Chapter 28: Miriam, a Dinner, and Palm Fronds

               
5th Gospel--Told by Jesus' Beloved Apostle

               
A Novel by Richard Jewell

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Book II: The Rabbi
Part Five–Messiah
                                      

When he arrived in Perea, Jesus quickly gathered the envoys together and brought them back westward again to Miriam and Lazarus’ home in Bethany. Here they all waited for the Passover.

And here, one by one, he began telling them about his most recent dream. It was too important to tell them all together.

He sought out Miriam first, before he had even shaken the dust of traveling from his robes. Lazarus’ servants directed him through the front rooms to the back of the house where an open pavilion, enclosed on three sides by porches, held a large blue pool of water in its marbled walks.

Miriam was sitting beside the pool in her white gown, her red hair dressed on top of her head in Greek fashion, as if she were ready for a large dinner party. She was staring thoughtfully at a bent old olive tree scenting the air with fresh green-olive fragrance. She was singing to herself and trailing her long, slender white fingers through the pool’s cool water.

Jesus smiled happily when he saw her. He began walking more quickly toward her.

She heard his footfalls on the marble pavement. She spun her head around. “Jesus!” she exclaimed. She jumped up and ran into his arms.

He hugged her wordlessly for several minutes. His love felt complete to him as he held her like this. Holding her made him feel united with all of life on the earth, and all earthly happiness. With her he felt totally connected to the Mother.

She sighed and leaned back. “Does it take so long to see a sister married?” she asked.

He laughed. “I wish you had come.”

She frowned. “I would have if everyone wasn’t making such a fuss about my brother being raised from the dead. He needed me here.”

“It is as well that I had the envoys wait for me in Perea,” he told her. “On my way down here from Galilee, I heard rumors that the Sanhedrin has secretly sent out thieves who will silence any of us who are caught alone, including Lazarus. I had to travel by night.

She looked up at him evenly. Her blue eyes sparked. “Isn’t it time for you to take a short rest for a while, perhaps in Egypt or Damascus?”

“No.” He smiled. “There is too much work to do here. Besides, my dear one, it is almost over.”

Miriam’s smile froze on her face. “What did you say?” she asked.

He took her hand and pressed it to his cheek. “Listen. I dreamed, after I left my mother in Capernaum, that two tall shapes in white were escorting me upward through stars. We ascended into a place where the stars were so close together that everywhere there was light. We flew right into the center of a large, bright star and there I talked with God.”

He looked up and out of the pavilion, to the top of the Mount of Olives beyond. “I don’t know what God said to me,” he continued, “but I looked back over my shoulder. Behind me I saw you and my mother and many others crying because I was gone. I saw Caiaphas and the other priests relaxing because I was dead, and I saw a cross being put away after use. My blood was on that cross.”

Miriam suddenly erupted into words. “But that doesn’t mean it’s soon!” she said. “Why you might even have years to live because Caiaphas is still very young and the Romans have been using crosses to kill people for years and probably still will for years more and–”

He put his fingertip on her lips. “Hush, my beloved. I saw the time, in my dream. It was a Passover. This one.”

Her eyes flooded with tears. She tried to hold them back. “But you can’t!” she exclaimed. “Not when you’re reaching the peak of your success!”
“It will be part of my success.”

“To die?” she asked angrily.

“Miriam, Miriam, don’t even you understand? How many times have you been beside me when I have said that I will rise from my own grave?”

Her eyes gazed at him with anger and doubt. “Can you?” she asked, huskily.

“Miriam!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you see? It is the only way! I must conquer death by dying! Even if I could avoid death now, still I would have to die soon. For we are reaching the point, my love, when we will stir up so many people’s thoughts and hopes that a revolution will come.”

“Then let it!” she told him fiercely. “Haven’t man of us worked for such a thing already? Then you came along and told us there is a better way. What is better about death?”

He shook his head firmly. “We will all die that way. The Romans will simply come in and sweep us up with their legions.”

She began crying in frustration. “Is there no way to freedom?” she asked.

“Let me die now,” he said. “Let me die before a revolution may come, so that the rest of you will be safe, and I will complete my work. It is the fastest way.”

“How can you be so sure!” she exclaimed. “It’s too risky!”

He looked down at the marble pavement. Suddenly he felt a bolt of fear shoot through his whole body. His fingers trembled. He took a deep breath and concentrated on calming his body.

