Take This Cup

by Bodie Thoene

  The builder bowed to her. “As you hoped. The upper room is indeed ready for the first supper, madam.”

  Papa replied, “As we prayed it would be.”

  The builder strode proudly to the stairway. “This way.”

  Mama eyed the steep steps with consternation. Her leg was not up to the climb. She bit her lip and hung back. “Lamsa, dearest, you go. And, Nehi, go up with him.”

  The builder, not comprehending the severity of Mama’s pain, urged, “But the mural, madam. Ah, to see it is to drink the pure waters of Eden!”

  She answered, “I’ll wait here. Bask in the glory of our beautiful weaver’s shop . . . imagine the shelves stocked with our handiwork. And, most of all, enjoy my new loom.”

  Papa and I followed the builder up the steps. There was no handrail, and the stairwell was narrow. We emerged into a room immersed in color and the scent of fresh paint and linseed oil.

  The artist, a thin, paint-spattered old man, was cleaning his brushes when we entered. He glanced up and smiled at me with a mouth only half full of teeth. “This is the boy?” he asked my father. “The boy who rode the Great Hart and came from afar to Jerusalem?”

  “Yes. Nehemiah, my son.”

  “Well then.” He chuckled. “Well. Well.”

  The painting of Eden covered the west wall. Sunlight from the east streamed through the window and splashed the scene of ferns and trees and flowers in bloom beside a flowing brook.

  I gasped. In the midst of the forest stood the Great White Hart. Steady amber eyes seemed almost alive. He gazed at me serenely. A deep wound over his heart oozed blood, to show his sorrow for the loss of Eden. Now, at the end of my journey, the great protector and companion who had carried me through so much danger was portrayed before me as if I was seeing him as he was.

  And Joseph’s cup was at his feet. Yes! Joseph’s cup! I recognized the pattern of the engraving without question. The silver chalice stood on a boulder beside a brook so real I could almost taste the water. Grapevines curled around it, and clusters of grapes gleamed in the sunlight. But it was not wine that filled the cup. Water from the eternal spring and blood from the wound in the Great Hart’s heart mingled together and filled the vessel to its brim.

  “But how?” I looked up at my father.

  The contractor said, “The view of the Temple Mount through the arched window is spectacular. I haven’t seen a view so beautiful even in the palaces of the rich men.”

  Papa put a hand on my head. He gestured at the painting and then through the window at the Temple. “From the land of Eden to Solomon’s Temple Mount. It’s been a long journey, eh, Nehemiah?” Clearly, Papa was pleased with the artist’s vision. “The garden, as it must have been on our mountain, before all was lost. And now, here—in Jerusalem—all will be restored.”

  Papa fished for silver coins with which to pay the artist. A few small drops of red paint marred the new wood planks of the floor. The old man apologized and stooped to clean away the paint.

  “Leave it,” Papa insisted. “As if the blood of suffering flowed from your brush, all of creation groans as we wait in hope for the Redeemer. A few drops on the floor. A foretaste of all the feasts we will celebrate in this place. A reminder that the cup of sorrow will be followed by the cup of great joy! And we will begin our celebration of new life this Passover.”

  Chapter 31

  My family and Rabbi Kagba worshipped together within the walls of the great Temple. Choirs and musicians and the prayers were almost drowned out by the clamor of buying and selling in the stalls of the merchants and moneychangers.

  I scanned the faces of beggars and boys, hoping to find my Sparrow friends, who had taken me in on my first terrible night in Jerusalem. I did not find them among the throng.

  I spent the week working to polish Joseph’s cup. At last it was no longer a cup. As each layer of tarnish was removed, the intricate pattern of vine and leaf and cluster of grapes was revealed. It had become Joseph’s silver chalice. Beneath my polishing cloth, the ancient gift was worthy of the coming King.

  I showed it first to Rabbi Kagba. Tears misted his eyes. “Good job, my boy. Good job. At last I will see him with my own eyes. His hands will encircle this silver. The wine will reflect his face. And he will pour himself out with the wine as the Havdalah blessings are spoken.”

  There were rumors that Jesus had come as far as Bethany, that he slept beneath the roof of Lazarus and would enter Jerusalem soon. We did not know if this was true.

  Joseph of Arimathea stopped by to tell us that the chief priest had met with Herod Antipas to discuss what steps must be taken if Jesus and Lazarus entered Jerusalem. The increased patrols of Roman soldiers and Herodian guards were evident. City officials were on edge. Rebellion and riots were a possibility.

  Sabbath arrived. Though we could have walked to the Temple to celebrate, Mama’s leg was worse than ever. We worshipped quietly at home. Rabbi Kagba led us in the same prayers I had heard on the lips of Jesus only a week earlier.

  That night, when three stars shone in the sky, Sabbath ended. I asked the rabbi when he thought Jesus would come.

  “Soon,” the old man said. “As the Passover moon grows, the heavens once again give signs of his coming glory to us.”

  As everyone slept, I pocketed the chalice and tiptoed across the street to the new building. I climbed the stairs to the upper room. The aromas of paint and blooming night flowers mingled. I sat on the floor in front of Eden. In the darkness it seemed more than a painting. I felt I could have stepped into that perfect world. I might have dipped the cup into the brook and raised it to my lips.

  The wound on the hart’s breast seemed the color of wine. “Ah, we have traveled so far,” I whispered. “So many wounds. So much heartache. And now, Jesus the King is coming! He will drink from this cup, and all things will be made new.”

