Now there are some who say that this was when he walked in to the courts of the Temple and drove out the money changers and threw open the cages of the animals again, or even that it was then and not the first time he entered the city. And there are some who say he was up to none of that at this time, that there was more than enough for him to do in those last days without that. He stood in the midst of the Temple, in the vast Court of the Nations, surrounded by those who had followed him, and the men in black, the powers that be, came to him and shouted, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!”
But Jesus, looking about them at the great high walls from which prayers and the blaring of trumpets reverberated, the stones, each thick and tall as a man, the pillars, the flagstones, the fountains, and he declared: “I tell you, if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out!”
Thomas said it happened as they rounded the hill and saw the city beneath them, and Matthew said it was as they left, but Magdalene and John remembered standing in the great Court of the Gentiles while Jesus openly wept, and he mounted the steps, crying out: “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! If only you had known on this day what would bring you peace! But now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will barricade you and surround you and hem you in on every side.”
Later his words would make it to the High Priest, and to his Sanhedrin, and though Annas would laugh, Caiaphas would tremble.
“They will level you to the ground—you and the children within your walls!” Jesus wept, shouting hoarsely.
“They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”
The details were confused, and some say they were confused intentionally. Some said that at last people were ready to celebrate Lazaros’s return from the dead, and some that it was the celebration of his very quick marriage to Sara. Still others said it was a party thrown by Simon, a one time leper and wealthy man who lived in town, but what is remembered is that hearts were happy. They were not light, but they were happy, and the food was good. The house was filled with the smell of hot bread and roasting meat, of leeks and onions and fine sweet dessert breads and now, behold, Marta, long out of her mourning black, was serving with Sara and her little Benjamin was bouncing in Lazaros’s arms.
They had all bathed before supper, and Jesus and John bathed in the mikvah to be ceremonially pure. Mary had gone off, and now and again some looked for her, but Jude was singing and they were all caught up in his music until even he stopped.
Now came Mary, in a very white gown, her black hair all down her back, and she bore in her hands the olive wood chest that remained in the little room of keepsakes. She walked behind Jesus who sat between Peter and John, and some were paying little attention until she knelt and opened the box and took the jar of soft, glowing alabaster and broke the seal, though some would later say she broke the bottle, and she declared, solemnly, “Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the King of Israel.”
And so saying, she poured the oil over his head, and as it dripped into his curls and over his ears and down his nose and he closed his eyes, she said again, “Hosanna. Hosanna to the Son of David.”
She turned about him and she opened the nape of his robe and anointed his chest with her hand, and then she took his hands and anointed them, and then she spilled the last of the oil over his feet, and its fragrance filled the house and Jesus sat there in his white gown, gleaming with spike nard, the sweet, sharp scent filling the silent house and Mary Magdalene bowed before him, her hands outstretched.
And then Judas broke this entire mood, calling: “Why wasn’t this perfume sold for three hundred silver coins and the money given to the poor?”
Jesus wiped his eyes, and head dripping, looked at Judas, calmly while, placing his hand on Mary’s head, he replied, “Let her alone. She had done what she could,and wherever my story is told, so shall hers be. She has kept this perfume for the day of my burial.”
Judas’s eyes went wide with…. Horror? John wondered. Anger?
Jesus declared, “You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”
What Jesus had told Magdalene was already in effect, for not much later the story would be confused and her anointing would be declared to be the same as Binah’s, and whatever Binah had been, they would both be conflated with the whore whose life Jesus had saved from stoning. Some would say that Mary had wiped Jesus’s feet with her hair, and John, who had never been wholly easy about Judas, would declare that he had always been a thief, and his anger was because he wanted the money. Already the end of the story was beginning, but as Magdalene rose from her hands and knees and blessed Jesus once again before departing this great room, the house was still filled with the scent of her anointing.
From then on, Jesus decided to live in the Temple as much as possible. He had taught by the side of lakes from boats, and he had taught on the tops of hills and in the courtyards of great houses, and now he would teach in the courts of the Temple. He had loved it even as a child, the place that his own mother had grown up in. He still remembered the year he had gradually come to accept his parents and family had returned to Nazareth without him, and he had made himself calm, and gone back to sit in the company of the teachers of the Law, learning, but often questioning and differing with them. Those had been great days, and he wished life could be like that again, that an argument would be no more than an argument, that someone would say a thing to him that would open his eyes even as he opened the eyes of others.