“I’m not sure, not absolutely.” He stared deeply into Miriam’s tear-filled blue eyes.

“Then let me die with you,” she suddenly said. Her eyes grew larger. “No. Yes. Let me go on a cross beside you.”

Jesus stared at her in surprise. “Miriam, don’t you understand? Everything has worked up to this time. Why not my reincarnation back into life, too? If it does, I will want you waiting for me here, not dead.”

She looked away. “Oh. Yes, I suppose so.” Then she exploded. “No!” she shouted. She pounded him on the chest with both her fists at the same time, over and over. “You can’t leave! she screamed.

“Miriam, my beloved wife in the spirit, I love you.” Gently he enclosed her in his arms until there was no room between them for her fists to pound. Her whole body tensed and arched. Quietly he began stroking her hair and her robed back.

“I love you,” he said again.

She began to sob, deep, racking sobs that tore upward from her chest and made her whine and shudder.

He picked her up and carried her over to a small marble bench on the edge of the pavilion where he sat, holding and cradling her. She sobbed against his chest for very many long minutes while he rocked her.

Sometime later, an old, white-haired servant appeared. He had been with Lazarus and Miriam’s family many years. When he saw Jesus still rocking her, he coughed politely.

Jesus looked up.

“The Master awaits you at table,” the servant announced. “I have a bowl of water for your hands and feet whenever you are ready.” He bowed politely and left.

Miriam looked up at Jesus from his chest. She was pale and drawn. Her red hair was straggling down, here and there, in wet strings that were pasted to her cheeks and temples. she took several deep breaths. “Go to dinner,” she finally said.

“I won’t leave you here alone,” he answered.

“No, Jesus, I’m fine, now.” She lifted one of her arms and laid her hand around his neck.

“Do you understand, now,” he asked, “that I am going to–”

“Ssh!” She shook her head violently. “I understand it all. I accept it.”

He nodded.

“I just need more time,” she told him. “Go ahead. Everyone is waiting for you. You are the guest of honor. Do not disappoint them. I will be all right.”

Slowly they disentangled. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek; then she walked into the house before him and disappeared down the hall to her room. Jesus went in to the meal.

When he entered the dining room, everyone rose.

Lazarus touched his own forehead in solemn greeting and kneeled before Jesus where the younger man stood. “Master and friend,” Lazarus said, “I have eagerly awaited your return to my house. I owe you everything.”

Jesus looked around the large, sunny dining room at all his envoys and friends gathered there. All were watching him. Everyone was serious, some with a humble bend of their head and some with fierce pride.

Jesus lifted his arm in greeting. “It is good that we are together again,” he said. A ripple of pleasure and happiness ran up his spine. “This may be the last time we meet together in strength before I must die.”

Several people frowned. He had not spoken to any of them, yet, about his latest dream. A ripple of discomfort spread through the guests. They had not expected this would be another occasion for him to predict his death. He had been doing so for a year.

“Let us talk of dying later,” Jesus said. He smiled. “The food awaits us. We will eat, and afterwards sing and plan for the Passover in Jerusalem.”

He bent down to where Lazarus knelt before him and lifted him by the hand. “Come, my friend,” he told the older man. “It is I who owe you. Without you, no one would know even now that so much is possible if a person will just try. Everyone here can learn to do what I did for you, you included.”

Lazarus rose and hugged Jesus formally. Then everyone reclined at the table.

Martha, Lazarus and Miriam’s sister, served the meal as was her privilege as the older of the two sisters. She directed servants, who carried the large silver platters of roasted lamb and quail, and baked fish with large bowls of steaming spring vegetable, to the great cedar table. Wines, sour and sweet, from Judea, Galilee, and Tyre were offered around. Everyone was just starting the first course when Miriam suddenly walked in.

Those who saw her first looked at her in surprise. This was a meal at which, in the most traditional way, no women were present. The women were to eat later. Yet it was not just her presence that made people turn their heads and look at her again. Her face was pale and drawn. It wore on it, mask-like, a cold and ivory dignity as if a great queen of some foreign country had died in her sleep and then been brought back to life for one day more.

She was carrying a vase of finest translucent alabaster inlaid with jade. The vase was open. From it arose the rich fragrance of costly Himalayan nard.

Jesus felt the center of his chest expand and overflow with love and sadness for her as he watched her approach him. Only he of all those in the room, he knew, realized what she was going through.

