by Woods, Karen
“Loose him, and let him go,” Yehoshua commanded.
Miriam listened to the stunned comments of the witnesses. Some of them believed in her son. Some didn’t know what to believe. No one denied their own eyes.
Martha told her brother, “Come, Brother, let us go home. You could use a wash, a change of clothes, and some food.”
Some people came back to the house with them. As they walked through the village, people came out to look at the formerly dead man, now living.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The story of Eleazaros’ resurrection from the dead spread quickly. The crowds coming to see Yehoshua grew in size. Word came that the parushim had convinced Yosef bar Kayafa, the high priest, to seek Yehoshua’s life. Further, word came that the parushim were seeking something to use against Eleazaros, some way to put him to death, because on Eleazaros’ account many believed in Yehoshua.
The time grew near for Pesach. Even though they had stayed well out of the reach of the high priest and the parushim, Yehoshua said they would go to Yerushalayim for the feast. His men had been quite upset at Yehoshua’s plans. Miriam wasn’t happy with that, either.
One evening, after dinner, Miriam sought Yehoshua, who had gone away from his people to have a short time of private prayer. She found him sitting on a rock.
“You know, they are worried about your safety,” Miriam said to her son, as she sat beside him.
“I know,” he said, his voice heavy.
“Son,” she began. Then she touched his hand.
“Emma, my time has come.”
She sighed heavily and blinked back tears. “A brave mother is a crown to her son?” she asked, trying to be brave for him, but failing.
“I asked Avinu Malkeinu to take this cup from me. But that is not to be. I have come to do His will, not my own.”
“Long ago, Simeon told me that a sword would pierce my heart also; that you would be the salvation of the people and the cause for the rising and falling of many in Yisra’el, a sign that would be spoken against. He said you’d be the Light to enlighten the Goyim. And that you would be the glory of His people. All of this is true, Son. Tell me what you wish for me to do.”
“Stay with me. Stay with them. Care for them as though they were your children. They will need you greatly when I’m gone.”
“I won’t leave you, Son. And I won’t leave your people.”
“I am sorry to be the cause of your pain, Emma.”
“When a woman loves deeply, she hurts when those she loves are in pain or distress.”
Yehoshua nodded. “Old Simeon, in the Temple, was far wiser than he knew himself to be. This will be a sword through your heart. That’s only thing I regret.”
“We both know the prophecies. Yisayahu was clear that you are to be numbered with the transgressors and to bear the sins of many,” she said, her voice tight. “There is a good reason Yoni called you ‘The Lamb of God’, my son. I don’t like it. But, I can’t change it. This is what is to be.”
“Emma,” he said, his voice heavy. He paused for a long moment. “They’re not ready, Emma. My men. Even though I sent them out and they came back with grand reports of healings and repentance of the people, they simply aren’t ready for what is to come. All the time that they’ve been with me and they still do not understand.”
“They will never be ready, Son. You ask a degree of boldness, dedication, and faith from them that is only rarely found among men. They will just have to do their best. Some of them will falter, and falter badly. I’m particularly concerned about Yehuda bar Simon, of Kerioth.”
“Yes,” was all her son said.
Shivers went down her spine at that one word.
Then he told her, changing the subject, “We are to spend Shabbat with Eleazaros and his sisters. Then on the first day of the week, we will go up to Yerushalayim to prepare for Pesach.”
“It will be good to see them again, again.”
“Yes, it will.” He was silent for a moment. Then he asked her, “What do you think of Yochanan bar Zebedee?”
“He is a good man. Kind, strong, well spoken, dependable, and of a good humor,” she answered her son.
“Would you mind if he took care of you as a son?”
“Perhaps you should ask him if he wants this burden of caring for an old woman?”
“If I ask him, he will care for you as well as if you were his own mother. It’s important to me for you to have someone caring for you with whom you are comfortable.”
She took her son’s hand in hers. “I do trust Yochanan, completely.”
“That is what I wanted to know.” He squeezed her hand and released it. He sighed. “We should go back to them.”
“In a bit. Let’s just sit here for a while. These moments are rare.”
“Yes. More than once, a woman has cried out from the crowd ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that suckled you.’ Those women were right. You are blessed, Emma. But you are blessed most of all because you have been willing to hear and live out the will of Elohim Avinu,” God our Father, “day in and day out for all of your life, no matter how hard that was. And there were times it was quite a challenge.”
“Everyone lives one moment at a time, Son. Miriam, the sister of Moshe, sang, ‘Adonai is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation. He is Elohai’” my God, “‘and I will prepare for Him a habitation. Elohai Avotenu’” our father’s God “‘and I will exalt Him.’ Those words have found new meaning in my life. You are my strength and my song. I have prepared for you a place to live, first within myself, and then a home for you to grow into the man you have become. You are Ben Elohim,” the son of God, “and it is my joy, privilege, and honor to be your mother.”