But now he was sure that war was in all his words, and he was here to say everything he could before it was too late, before he was silenced forever. When he looked throguh the immense courts of the Temple, he saw the flames of the sacrificial fires and thought, But now I am the sacrifice. That’s why it ends here. Because, in the end, I am the offering
The temple was so enormous, so filled with great open courtyards and roved porches, so many pools and streams, hidden pillared retreats, that one could easily settle down and make a home here. In the morning the singers chanted psalms and in the evening and the middle of the day, and the smell of roast meat drifted from way off where, like a golden and immense white and gold mountain of a block, the impenetrable Mikdash itself, the true temple around which all the courts and buildings were but ornaments and hidden within Kodesh Ha Kodashim, The Holy of Holies itself.
As Jesus walked through the Court of Israel with the disciples, they saw a blind beggar, and Simon Zelotes asked, as if the man were deaf as well, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus frowned.
“That which is broken in us, can be God’s glory. Bring him to me.”
“What?”
“You were the one who asked, Simon. Bring him to me.”
But the disciples were not the only ones who heard Jesus, and when Simon had delayed, others raced to the man, and white he shrieked, they dragged him before Jesus who declared, “I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
“Help me!” the man cried. “What the hell are you doing to me?”
“The Master’s gonna help you see,” some said, laughing. “He’s gonna do something for you, you poor wretch, sit tight.”
“Help!” the man shrieked. “Leave me alone.”
But Jesus was not listening. He spat on the ground and was making mud, and now in a sort of mad concentration, he was smearing it over the poor shrieking man’s eyes. He spat again and rubbed more mud into the man’s face and then said, “Take him to wash in the pool of Siloam! Take him now!”
And while Jesus wiped his muddy fingers on the inner hem of the red robe, he watched his some times followers and Simon and Nathanael carry off the crying man.
Meanwhile Jesus continued to preach:
“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”
But just then there was a great scream, and then a commotion, and for a moment, Jesus looked in that direction, for he knew it must have been the man, and when he looked to John, John assumed it meant the man’s sight was restored.
“Most assuredly,” Jesus began as if nothing had happened, but he momentarily lost his words, then began again, “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the sheepgate. All who ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. But a hireling sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and I know my sheep, and am known by my own. As the Father knows me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear my voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd—”
But Jesus stopped. Now, running toward them across the flagstones came Magdalene, barely able to run any faster, and she fell on her face, exhausted.
“Mary!” Jesus went to her and John and Peter surrounded them.
“They tried—they tried—”
“Mary, catch your breath,’ Peter urged her and John ran to get her water.
Peter looked blankly at the woman who had accompanied Magdalene, and several people who appeared to be servants were surrounding her.
“I am called Mariah,” one of the women said, “and this is my maidservant, Rhoda.”
The younger girl bowed.
“I do know you,” Jesus said, laying a hand on Magdalene, who was beginning to rise. “I know you both. Friends of Mary and Marta and Lazaros.”
“They have tried to kill him,” Magdalene interrupted Jesus.
“A man, mad as anything, burst into the house and went for Lazaros!”
“Lazaros is—? Nathanael began as John returned with a a skin of water.
“Lazaros is fine,” Magdalene said, and as she lifted the water skin to her mouth, blood was on the hem of her sleeve.
“The man is not,” she concluded.
“Dead,” Rhoda said.
“And at my own hand,” Magdalene said.
“We will sneak Lazaros out of his home and into mine under the cover of darkness and with a guard,” Mariah said. “We live not far from here in the heart of the city.”
“You and Marta should stay with us as well,” Rhoda said.
“We wish you would,” Mariah said.
“That remains to be seen,” Magdalene said. “But from Mariah’s house, Lazaros will be sent on to Joppa. And then out of here altogether.”
Judas sank down, collapsing and shaking his head.
“Friend,” Magdalene touched him, “but we are all alive.”
“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” he said to Magdalene.
“No matter, Juda.”
“Everything…” he shook his head. “It’s all too much.”.
All around them there had been a commotion, but none of them were paying any attention to this, and now Mark, Andrew’s young friend, ran to them, crying, “Jesus! The man you healed. The blind one!”
“Yes, lad?”
“They’ve rounded him up. The Sanhedrin! They’re grilling him and treating him something awful, and they’re about to throw him out of the Temple!”
