Guilt
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Guilt" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * *
Guilt
by Keith Hewitt
John 20:19-31
The light would have been poor for a room half the size. It was crowded and the atmosphere was heavy with the smell of too many bodies, too little ventilation, and the scent of silent human misery.
It was perfect.
The man at Table 3 was not a regular, but I'd seen him before. It took me a little while to figure out why he seemed out of place, and then I realized it was because he was there by himself... he usually hung around with a handful of other guys, but tonight he was there by himself. Well, himself and whatever burden it was he carried with him that caused him to sit in a dark, crowded room with a couple of dozen strangers, looking for numbness in the bottom of a cup.
I watched him for a while, and when it became obvious that his friends wouldn't be joining him I made my way over, slipping between patrons, slapping away a random hand or two along the way. He didn't look up when I stopped by his table, and I took that as a personal affront -- everybody looks up when I stop at their table. I gave him a couple of seconds to redeem himself, and when it didn't look like he would, I leaned forward, put my hands on the table, and looked him square in where his eyes ought to have been. "Mind if I sit down?" I asked quietly.
He looked up then, met my eyes for a moment, shrugged and looked away. "Suit yourself," he rumbled, and I almost walked away -- but then he pushed out a stool with his foot. It caught a rut in the packed dirt floor and tipped backward -- I caught it, set it right, and sat down lightly, perched almost on the edge of the stool.
"What are you having?" I asked.
He swiveled his eyes to look at me, then rotated them back to whatever had his attention. "Something wet, in a cup," he answered.
"What a coincidence -- me too." I sat up straight, caught the owner's eye, and pointed down at the table. The old man nodded and grabbed a cup from the stack of earthenware on the counter. "So, you look like a man who could use some company," I ventured, studying him as I spoke. He was thirtyish, not too tall, but broad shouldered and probably muscular beneath his cloak. A fisherman, I guessed, or maybe a farmer. He didn't look like a tradesman. His hair was long and not well groomed, and his beard was like a dark, wiry bush on his cheeks and chin.
But his eyes -- when he looked at me, it was almost as though he was seeing something else, but at the same time they held me; I couldn't look away, couldn't break contact until he did. He just stared at me, at first -- or maybe through me -- and then he said, low and soft, "They tried to make me feel guilty. They told me I was wrong and they tried to make me feel guilty."
"I understand," I said earnestly and reached out, touching the hand wrapped around the stem of his cup as though someone was going to try to take it.
"Believe me, plenty of people have tried to make me feel guilty over the years." His hand didn't move, didn't do more than twitch when I touched it.
"You don't want to feel guilty, do you?" I asked. I refuse to have anything to do with that kind -- they're more trouble than they're worth.
"You know how they say you should never miss a meeting?" he asked, ignoring my question. Maybe he never heard it -- he seemed to be sitting in a different room, even as my fingers rested on his hand.
"Sure," I agreed. Maybe I'd heard someone say it, once -- but my meetings were generally pretty short and didn't happen if I wasn't there.
"They aren't kidding," he said, and his lips twitched in a smile that didn't make it to his eyes. "Miss one meeting and suddenly you're the bad guy. Everybody's got it in for you. They tell me I don't believe -- that I don't have faith. They tell me that I don't understand what the Master was teaching us. They try to make me feel like I'm not one of them, now -- like I'm not quite as good."
"That's not right," I said sympathetically, and edged my stool closer to his. The owner came by, set a cup on the table for me, and a spare for my new friend. I didn't touch mine, but knew what was in it -- watered down grape juice for which my new friend would be charged full price.
"They're my brothers!" he half-shouted sitting up straight, seeming to startle himself and slumped down again. "They're my brothers," he repeated urgently. "How can they do that to me?"
I nodded, eyes narrowed slightly, trying to follow his disjointed thoughts. "Family can be the worst," I agreed. "With you one minute and against you the next."
His eyes changed, shifting focus, and it was almost like they were looking back through time. "They all ran -- we all ran -- when they arrested him. They arrested him, they beat him, and they put him in front of some phony court and not one of us stayed by his side. Even his favorite, Peter -- when somebody asked him if he was a student of the Master, he denied knowing him! Right there, in front of God and everybody, he lied and said he didn't know him."
"Hard to believe, but some people are like that. Just looking out for themselves."
"I spent the rest of that night holding Peter's head while he wept. Do they remember that? And when they took the Master out and hung him on a cross, young James was the only one there. Where were the rest of them? Where were they when I was talking to the Arimathean, to convince him to lay the Master to rest in his tomb, since the Master's family tomb was in Galilee?"
