Never Too Late
by Pamela J. Tinnin

It was forty years that I did not speak to my brother; forty years from
the day he came back into our lives. I was almost a man when he was born,
near 12 years I was. He came squalling into the world, fists clenched, his voice
already demanding his rightful share and more; from the first, the apple of
our father’s eye, the jewel of his old age. And my mother? You would have
thought he was a princeling, a child of noble blood, the way she fussed over him.
Once I told her she was going to make him into a girl, but she only laughed
and kept combing his dark curls.
     
And me? I loved him, too. Who could not? Before long he was toddling
around the village, his quick laughter like music. The boy never knew a
stranger. The old women would give him sweetmeats, the men would swoop him up and
pretend they were horses, carrying the young warrior into battle. There was
a time I would have died for him.
     
But sweet baby ways do not last. Soon the day comes when a boy must
begin to learn the ways of men. That is when it all began to sour, like wine
gone to vinegar. I myself tried to train the boy to the work of farming. He would
work for a while, always in a good humor, but if I left the field, he would
slip away. I would find him down at the river, singing and skipping stones
across the water.
     
Papa apprenticed him to the potter, but that did not last. My brother
was watching a pretty girl cross the square and forgot to keep his hands
steady on the wheel. It got unbalanced and flung clumps of wet clay across the
shop, breaking pots right and left. I would have laughed if the potter were not so
angry. It was my father’s duty to take him in hand, to set him straight…but
Papa was old and did not have the heart to punish him.
     
The day my brother turned sixteen, he shamed us all. He came to my
father and asked for his share of the inheritance…asked for his share, and
our father alive and well right there in front of him. Perhaps you do not
understand… you are not from around here. It was as if he had told our father that he
wished him dead. The servants heard every word, and the whole village knew
before the night was out… worse yet, they knew that my father humbled himself, gave
him what he asked for… all in gold coins, so that we had little or nothing
to fall back on if it ever came to that.
     
Right up to the last, I could not believe my brother would do this
terrible thing… surely he would not take what was not yet his to have… but
that was not to be. He only tied the leather pouch fat with the coins, then hid
it in his belt. My father had turned away… he did not want his youngest to see his
tears. The boy left then… never even looked back, just walked away, his feet
scuffing up the dust.
     
It came near breaking my father, what happened that day. He stood and
watched until my brother was gone from sight. The tears made muddy streaks
in the dust on my father’s cheeks, and still he watched. He watched for two
years… each afternoon he would walk slowly to the top of that little rise outside
the village and look off toward the moutains, north where my brother had
gone. Two years…
     
A traveling peddler brought stories back to us, of how a rich young Jew
had come to the city, spreading his gold around like it was nothing. He told
of how the rich boy bought wine for everyone, even thieves and robbers if
they would only drink with him. I heard how he bought women, women of the worst
kind, filthy with disease. Worst of all, the peddler said that when at last
his money was gone, when he had nothing more to sell, and the friends he had
bought with his money went their way, the boy took a job feeding pigs—a Jew feeding
pigs. Why any rabbi would tell you that he had offended heaven itself! I do
not know if my father heard these things… he kept to himself in those days,
more a shadow than a man.
     
Then it was planting time, just about this time of year. I was out in
our best wheat field, supervising the field workers. The foreman was sick
with fever, and you know you can’t leave servants to do a job by themselves. That’s
when I heard all the fuss down at the village.
     
Thinking it could have been a passing band of robbers, or a Roman
patrol come to take last year’s grain, I climbed on the donkey and kicked him down
the path towards home. That’s when I saw my father—he looked like a man
possessed, his robes held up around his thighs, he was shouting and running
up the road, his legs bare for all to see; I knew the neighbors would never quit
talking of it.
     
It was then I saw someone coming over the hill, way off in the
distance, his back against the sun, his face hidden. But my father knew him… oh, he
knew … and the joy on his face was nothing I had ever seen, before or since… “
Mahlon,” he shouted, “Mahlon, my last born, come home safe to me.”
     
I stopped then… just stood there and waited… waited while my father
gathered him up… waited while my father hugged and kissed the boy whose
robes smelled of pig leavings… waited while my father shouted for the servants.
“Bring my best robe,” he called. “Bring my ring… kill a fatted calf.”
     
The servants were chattering like a flock of black birds… the cooks
went off to the kitchens… old Damian went to find a robe and the ring with the
dark ruby held in the claws of an eagle carved in gold.
     
My father and Mahlon walked down the road, the boy trying to stumble
his way through a pretty little speech, only to be stopped by my father’s hand
on him, telling him his words weren’t necessary. They stopped in front of me… I
swear to you, I did not mean to speak, I did not mean to let the bile that
rose in my throat spill out… but I could not help myself…   My words hissed
like the venom of   a snake, “I have served you… I have never once disobeyed
you… all these years, all the work I have given you… never once have you even
offered a kid or a calf in feasting for me.”
     
