It was a hot sticky summer day, like today, when I met him.

Some would describe this event as a bolt out of the blue; but for me, meeting him seemed like nothing more than a coincidental chance encounter. At the time I didn’t think it would amount to much. I have met a lot of people in my life, how was this going to be any different? I was taking a nap under a tree just trying to get some shade and my friend woke me and told me to come meet this guy. “He was a great teacher,” he said. But the more he described the man for me, and mentioned the podunk town he came from, I grew skeptical. I’m always skeptical, it keeps me sane.

As we approached him, the man looked like any other man, a bit scruffy and poor, he had callous hands. Why would I want to talk to him? He was rough on every edge. But somehow he was genuinely excited to meet me. I never met this guy before, but he sure seemed to know me. He shook my hand and said, “Now here is an honest man!” How could he know that? I never even once talked to him. He made me curious.

Over the next couple of months, which eventually turned to a few years, I learned a lot from this man. His teaching was like no other, he didn’t boast or brag, there was no hype or exaggeration, but rather he spoke like he knew things. Deep things. Issues of the heart. He even talked about love, what man ever talks about love? At first, it seemed a bit too much.

We would travel as a group from town to town following him, listening to him teach, and everywhere we went people invited us to stay with them. They would feed us, laugh with us, and we would often sing around late night campfires. One thing I will never forget, everyone felt welcomed and listened to with the teacher. He never took over conversations, but when he did speak everyone stopped talking just to listen. It was as if…well…as if his words could make things. Change things. Most people who speak use hollow words that soon fade away, but when the teacher spoke his words had life, they landed on your chest hard and your eyes saw into realities that were once pitch-dark and closed. He opened them for you.

Light, that is it, his words were like someone turned on a light!

After a year of following him, things got really interesting. People who once were crippled and bent over would touch him and be made straight. I saw a guy who was as blind as a bat ask the teacher for the ability to see. A small dab of mud was placed on this man’s eyes, and after he washed it off he could see! What?

One time we were approaching a little hillbilly town called Nain. Whoever heard of Nain? I think my dad went there once to get his plow fixed. As we came to the town a funeral procession was heading out to the burial grounds because apparently a single lady’s only son just died. You should have heard the moaning! The dead guy’s mother was weeping so loud you could hear her 1/2 a mile away, and when we got up to her she was ready to collapse. It was kind of embarrassing, but why should she care what my cynical mind thought about her, all of her hope was gone. And then our teacher did something strange. He went up to the dead kid in the coffin and touched him. Every good Jew knows never to touch a dead body – – the priests will yell at you and call you unclean! But he did anyway and then he told the boy to get up – – and the boy got up!

You should have seen the look on his mom’s face. When her son sat up and spoke she didn’t say anything at first. Her mouth just hung there, wide open. I noticed she was missing about three teeth. And her tears kept flowing. But under those tears, her eyes were dancing. Have you ever seen dancing eyes? They are the same eyes I saw on my wife when she had her first child. Despair and pain were turned to unbelievable joy. It was unbelievable! I still don’t know if I saw what I think I saw!

I then looked at the smirk on the teacher’s face. I knew at that moment I had nothing to fear. I knew this man could take all the wrongs I experienced in life and he would make them right. People loved this man. Heck, I am not ashamed to say it, I loved this man!

But there were some who felt threatened by him. I will never understand why. Why would anyone feel threatened by a guy who only did good things? Maybe that is it because he is the only one who was truly good. People don’t like being exposed. Well, one night after we had some soft warm bread he turned to those of us who were with him since the beginning and said, “I am going to be murdered in the big city. The authorities that be don’t want me around. I just want you to know. Get ready to continue on after I die.” And right after he said that he took another bite of bread. One in our group, the loudmouth, turned to him and said, “Never, we won’t allow it!” Teacher told him to hold his tongue because what must be, must be. I saw fire in the teacher’s eyes. I said nothing.

However, after that exchange, I still didn’t believe it. He raised a dead boy, how could anyone kill the person who has life in his tongue?

Skip a few months forward, it was a holiday, the day everyone went to the big city to celebrate the festival of God. Teacher had dinner with us and told us “Tonight is the night.” I didn’t understand nor listen. He could do anything, life was great whenever we were with him, how was it possible he would be stopped? So I didn’t listen.

That night, after we finished singing, and he wanted to be alone to pray, the authorities came and took him. They actually took him, and teacher did nothing. Said nothing, Why? Maybe he was a fraud? In fact, the next day they decided to completely shame him by having him hang naked on a tree. I couldn’t watch it. How could the one who raised that dead kid and made seeing mud for the blind allow himself to be mocked so severely without retaliating?

I heard his last few words. Some were mumbled under dry chapped lips, but there were a few that rang as clear as a bell as he hung there. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do!” How?

He died. Now what? All of my future dreams of a perfect life, my hope that justice would come and all wrongs would be made right were snuffed out when he was snuffed out. Why? If he had a direct line to God the Father, would he allow such gross injustice to win? Why does sin always seem to win? How could anything good come out of such tragedy?

It’s over…

2,000 years later, sometimes I feel like it is over. But…one thing I didn’t mention…he rose up from being dead. I realize, as I look at life, some situations in my life feel dead. Like it is over. But that is exactly where the teacher wants it to be, out of death comes life. Truthfully, I just read, God must orchestrate defeat in our fleshly lives in order for him to rise up in our new selves.

Is it over? Are your dreams shot to pieces? Does it feel like you are hanging humiliated on a tree? I guess he has you right where he wants you. Like the dead boy in Nain, he wants you first laying dead in the coffin so when you jump up your eyes will dance. It is the only way to get your eyes to dance.