I shrugged. "Hiding?" I guessed, quickly losing interest. Look, talking is part of the deal, sometimes -- you'd be surprised how many men want to talk -- and I'm okay with that... to a point... to the point where it starts eating into my profit margin.
A girl has to have standards.
As long as I'm getting paid, I'm more than happy to listen... I'll listen before, during, and after, whatever makes them happy and me richer. But this was starting to look like I would be listening instead... and I haven't figured out a way to charge for that. Maybe some day people will be gullible enough to pay somebody who'll just listen to their problems and cluck their tongues at the right spots in their stories... but I doubt it.
I like to think people are smarter than that.
"Exactly!" he said, not noticing my waning interest. My eyes began to wander, traveling around the room to pick out other likely customers. The pairs or groups, I ruled out -- not my thing; they could find a Samaritan who might accommodate. A few of the other single men I also ruled out because I knew they were always short of funds by this time of the night. The rest I was pretty sure were married, from seeing them around town, and I stayed away from them these days -- I'd learned my lesson, which pretty much left me with Mister Chatty.
I sighed to myself, turned my attention back to him, then, and was startled to find that he was staring at me intently. There was an awkward pause, when I realized he'd asked me a question, and I thought frantically, tried to remember what he'd said while I wasn't listening. This is a skill -- maybe a gift -- that's rare; some of my colleagues have it, as do some priests. Most men don't.
Something-something-something-dead... something-something-something-guilt... suddenly the words materialized, and I felt a chill. "Your brothers, you're friends, they're telling you this man came back from the dead?"
"Yes -- that he appeared to them a week ago, as though he'd not been laid in the grave just days before, and they expect me to just believe them!" he said indignantly, his voice low but hot with fervor. "I don't know what they take me for, what kind of gullible fool, but I'm not. I'm not some country bumpkin impressed with ghost stories. I'm one of them -- back in Galilee, when the Master found us --"
I stopped listening again.
Back in Galilee, when the Master found us...
I was transported in time, suddenly, to a moment not that long ago when my life had hung in the balance. It was one of those moments as durable as fine, carved rock in your memory, unshakable and unforgettable, no matter how hard I tried. A man, a quiet man, tracing words and symbols in the dirt... a soft voice that could cut through stone and hard hearts with equal ease, with the unmistakable burr of Galilee to it. "This man, this Master of yours -- he was Galilean?"
My friend looked confused for a moment, almost surprised. "Yes, yes he was, of course. Didn't I say?"
"I don't think so -- but I remember him anyway." I drew my cloak more closely around me, covering up the bit of skin I had strategically displayed when I sat down; no doubt it would be covered in goose bumps now. Staring down at the table, I murmured, "I think I know your teacher. We had... an encounter, once."
The man smiled ruefully and shook his head. "No... I'm sorry, but no, he would not have --" Then he stopped and really looked at me for the first time that night. With a trembling hand he picked up the lamp from the table and raised it closer to me, to better see my face, and he studied it for a moment or two before he nodded and set it down. "You are the woman the Pharisees brought before him -- the adulteress."
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak while my thoughts raced. Why was I feeling guilty, all of a sudden? Disease and sickness are always a concern in my business, but if you take precautions you can avoid most of them and treat the rest -- but guilt will always finish you off, destroy your business.
"He saved you, kept them from stoning you," the man recollected, as though he were reconstructing the scene moment by moment -- then he looked around the room, then back to me, and said with sudden gentleness, "I'm pretty sure Jesus told you to go and sin no more."
I shrugged, and it felt like a massive show of disrespect when I did it; I frowned. "He did," I agreed. "But I soon realized that he may as well have said, 'Go and eat no more.' When you sin... when all you know is sin, and it keeps you alive... what recourse do you have?" I paused, looked down. "So he was the man executed last week -- the false prophet?"
"The teacher. The Master. We thought maybe the Messiah. But he was no false prophet. You didn't see the wonders I saw, hear him teach the way I heard."
"Oh, I heard. And I tried. But here I am." I looked up, then, looked him in the eye. "But now your friends are telling you he's not dead, but alive?"
"That he has come back," the man agreed. "He was dead, no doubt about that. The Arimathean told me there was no question. But they say he's come back and lives again. As though I would believe such a thing! I don't know whether they're mad, drunk, or just tormenting me."
"But if he could come back --" I began hopefully.
"He can't. Dead is dead."
