recline for an all-night meal commemorating the Exodus. This year, even more than past years, tens of thousands of festivalgoers arrive without reservations and strain the facilities of Jerusalem. Lambs will continue to be sacrificed for the celebration until the evening of the following day. Some of the low-ranking priests and banquet cooks will be kept at their labors well into the Saturday Sabbath that ends this holy week. Knowing this, the wise travelers that Lazarus was watching this morning come to the city weeks ahead of the show. King Herod Antipas has already arrived with his retinue. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in charge of keeping the peace in all of Palestine, will come with a thousand soldiers on Sunday.

No two points on the globe are as distant as the mansion of a busy Jerusalem elder, whose every need is met by his servants, and the two-room hut of Lazarus, who has received little in this life except an interrupted death. This being the case, Nicodemus surprises even himself when he leaves Jerusalem. He goes alone, undetected, shouldering his way east against the tide of pilgrims.

It is late afternoon. Lazarus sees him. He knows that Nicodemus brings bad news. The man looks tired, even though the journey is only three miles. Lazarus has compassion on him. Of all the souls that Lazarus had seen in hell, the most pitiful ones were the rich separated from their fat livings. On any other occasion, he might have run to greet Nicodemus and called him uncle, for this man had befriended his father. But Lazarus waits. The recently dead don’t hurry, nor do they feel a need to relive the past.

Shortly before this, Martha called Lazarus to the evening meal. Lazarus had come in, mostly to stop her braying. He isn’t hungry. Now he stands in the doorway of her house, busily ignoring the syrupy lentils she is setting out for him. Martha pushes her leatherwork to the end of the table, rude in its construction but smooth from wear. She places before him the bread, baked each day in the common oven by the women of Bethany. She nags her brother to eat. Would he, once again, not be hungry? Why does he spend every day of his new life out near the tombs?

The table is long, but there is barely room for Lazarus to eat. Martha is still working. Sandals, belts, knotted beads, and phylacteries—cocoons of leather containing scripture, attached to long thongs for a man to tie on his forehead as he prepares for prayer. Duties to finish before exhaustion comes again. Tomorrow she plans to go to Jerusalem and sell her leather goods, just as the men of her family have done for three generations.

We have a visitor, Lazarus says.

Finally! Our Mary!

Lazarus shakes his head. He hesitates to speak Nicodemus’s name; Martha doesn’t have time for the man. Also, the elder will be uncomfortable speaking with a woman present. It is her house, though. Neither Lazarus, nor Mary were interested or present to receive it when their father died, and Martha was too fierce to let it go to another kin. So now Lazarus turns to her, a helpless expression on his face, for he lacks the energy to seek another place to accommodate the Pharisee.

Martha pushes past her brother and interrupts the rich man’s greeting. Nicodemus has said shalom—an all-inclusive blessing of peace, but she stops him from offering further blessings upon their house, for health and prosperity, or reciting how he had known their father.

If you’ve come looking for Jesus, he isn’t here. Martha has a broom in hand. Her physical presence says, I’m going to sweep you away.

What I have to say should not be spoken in the street, Nicodemus whispers.

Where’s your famous hospitality, Martha? Lazarus speaks soothingly. This man may have come with an order for leather goods, or with news from the city, or—

Martha relents. She mutters under her breath, as if reading her brother’s mind, If it is about Mary, I want it straight. Men! They’ll dither till sunset. Women act.

Let me see what food I can offer you, she says.

Nicodemus responds stiffly to Lazarus’s embrace. Then in the dimness, he stands blinking. He has to be offered a chair twice. He is a stranger in a strange place, unsure of everything. City dwellers refer to those who live beyond their walls as am ha’aretz—literally, the people of the land. Many of this elder’s colleagues are so insulated from farmers and craftsmen that they don’t know how sheep multiply or how leather smells as it tans, nor are they familiar with dirt floors that have been packed so solid by countless people living in a place that they shine like polished stone. Martha rapidly places several dishes before him. He looks furtively toward the door, where Lazarus still stands. In Nicodemus’s home, there would be a servant waiting there with a silver bowl for the ritual washing of hands that Pharisees perform.

