The Weeping Chamber

by Sigmund Brouwer

  Yeshua closed His eyes again and tilted His head back to the tree.

  Later Judas would convince himself that if only Yeshua had not dismissed him, he would have returned the silver to Caiaphas that morning. Instead Judas stepped away, his face burning with shame and anger, his alienation heightening his sense of determination.

  If the other disciples noticed the quiet conversation, none showed interest. Judas wandered deep into the garden, thinking only thoughts of self-pity.

  The others continued to rest.

  And the lamb, unaware of the few hours left to its short, innocent life, remained content in the new grass.

  **

  The echo of silver trumpets rang through Jerusalem, signaling to the pilgrims that the eating of leavened bread must cease. This early division of the festive day, however, was strictly a rabbinical hedge of safety. Not for another two hours would the official abstention begin.

  The same echo of trumpets reached Gethsemane. Yeshua rose from His comfortable meditative position. He called for Peter and John.

  His voice, after the long silence, naturally drew the attention of the rest of the disciples. Judas moved closer, too, but still found himself on the outside fringe.

  “Teacher?” Peter asked.

  “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover,” Yeshua said. His voice held not command but near resignation.

  “Where do You want us to prepare for it?” John asked.

  Judas leaned forward, straining to hear the answer. His heart thumped and he swallowed hard, as if this were the actual moment of betrayal. Now he would get the answer he needed. And later he would find an excuse to slip away and deliver the information to the authorities.

  Yeshua will be defeated.

  “As you go into the city, a man carrying a pitcher of water will meet you,” Yeshua said. He looked past Peter and John briefly, catching Judas’s intense interest. “Follow him. At the house he enters, say to the owner, ‘The teacher asks, Where is the guest room where I can eat the Passover meal with My disciples?’ He will take you upstairs to a large room that is already set up. That is the place; go ahead and prepare our supper there.”

  Judas saw plainly that Peter and John exchanged quick frowns of mutual puzzlement. Anger stabbed Judas with a dagger of savage heat. They were so close—these two Galileans—and shared an intimacy they never would with him, the outsider Judean.

  The real heat of Judas’s bitterness, however, came from something far more significant.

  Neither Peter nor John—nor the other disciples—understood why Yeshua’s instructions were so vague.

  Judas, however, knew.

  Carrying water was woman’s work, out of the ordinary for a man. This was an extraordinarily simple method to make a man recognizable.

  Yeshua must have already made arrangements for a room for the Passover supper; Yeshua must have already planned this simple method of connecting as a way to keep the location unnamed ahead of time. For it was equally simple to choose the trumpet call as the time for the man with the water to go forth and be found.

  Judas knew. Yeshua had not only foreseen Judas’s intentions but had also taken steps to thwart him.

  And Judas knew even more.

  Yeshua remained in control.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  I climbed off the wall, knowing I still had business to attend to. The rest of the morning held less pain; I had, for the moment, a purpose. I searched out a lawyer and dictated to him the contents of an agreement I intended to deliver to Pascal.

  The lawyer’s fees were double what I would have paid had my thoughts not been lured by the prospect of death from the temple wall. The lawyer had protested it was too close to Passover to finish the document before sunset that dictated all work must cease—I was so distracted I did not bother to fight such an obvious ploy for extra fees.

  I left the lawyer with a scroll in the sleeve of my robe and returned to the mansion of my cousin, where I hid the scroll with the letters for my wife. Thus suspended from the sharper edges of torment, I managed to wait on a couch in a cool inner chamber until Pascal called for me. Together we made our way to the temple for the sacrifice of our Passover lamb.

  There was no enmity between us. I understood the practical reasons why he could not purchase my holdings, and indeed found it a comfort that he insisted we remain together in the temple despite the raised eyebrows my presence drew when his Sadducean friends greeted us. He could not purchase my business, but he refused to publicly abandon me.

  Among the crowd in the temple, I would have recognized the disciple named Peter had I seen him; his rigid rejection of my offer for money had left a vivid memory. The crowd around us was too thick, so I did not see him or the other disciple named John.

  They were close by, however. Waiting, as we were, for the gates to the altar to open.

  **

  In front of the massive Nicanor Gate inside the temple courts, Peter held the lamb that Judas had purchased. He and John were hemmed in by a packed crowd of noisy pilgrims, each representing groups waiting to celebrate the Passover feast that evening.

  On the other side of the tall, heavy doors, the Priests’ Court was filling with hundreds of white-robed priests and Levites as they prepared for the afternoon ceremonies; this was the one day each year that every temple priest was called to duty at the sacrificial altars.

  While the trussed lamb in Peter’s arms remained silent, the bleating of other lambs rose above the babble of the crowd. The musky smell of the lambs mixed with the pungent aroma of fresh dung and the general odor of hundreds of people sweating in the afternoon heat. Of this dense crowd, it seemed to Peter that only he and John were silent. Peter could only guess that John felt the same terrible loneliness, for neither had the heart to discuss with the other his sense of foreboding.

  Without realizing it, Peter soothed the animal in his arms with slow strokes along its neck and back, as if trying to allay his own fears.