My father seemed confused, an old man who had no understanding of what
he was hearing. “But son…,” he said, “This is your brother who was dead, and
is alive; he was lost and is found.”
     
At that moment, I could have let it go…I could have just forgiven and
forgotten… but I could not… I stood there looking at them, my father’s arm
around his shoulder, my brother‘s face shining like an angel himself had
touched him. And I spit… spit on the ground and walked away.
     
For forty years, we lived in the same village… we worshipped together…
seated far from each other; our children never once played with each other…
forty years, I would not speak to him… and if he came into sight, I
pretended that he was not there.
     
All these years, I’ve never doubted that I was right… never… that is,
not until the night before fall festival, the night my Marian lay on her
death bed… not once had she ever spoken to me as she did in those last hours. Her
face was flushed and hot, she kept pulling at me… I tried to quiet her, told
her to save her strength, but it was like she knew the time left to her was so
very short…
     
“Benjamin,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper. “I have been a good
wife to you… not once I have given you reason for shame, have I?” I told her
then that there would be time for foolish talk later, to be quiet, to try
and sleep… but she put her hand on my lips and told me the time for her silence
should have ended long ago.
     
“I must speak,” she said. “Forty years,   Benjamin, forty years of
hate… all for what? Because you were too blind to see that love is not like a
bushel of wheat that can only feed so many? Oh, my sweet Benjamin, ” she
said, touching my face, “The year your brother left? We were all so young… That
same year the rabbi Jesus came to the village with his followers. You have never
wanted me to speak of that time, but I have remembered his words all these
years.

He told us there is a better way than the old laws. He talked of how God
doesn’t turn people away, not even the worst of us. He said love is like a
miraculous well—the more who drink from it, the deeper the water. All these
years, I prayed that you would see the truth of what he taught… but you never did…
and your anger has devoured the joy from your days… you approach your 70th
winter, a bitter and lonely man… and I go to my death, grieving for you, and
for the life we could have had…”
     
She closed her eyes and for a time, I thought she would say no more.
Then I saw her lips move. I bent near, and heard the words, “It is not too
late, Benjamin. It is never too late.” And then with a sound like a soft sigh, she
was gone.
     
For a long time, I told myself it was just the crazy words of an old
woman. I would look across the valley, see the house of my brother… I’d
hear the music there on feast days… I saw how the villagers were always welcome
at his table… I watched him after temple, shaking hands and laughing at the
other men’s stories… I have seen him at the market, a grandson on his shoulders,
and two or three following after him.
     
Night after night, my wife came to me in my dreams with her words, “…
never too late…never too late.” Then came a morning, a morning like any
other. I got up, put on my striped cloak, took my walking stick, and stepped out
the door into the bright morning light. All the way to my brother’s house, I
tried to form the words I would say, but I could not seem to find the right ones.
When I tapped on the door with my stick, he answered it himself, stood there
looking out, blinking against the sun.
     
I started to speak, but my voice wouldn’t come, and I could not look at
him, remembering forty wasted years, remembering how year after year I had
refused to feast with him; how I had turned away in the market place; how I
had walked past him, sabbath after sabbath. In the silence all I could think of
was how I should not have come, of how he would never forgive me, and I
turned to go.
     
“Who is it,” I heard a woman call from inside. “Mahlon, who is it on
such a fine morning?”
     
I felt his hand on my shoulder then and I heard him answer. “It is
Benjamin, my brother. He was dead, and is alive; he was lost and is found.”

PASTORAL PRAYER 
Creator God, source of all that is glorious and awesome, comforting and common, 
Divine Presence in all that lives and moves upon the
earth, surround us with the assurance of your continued presence in every
aspect of our lives.
     
You call us to be your saints, people with a new name, a new life. But
we cannot dwell in your house unless we open its doors to the whole world.
We cannot find delight in doing your will unless we accept our kinship with all
your children.
     
Heal and sustain those of us and those we love who are ill or troubled.

We pray for all those who grieve for loved ones lost to death,
especially this morning we pray for the family and friends of Bobby
Ashcraft. May your presence be a comfort in the days and weeks to come.

May your love sustain and motivate us. May we learn to be patient and
kind because that is how you have dealt with us. We seek to bear all things,
believe, hope, and endure, as we mature in your service.
     And now as Jesus taught us, let us PRAY
     Our Father who art in heaven…

Copyright © 2004 by Pamela J. Tinnin. Reprinted with permission.
(Comments to Pam at PamT481@AOL.COM )