The Five Books of Jesus

Book Three: Vayiqra (And He Called), Section One (Continued)

When they approach the eastern wall of Jerusalem—God’s chosen city—the people who have come with Jesus start to pave the road with their clothes, lining the way for him. And as he draws closer to the city, they start to sing from a psalm:  

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
We bless you from the House of the Lord!
God is the Lord, let his light shine forth: bind the sacrifice with cords to the altar!

Simon’s friends have prepared well. Soon their people join the procession waving palm branches, symbols of the land of Israel. They complement the sounds of the old psalm with their own, adapted overlapping verse:  

Blessed is the kingdom of David that comes in the name of the Lord!
Lead us up to the House of the Lord!
Hosanna to God, let his light shine forth: make a sacrifice at the altar!

Some of the men from Jericho and the pilgrims from Galilee take up the new chant. Arriving Judeans and even some Jews from abroad start to gather to see what’s inspiring the song. A few join in, though they’ve never heard of Jesus. They start to throw their coats and sashes down; Simon’s friends hand out palm leaves and branches to anyone who will take them. 

The cacophony of traffic—camels grunting, donkeys braying, pedestrians colliding, wheels beating on uneven cobblestone—can be overwhelming when the festivals bring half a million people to Jerusalem. But now the force of the song competes even with those sounds: 

Blessed is the kingdom of David!
Lead us to the House of the Lord!
Hosanna to God! Hosanna to God! Make a sacrifice at the altar!

Jesus dismounts from his donkey. He has reached the Temple gates. 

*

No one watching outside the gate knows what to expect. Will Jesus walk into the heart of the Temple and make a sacrifice at the altar personally, announcing himself as high priest and king? Or will he head straight to the Roman fortress on the Temple’s north side and knock it down like Sampson in the temple of the Philistines? Will he call the sick and the lame to the Temple and heal them there? Or will he simply preach to the multitudes of the faithful who have come to Jerusalem? 

No one in the outer court of the Temple has any idea what Jesus will do either, because no one there even heard the song: the Temple’s outer court is the noisiest place in all of Jerusalem this time of year. Cattles’ lowing echoes off the high walls, sheep bleat incessantly, coins clank as people exchange profane Roman currency for purer coins. Local guides sing out their slogans in desperate attempts to be heard over hopeful entrepreneurs’ loud exclamations of the beauty of their souvenirs. Poor widows lose control of their tempers and voices as they complain about exorbitant prices on sparrows and doves this season, and merchants yell abuse at them as loud as it is vulgar before pushing them away with carefully washed hands.

Jesus starts to shove. 

He goes for the money tables first, flips one over so hard that coins from Rome, Tyre, and Tiberias make a cloud in the air like locusts and fall like hail. The local guides and hawkers stop shouting their slogans and dive for the loose coins, but overturned tables crash down in their way as Jesus keeps moving, black hair and beard flaring out like an angry lion’s. Using his coat as a whip, Jesus scatters the cattle—the owners shake their fists at him but chase their heavy goods out onto the porch and then into the lower quarter’s tight, hungry streets. Jesus shouts a warning to the dove-sellers and then throws open cage after cage. First dozens, then hundreds of birds fly out into the sudden freedom and circle above the Temple for the whole city to see. 

God watches one of them as it falls back to the ground. 

The high priest’s guards rush in but by the time they arrive, a herds’ worth of livestock are scattered and the floor is littered with coins of gold, silver, and brass. Some of the outer court’s best-known merchants are nowhere in sight, others are shouting at Jesus, while still others sit on, fatalistically bemused at the sight of their upended tables and broken plans. Dozens of strong men have poured into the court behind Jesus, armed, as it were, with palm branches.

“Stop!” say the guards. “What are you doing?” 

Jesus turns toward them. “Have you let this house, which is called by the Lord’s name, become a den of robbers before your eyes?” 

The merchants look down at their hands indignantly. They don’t see a speck of blood. 

“What are you talking about?” asks the chief guard. 

“I’ve seen it,” says Jesus, and he looks around at scattered wares, straying animals, and angry sellers. “It wasn’t supposed to look like this. It was supposed to be a house of prayer for all nations.” 

There’s a big crowd behind Jesus now. Too big and too lively for the guards’ comfort. Bigger than the current crowd of Jesus’ victims and possibly even more passionate.

Someone is going to have to answer for the chaos of this day, thinks the chief guard, but now is not the time to announce who or how. 