Lazarus meets his gaze. Nicodemus is sweating. Martha thumps a damp rag down beside him. Nicodemus nods his thanks to her, dabs his forehead, and wipes his hands. Then, wordlessly, he breaks the bread, setting half of its flat circle in front of the empty chair. He lifts the small cup of wine. His lips move—a silent thanksgiving. He drinks and his face shows that he finds the wine better than expected. Then, once again, Nicodemus closes his eyes in prayer.

Lazarus reads his lips:

Out of the depths I cry to thee,

From even the heart of the sea

Or the home of the dead

Or this home.

Shalom.

Then, nodding, as if he knows this room to now be holy, Nicodemus says, Your lives are in danger. Some on the council—

The Monkey, Lazarus interrupts, and Nicodemus winces.

Yes, Caiaphas is leading the council in this. Nicodemus knows that the am ha’aretz, including Jesus, refer to this high priest as "the Monkey." Caiaphas has a narrow face and long arms. His movements within the halls of power have a swaying, hand-to-hand movement as he pulls one sycophant after another into his sphere. The backs of his knuckles are hairy, even though they are covered with jeweled rings.

You are aware that Caiaphas is concerned about Jesus. In fact, months ago, he offered the prediction that ‘our little Nazarene,’ as he calls him, would proclaim himself to be Messiah during the Passover week. Now he fears that many people, including a large number of pilgrims from other lands, will think Jesus a god because of what he did for you, Lazarus. The whole council is in an uproar concerning what happened here in Bethany.

So my brother’s good health is an embarrassment to them? Martha asks.

They don’t like the pilgrims stopping to see Lazarus before going up to the temple.

Is he on the highway? Did you see pilgrims surrounding my house to catch sight of him? No. I chase them off. I keep Lazarus hidden.

Good. Perhaps it will all blow over. Jesus will go back to Galilee, or better still, across the Jordan . . .

We have no control over Jesus.

No one thinks that we do, Lazarus said to his sister. The man’s just repeating what Jesus already warned us about. If I go into the city, they will capture me. I will have to go through the bother of dying again. And Jesus . . . well, you know that there is a silver lining to all this, Martha—you’ll be able to prepare for the Passover here in Bethany, like always.

There’s more, Nicodemus says.

Always is. Martha is standing near, her largest wooden spoon in hand, her six-foot frame blocking the remaining evening light from the home. Bowls of chopped cucumbers and nuts have already appeared on the table. The wine cups have been refilled. She is making something else with the spoon. She turns to her brother. Light us a lamp, will you?

Nicodemus notices for the first time that there is another room to this house.

Is Mary in there?

When they shake their heads, he looks disappointed. The council now believes that Mary is even more dangerous than your brother. The temple guard says that she draws bigger crowds than any of our teachers. The Roman soldiers say that she is a witch. There is a rumor that she is the real power behind Jesus.

Nonsense, Martha says, and then she goes into the back room, taking the oil lamp with her. In the darkness the men speak freely.

There are Hellenists among the pilgrims who are drawn to the idea of a god and a goddess ruling from our temple, Nicodemus whispers.

They like balance. As Lazarus says this, he makes a gentle seesaw motion with his hands. Then, noting Nicodemus’s confusion, he adds, Most people don’t study religion. They have to get things done in this world. They notice that things go better when a man and a woman cooperate, and—

Lazarus! Nicodemus hisses. I haven’t come here to talk about what people think. The council wants Mary dead. Unless you can get your sisters to—

Martha returns. She is armed with ink, a quill, and a scrap of thin, smooth hide. Placing them on the table before Nicodemus, she says, Write. I give you a statement to be read before the seventy elders.

It won’t do a bit of good, Lazarus says, but she brushes him away.

What Martha knows of the law—and of religion, for that matter—comes into her life in little scraps. She captures what she knows like a honeypot catching flies. She is always in the background, working, while the men discuss important things. When scholars from the city come to visit Simon the Leper, who is in exile in Bethany, Martha cooks. Martha listens. When the faithful chant prayers in the grotto on holy days, Martha stays in her house, doing her craft. Her seat will be by the open door, though. Her heart takes in a thousand things and rarely lets them go.