Miriam slowly walked to where he reclined. Then she tipped the vase so that the liquid nard began slowly pouring into her hand. She spread the ointment well on Jesus’ feet. Then she reached up to her head and released the tresses of her long red hair so that they cascaded down. She wiped his feet with her hair.

Several of the envoys felt tears stinging their eyes as they watched. They did not know why, for both Jesus and Miriam were dry-eyed as they looked into each other’s faces.

Other people, though, were disturbed. It was awkward that such a highly personal and physical show of affection should be happening here in the midst of so many men. and then there was the Himalayan nard. It was rather expensive, and Miriam just kept pouring it into her hands and rubbing it onto his feet as if it were water.

Finally one of the envoys, Judas, could stand it no longer. He jumped off of his velvet-covered couch. “A year in the fields!” he shouted. “Jesus, would you have this woman pour a workingman’s wages for one whole year on your feet!”

Jesus raised his head and looked at Judas evenly. “You would do well to be more like her, Judas Ischariot. I see you have on a fine white linen robe embroidered with gold thread. I see you are carrying a fine new money pouch with silver medallions and a lining of red silk, as you have so proudly shown us. Where does the money for buying these things come from? You yourself are a poor man.”

Judas flushed a deep red. “It is improper for her to act this way!” he told Jesus.

Jesus slowly shook his head. “Do you so easily confuse devotion with sex, Judas? Can you not see a man and woman touch without thinking of lust? I tell you, she anoints me for my burial. Is this not so, Miriam?” He lifted her chin.

“Yes, Lord,” she answered huskily, “it is so.”

Jesus looked around him at the shocked faces.

“Yes,” he told them, “my burial! Does that sound so strange? I have been telling you to expect it for over a year, now! Would you have me not die? How else can I conquer death and reincarnate from the grave if I don’t die first?”

“Why, Master,” asked Peter lying nearby, stroking his uneven beard, “is it necessary for you personally to die? Have you not already healed Lazarus, here, and proved death false in that way?”

Jesus shook his head. “When a man is drowning,” he said, “it is easy for another to rescue him. But how much harder it is for the almost drowned man to rescue himself! How can he save himself when the very water he needs to escape has already captured him? Likewise, death is much more difficult to heal when we are in the midst of it, than when we stand outside, looking upon it. I must conquer it within myself, so that others may do so, too.”

Peter stroked his beard viciously. Suddenly he held his hand out. “But Master,” he said, “surely you can do more good by being here with us, alive, than by dying!”

“No!” Jesus exclaimed. He shook his head sadly. “Peter, you are not even thinking. It is not as if I am leaving you. I will return from death. How many times must I say this? It means that in several days I will be back among you, working with you and showing you how to do these things.”

Jesus kissed Miriam on the forehead as she kneeled, now waiting, before him. “Go now,” he told her. “We will talk again later.”

He turned back to Peter and the others. “Even if I did fail,” he told them, “or even if I succeeded but had to leave you, it still would be worth it! Don’t you see? We are like walkers on Mount Hermon in the winter. The snow is deep, but wherever one of us walks, he leaves behind a trench through the snow where others may follow more easily.

“Even if I don’t succeed completely, still my meditations in the midst of death will make it easier for others, who may someday follow me. this earth is our birthplace, our home for the joys and loves of physical life. Should not this physical, earthly life be part of our spiritual inheritance, just as the spirit realms beyond earth already are? We may live with the Father eternally. But the Mother and her body of stars, oceans, and earth is given to us only for a short period each time we are born. Yet we will have her, too, eternally. All we need to do is conquer death!”

Jesus looked at the food spread out before him. He reached out and plucked a leg of roast lamb form its gleaming platter and began slowly and thoughtfully eating it. As he chewed, he meditated upon each tense part of his body, relaxing it. He carefully avoided looking up. He hoped they all could finish eating before he told them anything more.

Gradually he heard the sounds of dining steadily increase around him. Later, some of the others began talking quietly to each other.

Jesus relaxed even more. He glanced up, and immediately his eyes locked with Judas, who was staring unhappily at him.

Judas looked away quickly.

Jesus sighed. He wondered how much a large and willful group of friends such as his had ever managed to stay together three years, let alone continue to believe in the same things. that, to him, was one of the greatest surprises of his three years of teaching. Even the Sanhedrin, and the Roman government, had severe disagreements and divisions within themselves.

Jesus turned to Peter. “Did I tell you about Philoas’ aunt from Ephesus?” Jesus asked.

