The heart of light: a reading on the Transfiguration

He didn't tell us why we were climbing the mountain. We were used to that. We trusted him.

We walked and walked; we took goat-paths at first, between the rocks, kicking up clouds of dust in the sun. I couldn't stop thinking about the things he'd said that week—that we would take up crosses, that he'd be killed. Who do you say that I am? He asked, and I answered, The Messiah—and he said I was right, he said I was blessed, and then he started talking about crosses, and being killed. Killed. No, I told him, not you, not you—and he turned and called me Satan. I could still hear the ring of his voice as I climbed that mountain behind him—my Master, whom I loved, calling me Satan. And it stung.

We climbed for hours, till the sun was high. We were sweating, but the air was getting cool. The land was laid out before us, underneath—field and pasture and the paths between them, and rocks everywhere like scattered seed. We had no idea what he meant to do. Show us the land, maybe, tell us what God meant to do for Israel, tell us where we were going next. We didn't know what he was going to do, we never knew what he was going to do, we knew to follow him. That was all. We knew he was the Messiah. And then we reached the crown of that mountain, and suddenly—before we could fling ourselves down on the grass to rest, before I could raise a hand to wipe the sweat off my brow—suddenly we knew something we had never known.

It happened so fast.

At first I thought the sun had come out from behind a cloud, suddenly; there was so much more light than there had been a moment before—but the sun rode high in the cloudless sky, and looked pale as a candle-flame in the sun compared to Him. Him. His face and clothes shining—like the clouds on Lake Galilee after a storm, when the sun catches them from behind and fills them with light—only brighter. If something could catch the sun like a cloud, and fill it with light—that something was him. There was so much light. Oh, I cannot tell you, I cannot tell you what I saw. I can only swear to it, and I will swear to it every day of my life: I saw the glory of the One and Only. If a man stares at the sun, is he not blinded? We stared and stared into the heart of light, and were not blinded. We saw and saw.


When I came to myself there were two men with him, who stood in his light. They were talking; they had been talking, I thought, for a long time. They were—I don't know how I knew—they were Moses and Elijah. My hands were shaking. You are the Messiah, I'd said, but I hadn't known. I hadn't known this. I wanted to throw myself face down on the ground but there they were, standing there in all the glory of the light, quietly talking. And I was afraid it would stop, the light would go, the sun would be all we had left. I started babbling—Master let's stay here, let's build three shelters, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah, as if that light needed a roof over its head against the rain. I was shaking all over. And then I couldn't see—we were inside a cloud that was filled with light, we were inside the light itself—I heard a voice say This is my son, whom I love, listen to him. I heard the voice of God, and I saw the light.

I have been in darkness many days since that day; I have been in the dark heart of life. I have known why he called me Satan. He can call me anything he likes. I have seen the darkness of the grave; but that light has never left me. It is inside me. I am inside it. Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts, in the darkest hour, still he is in me and I in him. I am still in the heart of light.

Nets

When he called us, we had just spent two days repairing our nets.

Not storm days, either; we had just spent two good fishing days sitting on the shore tying knots. We had to. Our last net had torn the day before, the big one; we'd been trying to make it through on that one till the next chance to make repairs, and then it caught on a rock deep under the lake and tore a long gash all through it. Simon claimed we'd caught some strange creature that had thrashed its way loose through our net; I told him we were lucky that rock hadn't been any higher, and he'd better remember the place so we could avoid it from now on. We had plenty of time to argue on it, sitting there tying hundreds of little knots, watching Zebedee and his sons out there on the water hauling up gleaming loads of fish.

And I have to say Simon never stopped tying, even to gesture about that creature of his, though anyone who's met him knows Simon scarcely has the patience for a job like that. But he'll do what he has to do. And if there's one thing a fisherman has to do, it's care for his boat and his nets. A fisherman's roof can leak, his door can hang broken for months, but his nets and his boat, they're his life. He depends on those to fill the bellies under that roof.

So as I say, we were fishing that evening with our new-mended nets; an early start, out on the water as soon as the sky'd grown dark enough so you couldn't see a shadow. Fish'll flee from the shadow of a boat, and we couldn't afford to go without a catch after two days mending. We had just found a good place and were laying out our biggest net, spreading it through the water in as wide a circle as we could get with just the two of us. It's delicate work; you can't let the net fold down over itself, or it'll tangle instead of spreading, and the fish will flee while you haul the thing out to start again. We were almost done, and a neat job too, when Simon turns and looks at the shore.

