I remember the light. Not the warm glow of a soft tunnel beckoning towards home or heaven. Rather a blinding blaze that burned through the gauze wrapped around my head. If I wasn’t bound by bandages, I would have thrown my hands over my face to protect my eyes. Accompanying the light was a soft warm fresh breeze dispelling the sour smell. A vaguely familiar voice said “Arise.” And then again “Arise.”
Who was he talking to?
And finally, “Lazarus, get up!” This was a different voice. Most likely my sister, Martha, who elevated impatience to an art form.
“Arise, my son,” a voice as soft as a feather said.
“Jesus?” I wanted to say, but with the bandages in my mouth, it came out as “Cheeze-um?”
“Yes, my son, arise.”
“C’mon Lazarus,” Martha said, almost in my ear. “People are waiting for a miracle. Get up!”
What Jesus, Martha and the people susurrating somewhere beyond the illumination forgot was that I had been swaddled tightly and if I tried to get up, I would have rolled off onto the rock-hard ground.
“Oh for God’s sake,” Martha said. I assumed she was the one ripping the gauze off of me. The light was even more painful. I would have tried to hide my eyes, but realized the only clothing I was wearing was the bandages.
“Wait,” I tried to fight her off, but she was not to be deterred and soon I was buck naked in front of my two sisters, my savior and a crowd of people who were drawn either by faith or entertainment.
A child’s voice laughed. “Look, it’s shriveled.” I managed to position the bandages in front of my groin before anybody else saw it.
“Oh, thank you Lord, he’s alive,” Mary, my quieter and more considerate sister, said, wrapping her thin arms around my neck. “Say thank you to Jesus,” she whispered in my ear. If I had any idea of where Jesus was, I would have been happy to do so. But everything was a blur and my head felt like it was encased in dried mud.
“Shank shu,” I said. Even though my mouth had been liberated of the gauze, my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth. I tasted something worse than rotten anchovies.
“You are welcome,” Jesus said. “I’m sorry I was late.”
“Shit’s k,” I said, trying to pry my tongue free. I had no idea what he was talking about. I had no idea how how I ended up here. One moment, I am walking to work when someone said “watch out!” and the next I am standing in a cave wearing nothing but gauze and embarrassment.
“Here, let me help you. Take it easy. You’ve been dead for two days,” Mary whispered.
“Wuh? Ted? Me?”
“Yes. Please take it slowly.”
I tried to nod, but my sodden head felt like it was tenuously attached to my shoulders.
“Look,” Martha said from somewhere near the light, “are you going to walk? People are busy. Nobody’s going to believe that you have been resurrected if you don’t walk or speak. Move, you’re embarrassing me.”
“Thorry,” I said, trying to move my legs. “The meek shall inherit the Earth” was meant for someone else. “Here,” she said, sighing, “let me help you.” She shoved Mary out of the way and pushed me forward and I staggered like a drunken sailor. The crowd groaned, probably thinking they had been duped by another Messiah-wannabe.
Martha bent down and slipped her arms under mine and began to pull as if she was trying to extract a reluctant stopper from of an amphora. “Walk or else,” she hissed in my ear.
With extraordinary concentration, I ordered my legs to support me. Of course, Martha was no place to be found when I managed to scramble two steps. Mary was all the more willing to prevent me from tipping over but she was like a a sheaf in the wind. Jesus saved me from toppling over. We one hand he held me up by the chest and with the other he waved at the crowd and said “ta da.” They hooped and hollered and Thomas, who had been dating Martha off and on for a couple of years came over and poked me a couple of times. He turned around and said “yep, he’s alive.”
“Ta da,” Jesus said again. He said that a lot. “Ta da, loaves and fishes.” “Ta da, look who’s walking on the water.” Martha groaned, but John who used to be in advertising told her not to worry, they would clean it up in the Gospels.
People streamed towards Jesus, jockeying to have him touch them. He let me go and I started to teeter, but was restrained by Martha’s nails digging into my arm. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “Don’t you dare.”
Mary retreated to help me. But Martha warned her: “Don’t. It’s not a miracle if he doesn’t walk on his own. And if it isn’t a miracle, we won’t make a dime off of this.” Jesus who got a cut of every miracle, turned his back to the crowd and hissed “whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” and then under his breath added “or else.” With every ounce of concentration, I could muster, I balanced myself and held my hands out to demonstrate I was walking independently. “Ta da,” Jesus said and the crowd cheered.
Jesus stepped aside with a grandiloquent gesture, allowing the crowd into the tomb. They were divided into three groups: those who followed Thomas’ example and were sticking their fingers where they didn’t belong; those that circled me like I was some sort of circus freak. Maybe they were looking for the corpse hidden in the back of the tomb. The last group jockeyed for my attention. They had more questions than a spring rain has drops. Did it hurt when I died? Did I see a tunnel of light? Did I see their mother, husband and/or child? Did I see God? What did he say? The most common question was “was it worth it?” I could offer nothing more than a well-intentioned shrug.
Eventually people got bored, figuring that I had been resurrected from the dead, what did it really have to do with them? Martha grabbed Thomas and headed out to the merch table before another messiah showed up. Jesus was late for a parable and asked me if I needed anything else before he left. I was pretty sure he was insincere. That left Mary and me. She stood tentatively next to me, unsure if she should be supporting me. Mary could dowse for guilt from a mile away.
“It’s okay, I’m fine. I just have to take it slowly.” I shielded my eyes in the bright morning light, having figured that I would never see it again. We turned west and made our way past our neighbor’s huts until we stopped in front of the one our late parents built. I suppose we could have asked Jesus to resurrect them, too. But neither Mary and I suggested it, remembering how unpleasant it had been to live under the same roof with them.
For better or worse, I was home. I reached out for the wooden latch and was intercepted by Mary. “Before we go in there’s a couple of things you should know.” She stared at my dusty sandals, afraid to make eye contact. “This may come as shock to you.”
“Mary, this morning, I was dead and now I’m not. Not like I was asked in either case. I doubt there is anything that could shock me.”
“You have to understand. We thought you were dead. Of course, we believe in Jesus. But there was no guarantee you would come back. You remember when Mr. Ginsberg got hit by a rock in his head and how we thought he was dead, but then he woke up, but wasn’t the same? We weren’t sure you would be you if and after Jesus raised you from the dead.”
“Understandable,” I said, but she still wouldn’t let me open the door.
She looked side-to-side as if we were being watched. “Martha was concerned that without your salary, we would have a hard time making ends meet.”
“And?”
She sighed as if she had nothing else to say. “We sold your clothes.”
“You sold my clothes?”
She nodded silently. “And the rest of your stuff.”
“All of my stuff?”
“Except your bed.”
“Well, thank God, that’s one thing. At least I will have a place to sleep.
She shook her head. “We needed it to rent out your room.” Before I could say anything, she added. “His name is Elisha. You remember the Shunammite widow's son? He already paid us a month in advance.”