Peter brightened. “No. No, as a matter of fact.”

Jesus describe what had happened, to Peter’s laughter and his instant concern for the woman.

later, after the dinner was long over, Jesus began to take each of his envoys aside to describe his latest dream. Many of them, he sensed, still doubted the outcome of his death. He didn’t blame them. He felt a small, gnawing doubt himself.

The next day they all left Lazarus’ house together, to attend the Passover Feast in Jerusalem.

On this Passover, Jesus had awakened from four hours of restful sleep, and another two of deep mediation, feeling completely whole. His mind was alert, his senses keen, and his body feeling to him like it was bubbling with anticipation and energy.

As he and the envoys and other friends walked along the road to Jerusalem, he joked with them. Some of the large company sang. They stopped opposite Bethphage, a small village, to rest and drink cool water from a deep, rock-lined well.

“Go into town here, Peter, and you, Andrew, and get me a donkey.” He told them where they could find it.

“But why, Master?” Peter asked. “Won’t a donkey slow us down?”

“Yes, my Rock.” Jesus smiled. “But I will ride the donkey. The ancient prophets said I must. As is written of old, today is the Day of the Messiah.”

Peter and Andrew looked at him strangely, then went and did as he had said. They wondered how this could be his Day when no one except a few friends were even around to see him enter the city. When they returned, Jesus mounted the donkey, and they all started off again. But as they went, strange things began to happen. A few people along the way recognized Jesus.

“Look!” they cried. “It is he!” They ran up and asked, “Master, is it really you?”

Jesus laughed. “I am here,” he said. “I have come for our Passover.”

“Where do you go now?” they asked, looking down the road. “Are there men who are dead, like Lazarus was, whom you will cure?”

Jesus nodded. “Perhaps. And there are many others who need me in the city, for I go there to heal and talk about the Way.”

These people left, their dusty robes flapping rapidly around their feet, as they ran ahead up the slope of the Mount of Olives to tell others Jesus was coming.

Soon other heads appeared over the edge of the hilly pass before Jesus and his company. Women, children in their mothers’ arms and playing tag around them, and a few men began appearing along the hard-beaten road, cheering and waving to Jesus. “It is Lazarus’ priest, the one who raised Lazarus!” some cried. “it is the reincarnation of John the Baptist! He is returning to cleanse us of our sins!” an old man shouted, waving his fists victoriously in the air and doing a little dance in the long grass beside the road.

Among the people on the road was Sarah who, as a girl, long ago had been among the first to hold Jesus as a baby, and who saw the light shining from his infant body and from the night sky all around. She was now an older woman Mary’s age. She operated her own inn along this road. When she heard the noise, she ran out to see what was happening.

She recognized Jesus instantly. She had kept track of him ever since his return to Israel, waiting for him to proclaim the Perfect Kingdom and take on his kingship.

Jesus suddenly turned around on the donkey’s back and, from the distance, looked straight into her eyes.

Sarah felt pinned by joy. Her whole body relaxed in a rushing feeling of love and protection, so much so that tears sprang to her eyes.

“It is my Day, Sarah!” he called to her as he passed by. “All that you have waited for will begin to come true on this day.” He smiled a kingly smile down upon her. It was a smile full of dignity, love and strength.

Overwhelmed that he knew her, let alone that he should talk to her in this way, she sat down suddenly on the grassy edge of the road.

“come with us!” called some of those following behind him.

she rose and called back. “Yes, but I must close my inn, first!”

As she hurried into the procession, other people far ahead already were passing along the words Jesus had spoken to her. “It is his Day! He is the Messiah!” they shouted. “The King!” others shouted back. “The High King of Israel is coming to take his rightful throne!” “Praise the King!” many called. “Hosanna! Praise the Messiah who comes in the name of God!”

A great crowd of onlookers and feasters at the Passover in Jerusalem came out of the city, shouting these same words and spreading their garments under the feet of Jesus’ donkey. Others laid down fronds of tree branches in Jesus’ path, and he rode, laughing and smiling, through the closely pressing crowds. If he had not looked so powerful and dignified in spite of his laughter, the crowds would have crushed him out of love. As it was, many people kneeled at the donkey’s shoulders as it slowly passed, and others reached out to touch Jesus’ garments. A high-pitched hum filled the air as if the trees and rocks themselves were singing. Jesus loved all the people, touching as many of them as he could and calling out the names of those whom he knew or recognized.

