“Now, go to sleep. And tell no one about our conversation. Tomorrow you will join the boys who follow our camp.”
“How will I know when to give you the cup?”
“You’ll know. Very soon.”
He kissed my brow, and I returned to the warmth of my fleece bedroll. My head barely touched the pillow, and I was fast asleep.
M
orning came late and gloomy. A bank of dark thunderheads, low on the eastern horizon, blocked the sunrise.
I opened my eyes as someone quietly recited morning prayers inside the tent. I recognized my mother’s weaving in the prayer shawl wrapped around the man, but the voice was not familiar to me.
“Blessed is he who spoke and the universe came into being. Blessed is he who keeps the whole world going.”
Was I home in the shepherd camp of Amadiya? On the road? In Joppa? Jerusalem?
I sat up slowly, and my hand fell upon the cup. I remembered then. The inn. Jesus. Lazarus. Peter. Peniel, the cheerful scribe.
“Blessed is he who does what he says. Blessed is he who decrees and finishes.” It was not my father but Joseph of Arimathea who recited the blessing upon the day. “Blessed is he who has mercy upon the earth. Blessed is he who has mercy upon creation. Blessed is he who gives a good reward to those who fear him.”
My conversation with Jesus on the rooftop last night returned to my memory in a flash, as a dream returns to mind when one is fully awake. I stared at the cup and wondered if I had truly met Jesus here, or if the meeting was only a dream.
“Blessed is he who lives and endures forever. Blessed is he who rescues and redeems us. Blessed is his name!”
Rubbing my eyes, I stared at Joseph. He was a good man, searching for the truth like everyone else.
“Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe and our merciful heavenly Father, who is praised by your people and glorified by the tongues of your pious servants. We praise you through the songs of David, your servant, O Lord our God, with praises and songs. We glorify you and declare your Name and your rule, O God; your great Name glorified forever and ever. Blessed are you, Lord, the King who is to be praised.”
I offered my small “Amen” at the end of my benefactor’s prayers.
“
Shalom,
Nehemiah.” Joseph removed his prayer shawl.
“Good morning.” I stood and yawned. I smelled baking bread, and my stomach growled.
“You’re hungry.” Joseph folded the prayer shawl I had watched my mother fashion so very long ago. “Throw on your cloak. Let’s go.”
I washed, dressed, and laced my sandals, then followed Joseph down the steep outside steps. As my foot touched the pavement, I heard the loud bang of the barn door and the angry shouts of a dozen boys. A brawl tumbled out of the stable into the courtyard. Like a pack of puppies, the tribe seemed divided into two factions.
Two boys about my age grappled and fell, then rolled on the ground. Punches punctuated the cheers and jeers.
“Get him, Avel!”
“Slaughter him, Davin!”
“Don’t let him get away with that!”
“Shut his lying mouth!”
“In the gut. Hit him in the belly!”
“That’s it. That’s it!”
Pious heads popped out of windows to observe. Pharisees, prayer shawls billowing like the wings of gulls, swooped into the melee.
Then I spotted Jesus, framed in a doorway. He observed the battle for only an instant, then waded into it. Grasping both combatants by the backs of their tunics, he separated them. Still they swung. Jesus held them out of reach of one another as they flailed, then finally gave up. They scowled at one another across the gulf of his arm’s reach.
The crowd grew thick—Pharisees, servants of Pharisees, and the men and women of Jesus’ band. They looked on in silence.
“Avel.” Jesus looked at the bloody face of the fair-haired boy in his right hand. “What’s this?”
Avel wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. “This . . . this cur—”
Jesus shook Avel a little. Avel fell silent. Jesus addressed the boy in his left hand. “All right, then. What’s your name?”
A gruff, ragged servant of one of the Pharisees replied defiantly, “He’s my boy. Davin is his name. We are in service to Hamid, a Pharisee of Jerusalem and a member of the council.”
Davin spat, “And your boy Avel swung first.”
Avel shouted, “He was calling you names, Master! Said you are a fraud. Said it was all tricks what you do!”
Davin wriggled and kicked at Avel. “It’s true. My father and my master say you’re nothing but a troublemaker! Say you’re nothing. Nothing! Going to turn the world upside down and get everybody crucified!”