“Why don’t you come here tomorrow and explain to the high priest and sages what exactly this is all about?” says the chief guard, hoping to avoid a full-scale riot. 

“I promise I’ll come,” says Jesus, and the guards make a graceful but rapid exit from the court, shrugging to disappointed and disgruntled merchants as they go, as the crowd behind Jesus begins to sing: 

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
We bless you from the House of the Lord!
God is the Lord, let his light shine forth: bind the sacrifice with cords to the altar!

*

But Jesus doesn’t enter the inner courts of the Temple today. In the late afternoon, he heads back out of the holy city and up the Mount of Olives. At first the crowd follows him, but he firmly wishes them a good night, and then satisfies them by saying he’s looking forward to seeing them in the morning. They wander off in clusters toward their homes or the places they’re staying. Even close friends from Galilee let him send them to the villages to get some rest, and at last he’s left alone with his apostles. 

Jesus sighs and slumps down under a fig tree and looks out at the glare of the sun off the Temple’s golden dome. Though it’s well before the fig harvest, this tree’s leaves are already spread like they do once the fruit starts to come, so Peter looks through the branches to find some fruit for his Master. Then he notices a tear running down his Jesus’ face.

“It’s no use, Peter,” Jesus says. 

Peter stops. “What do you mean?”  

“Haven’t you read the scripture?” says Jesus, “I will take away the harvest, says the Lord: there will be no grapes on the vine or figs on the fig tree: its leaves will wither, and the good things that I have given them will pass away.”

“I can get you something else to eat,” says Peter. “Should I run up to the market in the village?”

But Jesus doesn’t answer. 

Andrew sits down next to Jesus and looks out at the Temple and the holy city beyond. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he says. “The way the gold looks like fire, the marble pillars white like a cloud. Like God’s still right in front of us, day and night, still leading us out of the land of bondage. Things will be all right.” 

Jesus looks at Andrew. “A day of desolation is coming,” he says and turns back to the Temple, “when not one stone will be left standing on another.” 

“When is that day?” asks Judas. “Is it a sign of the End?”

But Jesus shakes his head. “It’s only the beginning,” he says. “Like the leaves of the fig tree before summer comes.” 

*

There will be wars and rumors of wars, says Jesus. Men who speak in the name of prophets and messiahs will leave the land bathed at least three times in blood. 

The apostles’ minds reel. 

People will starve and plagues will rage and houses will collapse as if under the force of earthquakes, says Jesus. Brothers will hand over their brothers to be killed and children will turn on their own parents. People will forget the meaning of love. 

The apostles’ hearts sink. 

When fights break out over idolatry, get out! says Jesus.

When the armies come up against Jerusalem, get out at once! he says.

If you see fighters from your housetop, don’t go into the house to put your affairs in order. If you’re in a field when the news of war comes, don’t go back home to fetch a coat. Just run, immediately, to the safe place over the Jordan. 

Pray that your daughters aren’t pregnant or breastfeeding then, says Jesus. Pray you don’t have to flee in the winter. 

Pray that God will make it go quickly so the whole earth isn’t eaten up.  

When will this happen? says Thomas. How do we know when it’s begun?

Only my Father knows, says Jesus. But once it starts it will happen again and again and again. Until the moon is a burned-out candle, and the stars fall one by one. 

But don’t let it shake you. Go to the farthest ends of the earth and finish the work you’ve been given. 

That’s when I’ll come again, says Jesus. In a cloud by day and with fire at night. 

That’s when I’ll come. 

The apostles’ heads spin. They go back to the village and don’t say much for the rest of the night.  

*

But in Jerusalem, the high priest and his sages talk late into the night, extending their discussion of final holiday preparations to consider the Temple disturbance—and to weigh their options for handling the man responsible for it. 

“Who is he?” says one of the sages. 

“Trouble,” says the high priest. 

“For the merchants, certainly, but maybe not for us,” says another sage. “Let’s talk to him and see what he wants before we act.” 

“Talk to him?” says the first sage. “And then sit here and deliberate while he starts a riot right at the time when our city is host to guests from every corner of the earth? We should tell the guards at the Temple to arrest him tomorrow if he comes back.”

“If you want to see a riot, go ahead and arrest him,” says the second sage. “I promise to say the mourning prayers with your widow if his crowd of supporters forcefully objects.” 

