The Fisherman (9 page)

Yet with so little time and so much to be done, all he asked of us was our willingness to build a friendship with him. He simply invited us to stay by his side, to eat with him, to walk with him, to camp out with him, to listen to him, to learn from his example, to build a comradeship with God in human form.

Jesus did not attempt to bring us to a point of competency in knowledge or techniques or programs. He simply sought to draw us into a depth of friendship with himself, a friendship that would ultimately become the driving motivation in every aspect of our lives.

When our little band came down from the mountain, we found the crowd still waiting, the sick still hoping for his healing touch. I never saw his healing powers more intense than they were that day. Hands reached out from every direction seeking to touch the healer. And everyone who touched him went away healed.

When all who had come for healing were cured, the Master led us once again up the hillside. This time, however, everyone was invited to join him. He found a spot that would accommodate all of us and sat down with his twelve immediately in front of him, with the multitude at our backs. Then he taught. Much of what he said that day I had heard him say before. But it was different this time somehow. Though hundreds of us heard his words that day, throughout the entire discourse his eyes were fixed only on us twelve. He talked for more than an hour. He talked about the rewards of discipleship. He talked about the importance of purity. He redefined love and humility in terms that created within me a hunger and a longing to be so much more and so much different than I was. He talked in painfully practical terms about the power money has to consume us, then went on to call us to a practical trust in our heavenly Father's willingness and ability to meet our needs. He talked with us about the destructive powers of lust and a judgmental spirit. He talked about the rich rewards that accompany purity and generosity. In simple, understandable words he revealed to us how life was designed to operate.

When he finally stopped talking, no one moved, no one spoke, no one took their eyes off the Master. Each of us felt as though this man had just opened up our hearts and revealed to all the world what was there. Yet, he had done it in a way that rather than flooding us with shame filled us with a hunger and thirst for righteousness unlike anything we had ever known before.

The only way I could bear the thought of that day coming to an end was by reminding myself that when I awoke in the morning, I would still be his disciple, and he would still be my Master. And, to be honest, it was this realization that sustained me every day for the next several years. It was all so good, so incredibly good, because he was . . . well, simply because he was, and that was all that mattered.

If the events of the months that followed are to make any sense to you, two things must be clear in your mind. First, you must understand what we the followers of Jesus were trying to accomplish. Second, you must understand what Jesus needed to accomplish within us.

For our part, the situation seemed clear. After more than four hundred years, a true prophet of God once again walked among his people. He was a prophet confirmed by God through miraculous healing powers. He was a prophet gifted with insights and teaching skills unlike anything any of us had ever seen. As with the prophets of old, this Prophet Jesus now gathered disciples to himself. Our role was to listen carefully to his message, learn it well, and apply it to our lives. We would then help him carry his message throughout the land. In time, no doubt, Jesus would follow the prophetic pattern and commit his message to written form so that it would become a part of our nation's heritage forever. Despite all this, however, it was understood that Jesus was just a man. He was a remarkable man. He was an amazing man. He was a man powerfully gifted by God. But, still, he was just a man. His absolute, total humanity was an unquestioned certainty of our relationship with him. We knew the woman who had given birth to him. We lived with him twenty-four hours a day. We saw him eat. We knew the scent of his sweat. We watched him, overcome with exhaustion, close his eyes and sleep.

Jesus, however, had a different agenda. He knew his ultimate destination was the cross. He knew, too, his remaining time on earth was measured better in months than years. And he knew that between the beginning of his public ministry and his departure, he would have to bring us from our comfortable, reasonable, logical belief in him as a mighty prophet of God to the discovery of his true identity. It would be nearly two years before he would ask us who we believed he was. During these two years he would make certain we had the knowledge we needed to answer that question.

As I write these words, I know my time is short. It would be impossible for me to attempt to walk with you through a detailed account of the months that followed. I do, however, want to share with you some of the turning points in my understanding of who this man was. Doctrine in its purest form is nothing other than our honest response to what God has chosen to reveal to us about himself. Following his designation of the Twelve and knowing he had our undivided attention, Jesus began to reveal himself to us in ways that kept us in a nearly constant state of thinking and rethinking and rethinking again our beliefs and assumptions about this man from Galilee. This mental stretching process began the following day.

We spent a night together at the house where Jesus was staying in Capernaum. It had been a wonderful day. It had also been a long day, an exhausting day. Following our evening meal together, we each found a corner in which to sleep. Sleeping has always been one of the things I do best. I closed my eyes and remembered nothing else until I woke to the early morning sun streaming in the window and the sound of Jesus seekers milling around outside the door.

There were always Jesus seekers outside the door, waiting for him to get up, waiting for him to come out, waiting for him to come back. This morning, however, there were several prominent faces in the crowd, leaders in our community, who brought with them an urgent request for the Master.

