by Jane Lebak
“Is this payback?” Raphael whispered. “Because I didn’t work hard enough before?”
Gabriel raised his hands. “I have no idea what you mean.”
Thomas said, abruptly, “I don’t think we should head into Jerusalem.”
Jesus looked at him, and in an instant Raphael recognized the heaviness in his eyes, the exhaustion. Satan had reconnoitered the disciples for three years now. He didn’t need an intense research phase. He needed instead just permission, and that he’d already obtained.
Thomas said, “They want to kill you. Isn’t it better to stay away?”
Jesus said, “And not fulfill the word of the prophets?”
Peter said, “Do we have to go into Jerusalem to fulfill the word?”
Judas exclaimed, “Of course we do! Jerusalem is the City of God! That’s where it all happens, whatever it is.”
Jesus winced, but Judas continued, “That’s where the Temple is, and the high priest. That’s where the Romans have their center. If we take that, then the world has to listen!”
Jesus said, “Judas, no.”
“Of course this is what has to happen!” Judas turned to him. “Didn’t you say no one knows the day or the hour that the Kingdom will come? So why not here? Why not now? All the players are in place! We just need to put them together the right way, and you can restore the Kingdom of Israel!”
Philip and Andrew approached with the donkey, and Jesus said, “I’ve made it clear I’m not looking for the rulership of the land.”
Judas said, “But you could.”
Jesus said, “There’s a lot of things I could do. That’s not why the Son of Man came to you.”
Philip threw his cloak over the back of the donkey, and Jesus mounted it. Then with Andrew holding its lead, they headed toward Jerusalem. Judas started singing, and then Simon and Bartholomew joined in, and soon all of them had begun a loud chorus. As they passed through the village, other people began to follow.
Raphael thrummed with excitement as the people began cutting down palm branches and laying them in the road, and soon a crowd formed. Judas tore off his cloak and laid it on the road before Jesus’s donkey, and then Simon did the same. Within minutes, cloaks lined the road.
“Hosanna!” Judas started shouting, and then the people took up the chant. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Hundreds of travelers. Hundreds of callers. All they needed were harps and cymbals and trumpets, Raphael realized, but the people were making their own music.
They mounted a ridge, and Jerusalem came into view. A sudden sorrow overtook Jesus’s face. “Oh, Jerusalem,” he whispered. “Jerusalem, you don’t know the things that are going to happen to you, and in you. When it’s all over, there won’t be two stones left on top of one another.”
A Pharisee pushed up close to Jesus. “Rein in your disciples! Are you some kind of king?”
Jesus shook his head. “If I tell them to be quiet, even the stones will start crying out.”
When they reached Jerusalem, the procession made straight for the Temple. “He’s going to do it!” Judas kept saying to Simon. “He’s going to bring in the kingdom!”
At the Temple, Jesus got off the donkey and asked Andrew to return it, then brought the whole entourage in with him. And as soon as he reached the sales booths, he shouted, “Everyone out! This is not a marketplace! This is my Father’s house!”
Raphael’s wings flared, but Jesus rushed for the nearest table and flipped it. Coins rolled everywhere, and the merchants scattered. He set free a cage full of doves, and he called to the people, “This is a house of prayer, not a den of robbers!”
The crowd responded, rushing to set free the animals and shove the sales tables to the sides. The priests fled the scene, and through it all, Raphael couldn’t help but notice how Judas smiled, how his face flushed, and how he watched with a bright anticipation.
#
And how the next day, when Jesus went back to the Temple to teach, Judas was disappointed. And angry. How he argued that they needed to capitalize on the promise of yesterday’s crowd.
How when Jesus told him no, Judas became quiet.
How Nivalis looked worried. Then terrified.
How after a while, Judas slipped away, because he’d had a really good plan. All the main players were in place, he’d said. It was just up to a clever man to put them all together.
#
As the disciples and Jesus settled down for the Passover meal, Nivalis clutched Raphael’s side so hard she hurt him, tears streaming down her face as they prayed together. She kept looking at Judas, but she wouldn’t stand near him, and for himself, Judas remained stone-faced. But he was excited.