The first sage glares at his colleague, but the high priest raises a hand for calm. “There are more than enough widows in Israel already,” he says. “And there’s no glory in reckless acts. Either we find a way to disgrace him in the eyes of the crowd, or we find reliable charges and arrest him quietly in the night. Try to find out who he is and what these people expect from him. Listen for him to speak recklessly, or else force him to speak too cautiously for a crowd’s taste. Then we can stop him—”

“If he needs to be stopped,” says the second sage.

The high priest sighs. “We need to be prepared,” he says, “to keep the peace here.” 

*

Jesus rises early in the morning and climbs up on the young donkey. He asks James to walk by his left side and John by his right, and heads toward the Temple as he promised. And though James hasn’t forgotten he’s supposed to be humble as a little child, he can’t help but feel a little proud and more than a little vindicated that he and his brother are on Jesus’ right and left sides on such an important occasion, while the other apostles walk behind. 

But James’s feeling of pride suffers when Jesus asks him and John to wait at the gate with the donkey until he returns. James had imagined he’d follow his Master into the house of worship, not end up stuck outside with some borrowed, braying beast. 

Though Jesus and his apostles have arrived at the Temple quite early, many are already waiting for him there: Simon's friends hoist up their palm branches in greeting; the pilgrims from Galilee and men from Jericho cheer; big groups of Jerusalem natives and visitors from overseas point excitedly and whisper; his mother and Mary from Magdala smile at him from across the sea of faces. 

Several fully armed Roman soldiers supplement the Temple guards today. Sullen merchants and moneychangers conduct their transactions quietly; new cages of birds have been brought in, and are being sold at standard off-season prices. 

A servant of one of the sages walks up to Thomas. “Which one of you is Jesus?” he asks. 

“Why do you want to know?” Thomas says. 

The servant’s eyes shine. “Because there aren’t many teachers in these days who really honor God more than men,” he says. 

Thomas is impressed and takes the man to Jesus. 

“Master,” says the sage’s servant quietly, though still just loudly enough for the people nearby to hear, “what does the law really say: is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?”

But Jesus answers loudly enough for almost everyone to hear. “This man has a good question,” he says as he turns to face the crowd. “He wants to know if a holy person can pay Caesar taxes in good conscience. Does anyone have a Roman coin?” 

A man in line at the table of a money-changer produces one, and Jesus examines it. 

“I grew up in a village where we didn’t see coins like this much,” Jesus says. He waves the scholar’s servant over. “Can you tell me whose face that is?” 

“It’s a graven image of Caesar,” says the man. 

“That settles it, then,” says Jesus, and Simon sees his friends lean forward in anticipation. But their excitement gives way to disappointment when Jesus speaks again: “If it’s Caesar’s,” says Jesus, “you’d better give it back to Caesar.” 

Simon watches several palm branches drop. 

“If it’s Caesar’s, it doesn’t belong here,” says Jesus, and then, more loudly and clearly: “Give what’s Caesar’s back to Caesar, and give everything else to God!”

Mary from Magdala is the first to burst into joyful laughter, and a hundred or so Jews from the north, south, and abroad quickly join in. The palm branches go up again and Simon’s friends cheer. Jesus hands back the coin and walks with his mother into the easternmost of the inner courts before the foreign soldiers can decide how they feel about what just happened. 

*

The twenty-three jurists who sit in the lower court chamber near the treasury can tell by the rising rain-like pitter-patter of coins on the depositories that a large group of people has just arrived in the adjacent court. Two of them excuse themselves: they have special instructions from the high priest to meet someone. 

Several men in the crowd fit the rough description they’ve been given of the one who disrupted the outer court yesterday, so the jurists simply listen to the man everyone else is listening to. They find a place close enough to hear him answer questions and listen to him talk about resurrection in his cumbersome rural Galilean accent. The combination of his folksy dialect and folktale doctrine is almost too much for them to keep straight faces about: they’re a little surprised the high priest was worried about such a simple, backward preacher.

“This shouldn’t be difficult,” says one jurist to the other, and they walk up to Jesus. 

“Master,” says the first, trying to make the word go out of his mouth smoothly, without any trace of sarcasm, “forgive us for interrupting, but we happened to hear something about the dead coming back to life.” 

“Surely you’ve read the scriptures,” says the second, “and you know the law: if a married man dies without children, his brother, as the goel, marries the widow and makes descendants to preserve the dead brother’s name.”

But the preacher from Galilee just looks at them and doesn’t say a thing.

