I was late that morning because of a goat.
There are explanations that make a man sound respectable, and there are explanations that make him wish he had simply lied.
Mine was a goat.
The animal belonged to my wife's brother and had somehow pushed through the wooden gate before sunrise. By the time I heard the shouting, it was already halfway down the lane with a length of rope dragging behind it. I should have left it to them. I had work waiting for me outside the city, and after what had happened there before the Sabbath, I had particular instructions to inspect the garden as soon as there was enough light to see.
But the goat had chosen me.
I spent what felt like half the morning chasing it through alleys, around a stack of pottery, under somebody's washing, and finally into a courtyard from which it had no escape. By then I was sweating, angry, and covered with dust before my real work had even begun.
Worse than that, the sun was already rising.
I hurried out with my tools, reproaching myself with every step.
Joseph had entrusted me with the garden. It was not a difficult responsibility most days. I checked the trees, the paths, the walls, the places where water gathered after rain. I also inspected the tombs. Rich men cared about their tombs almost as much as their houses, perhaps more. The living complained if a branch scratched a wall. The dead, fortunately, never complained at all.
But there had been a new burial before the Sabbath.
Not an ordinary one.
I had been there when they brought the body.
I had watched Joseph and the others carry the crucified man inside. I had helped clear the way. I had stood close enough to smell blood beneath the spices.
And I had experienced something that I had told no one.
The dead man looked like me.
Not exactly. No two men are exactly alike. But close enough that when they carried him past me I felt the skin tighten across my back.
The shape of his face.
The beard.
Something about the eyes, even closed.
For one terrible moment I had the absurd sensation that I was watching men carry my own corpse.
I remember touching my cheek afterward just to reassure myself that I was still standing there.
For the time being I had tried not to think about it.
Now, as I hurried toward the garden, I was already in a foul state of mind. I imagined broken branches, disturbed soil, perhaps animals having entered somewhere. Worse, I imagined Joseph asking why I had not appeared when I was supposed to.
A gardener who cannot arrive at his garden is not much of a gardener.
I was approaching the place when two men came toward me quickly.
They were not walking normally.
They looked as though they had been running and had suddenly forgotten why.
One was younger. He seemed stunned but controlled. The other looked older and much more agitated. His breathing was heavy. His eyes were everywhere.
I slowed down.
Tombs attracted strange visitors.
Grieving relatives came at odd hours. So did thieves.
The two men saw me.
The older one stopped.
He stared directly at my face.
I expected him to ask something.
Instead, he stepped toward me and suddenly caught my arm.
Not violently.
That almost made it worse.
His fingers closed around me as though he knew me.
For several seconds he simply stared.
His mouth opened slightly.
I stared back.
“Do I know you?” I was about to ask.
But he did not answer because I had not yet spoken.
His grip tightened.
The younger man looked from him to me and then back again.
Neither seemed able to decide what they were seeing.
I began to think seriously about shouting for help.
“What are you doing here so early?” I finally started to say.
Then I looked past them.
And forgot the question.
A man was coming toward the garden at a distance.
My mouth remained open.
For a moment I genuinely wondered whether chasing the goat had somehow injured my mind.
That man looked like the man who had been buried.
Which meant he looked like me.
The older stranger felt my arm stiffen under his hand. He turned and followed my gaze.
But the walking man had already moved behind the rocks and trees, and I do not think either of them saw him at all.
The older man looked at me again.
Something changed in his expression.
Whatever he had thought for those few strange seconds, he now understood that I was not the person he had hoped—or feared—I might be.
He released my arm.
“Forgive me,” he muttered.
The younger man gave me a hurried, embarrassed bow.
Then they left.
I watched them go only for an instant.
Normally I would have followed two suspicious men who had just come from a burial garden.
Normally I would have demanded to know what they had been doing there.
But there was now a far more urgent question walking toward my place of work.
I followed the other man instead.
Carefully.
He was not dressed as I was. He was wearing a nice pristine seamless tunic.
Once I came closer, the differences between us became easier to see.