He took her hand in his and kissed her forehead. “No son ever had a better mother.”
“No son was ever more loved by his mother. That’s about all I can say with any certainty.”
“Master?” Yaacov, the son of Zebedee, called out. “Someone has come to speak with you, a rich and important man.”
“So much for a quiet moment. Come, Emma. The world calls us.”
Miriam sighed. “The world always calls us. From time to time, I am tempted to ignore the call.”
Yehoshua took his mother’s hand. “Emma, I love you.”
During dinner at Eleazaros’ home that next Shabbat, Miriam, the sister of Eleazar0s, left the table and returned carrying an alabaster bottle of spikenard ointment.
She broke the neck off the bottle and poured the cups of the ointment on Yehoshua’s head and feet. While kissing his feet, her hair fell upon his feet.
The entire room took on the sweet smell of spikenard.
Yehuda bar Simon, of Kerioth, complained, “Why has this been done? That ointment could have been sold for a year’s wages for a working man and the money given to the poor.”
Yehoshua sighed. “Let her be. She has done this in preparation for my burial. Wherever the good news is told, this shall be told in her memory.”
Looking up from where she knelt at Yehoshua’s feet, Eleazaros’ sister blinked back her tears.
Miriam, Yehoshua’s mother, saw those tears and had to, herself, blink back her own tears. As she looked around, from face to face, she saw puzzlement on most faces; puzzlement on most and anger on the face of Yehuda, son of Simon, the man from Kerioth.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Leaving Eleazaros’ home, Yehoshua sent two of his men ahead to bring a donkey and a foal on which no man had ever ridden.
As her son sat upon the back of the donkey, with its foal following behind, Miriam recalled the prophecy, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Yerushalayim! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
She must have spoken her thoughts aloud because of the look several of the women gave her.
“What did you say?” Miriamne, the one called Magdala, asked, her voic
e small.
“A prophecy, now fulfilled,” Miriam answered.
“You really do believe,” Miriamne said, with a smile.
“Of course, I believe in my son,” Miriam said on a sigh as they walked along behind him. “I know him.”
It didn’t take long before word of his approach had people turning out along the side of the road, from the time that they reached the Mount of Olives, placing their cloaks and branches of palms, if they had no cloaks, on the road, shouting, as David had prophesied, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of Adonai!”
Parushim who came out to see what the hubbub was about were clearly upset. One of the members of the walked up to Yehoshua, “Teacher, rebuke your followers.”
Miriam heard her son dismiss the suggestion, “I tell you, if these people were silent, even the stones themselves would cry out.”
Stones would cry out? Miriam wondered. How would they cry out, in praise of her son, or in judgment of the people as Habbakuk had said so long ago?
Still, she recalled other words from that same prophecy, “The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Elohim, as the water covers the sea.”
Then he rode on, slowly, towards the city as the people shouted their praises.
She caught up with her son and walked beside him as they came closer to Yerushalayim. She saw his eyes fill with tears as he saw the walls of the city and heard him say lowly on a pained sigh, “If you, even you, had known on this day what would bring you peace; but now, this is hidden from your eyes. The days will come when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you, hemming you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and your children within your walls. They will not leave one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of El Elohe Yisra’el coming to you.”
She touched his hand.
He looked at her. Miriam’s heart broke at the amount of pain she saw in his eyes. “All will be well, Emma. I must do this. It was for this cause that I came into the world. Go back and walk with the women, please. They will need you.”
After entering the city, she heard one of the parushim grumbling to another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. The whole world has gone after him.”
They made their way to the Temple area. Miriam had never seen Yerushalayim so excited, even some of the Greeks who were in the city had come out to see her son.
Those people sent a spokesman to Philip, asking that they could have an audience with Yehoshua. Philip went to Andreas, then the two of them went to her son.
Miriam stood nearby as her son said, in the presence of the Greeks, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I say to you that unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and dies, it remains alone; but it it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, let him follow me, and where I am, there my servant will be as well. If anyone serves me, him my Father will honor. Now, my soul is troubled and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came into this hour. Father, glorify your name.”
Then came a voice from heaven, which some said was thunder, and others claimed was the voice of an angel, but Miriam heard the words, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”
Yehoshua continued, “This voice did not come because of me, but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of the world; now, the ruler of the world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to myself.”
The spokesman of the Greeks turned to him, “We have heard from the Law that the Christos remains forever. How can you say ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up?’ Who is this son of man?”
“A little while longer, the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. He who walks in darkness does not know where is going. While you have the light, believe in the light that you may be sons of the light.”
Then Yehoshua walked away from them, heading towards the Temple, a place the Greeks could not go.
Everyone was expecting great things from her son. But what he had for them was not what they expected. This all frightened her, nearly beyond words. Yet, she prayed for courage, with every step.