“Once there were seven brothers,” says the first jurist, “and the first took a wife, but died on their wedding night.”

“So the second brother married her, but he too died on their wedding night,” says the second jurist, “as did the third.” 

“A more superstitious man might have begun to suspect the interference of some demon,” says the first jurist, “and a lesser man might have declined to play the goel’s part and marry her, but the last four brothers each kept the law—”

“And each,” says the second jurist, “died on the wedding night, leaving the woman herself childless until the day she also died.” 

“Tell us this:” says the first jurist, “if there really is a resurrection—which Moses simply forgot to write about—who will she belong to there? Each of the seven took her as his own.” 

The jurists smile at the strength of their argument, but the Galilean looks at them with apparent contempt. 

“How can you understand the scriptures if you don’t know the power of God?” says Jesus. “Moses gave that law for earth: there’s a greater law in heaven. You should know at least this: before anyone rises from the dead, the laws of the goel will be fulfilled.” 

All the humor disappears from the jurists’ faces. “Come with us,” they say, and they lead him up the steps and through the gate into the court of Israel. 

*

The two sages who advise the high priest are waiting there, looking out over the court of priests to check the preparations around the altar.

“This is the man who made such a disturbance yesterday in the Temple,” says the first jurist.

“And we just heard him disparage the law,” the second jurist says. 

The first sage turns to Jesus. “Who do you think you are?” he says, “Who gave you the authority to do all this?” 

“Answer one question for me,” says Jesus, “and I’ll answer that question for you.” 

A large group of strong men begins to file into the shallow court behind Jesus. They watch the first sage until he grows nervous his wife may become a widow if he doesn’t choose his words carefully. 

“Ask your question,” the first sage says. 

“Was John’s baptism from heaven, or men?” says Jesus.

The first sage sees the trap now: if he says “heaven,” Jesus will make him look like a hypocrite for not going out to the desert. If he says “men,” in the presence of so many witnesses, he’ll offend anyone who counted John as a prophet.

“I can’t tell you,” the first sage says. 

Jesus nods. “I understand: I can’t tell you about my authority either.” 

“Would you mind answering a different question for me?” asks the second sage. Jesus looks at him carefully, then shrugs. 

“Of all the commandments that have been written,” says the second sage, “which comes first?” 

Jesus smiles. “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one!” he says, “And so you should love Him with an undivided heart, with your whole soul and mind and strength.”

But before the second sage can congratulate him on his answer, Jesus goes on, “The second commandment is almost the same: love your neighbor as yourself. And there are no commandments more important than these.”

The second sage looks over the great altar in the court of priests ahead. “Well spoken, Master,” he says. “There is only One, and there is none other than Him. To love Him with our whole hearts, with understanding minds and all the strength of our souls, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, is worth far more than all these burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 

“You’re not far from the kingdom of God,” Jesus says. 

The second sage looks closely at Jesus and speaks softly: “Is that why you’re here, then? To bring God’s kingdom back into the hands of a son of David?”

Jesus is staring out past the altar toward the entrance of the Temple’s holy place. “Why do they say the Messiah is David’s son?” asks Jesus. “David himself, filled with the spirit, said: the Lord told my lord: sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool. It would be enough for David’s son to bring back his father’s kingdom. But what is David’s lord supposed to do?” 

“I don’t understand,” says the second sage, but Jesus doesn’t seem to hear him. Jesus’ eyes are fixed intently on the Temple proper, and though of course it’s impossible, the second sage will later swear that he saw in those eyes a reflection of the Temple’s eternal flame. 

*

The sages don’t question Jesus further or issue any penalties for the disturbance on the previous day. When Jesus turns away and asks if he’s free to go, they say yes, and he leaves the men’s court and goes down the fifteen steps to where Mary from Magdala is waiting with his mother. But before they can ask what happened, Jesus points to something happening on the treasury side of the court: wealthy visitors from far corners of the Empire throw impressive sums of money into the depositories, showing their loyalty to the sacred house and city they’ve wandered far from. Beside them, a widow throws in two thin bronze coins. 

“Did you see that?” says Jesus. “Maybe the others gave the most, but she held back the least.” 

His mother nods. “That must have been her whole income. She gave everything she had.” 

“Then so will I,” says Jesus. “For the widows’ sake.” 

And he walks out of the Temple. 

James Goldberg is a poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, documentary filmmaker, scholar, and translator who specializes in Mormon literature.

Original artwork by Sarah Hawkes.

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