By the time he rode his donkey through the stone archway of the city’s southern gate, thousands were following him or running ahead of him, shouting and announcing his coming. Thousands more converged on the street up which he was leading his donkey. Women pushed baskets of hot baked bread into the arms of the envoys immediately behind him. Young girls showered him with spring flowers in glorious reds and yellows. One girl, just about to enter womanhood and with blonde hair and a Roman cast to her face, boldly walked beside him and twined a large blue flower in his hair above his ear. No sooner had she done this than an older Roman woman in fine white robes and emerald jewels pulled the girl quickly out of the crowd and began scolding her.

Jesus finally paused in the midst of the lower city, the old part of Jerusalem, which stretched south of the Temple. There were tears in his eyes, for as he had ridden into the city, he suddenly had a vision of its downfall in the far future. As he now looked about him, the bustle and exciting chaos of the lower city began restoring him to the present.

The lower city was the home of Jerusalem’s poorer merchants, of her old people who have no sons to support them, and of the lesser officials of the Jewish government’s workers. Just below it, on the slopes of the valley to the west and south of it, lived the city’s poor in ramshackle tents and arcades that constantly stank from the sewage lying in the haphazard streets. It was in the streets of these low parts of Jerusalem where Jesus had spent his joyous Passover going from house to house and sharing people’s feasts. He felt at home here, as he had in the marketplaces of India and Persia.

As he paused, thousands of women, children, and men in rags, or carefully repaired robes on their way to becoming rags, suddenly poured down on him. They streamed out of the narrow side streets and the cluttered alleyways between small, high apartments and small houses, and they gathered on the flat roofs. Several Pharisee priests, curious and worried by the huge crowd, also found room wherever they could, careful not to annoy the excited people around them.

The sun glowed hazy-yellow through the dust everyone was kicking into the air as Jesus dismounted. He stood on a pile of grain sacks.

As he stood up, he raised both his arms high. He had to wait several minutes before the festive noisiness and excitement quieted. When everyone’s attention was pinned expectantly on him, he began to speak.

“It is good to be with you again,” he said.

The people in the crowd who knew him from other times of healing and teaching cheered.

A warm current of pleasure was running through his whole body. he felt he could say nothing wrong. “Every one of you sons and daughters of Israel,” he told them, “is a son or daughter of Israel’s God, too!”

This time everyone cheered. These people resented the strict Laws of the Pharisees and the superior attitude of the rich Sadducees. Jesus was speaking to their hearts.

He smiled. “I see a few Romans and Greeks in the crowd. To you I say, we Hebrews are generous. It is Passover time. This week, Israel’s God loves you, too.”

People throughout the crowd laughed and smiled and yelled their approval. The foreigners present looked around self-consciously, but as people began to nod and slap them on the back, they, too, began to smile.

Jesus held out his arms.

“Just a minute!” called a tall, gangly priest. He looked like a vulture in his dark robes. Suddenly the whole square of thousands of people fell silent.

The priest stubbornly continued. “Are you the one they call Jesus?” he asked, “the one who thinks he is a messiah?”

“I am,” Jesus answered. He smiled down at the priest. “What is that to you?”

The crowd murmured unhappily.

“I’ll tell you what it is to us!” another priest shouted. He came waking and pushing his way up to the first priest, bullying his way through the crowd with his large body. “It means you must leave the city!” he shouted. “We have orders to keep you out if you dare set a foot within our gates!”

The crowd rumbled angrily.

“No,” Jesus said. “I am here to teach. It is you who must go.”

They looked at him in astonishment.

He focused all his energy and power on a point directly in front of their chests. As he kept on concentrating in this way, he suddenly shouted at them. “Begone, you vipers!” He shooed them away with his hands.

They stood rooted in shock. The thinner priest swayed. Then suddenly both of them turned and ran away as fast as the crowd would part for them.

People looked on in silence and surprise at Jesus. It was one thing to dislike Pharisee priests. It was entirely another to chase them away. There was no telling what the priests might do in return.

Before the thousands of people below him could begin to speak or move, Jesus spoke loudly and clearly to all of them. “Long ago,” he said, “our famous prophet Daniel had the great honor of fighting a foreign god. This god was a large dragon whom the foreigners worshipped every week. Daniel tried to kill it by feeding it a great mass of pitch, fat, and hair. The mixture plugged up the dragon’s insides, and his mighty belly puffed up to the bursting point with air he could not expel. Do you know what happened to the dragon next?”