I tried, Nivalis kept praying. He’s so convinced he’s doing the right thing.
Raphael looked at Jesus. He couldn’t protect him. Yet again, he couldn’t do a thing, and he couldn’t even object because it was God’s decision. But I don’t have to like it, Raphael prayed.
Jesus met his eyes. I don’t like it either.
Mary was in Jerusalem, but Jesus had asked her to stay with relatives tonight. Tonight was just for him and the twelve. Mary had agreed, but her eyes looked weary. She could hear the gossip. She knew the emotional temperature, and she thought Jesus wanted her away so she’d stay safe.
Raphael went cold. Can’t we turn this down? Pray for mercy? We could build the Kingdom right now if we had permission.
Michael reported back to Jesus. “I’ve Guarded the room.”
Jesus nodded. Satan will have his hour, but not now. This hour remains mine.
Jesus looked at all the disciples, and instead of the sadness Raphael expected to see (sifted like wheat? Satan was going to sift them like wheat? Which ones would blow away like chaff? Half? He’d already gotten Judas) Jesus looked steely. Almost proud, like a father.
They began the meal, but before the supper had ended, Jesus lowered his voice and gave thanks, then broke the bread. He gave it to his disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is given up for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
Raphael could hardly see Jesus at all. Remembrance — was he giving up already? Was it over? Where was their city? Their messianic vision?
Gabriel at his side gasped, and he dropped to his knees. A moment later, Michael did the same.
Raphael couldn’t tell at first what had driven the others down. But then he realized that sense of Jesus that always burned inside him — it was more. It was everything, because how could omnipresent be more or less, but it was in Jesus, and it was also in the bread. The bread in his hands, and then the bread in his disciples’ hands, and then the bread in his disciples. And then he was in them.
Raphael dropped to his knees as well.
Nivalis covered her face. “Please, no. Skip Judas.”
Jesus didn’t skip Judas. They all took the bread. The presence of God blazed in all of them.
Jesus took the cup, and he said, “And this cup, this is the new covenant of my blood, which is shed for you.” They passed it around, and Jesus said, “I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God comes.” When the cup returned to him empty, Jesus said, “I know my betrayer is here at the table.”
The disciples exploded into questions, but Raphael only sought out Gabriel. What did he just do? I don’t understand.
He said they had to eat his flesh and drink his blood, Gabriel replied. He made it happen. That bread looked like bread, but it wasn’t. I mean, it was, but it was more. It had the essence of him. Same with the wine. But it looked the same. You needed faith to see it, but it’s there. They did what he said.
Raphael touched Andrew and warmed with the same feeling as if he were touching Jesus.
Sift them like wheat. But Jesus had given them wheat that was himself. Did that mean Satan could sift, but there would be no chaff? And what of Judas?
Peter said, “I won’t ever betray you.”
Jesus swallowed hard as he went to the corner and pic
ked up a bowl. “Peter, before the morning comes, you’ll deny me.”
Total silence from all. Even Judas looked horrified.
Peter said, “Lord, I’m not going to leave you. I’ll go with you to prison. I’ll go with you to death.”
Jesus said, “Before morning. Three times. You’ll deny you even know me.”
He removed his cloak and tied a towel around his waist, and then went to Andrew. “Let me wash your feet.”
The disciples remained silent as Jesus bathed Andrew’s feet and then dried them. He moved next to Peter, who yanked back. “You can’t! You don’t even trust me.”
Jesus looked up with a faint smile. “If I don’t do this, you won’t be clean.”
Peter said, “Then do my head and my hands.”
Jesus chuckled, but Peter relented and let him do as he wanted. “No, if I do this, you’ll be clean all over. Trust me.”
He went around the room, bathing the feet of all the disciples. When he reached Judas, Nivalis buried her face in Raphael’s shoulder, but Jesus didn’t do anything different for Judas than he’d done for the others. No admonition, no scolding, no shaming. We can run, Raphael kept thinking. I’ve taken you out of bad situations before. I can take you now. We’ll find a spot and build your city.