“Simon!” I say. “Look to what you're doing!”

“It's him,” he says. “Over there.”

Him? I glanced over. And it was him, and my hand lost all sense of how the net was meant to go, and Simon dropped his end, and the net folded instantly and tangled. Because it was the man himself, Jesus, out on the shore in the dusk light, and his hands were cupped around his mouth, calling, and it was plainer every second he was calling to us.

I hadn't even been certain we'd see him again. John the Baptizer had pointed to him and told us he was the Messiah, and we'd thought the time was at hand, and then he'd left and gone home to Galilee and John had been killed for a stupid king's pride. So Simon and I had gone home to Galilee too, because what else do you do when things fall apart? We came home and found our nets still there where we'd stored them. When nets fall apart, you can mend them with your own two hands.

Simon turned the sail and tacked into the wind, trying to get near enough to hear what the man—the Messiah!—was saying. He was making broad gestures now, beckoning us in. I pulled on the net, trying to set right the tangle, but the sudden turn made it worse. It was in such a snarl now it was all I could hope to haul it up without another tear. I could see another hour wasted, sitting on the shore untangling the thing. I got most of it in the boat, till something snagged down near the waterline; then I turned again to the shore, where the wind was carrying Jesus' words to us over the water.

“Come with me!”

With him? I looked at Simon, who didn't look back at me, his hand on the tiller and his gaze locked on the man. Did he really mean come with him—not just—
“Come with me, and I will make you fishers of people!”

He did mean come with him. Him. Us to be disciples of the Messiah? Fishing for people. To bring people in to follow him, did he mean—the Messiah—
Simon didn't take his eyes off him, but me, I looked back at the nets. This wasn't like going off to the Jordan for a time to be baptized and hear what John had to teach. If the Messiah wanted us—the Messiah!—well, then we'd mended our nets for nothing, that's what.

The boat beached in a crunch of sand and slap of waves, and Simon jumped out into the shallow water and began to run up the sand. I gave another tug on the nets, my eyes picking out the mended places, all those knots we'd tied. The end of the net still trailed in the water, and I couldn't bring it up over the side. What was going to happen to our boat? Who would take it—would they care for it? Would they scrape the hull over rocks and fail to mend it? What would we live on without our nets to pull fish from the lake? We had no other skill. Only fishing.

And fishing for people—perhaps we had that skill. He seemed to think so. He himself!

“Should we come with you now, Teacher?” Simon was saying. “Where are you staying? What are you doing?”

“Yes, come with me. I am going round Galilee preaching the good news. The kingdom of God is among us now.”

The kingdom of God. The Messiah wanted us, to join him, to fish people into the kingdom of God. If his kingdom was among us, God must have these things in hand. What are you so afraid of, Andrew? Do you still think it will all fall apart? So many things do, in this world. For a moment I thought of God's hands tying knots. Hundreds of knots.

Millions of knots.

I left the end of the net trailing in the water, and jumped out of the boat.

Scars: a reading from the Gospels

I'm listening to the Lord of the Rings on audiobook these days, and have a lot of thoughts forming on the story of Eowyn and the meaning of her deeds and her transformation at the end of the story. I almost wrote about it for today, but I want to take the time to make a good job of it, so that'll be next week. (Stay tuned.)

So I'm sharing another of my readings today, the short Biblical pieces I write. I wrote this one for a spiritual retreat we hosted, for which Paul had selected the story of Thomas as a theme. As a doubter myself, I've always been fascinated by Thomas, but this time--and I don't quite remember why--I chose to take a step back, or maybe sideways. I wrote the story from the point of view, not of Thomas himself, but of one of his fellow disciples: Simon the Zealot. It was interesting, writing from the point of view of a somewhat hardened freedom fighter. It didn't actually occur to me till halfway through the story that such a person would know exactly what a mortal wound looked like. This is one of the things writing does for me: it shows me things I would never see otherwise. I never pay such profound attention to Scripture as when I'm writing one of these readings; I can't. The writing itself takes me to a place I can't otherwise reach.

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Scars


All of my scars have stories. But there's none of them I like to tell.

The oldest two, on my arms, are from my father. You can barely see them now. I can see them just like they were, if I think about it. I can see his face just like it was, too. Why would I want to think about it?

