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In the days when Tiberius Caesar ruled in Rome and Pontius Pilate governed Judea, there lived a man and woman in the town of Bethsaida, a fisherman named Simon and his wife by the Sea of Galilee. Although it was a time of relative peace for the Roman empire, there were those that yearned for freedom from Roman rule, and for something yet more. In those days, mystics and miracle workers sprang up in Galilee like the morning dew, appearing as if from nowhere and disappearing in the same way. On occasion, the man and woman, like many of their neighbors, had been caught up in the promise those men brought with them, but rumors and promises were all most ever seemed to bring.
Simon’s brother Andrew did not seem to share their pessimism with regards to these would-be leaders, and he for a time followed one who was called the Baptizer. Simon had brought his family - wife, children, and mother-in-law - once to see him, and found a disheveled man who emerged from the wilderness with a garment of camel’s hair and leather, who was said to be a prophet and preached a message of repentance (and who one day would be executed by the Tetrarch Herod for that same message). Within that wild exterior was indeed something strangely appealing, especially for their children, who asked to mimic him and eat honey in place of regular meals, yet there was still something incomplete about his message, for he said that he was there to prepare the people for the one who would come after, and they were left waiting, as they had always waited, for the hope that something would change. So, they chose to ignore further tidings of such men, and even when a new teacher had the town chattering in excitement, they did not go to see him.
The woman’s husband spent his days on the sea, catching fish with his brother to sell in the market. One day, Simon did not come home, and the woman found Zebedee, an older man of the same profession as her husband in his place at the door.
“Simon and Andrew and my sons have left to follow that new teacher,” he told her.
“I do not understand,” she replied, and however she asked Zebedee, she could not make her husband’s actions make any sense, and he seemed to know no more than that the teacher had come to see his sons while the three of them had been mending their nets and had already had Simon and Andrew in tow, and when he called for them, they left, leaving Zebedee and the servants in the boats alone.
“Why are you so calm?” she asked, for he did not seem to have the rage and confusion that was bubbling inside her. Andrew would follow those sorts of men, she knew, but for all his impulsiveness and brashness, she had thought Simon too fiercely loyal to ever abandon her and their family to gallivant around the country on a whim.
“I don’t know what, but there was something about him,” was all he could answer.
For the rest of that day, she chose to disbelieve Zebedee, who was getting along in years, though he had always been whole in body and mind, but as the night grew late and her husband never appeared, she went to the shore where she found his boat empty and she grew angry and spent the following days angry. She had no words to explain to the children where their father was and no desire to meet her neighbor’s pitying glances. Instead, she readied herself to travel to Capernaum, where the teacher had been heard to have as his next goal, in order to confront her husband.
The night before she was to set off, her mother, who had been unusually weak and quiet over the past few days, began to fall ill. Her mother was confused and disoriented, with a fever and cough that she could no longer hide from the distracted daughter. The woman decided to banish her errant husband from her mind in favor of tending to her mother, but still her mother became increasingly weak, a shadow of the strong woman her mother once had been. She felt tired and overburdened, even with the help of her sister, who had come over the moment she heard about her mother’s downturn.
As the woman listened to her mother’s coughs, and watched her previously carefree children tiptoed through the house while completing their tasks in the house and escaping outside whenever possible, the woman wondered what had happened to her home and despaired. Her sister urged her to send a message to her husband and ask him to bring the teacher he followed, for he was also rumored to be a healer. Initially, she resisted, for she was angry with her husband and the teacher for taking him away and had too much pride to beg for their aid, and she knew that the teacher was likely to be no better than all the other miracle men that traipsed through the towns, but at last, her sister’s repeated pleas and her mother’s decline broke down her will.
“I’ll send out the message,” the sister promised, and in her heart the sister was relieved that the woman agreed, because she had sent the message already and did not want to subject the woman to further betrayals.
Although her mother did no better the rest of that day, the woman felt the slow grief that had been burdening her heart lighten with the promise of hope. In the morning, in the quietness of the house, she heard a knock at the door, and she opened it to find a stranger, with her husband, Andrew, and the sons of Zebedee standing behind.
“Knock and the door will be opened” said the stranger with a wry smile. When met with her stunned silence, he asked, “May I come in?”
She looked behind the stranger to her husband, who seemed anxious and embarrassed, and she could not find the anger that had been fermenting inside her any more. She let him and her husband and the other three men she knew in and led them to her mother’s room, where she slept fitfully with fever bright cheeks and damp sheets. The stranger rebuked the fever and said, “Wake up, mother,” and her mother opened her eyes and sat up, hale and hearty.
“Thank you,” said the woman to the stranger. “Let me get you something to eat and drink.”
The stranger shook his head and said that he had other places he needed to be.
She faced her husband, and for a long while, they were silent. “I’m sorry,” said her husband finally, “but I will follow him where he goes, for as long as he will let me.”
The woman looked over to her mother, who was already insisting that the stranger and the other men sit down and offering them something to eat from the kitchen, completely ignoring her sister’s pleas to take things slowly, and said, “I do not understand it, but go with him. But I cannot wait for you forever.”
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The woman waited for a long time, but indeed not forever, for when the children were grown, she accompanied and labored beside Simon, who would be called Peter, in his travels to Antioch in Asia and to Alexandria in Egypt, and even to Rome.