A New Eden

by Quent Cordair

  Sandal-shod characters in colorful tunics and cloaks had appeared on the stage, moving casually about even as the auditorium was still filling with attendees. Women with clay pitchers balanced on their heads exchanged greetings in passing. Two girls had come to the well and were hauling on the rope, filling their pitchers. A farmer guided a donkey loaded high with sheaves of grain across the stage while children played hide-and-seek between the vendors’ stalls. A boy carelessly bumped into a patrolling Roman soldier, one of a pair. The soldier made as if to cuff him, but the boy ducked the blow and skipped away, sticking out his tongue and darting off before the soldier could catch him. From the auditorium’s sound system came the noises of the ancient city: iron wheels on stone, livestock bleating and braying, voices in Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, rising and tumbling. In the shadows to the right side of the stage, musicians quietly tuned instruments and readied sheet music.

  Though it had taken five phone calls, the concierge at The Sophia had found a ticket for Paige. She had paid five times the face value, plus the concierge’s tip. It was a good seat, in the fifteenth row. The family that had been sitting next to Paige on Sunday was nowhere to be seen. Paige wondered if perhaps they were in the balcony, or attending one of the free screenings in the tents on the flats, or watching the broadcast on television at home. They wouldn’t have recognized Paige from Sunday anyway: she was Ellen again, wearing the simple tan frock and white sandals.

  She recognized two of the names in the program: playing the part of Mary, the mother of Jesus, was Skye Emberly; in the role of John, one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, was Simon Paulson, the assistant youth minister who had spoken Sunday. She spotted Reverend Lundquist in the control room at the rear, arms crossed as he checked the monitors, watching everything, offering the occasional remark to the producer.

  The excitement and energy in the auditorium was building as the space filled to capacity and the organ began to play. On the hour, as scheduled, the house lights dimmed. Spotlights cut diagonals, scanning the audience. The tension and anticipation were palpable as the spots converged on the central doors at the rear of the auditorium. The music paused. The audience stood and turned. In the doorway a white-robed boy appeared, shouting, “He’s coming! He’s coming!”

  On the stage, the denizens of Jerusalem, too, heard the call. They had all stopped what they were doing and were looking out, wondering, questioning each other about what the commotion might be. The soldiers, frowning and alert, had come to the ready. Two more soldiers joined them. The boy came running down the center aisle and, in two bounds, leapt up the steps to the stage, where he stopped and, turning to the points of the compass, shouted his proclamation to all who would hear. At the clamor, more characters emerged from the wings and the doorways until the stage was full to overflowing. The boy ran off through one of the alleyways, still shouting.

  The orchestra’s trumpets joined the organ in sending up a regal fanfare, and through the rear doorway came – a man riding a donkey. The audience erupted in applause and praise. The rider, surrounded by a dozen men on foot, was playing the part of Jesus, no doubt, with the long hair, sandals, and white robe cinched with the length of cord – just as in so many paintings. It was a small donkey. Jesus’ feet were nearly touching the floor. His disciples were sober and thoughtful. Several were arguing amongst themselves and pointing at the city with concern. Paige recognized Simon Paulson among them. His character was pleading worriedly with Jesus, urging Jesus – judging by his expression and gestures – to avoid Jerusalem, motioning emphatically in a different direction. Jesus replied with a patient, dismissive lift of his hand and a few words of reassurance. Simon’s character fell back, shaking his head in disapproval. Still worried, he conveyed his concern to another disciple. But what could they do? Jesus, it seemed, was not to be swayed.

  The music rose. The people of the city descended from the stage and advanced up the aisle towards Jesus, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord! Blessed be the kingdom of our father David that cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” Their shouts merged and, with another fanfare from the trumpets and organ, their voices rose in a processional song. Palm fronds and cloaks were laid in Jesus’ path. The disciples joined in the singing. The Roman guards, remaining on the stage, sang in counterpoint, questioning the identity of this purported “king” of the people, predicting trouble to come. But then, when weren’t the Jews stirring up trouble?

  The song concluded as Jesus and his entourage reached the bottom of the aisle. He dismounted and, followed by the disciples, ascended the steps into the streets of Jerusalem, the crowd mobbing him enthusiastically. Stepping up onto a boulder, he raised his hands to quiet them. The audience in the auditorium took their seats. The children in the cast knelt or sat cross-legged before him, while older youngsters climbed into the branches of the trees and onto the roofs for a better view. Shy maidens and mothers with babes in arms listened from open windows. The soldiers worked their way closer.