Many people’s eyes were lighting. Daniel was a favorite hero among Israel’s poor.

A roughly bearded man in shepherd’s robes, in Jerusalem for the Passover Feast, spoke out. “The dragon died!” he called out.

“No,” Jesus said. “You are wrong.” He smiled. “The dragon,” he said, “turned into a Pharisee priest.”

At first there was shocked silence. Then people here and there began laughing. Soon the whole crowd of people filling the intersection and the streets and roofs around were laughing uproariously.

“Tell us more!” yelled a wide-hipped woman.

“A story, a story!” others shouted.

Jesus raised his hands once again. Everyone grew quiet. Motes of dust danced in the sunlight. A band of swallows, just recently returned to Israel for the warm months, swooped gracefully through the air.

“Once in a faraway land,” Jesus began, “where all the people drink tea and eat magical spices every day, a great king was about to be married.”

Many in the crowd nodded and murmured to each other. “He speaks of the Far Yellow-People lands” some said. Others told their neighbors, “It is India. I’ve heard he has been there.”

“This great king,” Jesus continued, “was marrying the most beautiful princess in the land. Her eyes were like almonds, her skin like the softest down on a newborn lamb, and she was so beautiful to behold that even the Doctors of the Laws and the Magi of that land trembled inwardly when they met her in the palace halls.”

The crowd buzzed its approval, and many grinned as they thought of some old Pharisee, shaking like a leaf before the beauty of a frail girl.

Jesus swept his hand through the air. The barn swallows dived toward him, then swerved away.

“Everyone important in the whole rich and powerful palaces of the nation was invited to the wedding! A great feast was prepared! Dozens of large yearling calves were spitted whole and roasted over fires the whole day long. Hundreds of game hens and delicate river fish were buried in coals and broiled until their flesh melted in the tasters’ mouths. Large, cool jars of the finest wines were set at each end of every finely-set table.”

Jesus leaned forward. “When the appointed hour for the feasting came, not one great prince or rich man or minister of state appeared!”

The mouths of many in the crowd dropped open. How could anyone, even rich princes, refuse such a feast?

“The king grew furious,” Jesus said. “He yelled at his servants. ‘Call out my soldiers and go imprison all those whom I invited! Put their jewel-covered wives and fat children out in the streets,’ he commanded, ‘for they are all a lazy, self-satisfied lot!’

“Then,” said Jesus, “the king commanded his servants to go out in the busy lanes and alleyways of his great capital city and invite any people they might meet there to come and eat his wonderful wedding feast with him.”

Jesus spread his hands. “Soon hundreds and even thousands of people form the streets were jamming the good king’s hallways and gathering at the splendidly set tables loaded with the wonderful foods! Everyone ate all that day and late into the night until hardly a man or woman could walk away from the tables. Many slept in their places while the king’s musicians serenaded them all night.

“After the great wedding feast was over, the next day as people awoke and began to leave, the king took each of his guests aside. Then, after questioning them a few minutes, he gave many of them the jobs that formerly the rich men and ministers and princes of state had held. All the lands thereabout became rich after that because of the wisdom of those who held their new posts, and the nation became known as the place where milk and honey flowed.”

Jesus smiled and let his arms drop to his sides. The crowd shifted happily and a collective sigh of pleasure spread through the streets. Men and women looked at each other and nodded knowingly. The story obviously was a fantasy, but one that many of them hoped would come true someday. They hated those who oppressed them, and considered most of those in positions of power and wealth to be fools.

“It is a parable,” Jesus said quietly. He looked around the street intersection, catchng as many people’s eyes as he could. He stretched out his arms. “You are the wedding guests from the streets,” he said, “and the wedding feast has already begun.”

“Who is the king?” a sharp-witted merchant asked. Everyone looked at Jesus to hear his answer. The silence spreading suddenly throughout the streets and rooftops was so thick that not even the swallows would fly through it.

“I am,” Jesus said. “I am the king. And my princess is God.”

Thousands of voices broke out in whispers and urgent questions at once. Were they listening to a madman, some wanted to know? How could a man marry God?

Jesus leaned forward and called for silence. “Listen, for I say to you, have you not heard of our Eloah, our Sheckinah, as spoken of by the men of old? Have you not heard of the female part of God, who awaits all of us in the secret places of life? It is she who I am marrying, she whom I will take to bed and thereby found a new kingdom!”