Rome maintains its iron grip over its conquered nations with the strategic placement of military garrisons throughout the empire. Though this hostile presence within our nation is a perpetual topic of complaint among our people, those of us in Capernaum knew we were more fortunate than many other Jewish communities. The Roman centurion in charge of the military post in our hometown was well known for his compassionate use of power and his genuine concern for the Jewish people under his control. He had been in our community for many years. He learned our customs and listened honestly to our concerns. Indeed, he personally financed the construction of our synagogue.

The Jewish leaders at the door came on behalf of this Roman military leader. He was well acquainted with Jesus' reputation in the community. Several times I had seen him standing at the stern of a crowd as Jesus taught.

This morning, however, the centurion did not come in person. He sent Jewish elders to ask the Master for help. A slave boy in his house lay in terrible agony, dying. Would Jesus be willing to help the boy?

Jesus set out immediately with the rest of us at his heels. There was something about this request that touched Jesus deeply. I think perhaps it was the obvious compassion of this Roman soldier. The boy was not his son. He was a slave. Yet the centurion cared deeply for the child. Jesus understood that kind of compassion perfectly. It was evident in his own eyes every time he touched the suffering in the lives of those around him.

The centurion watched for Jesus' arrival, and when he saw the Master coming, he quickly sent several close friends to meet Jesus in the street, bringing the message “Lord, don't trouble yourself further, for I'm not worthy for you to come under my roof; for this reason I didn't even consider myself worthy to come to you, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man placed under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!' and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!' and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!' and he does it.”

For a moment Jesus did not speak, but the expression on his face showed his obvious pleasure at the words he heard. Then he turned to those of us who were following him and said, “Not even in Israel have I found faith so great as this.”

When the centurion's friends reentered the house, they found the slave boy standing next to his master, his little arms wrapped tightly around the man, tears streaming down his cheeks.

It is difficult for me to explain why that particular healing affected me so much more deeply than did most of the others. I found it altogether unsettling. My Jesus was breaking out of the boundaries I had carefully established for him. He was
our
prophet. He belonged to the nation of Israel. He was
our
hope,
our
future. He would deliver us from our oppression and reestablish us to the glory that was due the chosen people of God. Yet here he was trotting after the request of a Roman soldier, healing a Gentile child. Gentiles had
no
right to his kindness. They should have had
no
access to his power.

And then there were those words of praise for the centurion's faith. I was jealous. Why couldn't I believe like that? Why couldn't it have been me the Master held up before the world as a glowing example of faith-filled obedience?

And there was something else as well, something planted in the back of my mind as a result of the way in which that boy was healed. Prior to that event I saw Jesus as someone who possessed the ability to heal. I didn't know how he did it; I just knew he did. I saw it as a gift he possessed, given to him by God. In my thinking it was not unlike some of my own God-given talents and abilities. Obviously his abilities vastly exceeded mine, but still they were not fundamentally different in kind. They were abilities given to a man in order to equip him for the work God had for him.

But those words spoken to Jesus by the centurion bothered me. “For I also am a man placed under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!' and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!' and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!' and he does it.”

He was suggesting that Jesus healed not because he had the ability to heal but rather because he had the
authority
to heal. But what man could claim authority over sickness and disease? Such authority did not belong to man. It belonged to God alone. It made no sense to me. And what we would witness the following day only intensified my confusion.

Jesus left Capernaum immediately following his healing of the centurion's slave boy. The crowds now surrounding him everywhere he went made it necessary for him to spend most of his time either in the open fields away from the city or, more often, traveling to other communities throughout the region. Not that traveling helped a great deal. As Jesus walked away from Capernaum, several hundred people followed behind him.

We spent the rest of the day on the road, heading to the city of Nain near the southern tip of Galilee, about a ten-hour walk from Capernaum. We stopped a few hours short of the city and camped for the night, then completed our journey the next morning. Though we seldom knew in advance why Jesus was doing what he was doing, we grew accustomed to the knowledge that there was always a purpose behind his choices. This was his first visit to Nain, so we assumed this trip was simply part of his broadening exposure of himself to the nation. It was certainly that, but we soon discovered it was an exposure unlike anything any of us had ever seen before.

We reached the city about midmorning. We must have looked strange to anyone watching our arrival—hundreds of people following in a huge procession behind a single man. As we approached the city gates, our procession was confronted by another procession coming out of Nain. This procession, however, was led by four men carrying an open coffin containing the dead form of a boy in his early teens. Alongside the coffin walked a woman in her midthirties, a woman consumed with grief. The agony in her sobs left no doubt about her relationship to the still form beside her.

Though Jesus was unknown by sight to the people of Nain, he was well known by reputation. When our two groups met, they merged into a solid mass surrounding the Master, the mother, and the undersized coffin. I could hear little ripples of “It's the prophet” and “It's Jesus” running through the crowd.

The Master's first words were directed to the mother. The intensity of her sorrow blinded her to what was happening around her. She didn't know and didn't care where all these strangers came from. She knew only that they were blocking the path to the open hole in the earth waiting for the body of her only son.

Jesus stepped directly in front of the mother, placed his hands on her shoulders, waited until she looked up into his face, and then said, “Do not weep.”