  Jesus spoke, telling of the blessings that God would bestow upon the poor in spirit and upon those who mourn. Upon delivering his famous “Blessed are the meek – ” line, he paused to allow the entire auditorium to respond with a reverent, reflexive “bathem” before he continued with “for they shall inherit the earth.” He blessed those who hungered for righteousness. He blessed the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the downtrodden, the persecuted. He told his listeners that they were the light of the world, and he adjured them to let their light shine on all mankind for God’s glory. He called upon them to be righteous, to love and to forgive their brothers, to pluck out their own right eye if it were lustful, to cut off their own right hand if it was inclined to sin. They were never to swear. They were to offer the other cheek when struck, and to love their enemies. They hung on his every word:

  Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use and persecute you. For if you love them which love you, what reward will you have? Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. And when you pray, pray thusly:

  Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

  If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

  Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon this earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

  The nearby merchants glanced at each other, frowning, taken aback at such strange talk.

  No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or he will hold to the one, and despise the other: you cannot serve God and material wealth. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, for what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body, what you shall wear. Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not; neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?

  And why think of clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not adorned as one of these. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is here but tomorrow is gone, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

  Therefore take no thought, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “How shall we be clothed?” After all these things do the heathens and pagans seek. Your heavenly father knows that you have need of all
these things, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof.

  With this, he spread his hands over his followers in benediction. They praised and worshiped him, raising their hands to him and to heaven. The soldiers were still dubious, dismissive, except for one, who seemed impressed, intrigued.

  Jesus had stepped off the boulder to continue on his way, with the crowd readily following, when a lone, plaintive voice cried out, “Son of David! Son of David! Have mercy on me!”

  Jesus stopped to listen. He raised a hand and silence fell.

  The voice came again. “Son of David! Son of David! Have mercy on me!”

  The crowd parted. Sitting against a wall was an old beggar dressed in rags, a crude crutch leaning next to him. His eyes were clouded and unfocused – he turned his head from side to side as he tried to discern what was happening around him.

  One of the soldiers kicked him. “Quiet, you crippled old fool!” he said, and added sarcastically, “Are you not only blind but deaf now, too? Haven’t you heard? This is the King of the Jews!” The other soldiers laughed.

  Jesus went to the man and knelt beside him. “What is it that you want?” he asked gently.

  “If you will it, Lord, I will see. It is all that I ask.”

  Jesus glanced at the soldier who had kicked the man. “It is easier to open the eyes of the body than the eyes of the soul.”

  Jesus placed a hand over the beggar’s eyes and the other on one of his legs. He bowed his head for a moment, then lifted the man by his hands and said, “You will not only see, but you will walk and run. Your faith has made you whole.”

  The beggar rose unsteadily, tottering. Jesus released his hands. The man wobbled and swayed at first, reaching out to steady himself, blinking as though he’d just come out into the sun from a dark cave. He was standing on his own. He looked about him, staring in shock and wonder. He took several halting steps. Reaching out, he touched Jesus’ arm. He touched the side of Jesus’ face, and with a cry of elation, he tested his legs, then leapt up and began dancing and shouting, grasping and touching every person and object within his reach, praising the name of his healer. The praise was taken up by the crowd with astonishment and joy.

  One of the soldiers was deeply affected by the miracle. He knelt before Jesus, who placed his hand on his head. The other soldiers, along with several priests who had appeared on the scene, looked on with scorn, convinced that it had been a trick of some kind. A new song began, with Jesus’ disciples and followers taking up a melody of adulation and adoration, while the soldiers and priests countered with doubt and derision.

  Jesus behaved as though the miracle had been nothing. As the song ended and he prepared to continue on his way, he searched through a fig tree, holding one hand to his stomach as though he were hungry. Finding no fruit, he cursed the tree aloud and declared that it would never bear fruit again.

  The priests were taken aback at this audacity. They began arguing among themselves over what the self-anointed prophet could mean by the curse. Jesus, ignoring them, moved on, exiting stage right, followed by the crowd and the disciples, and by the newly converted soldier, over the objection of his peers. The priests departed in the opposite direction, still grumbling. Only three soldiers remained on the stage – and a boy, the same boy who had narrowly escaped being cuffed by a soldier earlier. He was playfully mimicking the dancing and leaping of the healed beggar, pretending to touch all around him, and he was doing so closer and closer to the soldiers, reaching out tauntingly, as if to touch them as well, darting in and out of the range of their grasp. Finally, one of them unsheathed his sword and swatted at the boy with the weapon’s broadside, barely missing. The boy ran off laughing, following the crowd and shouting, “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed be the King that comes in the name of the Lord!”

  The organ and orchestra played. The lights dimmed to the audience’s applause and praise.

  A scrim lowered in front of the buildings. Darkness fell. The sounds of the city faded, to be replaced by a high rustling wind and the cries of buzzards. Dark silhouetted figures rotated the flats and moved the backdrops. Rollers could be heard rumbling on the stage floor. Other silhouettes moved, ghostlike, behind the scrim. When the lights came up, the setting was a desolate desert of the American West, with scruffy sage, tumbleweeds, barren boulders, rock and sand. On the scrim behind was projected a scene of distant, flat-topped plateaus and wind-carved sandstone arches.