Miriam, and most of the women, took the donkey and foal back to the man from whom they’d borrowed the animals while the men went to wash before they would enter the Temple. Then the women returned to the home of Eleazaros, Martha, and Mariam. While Yehoshua would be teaching each day in the Temple, for at least the next few days, all of them would be staying with Eleazaros until they came to stay in the city for Pesach.
Their normal room for Pesach had been arranged for the later part of the week. It always was complicated for the cooks when Pesach and Shabbat coincided. The lamb had been bought. Miriam tried not to think beyond today. The parushim were clearly upset. Yerushalayim lay in great expectation. Roman soldiers were thick in the streets of the city in anticipation of Pesach. That particular combination was never good. This could turn extremely ugly with little provocation. But for today, the praises of her son still rang in her ears, along with his prophecy about the future of the city.
Once back at Eleazaros’ home, Miriam and several of the other women began helping Martha and her sister with the meal which would be served this evening. After the meal was mostly under control, Miriam and Miriamne, as well as several other women, began preparing grain offerings to present in the Temple on the next day. Voluntary grain offerings were cakes of fine flour, salt, and oil. The portion of each cake which was to be burned on the altar was studded with bits of incense resin so that the grain gave off a sweet smell when in the fire. The remainder of the offering cakes would be put aside to feed the priests serving their rotation in the Temple.
Over dinner that night, in the home of Eleazaros, the apostles were all agitated.
“Master, do you really think this was wise; your throwing the moneychangers and merchants from the Temple?” Andreas asked.
“Those people are turning a house of prayer into a den of thieves,” Yehoshua said. “No, I don’t regret it. It needed to be done.”
Yehuda bar Simon of Kerioth, shook his head, “This was not the way to make the parushim and the priests happy with you.”
“Then again, that’s never been his goal, to make the parushim and the priests happy,” Yaacov bar Yosef said on a sigh.
Yehoshua smiled and sipped from his glass of wine. “My brother, that is true. However, Yisayahu, the prophet, spoke of these when he wrote, ‘He has blinded their eyes and darkened their hearts, so that they can neither see with their eyes nor understand with their hears, nor turn—and I would heal them.’”
“Master,” Yehuda bar Simon said, “when will you show your great power? When will you act to free us from the Romans?”
“Have you been with me this long and still you do not understand?” Yehoshua said, his voice pained.
Miriam turned her face away. Of course, they did not understand. And no matter how often he told them, they did not believe. She didn’t know how to make them understand and believe.
“Tomorrow, we go back into the city, and I teach in the Temple,” Yehoshua said. “It will be a long day for all of us, so shall we end this meal with our blessings, as usual?”
Eleazaros nodded. Then he began singing the birkat ha-mazon.
While the men went to bed, the women who would be going with them to the Temple on the next day went out to the mikveh, the pool of living water used by women of Bethany for purification. As with most pools, the men of the place used this during the day, the women used it after dark, for modesty’s sake.
The next morning, after prayers and breakfast, virtually everyone in the group walked to Yerushalayim to the Temple. Miriam could feel the tension among the twelve and the rest of the large group of her son’s followers; a tense anticipation almost as if they were just waiting for some great sign,
some great act that would drive the Romans from the land. Her son was right. They still didn’t understand.
Reaching the environs of the Temple, the men headed for the pool of Siloam, a mikveh, to purify themselves before entering the Temple. There were several mikva’ot in the vicinity of the Temple, but this was the one that Yosef had always used, and so it was the one Yehoshua used.
The women went ahead to the Temple. It seemed odd to have the moneychangers, those merchants who traded the civil coinage bearing the image of the Roman Emperor for Temple sheckles, and the merchants of sacrificial animals, selling their wares on the streets around the Temple. But, apparently, they weren’t taking the chance on her son throwing them out of the Temple again.
Miriam went into the Court of the Women with her daughter-in-law, Shoshonah, as well as Miriam and Martha, the sisters of Eleazaros, Miriamne, called Magdala, and Yoanna, the wife of Herod’s chief steward, and several others.
An elderly man dressed in full priestly garb met them. Miriam recognized him. His name was Daniel. He was a younger cousin to Zechariah. “Daughters of Yisra’el, why have you come?”
“We have come to present grain offerings to Elohei Sara, Elohei Rivka, Elohei Leah ve Elohei Rakhel,” the God of Sarah, the God of Rebecca, the God of Leah, and the God of Rachael, Miriam said, “freely and in worship of Avinu Malkeinu, for the honor of Ro’eh Yisra’el,” the Shepherd of Israel, “and for the support of his holy priesthood. We have come to pray, worship Elohei Sara, Elohei Rivka, Elohei Leah ve Elohei Rakhel, and listen to the teachers in this holy place.”
Daniel smiled at them. “Let me take you to the person who can receive your grain offerings. It’s been several years, Miriam, since I’ve spoken to you. I’ve seen you and your son from time to time, over the years. I remember you bringing him here for his pidyon ha-ben.”
“That seems both such a short time ago, and a lifetime past,” Miriam replied.