He didn’t project it to Jesus. And when Jesus asked the disciples to come with him to pray, he followed in mute desperation.
Uriel appeared and bowed to Michael. Raphael said, “Why are you here?” and he got the sense that Mary had sent her own guardian to be with Jesus. That didn’t offer Raphael any comfort. It meant Mary was terrified for her son’s safety, and he also knew it wouldn’t be as easy this time as it was in the wilderness.
They made their way to a garden where Jesus had prayed before. They prayed together, but the disciples were all tired after the four glasses of wine required by the seder. One at a time they grew too exhausted to continue, and the heavy darkness became heavier with the presence of demons, and although Jesus stayed awake to pray, soon he did so alone.
And Raphael, even though surrounded by other angels, felt devastatingly alone too.
Sixteen
Gabriel sat in one of the lower branches, blocked by the foliage but able to sense where everyone sat, when Jesus moved off a short distance to pray by himself, when the eleven fell asleep. Michael stood watch at the garden gate.
Satan was deploying every weapon in the arsenal: Jesus could walk away from his mission now; Jesus needed to realize how weak humans were if they couldn’t even remember their loyalties; Jesus should show them his true power so they never again failed him.
Through the third-party bond, Gabriel could feel Jesus’s prayer, and he detected flashes of the understanding Jesus had of what was to come. He wanted to disengage, but whenever he drew away, Raphael would clutch his heart all the tighter: Don’t leave. So Gabriel didn’t leave, but he didn’t want to look into the future. At the same time he wanted to know because sometimes when you knew something, you could twist it just enough to make a bad thing good.
Find the seed in the bad fruit. Raise a good tree, with good fruit. God always worked that way. It had to happen again.
Raphael burned into a frenzy, and Gabriel calmed him through the bond.
Jesus’s prayer flowed through Raphael, and Gabriel picked up a sense of it: a cup, and could it pass him by?
Raphael flashed beside him. “Can you appear to him?”
Gabriel said, “You should do it.”
“But it would mean more from you.” Raphael took both Gabriel’s hands, and he touched his wingtips to Gabriel’s. “Assure him we’ll be with him the whole time, no matter what else happens. He knows I’ll stay because I have to stay. But when you tell him you’ll stay, that means more.”
Squeezing Raphael’s hands, Gabriel assented. He slipped off the tree branch and knelt in a prayer of his own.
Is this allowed?
God’s answer came that he could.
Gabriel moved through the garden, avoided the sleeping apostles, and settled on his knees in front of Jesus. He tucked his wings forward to clear the ground. Jesus looked Gabriel right in the eyes.
The Father said to Gabriel, You will do what I tell you to do, adding nothing and omitting nothing.
Gabriel went cold. Asking to appear to Jesus right now hadn’t been his best move.
Could he even reach for Jesus’s hands? The Spirit approved, so he did. At the contact, he poured his strength into Jesus, and Jesus took a deep breath.
“God’s strength,” Jesus whispered.
He was not told to answer, so Gabriel said nothing.
Raphael urged him to say more.
The cup, God told Gabriel.
Gabriel opened his hands, and an earthenware goblet formed. Looking into it, he watched it fill with black wine, a mist halfway between existence and void. He stared into the depths of the cup as eternity swirled inside, and he would have been lost if God had not prompted again, The cup.
He wanted to object. He wanted to hurl the cup to the side, or to drink it himself, or to snatch it close and cover it with his wings.
Instead, Gabriel extended the cup toward Jesus while Raphael stood mute with horror.
Every angel in the garden watched Jesus take the cup, his hands resting over Gabriel’s for one stark heartbeat. Then Gabriel relinquished the cup filled with the nothing that before the Word had spoken once encompassed the whole of creation. Jesus raised the cup to his lips.
The instant they touched, Raphael screamed.
God released Gabriel. It didn’t matter any longer what Gabriel said or did: Jesus was cut off from the angelic world.
Raphael doubled over as though gutted, and Uriel curled around him but stared only at Gabriel.