  As Yeshua had predicted, there had been a manservant carrying a water jar. And as Yeshua had predicted, the servant’s master—the father of young Mark, a follower of Yeshua—had shown them an upper chamber ready for the Passover.

  Earlier in the week, Yeshua had correctly foretold where they would find a young donkey. And that they would be able to take it simply by asking. These were just two more uncannily accurate predictions among many.

  Including a very grim prediction—the grimmest of all.

  More than once on their journey to Jerusalem, Yeshua had foretold His own crucifixion. The day before, again Yeshua had predicted it.

  Crucifixion. The end of their teacher. The end of their dreams.

  If all the other predictions had come true, then this one . . .

  Peter tried to shake away the image.

  Peter even held a sense of danger for himself and John. After all, once the gates opened and they lined up before the priests on the other side, it seemed easily possible that either or both might be recognized as followers of Yeshua. These were the religious authorities that had posted notice that Yeshua must be reported if seen in public. For that reason, Peter and John, in the manner of their Galilean countrymen, had each hidden short swords beneath their upper garments. As followers of Yeshua, they were in as much danger as He was.

  As he waited, Peter finally became conscious that, in his nervousness, he had been stroking the lamb. For the first time in his adult life, he became aware of an animal as a fellow creature; the rough fisherman’s life in Galilee did not allow for the luxury of considering animals as more than beasts of burden, sacrifices, or food. Peter ran his thick fingers through the lamb’s delicate wool, watching how its thickness parted and fell back, marveling at its softness. He felt the animal’s warmth against his arms and stomach, felt the quick thudding of the lamb’s heart against his ribs, noticed the liquid depths of its wide eyes. The lamb was tiny, helpless. To Peter’s surprise, a tenderness surged within him. The big, strong, stubborn fisherma
n swelled with sympathy for the lamb and its fate.

  And ahead, priests finally began to open the gates.

  **

  The crowd’s anticipation was twofold. Passover was different from the regular sacrifices because ordinary people participated in the ritual killing; it was also one of the few yearly occasions when Israelite worshipers were allowed to enter the priests’ inner-temple domain.

  The size of the altar was enough to silence any pilgrim entering for the first time. The altar had been built on the same site on Mount Moriah, where centuries earlier Abraham had bound his son Isaac for slaughter. The altar was a perfect square of stones and earth, twice the height of a house, with an ascent ramp leading to the top, where three fires burned. The largest—for burning sacrifices—was a pile of glowing, crackling wood taller than the priests tending it with long metal tongs.

  Pascal and I shuffled with the crowd through the gates into the inner temple. As did, somewhere behind us among the massed crowd, Peter and John.

  The court filled and priests closed the gates again. Later, a second wave of pilgrims would enter. Then a third. Peter and John had hurried to be in the first group as they were anxious to leave quickly to meet Yeshua and the others in the upper room promised them.

  Inside, priests lined the steps of the altar, from top to bottom in a long double row that spilled beyond the steps to the center of the court. Each priest had gone through a lengthy purification process of cleansing and ritual. Each was ready for his sacred duty. The spilling of blood.

  **

  Nearby, but unaware until much later that Peter and John were there too, Pascal and I waited in the crowd.

  A threefold blast from the silver trumpets of the priests echoed against the hewn marble and stones. There was a pause, like a heartbeat stopped. And then, like a heartbeat pulsing back to life, hundreds of Levites began the ancient chant of the Hallel.

  “Praise the Lord!” the Levites called. The deep symphony of male voices rolled across the inner court.

  “Praise the Lord!” the pilgrims chanted in return.

  The Levites continued the verses of the psalms. The pilgrims only repeated the first line of each psalm. Every other line they responded to by singing, “Hallelujah.”

  The repetitive hallelujahs and the mesmerizing chant of the hundreds of Levites raised us to an emotional level of yearning joy, an awesome inner movement of souls stirred to reach for God.

  As the chant rose and fell, the first pilgrims at the base of the altar began to sacrifice the animals they had brought with them. The priest at the front of each line caught the blood of the dying animal in a golden bowl and passed the bowl to the priest behind him, getting in return an empty bowl. The priest behind passed the blood-filled bowl back. Each new bowl went up the long line of priests until the final priest threw the blood in a spray at the base of the great fire of the altar and passed that bowl back down again.

  No Gentile would ever witness this; the penalty was death for a non-Jew who dared defile the inner temple with his presence. Only Jews could see the slaughter of thousands of lambs and the river of their innocent blood.

  I could not fool myself, of course, into placing any hope in this ritual. I was only here because I had to maintain an untroubled pose until I had departed from Pascal’s household.

  For the fierce disciple with red hair, this too became an unexpectedly different Passover ceremony, but not for the same reason as me.

  **

  The chanting flowed over Peter and moved him in a way he’d never been moved. Because of his unexpected tenderness toward the lamb in his arms, this was the first Passover in which he truly began to understand in his heart what he had been taught in the synagogues since childhood. With his unexpected sorrow for the lamb’s destiny and the reason for its death, an awareness of God’s love began to fill the crevices of Peter’s soul.

  It was a mystical moment. Peter looked up to the cloudless sky, half expecting to see in the sun the blinding brightness of God’s face.

