The frightened disciples stepped back. Could something have gone wrong with the teacher’s mind? He had become so abrupt and strange lately, so obstinate. Odd, vacillating winds were blowing over him. Sometimes his face gleamed like the rising sun and everything around him was made to dawn; at other times his look was dark, his eyes despairing.
“Don’t you feel sorry for it, Rabbi?” John ventured.
“For what?”
“The Temple. Why do you want to demolish it?”
“So that I can build a new one. I shall build a new one in three days. But first of all, this one must vacate the land.”
He took the shepherd’s staff which Philip had presented him and banged it down on the paving. The wind of anger was now blowing over him. He looked at the Pharisees who were stumbling along and lacerating themselves against the walls, apparently blinded by the excessive splendor of God. “Hypocrites,” he shouted at them, “if God took a knife and tore open your hearts, out would bound snakes, scorpions and filth!” The Pharisees heard, became frantic, and secretly decided to block this fearless mouth with dirt.
The old rabbi put his palm over Jesus’ lips to silence him. “Are you courting death?” he asked him one day, his eyes brimming with tears. “Don’t you realize that the Scribes and Pharisees run continually to Pilate and demand your head?”
“I know, Father,” Jesus replied, “but I know still more, still more…”
Bidding Thomas sound the horn, he mounted his usual platform on Solomon’s Porch and once more began to proclaim, “It has come, the day of the Lord has come!” Every day from morning till sunset he shouted in order to oblige the heavens to open up and hurl down their flames-because, as he well knew, man’s voice is an all-powerful charm. You cried “Come!” to the fire or the dew, to the Inferno or to Paradise, and it came. Similarly, he was calling Fire. It would purify the earth, would open the way for the appearance of Love. Love’s feet are always pleased to step on ashes…
“Rabbi,” Andrew asked him one day, “why don’t you laugh any more, why aren’t you joyful, as you were before? Why have you grown continually more ferocious?”
But Jesus did not answer. What could he say, and how could Andrew’s naïve heart understand? This world, he reflected, must be destroyed right down to its roots if the new world is to be planted. The old Law must be torn down, and it is I who shall tear it down. A new Law must be engraved on the tables of the heart, and it is I who shall engrave it. I shall widen the Law to make it contain friends and enemies, Jews and idolators: the Ten Commandments will burst into bloom! That is why I have come here to Jerusalem. It is here that the heavens will open. What will descend from heaven-the great miracle, or death? Whichever God desires. I am ready to ascend to heaven or to be hurled down into hell. Lord, decide!
The Passover was approaching. An unexpected vernal sweetness had flowed over the hard face of Judea. The routes of land and sea had opened up, and worshipers arrived from the four corners of the Jewish world. The bellowing tiers of the Temple stank from human beings, slaughtered animals and dung.
Today a great number of the ragged and the lame had assembled outside Solomon’s Porch. With pale, hungry faces and burning eyes they looked maliciously at the well-fed Sadducees and at the rich, merry burghers and their wives, who were weighted down with bracelets of gold.
“How long do you think you’re going to laugh?” someone growled. “We’ll soon cut your throats. The teacher said so: the poor will kill the rich and divide up their goods.”
“You didn’t hear very well, Manasses,” snapped a pale man with sheep-like eyes and hair. “Poor and rich won’t exist any more; they will all be one. That’s what the kingdom of heaven means.”
“Kingdom of heaven,” an ungainly beanstalk of a man interrupted, “means that the Romans get out. A kingdom of heaven with Romans isn’t possible.”
“You understood nothing of what the teacher said, Aaron,” replied a venerable man with rabbit-like lips. He shook his bald head. “Israelites and Romans, Greeks and Chaldeans don’t exist-nor do Bedouins. We’re all brothers!”
“We’re all ashes!” shouted someone else. “That’s what I understood; I heard it with my own ears. The teacher said, ‘The heavens will open. The first flood was of water; this one will be of fire. All-rich and poor, Israelites and Romans-ashes!’ ”
“ ‘The olive tree will be shaken, but two or three olives will remain at the top, three or four on the highest branches.’ The prophet Isaiah said that… Courage, men. We’ll be the remaining olives. All we have to do is keep the teacher close by, so that he doesn’t get away from us!” These words were pronounced by a man with skin the color of a charred pot, and round, popping eyes which stared at the white, dust-filled road to Bethany. “He’s late today,” he grumbled, “he’s late… Take care, lads! Don’t let him get away from us!”
“Where can he go?” asked old rabbit-lip. “God told him to do battle in Jerusalem, and it’s here he’ll do battle!”
The sun was in the middle of the sky. The paving steamed; the stench increased with the torrid heat. Jacob the Pharisee appeared, his arms loaded with amulets. He was publishing the special grace of each: these cured smallpox, colic and erysipelas; these expelled demons; the most powerful and expensive killed your enemies… He noticed the ragamuffins and cripples, recognized them. His envenomed mouth cackled maliciously: “Go to the devil!” and he spat three times into the air to be rid of them.
While the ragamuffins bickered, each one twisting the teacher’s words in accordance with the longing of his own heart, a huge and venerable man with a long stick bolted in front of them, sweating, covered with dust, his wide, still-unwrinkled face glistening.
“Melchizedek!” cried old rabbit-lip. “What’s the good news from Bethany? Your face is all lighted up!”
“Rejoice and exult, men!” shouted the old notable. Weeping continually, he began to embrace them all. “A corpse has been resurrected; I saw it with my own eyes. He got up out of the tomb and walked! They gave him water and he drank; they gave him bread and he ate and spoke!”
“Who? Who was resurrected, who was resurrected?” they all demanded, falling upon the old chieftain. People in the neighboring arcades heard. Men and women ran. Several Levites and Pharisees also came near. Barabbas was going by, his ear caught the uproar, and he too joined the crowd.
Melchizedek was delighted to see such a great multitude hanging on his lips. He leaned on his staff and proudly began to speak. “Lazarus, the son of Eliakim. Does anyone know him? He died a few days ago and we buried him. One day went by, two, three-we forgot him. Suddenly, on the fourth day, we hear shouting in the street. I race outside and see Jesus, the son of Mary of Nazareth, with Lazarus’s two sisters prostrate and kissing his feet, lamenting for their brother. ‘If you’d been with him, Rabbi, he wouldn’t have died,’ they screamed, wailing all the while and pulling out their hair. ‘Bring him back from Hades, Rabbi. Call him and he’ll come!’ ”
“Jesus took them both by the hand and lifted them up. ‘Let us go,’ he said.
“We all ran behind them until we came to the grave. There Jesus stopped. All the blood went to his head, his eyes rolled and disappeared, only the whites remained. He brought forth such a bellow you’d have thought there was a bull inside him, and we all got scared. Then suddenly while he stood there, trembling all over, he uttered a wild cry, a strange cry, something from another world. The archangels must shout in the same way when they’re angry… ‘Lazarus,’ he cried, ‘come out!’ And all at once we hear the earth in the tomb stir and crack. The tombstone begins to move; someone is gradually pushing it up. Fear and trembling… Never in my life have I feared death as much as I feared that resurrection. I swear that if I was asked what I wanted to see more, a lion or a resurrection, I would say a lion.”