But the resemblance remained disturbing.
I knew that face.
I had seen it without life.
I had seen men wrap it.
I had seen it disappear into Joseph's new tomb.
I had watched the stone close the entrance.
Yet the man walking ahead of me showed none of the damage I remembered.
That unsettled me almost more than seeing him alive.
The crucified man had been ruined.
This man was not.
I began to wonder whether I had confused the dead man with somebody else.
Then I wondered whether the dead man had somehow been his brother.
Then I wondered whether I should turn around, go home, and tell everyone the goat had finally driven me mad.
But curiosity is stronger than good judgment.
I followed.
When I reached the burial area, I saw that something was wrong immediately because the tomb was open.
My stomach dropped.
This was exactly what I had feared.
Neglect.
The first morning after the Sabbath, and I had arrived late to discover an opened tomb.
Joseph would think I had slept through sunrise.
I moved faster.
Then I saw the woman.
I recognized her from the burial.
She had been among those who remained nearby. There was something memorable about her grief. Some mourners cry because grief demands it. This woman had looked as if the dead man had taken something necessary from the world when he died.
Now she was standing near the tomb.
And the man who looked like the dead man was speaking to her.
I stopped.
There was a bend in the rock nearby, and I moved behind it before either noticed me.
I am not proud of this.
A decent man announces himself.
A decent gardener certainly does not hide behind rocks listening to people talk beside somebody else's tomb.
But by then decency had lost its argument against curiosity.
The woman was crying.
The man asked her why.
Then he asked whom she was looking for.
She looked directly at him.
And I cracked a smile despite everything.
She thought he was me and asked him about the missing body.
If he had moved it, she wanted to know where.
She would take it herself.
I remember thinking that this was impossible. The body I had seen was not something this woman could simply carry away.
Then the man said her name.
Only her name.
“Mary.”
Everything changed.
Her face transformed so quickly that I felt ashamed for watching.
A moment earlier she had been a woman whose grief had exhausted her.
Now she looked as though the entire world had been returned to her.
She cried out to him.
And then she moved toward him.
There was nothing restrained about it.
She seized him.
She clung to him with the desperation of someone who had already lost him once and would not allow it to happen again.
I understood that much without knowing anything else.
Whatever this man was to her, she needed him.
Not wanted.
Needed.
I had seen widows throw themselves over bodies before burial. I had seen mothers refuse to release dead children. But this was different.
Mary was not grieving anymore.
She was protecting what had been restored to her.
The man allowed it only briefly.
Then he told her she could not keep holding him.
His reason puzzled me.
He said he had not yet ascended to his Father.
I leaned closer to the rock.
Ascended?
To his Father?
I wondered whether grief had made both of them strange.
But there was nothing confused about the man.
He spoke urgently.
Not fearfully.
Not impatiently with her.
Urgently.
There is a difference.
He spoke like somebody who had somewhere he absolutely had to be.
Then he gave Mary a message.
She was to go to his brothers.
She was to tell them that he was ascending to his Father and their Father, to his God and their God.
Mary did not want to leave.
That was obvious.
Even after releasing him, she stood there for another moment as though every part of her body objected to moving away.
Then he told her again.
Go.
And she went.
She ran.
I stepped slightly from behind the rock and watched her disappear along the path.
She ran as though the message could spoil if she carried it too slowly.
Within moments she was breathing hard.
Her clothes caught against branches.
She nearly stumbled once and kept going.
Then I looked back at the man.
He remained beside the tomb only for a short time.
He looked inside.
I could not see his face clearly anymore, but there was something in the stillness of him that made me think he had come there for this very reason.
To see it.
Perhaps I only imagined that later.
But I remembered the body being placed there.
I remembered the stone.
I remembered that terrible feeling that I was watching myself being buried.
And now the same face was standing alive before the empty place.
The man finally turned.
For one moment I thought of stepping out.
I could have called to him.
I could have asked who he was.
I could have asked what I had witnessed.
I could have told him that I had seen his body placed in that tomb with my own eyes.
