Take This Cup (38 page)

“I’ll tell you the whole truth, Nehemiah,” Timothy confided. “I know your father is a herdsman and all . . . no offense. But working here in the stock pens, I’ve grown to hate sheep.”

Obed and Jesse agreed. “Me too.”

Red confirmed, “And I hate everything that is inside a sheep.”

“A torch for me, any day,” said Timothy.

“And a loaf of bread,” agreed Red.

“Me too,” said the brothers, again in unison.

Red sprang the news. “But here’s good news: Nehemiah’s family is looking for apprentices. Weavers. Wool . . . not sheep, boys!”

Jesse’s eyes widened. “How many apprentices? One? Two?”

“Four,” I replied.

Red answered for all. “As much as we may hate sheep, I don’t have anything against wool. Such as it is, off the sheep.”

I clapped them on their backs. “It’s settled, then. But my mother won’t let you into the house if you don’t wash.”

They washed in a public fountain.

As we headed toward home, Timothy asked, “So, did you meet Jesus?”

“Yes. He even spoke to me,” I told them. “And he’s coming to Jerusalem.”

Timothy twisted his mouth and jerked his thumb toward the Street of the Butchers. “See that carcass? That’s what the rulers have planned for Jesus and his disciples if they enter Jerusalem at Passover.”

Red concurred, “I heard the high priest’s servant talking about it. They’ll kill him. One way or another. They want him dead and gone.”

The brothers piped, “Lazarus . . . dead too.”

“Yes, Lazarus. Almost Lazarus as much as Jesus.”

Red said, “The Sadducees don’t believe in the afterlife. Lazarus turned their cart of steamy religious guts right over! They don’t like hearing there’s a heaven and a hell.”

Timothy stopped as a squad of Roman soldiers marched by. “Especially not hell, I bet. Well, Romans—there’s the proof it isn’t getting better. Proof Jesus ought to keep his head down. The whole city is buzzing with rumors.”

Jesus was all the talk of the city, it seemed.

A
s we walked through the crowds, I listened to the litany of the boys who had died and those who had lived by the miracle of Master Lazarus’s kindness and that of his sister Mary and her servant, Tavita. The story of every painful swallow, hacking cough, and delirious nightmare was retold to me by my Sparrow brothers.

Once again I heard about the slow, horrible death of Lazarus as they had seen it.

The tears of his sisters.

Mourning for the passing of a good man.

Jesus coming too late.

Lazarus’s rotting, putrid body in the tomb!

The voice of Jesus commanding death to retreat!

The stone rolled back and a smell far worse than bad meat left in the gut wagons of Butcher Street!

The presence of death seemed so close in my friends’ eyewitness accounts that I could see it all. We passed the path that led to the Sparrows’ cavern, but I hardly registered where I was.

Then we halted at the turning. Red paused in his narrative and glanced up at the sky. The report of Jesus commanding the shroud-wrapped body out of the tomb was only half told.

All four of my companions made puzzled-boy faces at one another. Suddenly a great noise like a flock of geese rose up from the east from outside the city walls.

“What’s that?”

“Huh?”

“People. Lots of them.”

“Listen! Cheering?”

I peered at the bright morning sky. An enormous flock of
birds darkened the sun as they flew toward the Mount of Olives. Gasping, I remembered the mulberry tree at the inn. I heard again in my mind the promise of Jesus as the birds had erupted suddenly from the tree.
“You will know when I am coming.”

At that instant two hundred Sparrow boys of the stone quarry gave a shout in unison. They tore up the paths, emerging from their dark poverty. “He is coming! Jesus is coming!”

Rags and blankets fluttered like flags in their grimy hands. They pushed and swarmed around us. I was caught up in the rush through the lanes.

“Come on! Hurry!”

“He’s coming now!”

“Riding on a donkey!”

I did not question the truth that Jesus was approaching. We banged on doors and sounded the news.

Striving to outdo each other, we hammered on each portal, shouting the tidings, “Come and see! He is coming! Jesus is coming!” then raced to the next.

Colorful robes and blankets were snatched from the parapets of balconies to be waved in welcome as the common folk of Jerusalem joined in the rush to honor him.

This was the first day of the week. No work had been done on the Sabbath. No laundry had been washed. No shops had been open. No merchandise had been bought or sold. No fires were lit; no food purchased, until today. So the whole city was jammed with everyone making good all the things they had failed to do before the Sabbath rest and overflowing with pilgrims who had come for the Passover, now only days away. The city was ababble with voices speaking every tongue imaginable, shouting, laughing, singing, as if a competition had been decreed!

And into this glorious, riotous tumult, Jesus arrived!

The cry of “He is here” resounded from the city walls like the crashing of giant waves. Concentric circles of joy splashed every street and penetrated every shadow. Storefronts and houses were left unlocked and empty. We poured through the lanes and surged past startled Roman soldiers and growling Herodian guards.

Red and Timothy locked arms to keep from being trampled. “Stay close!”

Jesse and Obed linked to me. “Careful—stay on your feet!”

“Stay on your feet! Don’t wanta get crushed!”

We burst into the light outside the walls.

“Blessed is he . . . ,” shouted the crowds across the valley to the east.

“ . . . who comes in the name of the Lord!” we bellowed back.

“Son of . . .”

“David!”

“Hosanna to the King!”

“Hosanna in the highest!”

Now the human flood was a river rushing on the road to meet the King.
Had it been like this when King David had danced for joy before the holy ark as it entered Jerusalem?
I wondered. Rabbi Kagba had taught me that when the ark containing the
Torah
, the very Word of Almighty God, arrived in Jerusalem, there was a mighty celebration.