  A young man, his beard grown long, stumbled into view, struggling to put one foot in front of the other. He wore coarse woolen pants, a tattered shirt, worn boots with the soles nearly out, and a battered, round-rimmed black hat. Licking his parched lips, he squinted hard against the bright sun as he struggled on. When he reached the center of the stage, he stopped and fell to his knees in exhaustion. Removing his hat, clutching it to his chest, he looked heavenward in desperation and cried out in a hoarse, rasping voice –

  “Why have you brought me here, Lord? What would you have me do? Where shall I go? Have I not suffered enough already? Would you have me die in this accursed place?”

  He teetered. He tilted sideways but recovered, then pitched forward and fell face-first to the ground, his hat rolling away on its rim, circling in a wide arc before spinning and falling to a stop.

  The sky dimmed and darkened as a spotlight shone down from above. A heavenly choir began to sing. A beautiful angel appeared, seemingly out of thin air, to stand next to the fallen man. Unlike the Flock Angels, in their somber black, this was an angel of the traditional variety – white-robed, feather-winged and ethereal, with flowing flaxen hair. She extended her hand. The man, shocked and confused, raised himself on one arm to stare at her.

  “Rise, Obadiah Skairn,” she said. “Walk with me.”

  Despite his fear, the young man rose and took her hand.

  She was leading him away – but he had forgotten his hat. He dashed back to retrieve it, to the delight and applause of the audience, before rejoining her.

  The lights changed again and the scrim lifted. The scene behind had been transformed into a busy courtyard of Jerusalem’s holy temple, with long rows of steps and a double colonnade of thick, towering pillars. In the foreground, sellers of doves minded bird cages; changers of money minded tables of stacked coins; others offered live lambs and bleating goats for sale; robed priests in conical turbans glided about in haughty solemnity.

  The angel from heaven and the man from the nineteenth century looked entirely out of place, but no one seemed to notice them as they walked through, not even when Obadiah reached out and touched one of the lamb-vendors on the arm. He tugged the vendor’s sleeve and waved his hand in front of the man’s face, but still he went unseen, unfelt.

  Jesus and his disciples entered the temple courtyard and mingled with those who had come to pray and offer sacrifices. Obadiah, upon recognizing that he was seeing his Lord and Savior in the flesh, fell to his knees in worship – but the angel directed him to rise and observe.

  A pilgrim who had brought his son along was pointing to a building in the center of the complex. He explained to the boy that the building was the holy temple itself, which only the priests were allowed to enter. Within the temple’s inner court was the altar for the sacrifices. During festivals and holy days, smoke would rise day and night from the burning flesh on the altar. Deep within the temple, behind a thick curtain, lay the Holy of Holies, the most sacred of places, entered only once yearly by the high priest, who would make an offering of incense in supplication of God’s forgiveness, first for himself, then for all the nation of Israel.

  A widow, veiled in black, approached a moneychanger and offered a handful of coins. She was given only a few coins in exchange. Taken aback, she asked why, if the money needed to be changed at all, the exchange rate was so low. The moneychanger inform
ed her that the only proper offering to God was unblemished Jewish or Tyrian shekels. But why? she asked. Because the idolatrous imagery on the Greek and Roman coins made them unacceptable as offerings. As to the exchange rate, he only shrugged, as he did to her subsequent question as to how much of a percentage the temple priests gleaned. In the end, though disappointed, she dropped the few coins into the offering box and knelt to pray.

  Jesus, having observed all this, grabbed up a handful of cords that were being used as leashes for the lambs. Knotting them together into a whip, he began angrily beating and chastising all who were doing business there.

  Take these things away! Do not make my Father's house a house of trade! It is written that my house shall be called the house of prayer – but you have made it a den of thieves!

  He kicked over the moneychangers’ tables, scattering coins across the stage. He freed the lambs and goats – they bolted, bleating loudly, their owners in pursuit. He released the doves from the cages – they flew out and away from the stage to circle through the auditorium and perch high in the rafters.

  The children in the audience found much merriment in the mayhem. It was their favorite part of the play so far, a welcome relief from the seriousness and sermonizing. When the last moneychanger had been driven from the temple, the entire audience broke out in applause and hoots. Paige couldn’t help but think of the ticket in her purse and how much she’d paid for it.

  The temple priests were outraged, but Jesus stood his ground and lectured them, referring again to the temple as his father’s house, which confounded and upset them all the more. They argued with him, asking if he was aware that the children of the city were proclaiming him to be the Son of God, the King of Kings – to which he only replied, quoting the scriptural prophecy, “Out of the mouths of infants and children . . .” He chastised the priests for being more interested in making money than in being servants of God. The more he chastised and condemned them, the more righteously indignant they became.