The mess on my left leg and arm is from the Romans. I was fifteen. Some officer, going somewhere important in his long red cloak, just rode me down on his horse. I was in the way, and what did he care about some Jewish boy? The rocks on the slope beneath the road took chunks out of my leg, and my arm up to the shoulder. The wounds turned bad. I was sick with fever for a week and they thought I would die. But I guess he got where he was going on time.

The men in our village talked about it for weeks. But there was nothing they could do. What did Rome care?

It's not exactly the kind of story you brag on.

I suppose that's part of why I joined the Zealots, in the end. Why I decided to fight them. There were other reasons. I wanted to free our country. But the look on my father's face when he said “There's nothing we can do,” and the pain and anger in my belly when I saw it, those things are burned into me as hard as the thick hard lines and ridges on my skin.

I suppose that's why I don't like to tell the stories. There are other scars. The ones you can't see hurt longer. I don't know how long. I don't know if they stop.

The other scars are from the fights that came after that. Battles, I suppose you could call them. The one on my face is one of those, the one people ask about. They generally expect me to be proud, to want to talk about it. There is some of it I'm still proud of, but I don't care to talk about it. One memory brings back another. Believe me, putting a sword into another man and pulling it out is not a thing a man wants to remember.

Those days are gone, of course, since I chose to follow Jesus. I chose to fight for a different kind of freedom. He sent me out preaching, going around the country with the others, telling people the kingdom of God had come. He taught us so much. We saw the power of God in him, and the kindness of God; we saw lepers healed and the dead come to life. We saw him come into Jerusalem in triumph, not at the head of an army, but riding on a donkey with the people all shouting for joy and waving branches. And then the Romans got him after all. The Romans and our own people, our so-called leaders, the cowards. I've seen death enough to know it, but I saw Hell that day.

When the women came to us three days later and said they'd seen angels, when Peter and John came and said he was alive again, I thought hard. He was different from any man I'd known, and I had believed God was in him. If anyone on earth could do such a thing, it wouldn't be anyone but him. But I held back. I'll admit: I held back because I was afraid to be a fool. To be made a fool of by hope.

He came to us that night, very late. We were still awake, with one lamp burning. He wasn't there, and then he was. Someone cried out. He looked like a spirit in the flickering light, like his spirit come to say goodbye on his way to God. That's what we thought he was.

Then he spoke.

He spoke, and his voice had life and blood and strength in it, as much as it ever had when he'd stood up on a hill and shouted his teaching to the crowds. “It's me,” he said. “I'm alive. Look at my hands and feet. Touch me. See if it's me.”

I lit another lamp. I cupped the flame in my hands till it blazed high. And there in the flare of light I saw it. He was reaching out his hand to Matthew, and there on his wrist was the place they'd driven the nail through. It was healed. He'd been dead three days, and it was the clean pink of a fresh-healed scar. And then I looked further, and there in his left side I saw a thing I'd never seen in my life—a thing I could swear no-one had ever seen. I saw the scar of a mortal wound, fresh-healed just like the other.

No-one could have survived a blow like that one. I've seen men take wounds like that, and I know. It went in, right to the heart. And there it was, that awful hole in his side, new-healed just like all the other scars. Testifying. It was him. He had been killed, and he was alive. God was in him, and all our hope had come again.

I believed. The scars did that for me. But I don't know that I would have learned the other thing, the stranger thing, if I hadn't seen what they did for Thomas.

Thomas wasn't there that night. He was afraid, I think. I don't know where he hid, but he came back to us at dawn, and when he heard what had happened he accused us of lying. Then changed his mind on the instant, before we could get angry, and said we must have dreamed it, it couldn't have been real. He said he'd believe it when he'd touched those scars we spoke of, when he'd put his hand in that hole. I saw the tears standing in his eyes, though he turned away to hide them.

It was days before Jesus came again. We stayed together, talking of what we'd seen, of what we ought to do. Thomas said nothing at all. He barely ate. When the others tried to tell him again that it was true, he turned away.

Thomas was my friend. I seem like a hard man to most people, I suppose. But I know how hard life can be when you're young, and it was hard for Thomas. I did what I could for him. It wasn't much.

Then Jesus came to us again.

He wasn't there, and then he was. And he was standing by Thomas. Thomas staggered to his feet. Looking at him. He never took his eyes off his face. I saw the tears start in them when Jesus said “Peace be with you.” And he still stood there just looking at him, looking into his eyes. He never looked down at all till Jesus told him outright to look at the scars.

