When Jesus Wept

Chapter 29



My mother and father remained at the foot of the hill. I approached the angel and the handsome young man I guessed to be in his midtwenties. The young man seemed familiar to me. I remembered on earth seeing my reflection as I drew water from a well. It was like that. My features, the set of my eyes, the curve of the mouth and shape of the face, only not myself.

The young man and my angel stood when I drew near. The young man put out his arms and enfolded me in an embrace. “My father,” he said to me. “I am your son. Your heart named me Samuel the morning of my birth. And when I returned here, you wept for the baby named Samuel.”

I said, “But my only son was a newborn when he died.”

The chimes rang. The angel spoke: “There is only one age here. It is the age of perfection.”

Samuel smiled. “I am the baby who lies buried in the garden beside my mother, your wife.”

I gazed at him in wonder. We sat together on the knoll and held one another’s hands and spoke of his brief journey into the world of man. “I was not sorry to return home … here. But I told my mother I would be glad when you joined us.”

I studied the vineyards. “Where is she? Where? Your mother? My wife. Eliza.”

“I am second in the order of those who have come to welcome you. It is proscribed: First, your mother and father—you are flesh of their flesh. I am your son, blood of your blood. It is right that I follow my grandparents in welcoming you. My mother will come to you after we have made our journey.”

I nodded, comprehending the order of things. I felt no anxiety about when I would see Eliza. I was certain she would come when it was right. I was aware of the absence of time. The wonder of the meaning of eternal.

I told him about Bethany and all that I had done since I was a youth. I remembered the color of sunsets and described details of days and nights perfectly. He hugged his knees and drank in all the stories of my life as if it had been his life.

Samuel’s face was radiant as he recalled his three days on earth. “My father, I only lived in the world such a short time. But I remember well how you held me close in your arms and whispered and called me your ‘little man.’ I recognized your face perfectly when you entered Everlasting. When we saw you, I said to Mother, ‘Well, here he is!’ Oh, my father! I remember your breath on my cheek and your fingertips brushing my forehead as you rocked me and prayed for me to stay on earth with you … prayed for me to live and take up your mantle when you were old. And so … look here! Here I am beside you! Alive as you asked. But it wasn’t meant to be that I stay behind. Mother flew away home to heaven, and I was so small. I could not stay without her.”

My true self was filled with joy at the beauty and wisdom of my son. Love for him engulfed me. I could no longer summon a memory of my grief at his loss.

I spoke to him of the majesty of Jesus now on earth among men. Samuel knew the Lord Jesus well and said all the angels and saints would be glad when he returned to his rightful place.

How much time on earth had passed since I met my grown son and recounted all the days of my life? Time was nothing, after all. I had no way to judge Forever. I guessed that many, many years had flown by on earth. Surely others of my loved ones would be joining us.

The rustling of feathers caused my son and me to raise our faces in unison. My angel stood before us.

“Lazarus “—my name floated to me like a song—”now you know your son. How do you feel?”

“Overwhelmed by love.” I put my arm around Samuel. “I know what it means to be a father.”

My angel nodded once, pleased by my answer. “As your father loves you, you love your son.” The being closed his eyes.

The melody of many colors swirled around our knoll. Samuel gripped my forearm. “Look, Father! Look there! Joseph the Dreamer, Revealer of Secrets, comes!”

Suddenly a man dressed in a multicolored coat stepped out of a rainbow of refracted light. He was tall with dark hair and a braided beard. His teeth were white and straight, his lips curved in welcome. I recognized him at once.

He was Joseph, one of the twelve sons of Jacob the patriarch. His story had been my favorite in Torah school. Joseph had been the firstborn son of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel. He was the most beloved by his father. Because of this, Joseph was hated by his jealous half brothers. When Joseph was seventeen, they sold him into slavery, covered his multicolored coat with the blood of a slain goat, then told old Jacob that Joseph had been torn to pieces by wild beasts. But the Lord had raised Joseph from slavery to become the Prince of Egypt. He had saved the brothers who had betrayed him.

Joseph reached out to us in greeting with his hands palm up. “Ah. Blessed be the Lord, Adonai, who makes all things right! Look at you! It’s Lazarus and Samuel. Parted on earth but now together. Was there ever such a beautiful sight? Father and son! Reunited after such a long time.”

I knew Joseph spoke from experience. How many years had he lived the life of a slave before he became prince of Egypt and was reunited with his father?

The angel bowed to Joseph and stepped back.

Samuel and I also bowed low, but Joseph lifted us up. “Lazarus, master vinedresser … honored friend of Messiah Jesus … companion on his journey … beloved of the Lord. I was also a son, like your boy. Am I not also a father, like you, Lazarus? I was also beloved by my father, who grieved every day after my elder brothers sold me into slavery. But my story is not mine alone. The details of my story also prophesy of the life of Jesus, Messiah, Holy One of Israel. Jesus, whose name means ‘Salvation.’ Jesus, son of … Joseph. Come with me now and see what was, what is, and what is soon to come upon the earth.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Time is nothing. Walk.”

Clasping my arm and that of my son, Joseph the Dreamer pulled us after him through the curtain of refracted light.