Davin’s father raised his chin and stepped forward. “All true. Now I’ll thank you to put my boy down.”
Jesus effortlessly swung the boy into his father’s reach. Then he set Avel to the side. “Go on, Avel. That’s enough.”
The father placed his son behind him and drew himself up to challenge Jesus. His hands clenched and unclenched. For a moment I thought he would strike Jesus.
Peter rushed between them and faced off with the father. “Get back! You . . . you and that devil’s spawn of yours! You’re nothing but scum! Pawns of Israel’s oppressors.”
I spotted Avel’s bloody face scowling out from among Jesus’ disciples. A woman took his arm, guided him to the side, and dabbed his nose. The crowd of onlookers became a divided mob.
The opposition shouted and cursed Jesus as a pretender and a blasphemer.
Jesus’ followers defended their teacher vehemently.
“Jesus can fight for himself, all right!”
“Lord, call down hell fire on them! Burn them up—like Elijah!”
Jesus’ eyes flashed angrily, and I thought for a moment he might summon bolts of lightning and brimstone from the sky. Instead, he raised his hand and addressed his people. “That’s enough! Be still. You don’t know what you are saying!”
Instantly both factions fell silent. Jesus searched the faces of the opposition, fixing his gaze on one opulently dressed Pharisee.
Joseph muttered, “That’s Hamid.”
Jesus summoned the ruler. “Come here, Hamid. Take your servant and your servant’s son. The place to settle this debate is not here. Not now.”
The ruler snapped his finger and called his servants as if they were dogs. He warned Jesus, “The time is coming. You are right about that. It will be settled.”
The confrontation broke up. Those who had come to discredit Jesus grumbled as they returned to the business of saying morning prayers and preparing to travel to Jerusalem.
Joseph and I hung back as Jesus stooped in front of Avel and the woman tending his nose.
“Well, Avel. You’ll have two black eyes, I think.” Jesus looked up at the woman. “A cold compress, eh, Mother?”
I knew her name from the stories Rabbi Kagba had told me. Mary. She was beautiful. Her brown eyes with flecks of gold had smile lines at the corners. Hair and eye color was so much like her son.
Mary nodded. “Not broken. Not this time, eh, Avel?”
“No. I’m sorry.” The boy cast his blue eyes downward, then hung his head. “I . . . I just couldn’t help it. He was so . . . so . . .”
I was surprised that Jesus did not reach out and staunch the flow of blood or heal the bruised eyes. Jesus said quietly, “Pray for the boy you think is your enemy, Avel. Perhaps he will one day learn the truth for himself and become your brother.”
“I could have shut his mouth.”
Mary murmured, “Poor boy. Yes, Avel, pray for him. He doesn’t speak his own words, but only repeats what he has been taught.”
Jesus patted Avel on the back. “No more of this, Avel. It solved nothing, as you see.”
Avel’s friends circled around him. Jesus’ disciples joined them.
Jesus said, “Things that cause people to sin are sure to come, but woe to the person from whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone around his neck than to cause one of these little ones to sin.”
1
Peter growled, “I’ll pray for them. Pray them right into
hell where they belong. I look forward to the day when we bury these . . . hypocrites! I’ll never forgive them for such arrogant disrespect for you, Lord. Who knows what other sins they hide?”
Jesus did not acknowledge Peter but continued speaking as if he had not heard his words. “Watch yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
2
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
Jesus held up his thumb and forefinger, demonstrating how a small fragment of faith could accomplish mighty deeds . . . such as forgiveness. “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”
3
At that instant, Joseph placed his hand on my shoulder. “There’s Lazarus.” He inclined his head toward the man I had seen near Jesus the night before. He stood behind Jesus’ mother and spoke to Avel over her shoulder. In the morning light Lazarus looked to be about the same age as Jesus. He glanced up at Joseph, then came to where we stood at the foot of the stairs.
“My old friend.” Lazarus clapped my master on his back. “I’m glad you’ve come.”
“I returned to Joppa and heard all the news,” Joseph said, making the same gesture of companionship. “I came straight away to find you . . . to see. The news was all . . . about you. Is it true?”