"But if he could -- if he could leave this life behind, and come back with a new life, somehow... if he could turn away from what had happened, and start new... maybe there would be hope for the rest of us. Maybe it would mean the rest of us could somehow die and leave our old lives behind, and come back new." A startling idea was starting to form, and it felt like... hope.
"They're wrong, I tell you," the man said stubbornly. "It can't happen."
"But if it did... wouldn't it be a wonderful thing?" I asked softly.
He looked at me again, seemed to realize this actually meant something to me, and his expression softened. "It would," he agreed. "It would be a miracle of the highest order. And I suppose it would mean all those things you said. But let's be realistic. Let's be practical."
"Yes, let's be practical," I agreed, leaning forward, touching his hand again -- this time gripping it. "Your friends claim he comes to them. You claim he doesn't --"
"Can't."
"-- can't. So there are two possibilities, and you can prove which is correct. Go to your friends and wait for him to come. If he does, you prove that it's this teacher... this risen teacher. Look for the wounds in his hands and feet. Nobody lives through that. If he has them, and he's walking among you -- you'll know who's telling the truth."
"It seems like a fool's errand," he said reluctantly, but in his eyes I could see it -- he wanted to believe.
"Look," I said, "my customers tell me they have money, but I don't accept their word. Before anything happens, I need to see coins. Proof. It's sets my mind at ease. Proof -- one way or the other -- is what you need to set your mind at ease. Because no matter what you say, there's a part of you that wants to believe your Master returned."
He sat still for a long moment, then rubbed his eyes and nodded. "I do. You're right, I do."
I leaned close to him, then, and whispered in his ear, "Then I'll tell you a secret. I want to believe too. Prove it to both of us... prove it, and maybe both of us can move on to something better."
We talked for a little longer, then, and I drank his wine -- I needed it. After a while he stood up and said he needed to go meet with his friends... it was the meeting they had set for the evening of the first day of the week. When he left, he walked with purpose he had not had when he'd slunk in, and my heart stirred.
And now I wait, and I wonder... will he get his proof? Will I get mine? Is it really possible to die to an old life and come back to a new one? I wonder...
In the mean time, what are you having...?
Keith Hewitt is the author of three volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a local pastor, former youth leader and Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He is currently serving as the pastor at Parkview UMC in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. Keith is married to a teacher, and they have two children and assorted dogs and cats.
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 27, 2014, issue.
Copyright 2014 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Guilt" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * *
Guilt
by Keith Hewitt
John 20:19-31
The light would have been poor for a room half the size. It was crowded and the atmosphere was heavy with the smell of too many bodies, too little ventilation, and the scent of silent human misery.
It was perfect.
The man at Table 3 was not a regular, but I'd seen him before. It took me a little while to figure out why he seemed out of place, and then I realized it was because he was there by himself... he usually hung around with a handful of other guys, but tonight he was there by himself. Well, himself and whatever burden it was he carried with him that caused him to sit in a dark, crowded room with a couple of dozen strangers, looking for numbness in the bottom of a cup.
I watched him for a while, and when it became obvious that his friends wouldn't be joining him I made my way over, slipping between patrons, slapping away a random hand or two along the way. He didn't look up when I stopped by his table, and I took that as a personal affront -- everybody looks up when I stop at their table. I gave him a couple of seconds to redeem himself, and when it didn't look like he would, I leaned forward, put my hands on the table, and looked him square in where his eyes ought to have been. "Mind if I sit down?" I asked quietly.
He looked up then, met my eyes for a moment, shrugged and looked away. "Suit yourself," he rumbled, and I almost walked away -- but then he pushed out a stool with his foot. It caught a rut in the packed dirt floor and tipped backward -- I caught it, set it right, and sat down lightly, perched almost on the edge of the stool.
"What are you having?" I asked.
He swiveled his eyes to look at me, then rotated them back to whatever had his attention. "Something wet, in a cup," he answered.
"What a coincidence -- me too." I sat up straight, caught the owner's eye, and pointed down at the table. The old man nodded and grabbed a cup from the stack of earthenware on the counter. "So, you look like a man who could use some company," I ventured, studying him as I spoke. He was thirtyish, not too tall, but broad shouldered and probably muscular beneath his cloak. A fisherman, I guessed, or maybe a farmer. He didn't look like a tradesman. His hair was long and not well groomed, and his beard was like a dark, wiry bush on his cheeks and chin.
But his eyes -- when he looked at me, it was almost as though he was seeing something else, but at the same time they held me; I couldn't look away, couldn't break contact until he did. He just stared at me, at first -- or maybe through me -- and then he said, low and soft, "They tried to make me feel guilty. They told me I was wrong and they tried to make me feel guilty."