“Put your hand in my side,” he said, and Thomas looked at him, and I saw his hand reach out, just a little, and draw back. It was shaking. But it wasn't fear. His eyes were wide. He seemed not to be sure it was allowed. Not to be sure he was allowed.

And I looked again at that wound, that open path into his heart. Those holes torn in his wrists and in his feet. He would have them forever, by the look of them. I realized I was rubbing one of the scars on my arm; one of the ones the Romans gave me before I could even fight back.

I remembered what he'd said, what we hadn't understood till later: that he would give his life as a ransom for many. That was the story of these scars. The story of how he had been killed and yet here he was alive. Of how—though I didn't quite understand it all yet—he had saved us all.

But it was also the story of how men drove nails through his wrists, and he could do nothing to stop them. It was also the story of how he hung there nailed to a beam, and a soldier put a spear into his heart.

Thomas reached out his trembling hand, awe in his eyes, and put his hand into that wound. He looked like he was touching something holy. Something that had death in it, and life. The power of God, and the kindness of God.

And standing there watching him, I saw that he was. And he knew it. He saw those scars for exactly what they were.

And I wanted to touch them too.

A Flame in the Night - a preview

I recently signed the contract for A Flame in the Night, and the final manuscript is almost complete. I thought I'd share a little preview today. This is one scene that can be viewed completely out-of-context--in fact I'm considering making it a prologue. It's the scene where we meet the major new character in this story, young Elisa Schulmann.

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Elisa Schulmann took the last pin out of her mouth, slipped it carefully into the silk of the skirt she was altering, and picked up her needle. She glanced up; Madame Serge was watching her, standing in the open doorway that led to the front of the shop. She kept her hands steady under her employer's frown, taking a tiny, careful stitch.

“Wash your hands.”

Elisa laid down her work. “I washed them when I came in, Madame.”

“Wash them again. You're sweating. Do you know how much silk costs these days? If we have to replace that I'll dock every centime from your pay. Anyway, put that aside for now, I've just gotten a rush order from Madame Boutet. I'll need you to stay till it's finished.”

Elisa sat up very straight, glancing at the doorway of the windowless workroom and the narrowing stripe of afternoon light. She ducked her head carefully, keeping her hands still on the linty black fabric of her skirt. “I'm truly sorry, Madame, but you know that on Fridays—”

“You will make an exception tonight.”

Elisa lifted her head and looked Madame Serge in the eye. “I'm truly sorry, Madame,” she enunciated.

The woman's cold frown sharpened. “You people shouldn't work in Christian shops. I ought never to have hired you. Always trying to rub your difference in people's faces—too good to drink a cup of coffee with us—I wouldn't be so proud if my religion was based on doing cruel things to baby boys—”

Elisa was on her feet before she knew it, blood pounding in her ears. She froze. “Excuse me, Madame,” she said through lips stiff as clay. “I have a personal need.” She turned and walked carefully to the shop's tiny bathroom, then locked herself in and sat down on the toilet lid, shaking.

“God, help me,” she said in a harsh whisper. “Help me, please.” She closed her eyes, thought of the lines in Papa's face last week when he'd told her the rent had gone up again. Their rent, not the neighbors'. All Jews have gold under their mattresses, didn't you know? She thought of the day Papa had asked her to do this. The day Karl Schulmann, who had once been able to provide what was finest for his family, had admitted he needed his daughter's help. A tiny, burning coal had lit somewhere behind her breastbone at that moment. It was burning still. I will not fail them.

She took a deep, silent breath. Help me. She loosened her bun and re-pinned it, carefully, then rose and opened the door. Madame Serge was measuring a hem. Elisa stood silently till the woman finished, then spoke quietly, eyes down.

“I apologize, Madame. I will try to wash my hands more often. I apologize for my attitude and I will do as much as I can for you tonight.”

“Till it's finished?”

“Till seven, Madame.”

Madame Serge blew sharply through her nostrils, turned away and began to roll up her measuring tape.

By seven Elisa had the new sleeves of Madame Boutet's dress pieced, pinned, and the first seam stitched, and she was exhausted. She showed Madame Serge her work, ignoring the breathy sounds of her displeasure; they were good signs, signs that breath would be the only consequence tonight. She ducked her head respectfully as she said Bonsoir. She walked out of the shop and heard the door close behind her, and filled her lungs with the open air.

