I am Yagil.

I am a merchant, and have been all my life.  My father was a merchant before me, and so was my mother’s father. We are all descended from the tribe of Benjamin, although that distinction is less important that it used to be.   I live with my family in Jerusulem and we are in the 16^th year of oppression under Tiberius Caesar.  I am humbled to have the opportunity to speak to you.

I am a Jew, as you have correctly assumed.  I worship in the Temple.  I observe Shabbat. I fear the Lord, the God of my ancestors.  I can recount through the stories of my parents, and their parents and their parents how our people were torn from our land and sent in servitude to Babylon because they had turned from the Lord. We Jews have known times of persecution and exile.  Even within my father’s memory we were persecuted by Antiochus Epiphanes who wanted to kill us all and steal our land.  We were saved from destruction only by a courageous rebellion.   Very soon we will celebrate Passover and our freedom from the captivity of the Egyptians.   Our heritage is full of many miracles and of prophesy and of banishment and of redemption.  I live now in the land given by Jacob to our ancestor Benjamin, but we were not always here—we have been driven out and returned, driven out again and returned again.

We are in troubled times once more.  We are far from Rome, but not removed from the reach of Caesar.  Pontius Pilate, our Roman governor, is usually a decent sort, even though he imposes tax upon tax. He at least recognizes we have intelligence, that our society works well when we run it ourselves, and he allows us to worship our God and not Caesar.   I try to keep on his good side.  But Pilate is the exception, not the rule. Many more Romans, their soldiers especially, believe that we Jews are stupid and uncivilized. They kill us with little provocation and sometimes, I think, for their amusement.  Sometimes they tolerate our worship, sometimes they do not.  It is an uneasy time.

Until yesterday, I believed that the ancient stories of our ancestors, of miracles and prophets, were over.  Nothing has happened in my lifetime.  Our priests assure us the Lord God watches over us and commands us to follow His word.  They also assure us the commands they create for us are the commandments of the Lord God.   But aside from the John the Baptizer, whom Antipas killed not 6 months ago, there have been no prophets in our time. But we have been hearing of this man Yeshua,  the one our Greek neighbors call Jesus.  I myself hadn’t seen him until yesterday.  I had heard from my cousin Ariel that a friend had seen him restore sight to a blind man, but Ariel once told me he heard a sheep talk.  I have heard others speak of Yeshua too, but the claims seemed beyond belief—helping cripples to walk, healing lepers—who can do such things!  Sometimes stories grow with the telling.

But yesterday.  Yesterday.   My friend Elʿāzār ( the Greeks call him  Lazarus, I think) my friend died just 5 days ago. We had been friends nearly our whole lives, and so I was very sad.   I don’t think anyone expected him to die. I know I didn’t. I was sad that I had not seen him for a very long time.  Such a shame—my home in Jerusulem is only a 20 minute walk from Lazarus’ home in Bethany, and yet we had not been together since our families celebrated Passover 3 years ago.  He had been a friend of this man, Yeshua.  His sisters said dear friends, and I suppose that could be.  I think now perhaps we hadn’t seen each other because he chose to be with Yeshua when time would allow.   

And yesterday.  Yesterday I was still in Bethany. Many of us from Jerusulem were there, comforting each other and Lazarus’ sisters.  Martha, one of his sisters, had left the house and we were beginning to wonder where she had gone when she came back and whispered to Mary, their other sister.  I couldn’t hear what she said, but you could tell Mary was strongly moved by whatever it was.  Mary ran for the door and up the road.  The road led to the tomb, and it looked like something had happened, so many of us went with her.  It was this man, this Yeshua.  Lazarus’ dearest friend.  Mary ran to see him. She just collapsed at his feet.  She had tears streaming down her face once more when she told him that if he’d just been here earlier, he could have kept Lazarus from dying.  All of us were crying too.  Not just at the loss of our friend Lazarus but at the misery of our friend Mary, who we were trying to comfort.

Yeshua cried too, and asked to go to Lazarus tomb.  People behind me said he was crying because his friend had died, and because he too was moved by Mary’s grief, but I wasn’t so sure. I was there first, and was standing very close to both of them. It did not seem so much like grief to me as anger, although I couldn’t see what there was to be mad about.   Today, looking back, I think—but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Do you remember the scripture stories of Ezekiel?  How the Lord told Ezekiel to prophesy to dry bones scattered in the desert?  When Ezekiel prophesied, flesh came on the bones, but the bodies still did not live.  After Ezekiel prophesied, and flesh was restored to the bodies, the Lord breathed the breath of life into them, and they lived. 