I heard the sound of mocking. “Climb out if you can!” A group of rough-looking desert shepherds gathered around an empty cistern. Flinging dust at some pitiful creature trapped beneath them, they shouted:

“Come on, then!”

“Show us what you can do, dreamer of dreams!”

“We, your brothers, are stars who bow down to you!”

“We are sheaves of wheat who pay homage to you, O Prince!”

“Show us! Climb out if you can!”

“Free yourself if you’re so powerful.”

Samuel and I recoiled, holding back.

The Dreamer did not let go of us. “You must come. My brothers cannot see us. It is myself in the pit … as I was the hour my brothers stripped me of my father’s mantle and threw me naked down into the cistern.”

We had stepped from perfect peace onto the hard ground of the violent earth. I smelled the sweat of the young men around the pit. Their clothes smelled like sheep. The burning heat of the desert beat on my head. Faces were contorted with a gleeful rage as they hurled insults and sheep dung onto their young victim.

The Dreamer said, “These then, were my brothers. Rachel, the beloved, was my mother. But we were all sons of Jacob, grandsons of Isaac, great-grandsons of Abraham, who was the faithful friend of God.”

“May I speak?” I asked.

Joseph nodded. “They cannot hear you. They do not know we are watching.”

I whispered to the Dreamer, “What has this to do with Jesus, who was sent from heaven to earth as Redeemer of all Israel?”

Joseph the Dreamer replied in a sad voice, remembering, “What was done to me will be done to him by his brothers. Everything means something.” He inclined his head as the sons of Jacob left off their sport and left in a pack to eat their meal. Each of the sons of Jacob trampled on the beautiful coat their father had given his favored son.

“Listen to what they say,” the Dreamer instructed us.

“Let’s kill him,” said one, tearing meat from the bone with his teeth.

“Aye,” agreed another. “I’m for it.”

“There are lions in this place. Our old father will never know it was us.”

“We can say it was a lion. What do you say, Judah?”

The one they called Judah lifted his head from his meal. “Look! A caravan of Ishmaelites is approaching.”

The Dreamer explained to me and Samuel, “They were from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices. They carried the balm of Gilead for healing and myrrh for burial. Even these spices were a prophecy of what must come for Messiah.”

Judah stood and stretched, then said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our own flesh and blood.”

His brothers agreed.

The Dreamer drew us near as the sons of Jacob pulled the young man from the pit and sold him to foreigners for twenty shekels of silver. We watched as the caravan receded in the distance and the brothers slaughtered a goat. Then they dipped the coat of their innocent brother in the blood of the goat and carried it home to their aging father.

I shuddered as I heard the terrible wail of Jacob’s grief rising from the tent.

“My son! My son! My beloved son!”

The Dreamer lowered his chin and frowned as though the moment was fresh. “Oh! How my father, Jacob, wept! The grief of a father for his beloved son.” We stood on a hill above the encampment of Jacob. The keening of the old man resounded like waves crashing against the rocks.

“I will not be comforted,” Jacob cried. “In mourning I will go down to the grave with my son!”

So his father wept for him.1

As we listened to Jacob’s sobs, the Dreamer thumped his heart with his clenched fist. “The sword of sorrow pierced my father’s heart. I carried the weight of my father’s sorrow away with me. I heard him weeping still, long after I was sold in Egypt.”

The words of the Dreamer and his father’s tears were too much for me to bear. I felt the grief of every father for every lost child. It pushed me down to my knees.

Joseph the Dreamer commanded me to rise, “Get up! The weight of the world’s sorrow is too much for any man.”

“I can’t.” My legs would not move. My shoulders trembled as I remembered the moment of holding my dead baby. Kissing his sweet forehead as I laid him in the grave. I began to weep.

Then Samuel, my son, lifted me to my feet. “Father, I am here. It’s me … the son you lost.”

I was able to stand. Able to breathe. I wrapped my arms around his neck and clung to him with joy.

“Come away.” The Dreamer clasped my hand and the hand of my son, and we three stepped back through the veil of color. I was relieved as we departed the sorrow of the world. We left all that behind, entering again into the peace of the heavenly vineyard.

We sat on the knoll overlooking the vines. I thought to myself that surely many years had passed on earth since I had died.

I said to the Dreamer, “I never want to go back to the world as it is.”

The Dreamer answered, “I suffered at the hands of strangers for many years. I was thirty years old when the Lord lifted me out of prison and I entered the service of Pharaoh and became a prince in Egypt. The Lord revealed to me the famine that was to come upon all the world, and I stored the grain of Egypt for seven years. There was enough grain to feed the world.”

The Dreamer raised his hand and pointed across the green and gold vines. “Look there! Time is nothing. My brothers, famished beggars, come seeking the help of one they do not know and will not recognize. They come to Egypt to buy grain from the prince of Egypt … the brother they mocked and sold as a slave.”

I saw in the distance a cloud of dust sweeping across a distant land. The cloud did not come near the vines of heaven.

The Dreamer commanded that we hold tightly to his sleeve. “Come!” he commanded. “Hurry!”