Had it been like this on that occasion? Or was this greater still?

Palm branches stripped from trees were raised to welcome the Son of David.

All the poor of Jerusalem had light on their faces that day. It was well past sunrise, but it seemed that, all around me, every countenance shone with the blaze of dawn.

Here and there a Levite priest scowled or a scribe ducked into a doorway and slammed it forcefully to show his disapproval.

But not the people of the Land.

“He is . . .”

“ . . . on the Mount of Olives!”

The faces of Pharisees displayed shocked anger and, I thought, fear of what was coming.

Who could resist such a force as Jesus?

We were carried down the road in the flood.

Just outside the eastern wall two tides met—heaping torrents of cheering, shouting people. The noise and the spectacle rivaled any ocean breakers I had seen at Joppa’s shore. We who flowed out of the Holy City crashed into the current arriving from the Bethany road.

Red and Jesse snapped up palm fronds and waved them furiously. Red handed me one, and I shook it as if to make it seen back in Amadiya. “Look! There!”

“The Lord our Banner!” men shouted.

Down came the shirts and the tunics plucked from the wash lines. They fluttered to the ground with the colors of a thousand autumn leaves. They and a myriad of cloaks were spread on the ground before Jesus as the little donkey climbed the road to the Eastern Gate.

“Look! He comes!”

“Hosanna in the highest!”

“Hosanna to Jesus our King!”

As they came closer, we five scrambled up the embankment onto a boulder. From this vantage point I recognized Lazarus and the twelve disciples. Their faces beamed with pride and delight. And behind them was the old shepherd, Zadok, with Peniel,
Avel, Emet, and Ha-or Tov! Jesus’ mother was surrounded by women who sang the song of David:

“Give praise to the LORD, proclaim his name;

make known among the nations what he has done.

Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.”
¹

I waved my palm branch and shouted and laughed as he approached.

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

The silver chalice left beneath my pillow came to mind as the crush of humanity parted for him. I could not turn back to fetch it! Oh, why had I not carried it with me as I had done every other day?

“I know those boys in the procession,” I shouted to the Sparrows over the tumult. “Look there—it’s Peniel! And Emet, with the little bird riding on his shoulder. And that one there is Avel . . . and Ha-or Tov, with the red hair! Their father is old Zadok!”

“Praise to the Lord!”

The song of the women was joined by the multitude. I roared the lyrics off-key, but it didn’t matter. Every phrase was broken by gales of laughter as we sang.

“He remembers his covenant forever,

the promise he made, for a thousand generations,

the covenant he made with Abraham,

the oath he swore to Isaac.

He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree,

to Israel as an everlasting covenant.”
²

As the procession neared us, Jesus spotted me on the rock. He locked me in his gaze for a long moment. His eyes were filled with sadness.

How could he be sad at such a moment? The sight shook something deep within me. Was it because I had not brought Joseph’s chalice to him?

I cupped my hands around my mouth and called, “I have your
Kiddush
cup, Lord! Don’t worry. It’s ready for you, all polished up! I’ll bring it!”

I thought Jesus heard me. Was that a nod of acceptance? He turned his face to the walls and yawning gate. Then the moment was past.

The crowd closed on the road behind him, and Red jumped from the boulder.

Timothy studied me with new respect. “Hey, Nehemiah, I think he was looking at you. I mean, he seemed like he was staring right at you.”

My smile faded at the haunting impression of sorrow. I answered quietly, “Yes. I think so too.”

“Hurry up! Come on, boys. He’s going into the city!” The flood of humanity swept toward the gates.

I locked arms with the Sparrows. We shouldered our palm branches like soldiers marching to war and followed the triumphal procession through the Eastern Gate and into Jerusalem.

“Who is he?” someone asked.

“It’s Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee,” came the reply.

A litany of miracles followed.

“He fed five thousand with a few loaves of bread!”

“Free bread?”

“I was there in the field! Best bread I ever tasted.”

“It was like Moses and the manna!”

“He turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana. Such wine—like nothing you ever drank!”

“We’ll never be hungry or thirsty again with such a man as our King.”

“I was deaf, but now I can hear!”

“I was blind, but Jesus gave me sight!”

“He brought a dead girl back to life in Capernaum. I know her mother, and the story’s true!”

“Whoever heard of such a thing?”

“And surely you’ve heard of Lazarus?”

“He healed a paralyzed man who begged beside the well of my city for years.”

“I’ve seen it. Lepers . . . completely restored!”

“I was lame and now . . . look. I can walk!”

The question on the mind of every man, woman, and child in the crowd that day was, “What can Jesus do for me?”

We clung to one another and fought to remain standing in the irresistible surge of seekers. I wondered how I could bring the chalice to Jesus with such a multitude surrounding him. Then my longing turned to my mother. If Jesus had opened the ears of the deaf and given sight to the blind, surely he could heal my mother’s lameness.

We burst through the city gates and someone shouted, “This way! The prophet Jesus has entered the Temple!”

“Come on!”

“Let’s see what miracle he’ll do now!”

There was no chance for me to turn to the right or the left. No way I could go home and fetch the chalice or give my mother and father the news that the great Healer was at hand.
My friends and I were caught up, swept toward the Temple Mount in a relentless, dangerous current.

Lining the streets were Roman soldiers and Herodian guards. Their swords were drawn and ready as a warning that no rebellion would be tolerated. Faces were grim, mouths tight, and eyes fierce as they observed us. I thought,
They
must
also
be
fearful
of
what
might
happen.
If Jesus could feed his army with only a handful of bread, and heal their wounds, and even raise the dead, what chance did the armies of Rome have to oppose him?