  Over my shoulder, the moon rose in the east over the Temple Mount. I held the chalice up, toward the starry constellation of the cup, for the Lord of heaven to see it was clean and ready. “Here it is, my heavenly Father. I have done all you asked. I will give it to your King when he comes. Now, please, Lord, bless my family. Heal my mother’s leg. Increase my father’s work. His flocks and herds. The travels of my brothers back to Gan Eden. And . . . show me! Show me what I must do to serve your kingdom.”

  I crossed the street and went to bed, feeling certain that Jesus was very near to me. The tarnish of obscurity was washed away. The revelation was at hand. Somewhere, perhaps as close as Bethany, Jesus was also gazing at the stars and watching the Passover moon grow more full every night.

  I closed my eyes and blessed the one from above who made the moon and the stars. And I blessed the one who had left heaven’s glory to come down to earth to live among us. Jesus was his name. Certainly his eyes now looked up toward heaven from earth as if he were a man like all the rest of us. But he was not just any man.

  I longed for the moment when Jesus would take this cup from my hand, lift it and bless it, and drink deeply from it. I fell asleep with this vision before my eyes.

  Morning of the first day dawned. For the first time since I received it, I felt at ease leaving the chalice beneath the roof of my father, mother, and Rabbi Kagba.

  At breakfast I said, “Papa, when I arrived, the shop and the house were in ruins. It was cold and snowy, and I was alone. Four link boys who live in the caverns beneath the Temple—they’re called Red, Timothy, and two brothers, Obed and Jesse—gave me shelter and bread.” I looked at Mama. “They told me my grandmother had fed them before the fire. Before she went away to Joppa.”

  Rabbi Kagba said, “A good and righteous woman. Repaid for her kindness when you were taken in.”

  “Oh, my dear boy. What shall we do?”

  Papa reached for silver coins. “Some offering to help them during Passover?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know if they’re alive. The sickness took so many.”

  Papa replied, “And if they are alive,
we’ll repay them.”

  “Not money, Papa. They work very hard. I was thinking, maybe with our new building . . .”

  Mama asked, “What?”

  I looked through the window and imagined Passover next year when the weaver’s shop was open for business and the shelves were filled. “I thought about it a lot in the night. When Jesus comes and is our King, the Temple will truly be a house of prayer as it was in the early days. Everyone in the world will come. Everyone will buy a prayer shawl from us. Mama, you will need help weaving. I thought that maybe, if the Sparrows are still alive, you could teach them to weave.”

  My suggestion was like a lamp, lighting every face around the table. Mama clapped her hands. “Oh yes! Yes! Glorious plan!”

  “Ap-prent-ices.” The rabbi drew the word out, pronouncing every syllable as if they were holy. “Fine! Fine!”

  Papa studied me. “Lots of space. We’ll have the builders add a room on the rooftop so your friends can sleep close to the stars.”

  Mama added, “As I did when I was a girl, dreaming of a bridegroom. Your father. Though I didn’t know it was him I was longing to meet!”

  “You’ll have to find your friends,” Papa said. “You know where the Sparrows live?”

  And so it was settled. Leaving the cup wrapped beneath my pillow and sheathing my wooden sword, I set out to find the Sparrows.

  As the sun beat down on Jerusalem, I passed the head of the Street of the Butchers. A butcher cleaned and carved chunks of meat from a slaughtered ox. Children hauled guts and fat to soap makers, hides to the tanners. The smallest children fanned away flies.

  It was in the muck of the Shambles that I found the first of my four Sparrows.

  “Hey! Hey, Nehemiah! Nehemiah!”

  I turned on my heel and peered down the lane where every shop displayed haunches of sheep or goats and plucked chickens for sale.

  “Nehemiah!” A boy’s voice called to me once more, and I spotted the wild red hair of Red. His arms waved broadly. His face was beaming. He wore an apron, but it did little to protect his clothing from his task.

  I raised my wooden sword and laughed. “Courage, Red!” I shouted.

  He jogged to me and swept his hand over his filthy apron. “Still fighting the battle.”

  “You look like you’ve been in the thick of it,” I teased.

  “I’ve been hired to haul guts away to the knacker. Soap making. There’s a need for every bit of an animal, you know. You learn things here. Even things you don’t want to know.”

  “Well, brother, you’re still alive,” I said.

  “So are we all.” Red told me what I wanted to know. “Me, Obed, Jesse, Timothy.”

  “You made it through the sickness.”

  “Aye. Thanks to Lazarus . . . the famous Lazarus. You heard all about that, I suppose?”

  “I met him.”

  “Well then. Lazarus spooned broth down my throat and Jesse’s too, before he died. He’ll remember me. Timothy and Obed never did get sick. But it swept through the Sparrows’ camp. Almost as soon as you were gone, it started. Hey, did you find your family? I see somebody’s rebuilding your grandfather’s shop.”

  “All of them. Grandparents in Joppa. The rest—Mother, Father, my brothers—here in Jerusalem. And my family says . . . well, they wonder if the four of you would like to learn weaving.”

  By way of reply, Red removed his apron and flung it away. Leaving a wheelbarrow overflowing with entrails in the middle of the street, he took my arm. “Don’t look back. It will do something to you, I promise. I’ll never eat meat again. Not that I ever did. Enough of this. The boys are all at work. Not linking. But temporary like, for the holidays. So much work with all the pilgrims. Every crook in the city needs errand boys. Work like dogs, and they pay us like slaves.”

  Cheerful now, Red led me to the sheep pens where Timothy was hard at work scrubbing Passover lambs. Obed and Jesse shoveled manure.

  Our reunion was joyful. The news that they were wanted as weaver apprentices was met with astonished jubilation. To become an apprentice was, after all, the goal of every Sparrow.

  “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.

  As 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.