That was only a vision that came to Ezekiel.  But what happened next was like that.  Yeshua told us to roll away the stone.  He told Martha that he would show her the glory of God.  We didn’t want to stay. We knew very well what the stone concealed, and we certainly didn’t want to roll it away.  Martha told Yeshua that it had been 4 days since his death, but Yeshua told us to go ahead, and we did. 

Yeshua looked up and thanked his father, and then yelled for Lazarus to come out.  And he did.  Lazarus, dead for 4 days, stood up and came out.  He was still wrapped in spices and burial cloths, which would be enough to kill a man by themselves, but when we took them off, it was Lazarus just as alive as when I saw him 3 years ago.  I talked to him—he knew me.  It was Lazarus.  It was my friend.

I had been skeptical of the stories I heard about Yeshua.  I told you this earlier. I couldn’t believe that a man could actually restore sight to the blind, cast the demons out of a man possessed by them, heal the leg of a lame man.  Who would believe such things?  But no more. No more. Restoring life to my friend—who but the Lord God has power over death?  And his father?  He was praying to the Lord God!  How could this man Yeshua call the Lord God “father” unless it was so?  Surely God would not respond to one who called on him falsely.  I am no longer a skeptic.  It was not Ezekiel’s vision that we saw.  Flesh and bone without life was restored to life at Yeshua’s call.  Yeshua is of the Lord God.

My mind is still reeling.  I believe now, I KNOW now, that Yeshua is the Christ, the Savior we have long sought.  But it does not seem to me he is on a path to overthrow Pilate, or Antipas or Agrippa and certainly not Tiberius. And I think he is in danger even from our priests.  In spite of the power of the Lord God that we saw yesterday, in spite of having our friend restored to life, some of my friends were angry and we are all a little frightened.  I know that Caiaphas has no love for Yeshua.  If Yeshua is to rise, Caiaphas must decline, and I do not think Caiaphas wants to decline. 

I’m worried.  How will Rome react to such a one?  Rome does not allow others to have power greater than its own.  Surely one who holds the power over death itself should be our King, but I do not believe Rome would agree. 

But more than that, more than what lies before our people, I am worried about the paths that are before me, your servant Yagil.  After Lazarus came out of the tomb, after we removed his burial cloths and spoke with him, as you can easily imagine, things were pretty confused.  Not many noticed that Yeshua and his followers drifted away from us.  I wanted to talk with Yeshua, to praise him, worship him and ask what I should do now.  I couldn’t find him.  Later, I was able to speak with his follower, Phillip.  Phillip and his wife were with Martha, standing apart from the crowd.  Martha told me that before she came to get Mary, Yeshua told her that Lazarus would live.  Phillip told me that Yeshua heard days ago that Lazarus was ill, and would not come, saying only that Lazarus’ illness was to reveal the glory of the Lord God.  They told me that all of the stories I had heard of healing, and of other miracles, were true.  Phillip said that he and the other followers feared for Yeshua’s life, and urged him not to come to Bethany.  Even now, they are leaving to stay in a place away from the authorities.

We puzzled together over what Yeshua meant when he said to Mary: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,  and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”  I asked if they also thought Yeshua was angry as we left to go to the tomb, and what he could have been angry about.  They too thought he was angry.  It was Phillip’s wife who offered a guess that seemed to make the most sense.

She believes Yeshua knew even before they left Jerusalem that he was responding to God’s will, not to Lazarus’ or Mary or Martha’s need.  He loved them, clearly, but it was God’s will, not his love that moved him.  She thought, as I did, that this was so powerful an act that it won’t be ignored, or passed off as an exaggerated rumor.  She thinks that Yeshua is not speaking of life and death in the way we understand it, and that it is our inability to understand what Yeshua means that brings him to frustration, anger and tears.  She believes his tears were not for his friend, whom he knew would be restored to earthly life, but that he wept because of us, and for us, because we cannot yet understand.  Martha said Yeshua asked her if she believed what he told her about those who believed in him living even though they died.  She did; with all her heart she believed him, but when we came to the tomb, even Martha was not prepared. 

There is more to come, I am sure of that.  The return of my friend’s life may portend other tragedy, but I believe it will be for the glory of the Lord God.  As for me, I have never been so certain that the Lord God holds us still as his people.  I will seek to understand Yeshua.  I will seek out and follow his teachings.  Before he left, I begged Phillip to baptize me, and he did.  That is a start, I think.

I pray for us all to understand God’s will and purpose for us, and to understand why Yeshua wept in Bethany yesterday.

Shalom.