The intersection and streets became a howl of confused noise as people questioned and answered each other loudly.

“Where is your princess?” a grizzled old farmer asked with a gruff yell.

Once more the crowd quieted. They could barely contain themselves, waiting for Jesus’ answer.

“I will meet her in the air,” Jesus answered, “and in the earth. For my wedding bed is the grave. You are my new kingdom that I am founding; you may follow after me. For soon I will be killed, and in three days I will rise from the dead. Then shall the new kingdom begin!”

The crowd roared apart. “Rise from the dead!” many yelled. Large and small groups split off in every direction, shouting and calling to each other about what they had heard. Hundreds headed toward the temple and hundreds more to other parts of the city to tell their friends and relations and neighbors what they had just heard. The man who some said was the Messiah had told them all that he would rise from the grave!

“He did it for Lazarus!” were the words on many people’s lips. Others kept telling, over and ovr to small crowds around them, about the time they saw Jesus heal a cripple or cast out a demon. Everyone still in the street intersection kept glancing at hm as if they expected him to leap off the grain bags he was standing on and fly.

“I will return tomorrow to teach in the Temple!” Jesus called out. “Come there if you wish to hear more. But those of you who are hurt or need immediate help, come to me now. I will heal as many of you as I can!”

As his envoys and other close followers gathered about him, Jesus watched crippled beggars and poor men and women who were sick approach him in ones and twos from every direction. They came hesitantly, as if they were afraid he might hurt them.

“Come,” he said, smiling gently. “All it takes is a small touch, and your faith in me.”

Grimly he glanced at his brother James and several of the other envoys. They gazed back, their jaws set. James nodded once, then winked in spite of his hard look.

Jesus turned away thankfully. He knew, as they did, that by his words he had fully committed himself to his own death, and now, unless they actually ran from Jerusalem and Judea as hard as they could, very little could keep him from dying at the hands of the authorities. Inwardly he shrugged. He had spoken from the greater source within him, for as he had become caught up in giving the crowds a story, his whole being had become attuned to his deepest self, and the deepest self of everyone and everything around him. He realized that in some ways he had been a spectator just as much as everyone else, for he had no more known the exact time of his death and his recovery from death than had the crowds. His prediction of it was news to him, too.

He shook his head, trying to clear it and feel a little bit more normal, as he wrapped his hand around the punctured arm of one old man before him. They both sat down on the grain sacks by Jesus’ legs. The man’s wound was putrid and decaying, and he looked at Jesus miserably as the younger man shook his head.

“I’m sorry, young master,” he wheezed, “if my wound disgusts you. I will go elsewhere.”

“No,” Jesus told him. “It is not your wound, but my own uneasiness at what I have said today.”

The old man looked carefully at Jesus as the latter bent over the swollen, decaying arm. “Don’t want to die, do you, son?”

Jesus met the man’s glance. “No, grandfather, I don’t.”

The old man stared into Jesus’ eyes. “Don’t worry,” he told Jesus. “I was listening carefully to everything you were saying. I’d rather be in your position than mine.” He looked slowly around the emptying streets and at the low-roofed houses. “Maybe you really will come back. I can’t do that.”

Jesus smiled gratefully with his eyes. “You wait,” he told the old man. “We’ll meet again beyond here. When I am done with my work here on earth, I will show you the other realms.”

The old man chuckled and spat into the dirt of the street. Dust spattered up. “Just show me a few months free of pain in that arm, young master. That’s enough for me.”

Jesus nodded. He concentrated on the arm, and soon the old man was slowly walking away, flexing and swinging it. It was good again.

Jesus and the envoys healed hundreds of people there in the narrow streets as clouds rolled over and shaded them, chilling their bare arms and feet. Gradually the sun, high above the clouds and falling toward the upper city to their west, dipped toward the high city walls. When it went down, they gathered their medicines and herbs together and tiredly headed back toward Lazarus’ home in Bethany for supper and evening meditations.

No one threw palm branches before them as they went up the Mount of Olives to Bethany in the cool darkness. The king had had his Day, announcing his kingdom and then healing. He was now just another ordinary subject once more, dirty and tired as he turned his sandaled feet toward a normal mortal’s supper.

The next morning, Monday, he decided it would be time to start challenging the Temple priests once again. This Passover Feast, he knew, would be the last time he could challenge them, for they would put up with him no more.

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Most recent revision of text: 1 Oct. 2020.