  In his arms, the lamb began to twist and struggle in panic as it smelled the fear and blood of the dying animals ahead. With his new understanding of the significance of sacrifice, it pained Peter to hold the lamb prisoner as he and John moved up in the line of pilgrims.

  “This is the day the Lord has made,” the Levites chanted in the strange thunderous roar of men caught up in the vicarious taste of death. “We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

  And the people around Peter and John shouted in return, “Hallelujah!”

  At the priest’s feet, Peter knelt with John. Peter pressed the struggling lamb’s fragile body against the floor of the court. The priest’s flowing white robe was soaked with blood.

  “O Lord, save us. O Lord, grant us success.”

  And the people shouted in return, “Hallelujah!”

  With one hand against the lamb’s head and with a knife in his other hand, John slashed through the quivering tendons of the lamb’s neck to slit its throat. As the lamb thrashed, blood jetted in spurts against John’s and Peter’s sleeves.

  “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

  And the people shouted in return, “Hallelujah!”

  The awareness of the warmth of the blood against Peter’s arm mingled with the wonderful awareness of his soul, which now seemed to flutter—like the torn muscles of the lamb’s neck—between incredible joy and incredible sadness. As the lamb’s blood flowed into the golden bowl, and as the lamb’s life drained away, Peter’s voice rose in hallelujahs with the tumult around him.

  Peter wept in the beauty of the moment.

  “Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the highest.”

  And the people shouted in return, “Hallelujah!”

  Peter averted his face from John as they stood. The tears ran into his beard, and with his hands still occupied by the burden of the dead lamb, he could not wipe them away.

  John wisely made no comment.

  All that remained was to lay the sacrificed lamb on staves, where other priests would expertly skin it, removing the innards for burning at the altar, taking care that the bones of the lamb not be broken.

  Later, as Peter and John walked through the city with the lamb’s carcass on a wood frame between them, the sight of hundreds of special ovens set in public places for the pilgrims’ use brought back the memory of the sacrifice. And something else surged in Peter’s memory.

  “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

  “Hallelujah.”

  “Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the highest.”

  “Hallelujah.”

  Those same triumphant cries—the cries heard over the dying lamb—had also rung through the valley on Sunday past as thousands had cheered Yeshua’s approach to Jerusalem.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  I would argue that where faith or meaning diminishes, ritual fills the void. The Passover supper commemorated my people’s last meal in Egypt before the Exodus led by Moses.

  I imagine to the generation that first celebrated it, gratitude mattered far more than layers of ceremony. To them, a roasted lamb and unleavened bread were sufficient reminders of their newfound freedom and the angel of death that had passed over their firstborn because of the lamb’s blood smeared on their doorframes.

  I, on the other hand, found myself prisoner to centuries of adornment as I reclined at the Passover supper with Pascal and Seraphine. I squirmed with boredom as prescribed prayer and hymns followed the order that had been regulated by dusty old men with dusty old scrolls. Where among these rites was the Spirit of a mighty God who had inflicted plagues, parted the sea, and rained desert manna upon a people unworthy of His considerations?

  I did not mention these thoughts to Pascal as he raised the first cup of wine for a traditional prayer. It was easier to suffer in silence than deal with the questions my thoughts would have provoked. After all, from his point of view, it would have been too surprising to discover that aft
er an adult lifetime as a ruthless merchant of glass and silk, I was suddenly wasting time in philosophical discourse.

  And, because I did not want to draw the least amount of attention to myself, I drank from my goblet. It was the first wine I had tasted in months. When I wiped a few drops from the corner of my mouth with the back of my wrist, it looked like blood gleaming in the candlelight.

  I would think of that sight later when I heard the account of another Passover supper that began in a hidden room in Jerusalem as our own Passover meal drew to an end.

  **

  As the disciples followed Yeshua into the upper chamber, they saw the table set according to Passover custom.

  Jewish law specifically dictated that pilgrims not sit at the meal but recline on their left elbow and side, leaving the right hand free to eat. Such positioning of the guests made it impossible for a servant to reach over them to serve. Because of this, the upper two-thirds of the elongated oval table was surrounded by a horseshoe of cushions, and the extended lower third held the Passover dishes—unleavened bread, bitter herbs, radish, and vinegar in a bowl—within reach.

  Yeshua, lost in thought, moved to the cushion customarily held for the head of the table. On the left side, it was the second cushion from the end, deemed the middle. John took the end cushion, immediately to the right of Yeshua, below the master’s feet.

  The others moved to various other cushions as Peter, who had supervised the roasting of the lamb, set the meat beside the other dishes. This gave Judas a chance to squeeze past Peter and unhurriedly take the cushion above Yeshua, to the master’s left. The place of honor.

  Peter waited for Yeshua to command Judas to move. Instead, Yeshua took the first of the four cups of wine that were to fulfill the Passover and began the formal ceremonial benedictions.

  Peter had no choice but to finally recline on the empty cushion directly across from John. The place of least honor.

  Divine serenity filled Yeshua. All things were under His power as given by the Father; He had come from God and would return to God. With majestic dignity, He continued the prayer.