Instead I remained behind the rock.
I let him walk away.
That is the part of the story of which I am least proud.
I like to think of myself as a reasonable man. A hardworking man, most days. Not courageous perhaps, but not contemptible either.
That morning did not support the flattering version.
First I had been late to my work because I was chasing a goat.
Then two frightened strangers had nearly mistaken me for someone else.
Then I had hidden behind a rock while a dead man spoke to a grieving woman.
And finally, when I had the opportunity to step forward and ask what any of it meant, I did nothing.
I watched him leave.
Only when he had disappeared did I come out.
The garden seemed ordinary again.
Birds had begun making noise in the trees.
The sun had climbed higher.
My tools were still in my hand.
And Joseph's tomb was empty.
I inspected it because that was my job.
I inspected the stone.
I looked at the ground.
I looked inside.
Then came the harder question.
What was I going to say? How to justify myself?
***
It did not take long that day before another explanation began circulating.
The dead man's disciples had come during the night.
They had stolen the body.
That was the explanation respectable people were expected to accept.
And I had a problem.
I knew two men had indeed been there early.
I had met them myself.
That part could easily be made to fit the story.
But I also knew something else.
I had seen the man whose body was supposedly stolen.
Alive.
I had heard him speak.
I had watched a woman cling to him.
I had heard him say that he was going somewhere.
If I told what I had seen, I would be standing against people far more important than a gardener.
I did not like that prospect.
But neither did I want to stand before God someday having helped confirm something I knew was false.
So I chose the safest path available to a coward.
I said I had arrived too late.
This was not entirely a lie.
I had been late.
Very late, I emphasized.
By the time I arrived, everything important had already happened.
The tomb was open.
The body was gone.
I had seen nothing useful.
That became my story.
When someone asked whether I had seen the disciples take the body, I said no.
When someone asked whether I knew who had opened the tomb, I said no.
When someone asked whether I had seen anything unusual, I found something on the ground that suddenly required my attention.
I became very skilled at knowing nothing.
There was humility in it, though not the admirable kind.
I had been given a front-row place at something enormous and responded by hiding behind a rock and then pretending I had arrived afterward.
Other men might have become witnesses.
I became just latecomer.
Sometimes I even convinced myself that this was for the best.
What business did I have standing between priests, officials, grieving disciples and rumours of resurrection?
I pruned trees.
I cleared paths.
I kept tombs tidy.
I was nobody.
The goat, stupid creature that it was, had perhaps done me a favour.
Had I arrived on time, I might have been forced into the middle of everything.
Instead I possessed the perfect explanation.
The gardener was late.
What could anyone expect him to know?
And so I remained safely outside the great machinery that had begun moving around that empty tomb.
Years have passed, and I still do not know whether I should be ashamed of that or grateful for it.
Perhaps both.
But there is one thing I have never told anyone.
It is not evidence.
It is not testimony.
It is only a hope.
Before they buried that crucified man, I had looked at his face and felt, absurdly, that I was watching myself being buried.
Three days later I saw that same face alive.
I saw myself dead.
Then I saw myself alive again.
Perhaps that resemblance meant nothing.
Most likely it meant nothing.
But as I grow older, I have begun to treasure it.
Someday other men will carry me somewhere.
Someone else will inspect the place where they put me.
Perhaps another gardener will complain about some stone or sweep leaves away from the entrance.
And perhaps that will truly be the end of everything I know.
But whenever that thought frightens me, I remember that morning.
I remember the face inside the burial cloth.
Then I remember the same face walking away under its own strength.
I do not know what God did to that man.
I do not know where he went after Mary released him.
I do not know what it means to ascend to one's Father.
I know only what my eyes saw.
The man who looked like me was dead.
Then the man who looked like me was alive.
And so I have allowed myself one small, private hope.
Perhaps when my turn comes, God will remember me too.
Perhaps death can happen to a man without being allowed to become the final truth about him.
I have never said this aloud.
After all, I am only the gardener who was late.
But I have lived a little less afraid of dying ever since.