Lazarus replied with a single nod. “Yes. If it had not been for Jesus, you would have returned home and found my place at the table empty and my cup poured out.”
For a moment Joseph’s eyes brimmed with emotion. He did
not remove his hand from Lazarus’s shoulder. “Well. Well then. We have both been on far journeys, it seems. One for business and the other for . . . for . . . ,” he stammered.
“For the business of the Kingdom of God.” Lazarus lifted his chin slightly. His brow furrowed. “It is more beautiful than we could ever have imagined . . .”
“The parable that Jesus told last night . . . It seems this is a far land in which every man will want to dwell. I must speak with him. I have a question that only he will be able to answer. If it is possible.”
“Yes. Yes. I know he’ll want to speak with you. Tonight is
Shabbat
. Then after that?”
Joseph cleared his throat. “I’ve got to return to Jerusalem before
Shabbat
. Some business to take care of. But then I’ll come back.” He added, “My apprentice, Nehemiah, I’d like him to stay here among Jesus’ followers until I return.”
Lazarus agreed with a laugh. “Nehemiah. Well then, you can stay among our boys. There are a dozen or so who travel with us. They all have duties in the camp. You may have noticed Avel, whose desire is to be a bodyguard.” He laughed. “We will put you to work.”
And so it was that Joseph delayed his conversation with Jesus. He would return first to Jerusalem to inspect the completion of the family tomb, since Passover was rapidly approaching. If the work was done, he would pay the wages of the men who labored there.
“Please, Master Joseph,” I asked, “while you’re there, can you go by my grandparents’ shop? I’d like to know if it’s really getting rebuilt.”
Joseph agreed to check on the work in the Street of the Weavers, then left me in the care of his friend Lazarus.
So it was that I took my place among Avel and his two brothers, Ha-or Tov and Emet. Ha-or Tov was twelve, had curly, red hair and pale skin, and was the eldest of the three. Avel was ten and a cheerful boy. Emet was six, fair-haired like Avel, and had somber brown eyes. A wild sparrow perched on his shoulder, flitted to his head, and then to his hand. He fed the bird bread crumbs and called him
Yediyd
, which means “friend.”
It was the bird and his endearing actions that made me laugh for almost the first time since the night my father’s camp was attacked. There was a story in the bird—a tiny sparrow crushed by the hands of evil, but then healed by Yeshua and now a gift of great joy to a poor boy, Avel said, nodding at his little brother.
The brothers had once been counted among the orphan boys of Jerusalem, living in the caverns beneath the city as Sparrows until they were adopted by an old shepherd of Bethlehem named Zadok.
Zadok had the look of a man who had been mauled by a lion. I had grown up with men who were scarred and battered in the battle to protect the flocks from wild beasts. He was missing one eye, wore a patch over the socket, and his face was creased with an old wound.
That morning he fed the livestock, which were a part of Jesus’ band of followers. Mary, the mother of Jesus, spoke to the old man cheerfully as he passed. She and a number of other women served the disciples breakfast. It seemed to me that perhaps Mary was related to Zadok in some way. There was a familiar family bond between them.
The children of the camp ate separately from the adults. I was seated between Avel and Emet. Between bites of bread and eggs, the brothers poured out the story of Zadok.
Avel wore his black eyes like badges of honor. He shrugged.
“Look at my old father there. That patch. A spear hit him in the face, and that’s where he lost his eye. Jesus could give him two eyes, but he don’t want it. He says his face is a reminder of what the Herods did to his sons, and he is proud of his wounds.”
Emet added, “Zadok’s a fighter too. So I guess it’s right we’re his sons.”
The old man had spent his life watching over the flocks at Bethlehem. He had a wife and three small sons when Jesus was born in a lambing cave. He had seen angels appear in the sky and had been among the first to hold the infant King of Israel. Mary, Joseph, and the baby had stayed in Zadok’s house. When the Magi arrived to pay homage, it was at the home of Zadok where they found Jesus.
I had heard some of the story from Rabbi Kagba. The foreigners had warned Mary and Joseph to flee from Herod. Then the soldiers had come. I was familiar with that much of the tale.