"I understand," I said earnestly and reached out, touching the hand wrapped around the stem of his cup as though someone was going to try to take it.
"Believe me, plenty of people have tried to make me feel guilty over the years." His hand didn't move, didn't do more than twitch when I touched it.
"You don't want to feel guilty, do you?" I asked. I refuse to have anything to do with that kind -- they're more trouble than they're worth.
"You know how they say you should never miss a meeting?" he asked, ignoring my question. Maybe he never heard it -- he seemed to be sitting in a different room, even as my fingers rested on his hand.
"Sure," I agreed. Maybe I'd heard someone say it, once -- but my meetings were generally pretty short and didn't happen if I wasn't there.
"They aren't kidding," he said, and his lips twitched in a smile that didn't make it to his eyes. "Miss one meeting and suddenly you're the bad guy. Everybody's got it in for you. They tell me I don't believe -- that I don't have faith. They tell me that I don't understand what the Master was teaching us. They try to make me feel like I'm not one of them, now -- like I'm not quite as good."
"That's not right," I said sympathetically, and edged my stool closer to his. The owner came by, set a cup on the table for me, and a spare for my new friend. I didn't touch mine, but knew what was in it -- watered down grape juice for which my new friend would be charged full price.
"They're my brothers!" he half-shouted sitting up straight, seeming to startle himself and slumped down again. "They're my brothers," he repeated urgently. "How can they do that to me?"
I nodded, eyes narrowed slightly, trying to follow his disjointed thoughts. "Family can be the worst," I agreed. "With you one minute and against you the next."
His eyes changed, shifting focus, and it was almost like they were looking back through time. "They all ran -- we all ran -- when they arrested him. They arrested him, they beat him, and they put him in front of some phony court and not one of us stayed by his side. Even his favorite, Peter -- when somebody asked him if he was a student of the Master, he denied knowing him! Right there, in front of God and everybody, he lied and said he didn't know him."
"Hard to believe, but some people are like that. Just looking out for themselves."
"I spent the rest of that night holding Peter's head while he wept. Do they remember that? And when they took the Master out and hung him on a cross, young James was the only one there. Where were the rest of them? Where were they when I was talking to the Arimathean, to convince him to lay the Master to rest in his tomb, since the Master's family tomb was in Galilee?"
I shrugged. "Hiding?" I guessed, quickly losing interest. Look, talking is part of the deal, sometimes -- you'd be surprised how many men want to talk -- and I'm okay with that... to a point... to the point where it starts eating into my profit margin.
A girl has to have standards.
As long as I'm getting paid, I'm more than happy to listen... I'll listen before, during, and after, whatever makes them happy and me richer. But this was starting to look like I would be listening instead... and I haven't figured out a way to charge for that. Maybe some day people will be gullible enough to pay somebody who'll just listen to their problems and cluck their tongues at the right spots in their stories... but I doubt it.
I like to think people are smarter than that.
"Exactly!" he said, not noticing my waning interest. My eyes began to wander, traveling around the room to pick out other likely customers. The pairs or groups, I ruled out -- not my thing; they could find a Samaritan who might accommodate. A few of the other single men I also ruled out because I knew they were always short of funds by this time of the night. The rest I was pretty sure were married, from seeing them around town, and I stayed away from them these days -- I'd learned my lesson, which pretty much left me with Mister Chatty.
I sighed to myself, turned my attention back to him, then, and was startled to find that he was staring at me intently. There was an awkward pause, when I realized he'd asked me a question, and I thought frantically, tried to remember what he'd said while I wasn't listening. This is a skill -- maybe a gift -- that's rare; some of my colleagues have it, as do some priests. Most men don't.
Something-something-something-dead... something-something-something-guilt... suddenly the words materialized, and I felt a chill. "Your brothers, you're friends, they're telling you this man came back from the dead?"
"Yes -- that he appeared to them a week ago, as though he'd not been laid in the grave just days before, and they expect me to just believe them!" he said indignantly, his voice low but hot with fervor. "I don't know what they take me for, what kind of gullible fool, but I'm not. I'm not some country bumpkin impressed with ghost stories. I'm one of them -- back in Galilee, when the Master found us --"
I stopped listening again.
Back in Galilee, when the Master found us...
I was transported in time, suddenly, to a moment not that long ago when my life had hung in the balance. It was one of those moments as durable as fine, carved rock in your memory, unshakable and unforgettable, no matter how hard I tried. A man, a quiet man, tracing words and symbols in the dirt... a soft voice that could cut through stone and hard hearts with equal ease, with the unmistakable burr of Galilee to it. "This man, this Master of yours -- he was Galilean?"