Almost two weeks before this, when Lazarus lay dying, she had dictated a letter using Mary as her scribe. She sent it to Jesus, using one of Simon the Leper’s servants to carry it. She’d begged the teacher to come. Her letter had persuaded him but had failed to get the man to hurry. Lazarus had died.

Martha isn’t going to let that happen to Mary. She begins dictating to Nicodemus:

---

"I, Martha, write for all to know that Mary of Bethany was normal at birth. Those who say that a deal was struck with the devil were not there. Rachel of Bethany claims that Mary was born with a caul. Rachel is a bitter and meddlesome old woman. Where is the evidence? What she showed to Simon the Leper was obviously the birth sack from one of her goats. The rich man didn’t know any better.

"I, Martha, write this now because there are some who say that Mary was responsible for our brother’s return from the dead. They say that Mary went out before the full moon and chanted a curse on the evening air and the demons of the stream. They say that this curse brought Satan, in the form of Jesus the Nazarene, to our town three days later.

"I, Martha, testify that the moon was new on the night that Lazarus died. Further, I had sent for Jesus when our brother first became ill. I cared for Lazarus while we waited for Jesus to come and heal him. Jesus is not the devil. He is an old family friend who often stays with us during the holidays. All of Bethany can testify to this fact. The men of Bethany helped Jesus roll away the stone that covered our family’s burial cave. They would not have done this if they didn’t know the teacher to be a good man.

"These, now, are the facts that all in our village know about Mary: our mother had a difficult labor. She was well past the time when this sort of thing comes easily. It had been twelve years since she had brought me into the world, and eight years since Lazarus. Further, there were not many children conceived in Bethany in the time following the murder of the innocents by Herod Archelaus. Those who knew the midwife’s arts had left the village. I was with my mother through it all. She didn’t curse or call out for the devil. No deal was struck.

It was spring, and a week after Mary was born, our mother came down with the fever. A few days later, she died. Our father had taken Lazarus into the city, as was his custom. While my mother was yet alive, the women of Bethany had refused to enter our house or to help me care for the newborn, for fear of the fever. The moment they heard my wail, though, they came. They washed the body. Within the hour, they had our mother wrapped in a gravecloth. The men carried her to the grotto. Then Lazarus and my father came home. They appeared out of the sunset, for the road to Jerusalem goes west.

Who has died? Who is being buried? Lazarus suddenly speaks. It is a perfect imitation of their father, a voice that hasn’t been heard for over a decade. Martha flinches as if cold water is being poured down her back. She had been so fixed on saving Mary that she forgot about Lazarus. Her brother has a knack for sneaking up on her. Even now, in midlife, he moves like a cat.

Lazarus asks, Do you wish to mention the real reason our mother was buried so quickly? Was it not that she also was suspected of witchcraft?

No. Write this: ‘Our mother was buried quickly because that is how we do things here. Bethany is on the edge of the desert, not cool like your city.’

Nicodemus looks to Lazarus. His pen is in the air. Lazarus had returned to the door so that Martha could sit in the only other chair. Looking out into the evening, he shrugs.

Martha continues. And Mary grew to be a normal child.

Lazarus makes a disparaging noise.

What? You have something to add? Martha doesn’t wait for his answer. Mary grew up alone. There were no other children her age. Lazarus and our father were always away, and I . . . I had to make the things they sold in Jerusalem, so she had imaginary friends. What child doesn’t?

She saw visions. Lazarus is blunt.

"No! Do not write that. Say that she was fine until the day she went to Jerusalem and married a Pharisee. If there are rumors about what she was doing all those years that she was away from us . . . well, they are simply old wives’ tales. For a whole year now, she has been here, in Bethany. And since coming home, Mary has done nothing strange. Write that. If they think that she or my brother are problems, then tell them that we in Bethany are caring for them. We take care of our own."

Nicodemus shrugs and asks it outright. Where is Mary?

Perhaps with Jesus again, Lazarus answers.

No. Martha is cross. "If someone should ask, tell them that Mary continues to