Suddenly we stood in the hall of a great Egyptian palace. The brothers of Joseph, older now, lean and weathered by sun and trouble, came walking as a group through the marble corridor.

We followed as they were ushered into the presence of a great man.

The Dreamer said to us, “That is who I became after all my suffering. They live in tents and tend my father’s flocks. I am the prince of Egypt. I know my brothers, but they do not recognize me.”

The eleven brothers bowed down before Joseph the prince, just as Joseph, as a boy, had dreamed they would. They presented him with gifts of frankincense and myrrh.

The Dreamer said to me, “There is my younger brother, Benjamin. We shared the same mother, Rachel. She died giving birth to the lad. I was present when he was born. He was a comfort to me and to my old father.”

Samuel and I observed as the eyes of the prince fixed on Benjamin with such longing that I thought his heart would break.

Suddenly, the prince shouted that all his attendants should withdraw. As the Egyptians scurried out, the prince began to weep in front of his brothers. They looked at one another in confusion as Joseph’s tears streamed down his face. “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?”

The brothers could not answer him. They were terrified at his presence.

He stood from his throne and descended. “Come close to me,” Joseph entreated them.

They hesitantly moved toward him.

“I am your brother Joseph, the one whom you sold into Egypt. And now, do not be distressed or angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been a famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing or reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So, then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. Bring my father down here quickly!”

Then, as we watched, Joseph threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept. And Benjamin embraced him, weeping. Joseph kissed all his brothers and wept over them.

One moment more and I glimpsed the reunion of the old father, Jacob, with his son. Joseph held the old man in his arms, and the two wept for joy at their reunion.

The Dreamer smiled and turned away. “So many tears.

I wept for betrayal. For parting. For suffering. And for love. What my brothers meant for evil, God meant for good to save a remnant. The events of my life were but a foreshadowing of a greater life. He walks among his brothers now. But they do not recognize him. The prophecy is recorded by Moses in detail. As it was for me, so it is today on earth. Jesus the Messiah, only Son of God the Father, Deliverer and Redeemer of all the world, will soon be rejected by his brothers. Mocked, reviled, tortured, and stripped of glory. Jesus comes to be the Savior of all. What men intend for evil, God intends for good.”

In the blink of an eye, we once again stood on the knoll above the heavenly vineyard of the Lord. And now the brothers of Joseph gathered around us. I recognized old Jacob, who, of all of them, still remained old in his appearance. His white hair and beard were an honored crown to a long life lived in sorrow.

The brothers bowed deeply before Joseph. Judah stood apart. It was Judah who offered to save his brother’s life, I remembered.

Jacob approached Judah and placed his hand on his head. “Judah, like a good shepherd, you offered to give your life to save the life of your brother. It is recorded in Torah what I said to you. ‘You are a lion’s cub, O Judah! The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his. He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch. He will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.’ ”

Joseph the Dreamer stood before Judah. “My brother, from your descendants and the tribe of Judah came forth King David, Israel’s shepherd. From the descendants of David is born the Savior of the world: Jesus, son of David, son of Almighty God. The scepter is his.”

Old Jacob turned to Joseph. “On earth, it is recorded that the father, the protector who raised up Jesus Messiah is a man named Joseph. Therefore Jesus is known as Jesus, son of Joseph. This is to honor you, my son. My blessing is recorded in Torah: ‘Joseph is a fruitful vine, a vine near a spring, whose branches climb over a wall. With bitterness archers attacked him; they shot at him with hostility. But his bow remained steady, his strong arms remained limber because of the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, because of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, because of your father’s God who helps you, because of the Almighty who blesses you with blessings of the heavens above and blessings of the deep that lies below, blessings of the breast and blessings of the womb. Your father’s blessings are greater than the blessings of the ancient mountains, than the bounty of age-old hills. Let all these rest on the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince among his people.’ ”

I stood in wonder with my son in the midst of the ancient ones as they spoke of what was, what is, and what will be.

Love. Envy. Rejection. Betrayal. Suffering. Victory. Exultation. Reunion. Forgiveness. Salvation. Restoration. Deliverance.

The tears of Joseph were so great. The prophetic truth of what was to come upon Jesus, living out God’s plan among brothers who hated him, was almost too much to bear. In the order of things, his story had only reached the tears of rejection …

My son leaned close to my ear and whispered, “Look, Father! It’s Mother. Mother is coming!”

The ancients parted for Eliza as she walked toward me. “Eliza!” I cried, enfolding my beloved in my arms.

Radiant at our reunion, she lay her cheek against my chest. “Oh, my love!” She sighed. “I have longed for you.”

I had wondered if there could be longing in heaven. “Well, we are together now … forever. Ever after is such a long time.”

She raised her face to mine and kissed me. It was as I remembered her kisses in my dreams. Sweet wine. Together. Never more to be parted. No more tears. No more sorrow. I wished never again to see the world from which we had come, nor to remember the suffering that had been our lives.

I closed my eyes and drank her in. Eliza and I held one another for what I imagined was a century or two. It was calm and still.

And then all of heaven fell silent. The ground beneath my feet trembled as sound like none I had ever heard penetrated the peace of our garden …