Jesus’s eyes flew open and he shot up, pulling the blue mantle about him. In these days he was not only surrounded by disciples and followers, but by those who thought he was the most exciting thing in Jerusalem, and many raced after him through the pillared halls of the Temple.
“There he is, Master!” Peter called. “There he is.”
And when Jesus came to the man who was surrounded by a small crowd of confused and angry people, using his hand as a rudder, Jesus moved through him, and the man blinked at him.
“Sir,” he said.
“What has happened to you, friend?”
“This man is a blasphemer—” one of the priests began, and Jesus made a sharp shushing motion, and the priest went silent.
“Tell me, friend,” Jesus said, tenderly.
And whether the once blind man knew him or not, he spoke, telling Jesus all about the things that had happened this morning.
Those who previously had seen that he was blind had said, “Is not this he who sat and begged?”
And some said, ‘This is he.’ Others said, ‘He is like him.’” The man reported, “I am he.”
And then they said, “How were your eyes opened?”
He answered and said, “A man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to ]the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and I received sight.”
Then they said to him, “Where is he?” and he said he didn’t know.
And so they had dragged the man who was having the most exciting day of his life before the men of the Sanhedrin who also asked him again how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.”
“This man is not from God, because he is a lawbreaker,” they told the bind man, whose name was Nahum, and others said. “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?”
Nikanor and Mattai and many of the old heads of the Sanhedrin, surrounded by priests and doctors of the Law had said, “What do you say about him because he opened your eyes?”
And so Nahum had said, “He is a prophet,” and sent everyone into a rage. The priests and the doctors refused to believe him and while Magdalene had been running through the Temple, searching for Jesus to tell him of the attempt on Lazaros’s life, Nahum’s parents had been dragged into the courts before the Hall of Hewn Stone. They asked them, saying, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”
His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but by what means he now sees we do not know, or who opened his eyes we do not know. He is of age; ask him. He will speak for himself.”
So now, poor Nahum was on trial before all these, and they again called the man who was blind, and said to him, “Give God the glory! We know that this man is a sinner.”
Nahum answered and said, “Whether he is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.”
But they insisted on being stupid. Understanding would be too much. After all, they were still dealing with the business of Lazaros of Bethany, a once very dead man now carrying on and being now very much alive.
Then they said to Nahum again, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
He answered them, “I told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”
And they had laughed at him wildly, nearly spit on him, wanted to hit him.
“You are his disciple, but we are Moses’ disciples. We know that God spoke to Moses; as for this fellow, we do not know where he is from.”
And now these men, who had no respect for the rest of Israel, who considered the whole city of Jerusalem to be so much dumb dross, like the mob in Rome or any other city, were turned on their head as Nahum spoke.
“Why, this is a marvelous thing, that you do not know where He is from; yet He has opened my eyes! Now we know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, He hears him. Since the world began.”
Nikodemos was ashamed to be part of the Sanhedrin’s number.
Nahum, a man so often seen dirty, bent over and in the dust, stood straight as if he was a great teacher of the Law.
“It has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind. If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.”
And Nikodemos watched the hate in Nathan’s face as he stepped forward and declaimed to a man he had never known:
“You were completely born in sin, and are you teaching us?”
And they had been in the midst of casting him out when Jesus arrived, was hearing Nahum recount all that had happened to him, and now asked him, before them:
“Do you believe in the Son of God?”
At this there was hissing all around them, even spitting and sounds of “Blasphemy! This is blasphemy.”
But Nahum answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?”
And Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you.”
Then Nahum clasped his hand and kissed it, bowing as he held Jesus’s hand, and kissing it over again and over he said, “Lord, I believe!”
And while Nahum was clinging to his hand, Jesus turned to look at all around him, the disciples as well as his enemies.
“For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.”
Nathan demanded, “Are we blind also?”
Jesus said to him, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.”
And then he pulled Nahum from the midst of the crowd and joined him and the scared man and woman who must have been his parents, and placed them securely with Simon Peter while now he railed:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.”
And as he spoke, he cast off his blue mantle, and he began to tie a cord which he brandished like a whip in the direction of Nathan and Nikanor.
“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the Temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the Temple, he is obliged to perform it.’ Fools and blind!” he cried, snapping the whip back as men danced out of his way, “For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And, ‘Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.’ Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?”
A great space was made around Jesus, and the red robe hanging from his shoulders, whip hanging from his hand, he shouted as he passing through one court into the next.
“Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it. He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” he cried as he headed down the steps, followed by namy, and shouted in the great open courtyard, “for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
A great gathering of priest and scribes in flowing robes had gathered on steps and he advanced toward them. Nikanor, to his credit did not back away, though others did.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’
“Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. Serpents,” he slapped down his whip, “Brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
In the midst of the temple, Jesus threw up his hands and cried: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ”
“And then he said that his Kingdom of Heaven was like a vineyard, and that we were the workers and that vineyard, and that he was the prince, the Messiah the Son of God even, and that if we rejected him, if we killed him, then God would come and destroy us all and the Kingdom would be handed to others.”
“What does he mean by the Kingdom?”
“Does he mean Israel? Does he mean the covenant with God?”
“He has been all over Syria and all over Samaria, all over the places God has utterly rejected, preaching his word. Because no good Jew will accept him, he seeks to make the new Israel where Israel never was.”
“He seeks to invigorate the faith.”
“The faith needs no invigoration!” Nikanor almost screamed, “It needs to be followed.”
“If it needed no invigoration,” Felix began, “then why do you Pharisees add so many things to it?”
“You heard him,” another Saducee chimed in, “‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees…’”
“Whose side are you on anyway?” Nathan demanded.
“The side of reason,” Felix replied.
“Jesus’s reason will rip Israel in half.”
“We may be lucky for Israel to be ripped only in half,” Josiah noted.
“You have only to look down onto the Temple grounds and see the people noisier, more divided than ever.”
“And more hopeful,” Joseph of Arimathea said.
“What?”
“And more hopeful,” he repeated.
The whole time they spoke, from his seat in his own window, his robes pulled about him, Joseph Caiaphas watched the squabbling men and said nothing.
“What was that whole bit about the man in the wrong wedding clothes?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nathan grumbled. “And I don’t care.”
“He got you Saducees good,” Nicolas said, “When you came to him about that nonsense of the woman with seven husbands.”
“Will there truly be no marriage in heaven?” Nikodemos wondered.
“You’ll just have to get there and see, my friend.”
“I went, and I asked him, I was respectful. I said, we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”
“And he called you a hypocrite.”
“He did, indeed. He said, ‘You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.’ They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, ‘Whose image is this? And whose inscription?’
“So we replied, ‘Caesar’s.’”
“And he said,” Joseph put a finger to his temple in admiration, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
“And what in hell does that mean?” Josiah demanded.
At this, Caiaphas cleared his throat, and Caiaphas had always been the sort of man who had only to clear his throat and be heard. They all turned to him as he spoke, almost without tone.
“Is there no one, no Temple guard, who can arrest… one… man? In a bright red robe.”
“The people love him, Lord Caiaphas.”
Caiaphas raised an eyebrow.
“Many of the people love him,” Jotham corrected himself.
“Well, Pilate does not love chaos, and neither do the Herods and, what should be more important to every man in this room, neither do I.”
“Lord,” Josiah said, “I would introduce into our circle someone who... might be able to help with all of that.”
“All of that?”
“The Jesus situation.”
Caiaphas snorted and then said, “Well, if you can, then when could we meet this extraordinary man?”
“Right now,” Josiah said. “He is outside the door.”
“Well then send him in,” Caiaphas said, but Annas said, “No.”
The High Priest’s eyebrows went up at his father in law’s interruption.
“We will go out to him,” Annas said, and Caiaphas nodded, for at once he understood there were too many people in this room and too many of them were friendly to Jesus. He signaled to Josiah and Nathan and three of the priests, and climbing out of the window, Caiaphas went out of the hall with Annas.
“I want to see it end!”
“Oh, it will end,” Alexander commented.
“Be silent,” Caiaphas snapped at his sarcastic son.
“You’ve heard him,” he said. “Everything he’s said, the red gown. He has come to make a showdown, to push you into something violent. He’s going to get himself killed, and I don’t think at this point he cares if he takes all of us with him.”
“But you’ve followed him so long,” Caiaphas murmured.
“He was the bridegroom then,” Judas said, miserably. “The wedding feast had begun. The world was brighter then. Now all he talks about is the walls of the Temple being torn down stone by stone, enemies coming to burn down Jerusalem, people flying to the hills, the end of all things, destruction, destruction… And… I just want it to stop.”
As Judas flung his face down on the table and wept, Caiaphas placed a hand on his head and nodding, he said, “So do we, Friend. So do we.”
End of chapter twenty-two