The narrow streets of Lyon were deep in shadow beneath the three-story houses, clouds already brightening to pale sunset gold in the sky above; Elisa went quickly, threading her way to the dingier quarters. She turned into her familiar alley and went down it hugging the gray wall, away from the stench of the sewer drain where something seemed to have died. She let herself in the back door and climbed the stairwell, shutting her ears against the sound of angry voices through thin walls. Her eyes found her own door, her fingers rising instinctively, eyes on the two ragged nail holes where the mezuzah used to be. They always tightened her stomach a little, those holes. She passed them by and let herself in the door, into peace.

It smelled like chicken. It smelled like Shabbos. The deep, sweet peace of Saturdays in the house back in Heidelberg came back to her with the scent, and her eyes stung. Her right hand lifted to the small bright mezuzah nailed in its new place on the inner doorframe, and for a moment she thought of nothing but the holy words inside. Then she heard her sister's voice: “Just stop it!”

She set her jaw and walked down the little hallway to their bedroom. Her brother Karl sat on the bed, arms crossed and face defiant, as their sister Tova, fingers tangled in her half-made braid, wailed “I'm going to have to redo it all!”

“Karl,” said Elisa.

“I didn't,” said Karl hotly, “I didn't touch her, I just asked if I could share the washbasin a minute—”

“You hit my elbow!”

“I didn't mean to!”

“But you did,” said Elisa. “Apologize. Tova, I'll fix it.”

“Sorry,” muttered Karl to Tova's shoes.

“Thank you,” whispered Tova, tears appearing in her eyes. She smiled at Karl through them. She was the only one of them who used her Hebrew name for everyday; it had stuck, Mama said, because it meant “good.” And wasn't that just like a parent, thinking pliable was good? Elisa worried for her. “Shh now,” she soothed as she braided her sister's thick, wet hair. “It's all right.”

She gave Karl his turn at the basin and then shooed them out so she could change. She heard clinking from the kitchen as she peeled out of the sweat-stained black working dress, and doubled her pace. As she combed her hair something rustled behind her. A slip of paper appeared under the door—then flicked back out of sight. She turned her back. Do you know what I do for this family? I'd like a minute's peace sometime. Rustle. Flick. She glanced back. There it was, then—flick—a grin seemed to hang in the air. The corners of her mouth softened helplessly. Whispers from behind the door; a giggle. She twisted her hair into a bun, shoving bobby pins in ruthlessly, and dove for the paper as it slid forward again. “Ha!” She threw open the door and displayed her trophy. “I win.”

“Come to the table,” Mama called from the dining-room.

As she followed her grinning siblings down the hallway she glanced aside at the open door of her parents' cluttered bedroom. Her smile fell away as she took in what lay on the bed.

Mama's jewelry box. Open.

Her heart tightened, then began to pound. The open lid, that ought to be locked and hidden in its place under the floorboards, spoke to her as if aloud. It's not all right. Tova and Karl were almost too young to remember the days back in Heidelberg when the automobile had gone, and the carved walnut furniture, and the piano. Her first piano. She'd cried and cried. The next day Papa had taken her to a rally. She'd heard words she still could not burn out of her mind. “We must leave this country,” Papa had told her quietly, as she walked home with him white-faced. “I am so sorry, Lies. I would not have sold your piano for any lesser reason than this. You see, they will not let us leave with our money. That is the price.”

“It's not fair,” she had whispered.

“It's not fair,” he'd said gravely, as if they were reciting a lesson together. Then, “We will pay them and go.”

She leaned on the doorframe, staring at the box. Who are we paying now? Where do we go? The handful of bright things in there was all their savings. Not enough. She had heard Papa say so. She had heard him say over and over that the rumors from Paris must be exaggerated; that even if the Nazis had done such a thing in the Occupied Zone it was another matter here. This was still France.

He had said it to her and Karl and Tova, his voice measured and calm. He had seemed so sure.

The gold in the box spoke its silent question. “I don't know,” she whispered, and turned away. She walked down the hall to the dining-room, to where against the scarred wall the pure-white cloth was laid on the table, the blue-and-white plates and the clean napkins by each one. To where Mama stood behind the four tall candles, and Papa by her side smiling. To Shabbos dinner, and peace for tonight.

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image credits:

young woman sewing: Vincent Van Gogh, wikimedia commons

alley: vanOrt, https://www.flickr.com/photos/vanort/

candles: Miheala Gimlin,  https://mihaelagimlin.com/