My friend looked confused for a moment, almost surprised. "Yes, yes he was, of course. Didn't I say?"
"I don't think so -- but I remember him anyway." I drew my cloak more closely around me, covering up the bit of skin I had strategically displayed when I sat down; no doubt it would be covered in goose bumps now. Staring down at the table, I murmured, "I think I know your teacher. We had... an encounter, once."
The man smiled ruefully and shook his head. "No... I'm sorry, but no, he would not have --" Then he stopped and really looked at me for the first time that night. With a trembling hand he picked up the lamp from the table and raised it closer to me, to better see my face, and he studied it for a moment or two before he nodded and set it down. "You are the woman the Pharisees brought before him -- the adulteress."
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak while my thoughts raced. Why was I feeling guilty, all of a sudden? Disease and sickness are always a concern in my business, but if you take precautions you can avoid most of them and treat the rest -- but guilt will always finish you off, destroy your business.
"He saved you, kept them from stoning you," the man recollected, as though he were reconstructing the scene moment by moment -- then he looked around the room, then back to me, and said with sudden gentleness, "I'm pretty sure Jesus told you to go and sin no more."
I shrugged, and it felt like a massive show of disrespect when I did it; I frowned. "He did," I agreed. "But I soon realized that he may as well have said, 'Go and eat no more.' When you sin... when all you know is sin, and it keeps you alive... what recourse do you have?" I paused, looked down. "So he was the man executed last week -- the false prophet?"
"The teacher. The Master. We thought maybe the Messiah. But he was no false prophet. You didn't see the wonders I saw, hear him teach the way I heard."
"Oh, I heard. And I tried. But here I am." I looked up, then, looked him in the eye. "But now your friends are telling you he's not dead, but alive?"
"That he has come back," the man agreed. "He was dead, no doubt about that. The Arimathean told me there was no question. But they say he's come back and lives again. As though I would believe such a thing! I don't know whether they're mad, drunk, or just tormenting me."
"But if he could come back --" I began hopefully.
"He can't. Dead is dead."
"But if he could -- if he could leave this life behind, and come back with a new life, somehow... if he could turn away from what had happened, and start new... maybe there would be hope for the rest of us. Maybe it would mean the rest of us could somehow die and leave our old lives behind, and come back new." A startling idea was starting to form, and it felt like... hope.
"They're wrong, I tell you," the man said stubbornly. "It can't happen."
"But if it did... wouldn't it be a wonderful thing?" I asked softly.
He looked at me again, seemed to realize this actually meant something to me, and his expression softened. "It would," he agreed. "It would be a miracle of the highest order. And I suppose it would mean all those things you said. But let's be realistic. Let's be practical."
"Yes, let's be practical," I agreed, leaning forward, touching his hand again -- this time gripping it. "Your friends claim he comes to them. You claim he doesn't --"
"Can't."
"-- can't. So there are two possibilities, and you can prove which is correct. Go to your friends and wait for him to come. If he does, you prove that it's this teacher... this risen teacher. Look for the wounds in his hands and feet. Nobody lives through that. If he has them, and he's walking among you -- you'll know who's telling the truth."
"It seems like a fool's errand," he said reluctantly, but in his eyes I could see it -- he wanted to believe.
"Look," I said, "my customers tell me they have money, but I don't accept their word. Before anything happens, I need to see coins. Proof. It's sets my mind at ease. Proof -- one way or the other -- is what you need to set your mind at ease. Because no matter what you say, there's a part of you that wants to believe your Master returned."
He sat still for a long moment, then rubbed his eyes and nodded. "I do. You're right, I do."
I leaned close to him, then, and whispered in his ear, "Then I'll tell you a secret. I want to believe too. Prove it to both of us... prove it, and maybe both of us can move on to something better."
We talked for a little longer, then, and I drank his wine -- I needed it. After a while he stood up and said he needed to go meet with his friends... it was the meeting they had set for the evening of the first day of the week. When he left, he walked with purpose he had not had when he'd slunk in, and my heart stirred.
And now I wait, and I wonder... will he get his proof? Will I get mine? Is it really possible to die to an old life and come back to a new one? I wonder...
In the mean time, what are you having...?
Keith Hewitt is the author of three volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a local pastor, former youth leader and Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He is currently serving as the pastor at Parkview UMC in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. Keith is married to a teacher, and they have two children and assorted dogs and cats.
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 27, 2014, issue.
Copyright 2014 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