Gabriel covered his face with his hands.
Raphael exploded from Uriel’s grasp and got right in front of Jesus as he drained the cup to the bottom. “I’m still here! I didn’t leave! We’re not gone!”
The empty cup slipped from Jesus’s hands, hit the ground and vanished. Jesus slumped against the rock, and in the next moment he was battling tears.
Gabriel reached for Raphael’s soul.
“Don’t you dare!” Raphael spun to face the Cherub. “You cut him off from us! You betrayed him just like Judas!”
Gabriel still saw that cup in his mind’s eye, still felt the chill of clay against his palms.
Michael moved between Gabriel and Raphael. “He did what God ordered him! He didn’t manufacture that on his own!”
Raphael radiated incoherent rage, and Gabriel sat in shock. All the angels were staring while Michael struggling to contain Raphael and Uriel wrapped him in purple wings.
Darkness closed around the garden. Demons. The sense of Satan’s curious patience. On the peripheries were Asmodeus and Beelzebub laughing at the Seraph’s frenzy, and with them Belior and Mephistopheles piecing together the hidden from the visible.
Raphael pushed past Michael, but then Saraquael got between them. Uriel put it in Gabriel’s heart: Go to Mary.
Gabriel wanted to stay. Leaving would be the abandonment Raphael was accusing him of, the abandonment Jesus already feared.
Jesus can’t feel you even if you stay, Uriel pushed. I want someone with Mary. She ordered me here, but she needs someone with her too.
Gabriel reached into Raphael’s soul, but the heat drove even his Cherub heart backward.
Michael glared at Gabriel. Get out of here!
Gabriel fled.
He appeared in Mary’s room, dark himself in the darkness. She had to be asleep, but immediately he heard rustling, and she was on her feet. “What are you doing here?”
“Uriel sent me.”
“Go to Jesus,” she urged. “I don’t care if they attack me.”
“Uriel sent me,” Gabriel repeated. “Michael ordered me here. I can’t go back.”
Mary let out a long breath. “How is he? Is he hurt? Have they arrested him?”
“No
t yet.” Even in the dark, he couldn’t look at her “But it’s a matter of time.”
Mary said, “What’s going to happen?”
“I can’t say for certain.” But he knew what was in that cup, and for the first moment he wondered if perhaps Jesus hadn’t been cut off from his Father at the same time as he was cut off from the angels. And he remembered his own past: the Vision, closed away like a blink.
Raphael, screaming. Michael’s anger. Demonic amusement. Jesus fighting tears. And this. It added up to death.
Mary grabbed his hand. “What did you just realize?”
“Pray with me,” Gabriel whispered. “Please, even if you don’t have the words, please pray with me.”
#
Uriel would have yelled at him for not letting Mary fall asleep, or rather for encouraging her to stay awake. Uriel would have been yet another furious guardian because Gabriel as a non-guardian couldn’t understand what human beings needed. But Uriel wasn’t there, so Mary prayed with Gabriel until she shook with exhaustion, and then he infused her with strength of the same sort he’d given Jesus. At which point, replenished, she joined him again in prayer as if she’d slept for eight hours.
An hour later, Saraquael appeared. Mary turned toward him even before Gabriel did. “What’s happened?”
“He’s been arrested.” Saraquael sounded subdued. “They’ve brought him before the priests.”
Mary said, “Let’s go.”
Saraquael shook his head. “That won’t be wise. They’re going to target his followers.”
Mary huffed. “I didn’t ask if it was wise.”
Gabriel said, “Uriel will hand me my head.”
Mary folded her arms. “Uriel would want to be near me if I were imprisoned.”
“Uriel can’t be killed.”
Mary said, “If it’s the Father’s will that I die near my son, then I want that too.”
Gabriel looked aside. “What if he’s not allowed to see you? We were all cut off from him. If he can’t see any of us, it must be for the reason that God wants him to do it alone.”
Mary lowered her voice. “But I can be near him, and that’s all I’m asking. Aren’t all of you doing the same?”