Mary's Steps

As the smooth coffee colored sandals shuffle across the cool beige and gray block stones, her heart is heavy. The days have been so long lately. There have been many hard and difficult days in her life but nothing like she has experienced before like this one. Even the leaves on the olive trees lining the walkway seem to mourn in the wind for that they are asked to carry. Yes, it has been a long night . . .


She makes her familiar way along the city streets that are so quiet this morning. Eyes heavy that are difficult to focus from the lack of sleep and from the many tears of crying, she longs to be with someone she knows, a well-known friend with whom she can “be” and not have to speak to explain herself.


Minutes feel more like slow passing hours. She passes the bakery where the bread is starting to rise and the aroma fills and consumes the air that she breathes. Sabbath is finished. It ended when three stars rose in the sky last night. The market shops will be opening soon and the hurry and bustle of life will begin as it always does, but it will never feel the same for her.


He has been her friend -- her companion -- her comforter -- her life. Thoughts leap and flash through her mind of all the time they spent together eating, laughing, sharing, learning and being. Knowing and connected to everything that he said he was. Why did he have to leave her?


People can be so cruel and make so many harsh decisions based on fear that they will be looked over or forgotten. Yet, he never overlooked anyone. His hand was held, his robed touched, and still his heart moved. There will never again be anyone like him.


The archways of the alley streets seem to mockingly wind and bend this early morning as she heads to the home of the mother of her well-known friend. Every step seems to ache because of its created intended slope. She quietly knocks at the well-worn carved wooden door to the small dark and gray basalt rock home. It is quiet. The knock echoes down the street through the homes lined in their season one after the other.


Slowly the door creeks and opens, her friend’s mother takes her hand and she offers a comforting hug. Gently placing her arm around her friend’s shoulder, they start to walk together towards one of his favorite places.


It has so quickly got around town especially since Joseph is of such noble rank that he is a member of the Jewish High Council. It is such a peculiar thing . . . He sits among the group that cast the death sentence on her friend but Joseph was willing to disagree with and not participate in the actions of the High Council. Everyone in town knows him well. Joseph’s hometown is the village of Aramethia. He is a wealthy wine industrialist although is known to be a man of good heart and impeccable character. Resolved, Joseph even had the nerve to go to the governor, Pilate, and request for the body. It was such a generous gift to offer his own place of eternal rest to someone that was so hated and despised by his peers.


The Vineyards belong to Joseph and are cut into the rock quarry of Mt. Moriah. This is the same mountain where the first Temple was built by Solomon. As she learned in many stories as a child, Abraham first offered his promised son Isaac on this mountain, but God provided another sacrifice.


The solemn tomb is located to the side in the beautiful garden setting. Many gray stone olive presses, well-worn shaded trees, an array of colorful flowers, and vineyards protectively surround where he has been placed. It is such a lovely, picturesque, aesthetic location and dwelling.


Joseph, although such a man of high status and wealth, took him down from the cross at Golgotha – the place of the skull - in front of everyone along the busy traveler’s road to Jerusalem for Passover. The eleven best and closest friends that her friend had left were long gone and scattered throughout the city and in hiding. He risked his reputation for kindness to someone he didn’t even know that well. Joseph gently wrapped him in new white linen cloth as a mother would have her own child. His act of mercy was while everyone else, easily forgetting the events of the day, were quickly heading back to their homes, buying flowers, ending errands, and finishing preparing the supper as Sabbath was about to begin.


She had stood at a distance and watched Joseph and admired his capacity for empathy and compassion. Keeping vigil of each event and trial of her beloved friend was almost more than she could bare but of which nothing she could have done to prevent. As Joseph carried and placed her protected guardian’s body in the tomb, she had openly grieved in her wailing and sobbing. It had been such a long night . . .


As her friend’s mother unlocked and fearfully opened the gate to the garden spring, she stands still while reflecting for a moment. At one time, he had opened a door for her that she thought would have been closed forever -- a door to life and hope. She had been betrayed, used, and abandoned many times. It was a recurrent theme in her relationships. Life had been ripped from her, and she was now bruised and scarred. She had experienced very little tenderness in her few years of living. Life had been cruel, humiliating, and painful. When she met him, she had very few friends even though she had grown up in the village of Magdala near the costal region of Lake Genneserett, or the Sea of Galilee as it is also commonly known. Afraid that a little compassion or understanding would sully their public reputations, people had shunned her amongst their friends. But - he was different. He cared. Over time, she would grow to deeply love him and know that he loved her too.
Her friend’s mother said that she was tired and would like to rest. She found a molded rock that would provide some comfort underneath the shade of the wide curvy branched olive trees that had recently bloomed in their magnificence. As she looked down and walked along the flower and rock-lined path, she saw rows of teal wormwood, ivory alyssums, rose myrtle and pearl lilies symbolizing torment, love, majesty, and worth beyond beauty. The garden brings to life her own true feelings about her friend.


Keeping her eyes focused on the ground to contemplate her great loss, she arrives at the tomb and surrendering to the grief, falls to her knees as she weeps. Her eyes are sore and swollen from her tears, but she thinks that she must see him just one more time even if it only means in death.


Light is dawning in fuchsia, turquoise, crimson, violet, and amber hues on the crescent of the hill of Golgotha just above where the tomb is located. As shadows of dawn are cast over her face, she notices the large round smooth-solid stone that is meant to protect the body from theft has been rolled away to the side. She slowly rises and pears into the right side window of the tomb as tears fall freely without force or will down her tear-stained cheeks.


What is this? What is this light? The bright white light is cascading all around her. The mother of her friend has climbed the hill. The light is jointly enveloping them. Who are these two men? Why are they there? Why are they wearing robes of white? Why is one sitting where the head of her friend should be? Why is the other sitting where his feet should be resting? Where have they taken her precious teacher and friend?


Other women now have joined the mother of her friend; they are bowing down in worship, awestruck by what they are seeing.


Then, the one-in-light speaks to her, “Woman, why do you weep?” She can’t respond right a way. How could they not know? Everyone knows. But she hears herself explain, “They took my master and I don’t know where they have placed him.”


The one-in-light speaks to her again, “Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery?” Although she is confused he continues speaking to her, “He is not here. He has been raised up. Remember how He told you when you were still back in Galilee that He had to be handed over to sinners. Then he would be killed on a cross. In three days He WOULD rise up again.”


It was at that moment, her thoughts remembered the voice of her friend speaking these same words to her. Thinking to herself that she desires to be in the moment of her sorrow, she turns her head away to reflect on what this man-in-light has told her.


While looking down, another man stands in front of her blocking her way. This is all too overwhelming! She needs to find who has taken her friend and this still silent Gardner is preventing her from letting his other friends know what has happened. But -- perhaps this Gardner saw something and knows what has happened to the body of her friend. Again she speaks pleadingly through her tears, “Mister, if you took him, lead me where you put him so I can care for him!”


Then in an oh-so-familiar comforting, well-known and loved voice speaks her name, “Mary.” How many times has she heard Him speak her name before - the tone, the lilt, the energy – such a wonderful gift that has greeted her at her door so many times in the past. It’s Him! Using the intimate conversational word for Great Master-teacher, she excitedly exclaims “Rabboni!”


But He says to her, “Don’t cling to me. I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and Your God.”


Letting go and with every source of energy available as her friends of women join along behind her, she quickly runs down the stone patterned path to Peter’s home to tell him and his other friends who have congregated there after a long night. She can hardly contain her enthusiasm to tell them whom she has just talked to and seen again. As she rushes through the opened door embracing her friends, she shouts with joy, “Morning has come! Jesus is Alive!”