Thorns of Glory, page 55
“No,” I said firmly. “Absolutely not.”
“The Liahona?”
“I don’t . . . No, not that either.” I crouched beside her, attempting to take her hand. She pulled it away before I could grasp it. I sighed and continued. “Like I told you before, the caves. The passages. That’s how we got here. I don’t have the answers to everything, Hamira. I couldn’t have predicted this. I didn’t know we were going to witness any of this. But here we are. That’s why it’s a gift. At least, that’s what I believe.”
Her flood of skepticism started to burst its levee. “Gift? Seriously? All the terrible things that have happened to us. Awful things we’ve seen. Your wounds. Your cuts and bruises. You still believe it’s a gift?”
I tried to smile. “I do. As for the terrible things . . . Why not? Is this really so different from other times? Different from everything else that happens in life? We chose all this, Hamira. I mean, we chose to come to mortality. We started out in the warmth of His presence. What I mean is we were with Jesus and our Heavenly Father. But it couldn’t stay that way. Not if we wanted to become like God. Not if God wanted us to become like Him.”
I was sure I was mucking this up. Talking too fast. Still, she was listening, engrossed.
I forged on. “We knew there’d be pain. That we’d screw up. Experience awful things. We came anyway. We chose to be born. All to become like our Heavenly Father.” I motioned toward the gathering. “And to become like Him, our Savior. The point is that none of it—none of it—would mean anything except for what He’s about to do.”
She couldn’t look at me. She started pacing. “And we’re supposed to see this event? Witness it?”
I was about to say, “Apparently,” but I didn’t get that far. Hamira’s expression became taut, like a piano wire, as she was seemingly jogged back to reality. “He’s coming, Joshua. My brother. I can feel it. He’s on his way.”
“So?” My lackadaisical response surprised even me.
“So?” she repeated like I’d lost my mind.
“Hamira . . . I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”
She cringed and clenched her teeth. I wasn’t trying to be flippant. Not sure what I was trying to be. I just wanted to go back. I wanted to see and hear more.
Hamira brushed the dirt and debris from her luminous gown. Not out of vanity. Her appearance was not her concern. She was stalling. Deciding. I wondered if Omer’s great-granddaughter might bolt, flee as far away as possible to avoid falling into her brother’s clutches. Instead, she turned and headed back toward the others.
* * *
Hamira
I could feel him. I could feel my stepbrother drawing nearer, like a parasite under my skin. I was a fool! Nimrah would kill me! Or delegate that vengeful act to Kentor or Jugal or one of Herod’s strongmen. This time Nimrah would not dither. I knew this as surely as the crimson moon blazing overhead. Still, I plodded back toward Sabrina and Melody. Back toward Him.
My thoughts roiled and raged. I wasn’t sure anymore what I believed. I’d heard all that Joshua said. His analogy of a mother’s birth pangs. I’d striven to draw it all into my mind. Ridiculous! I wondered if I’d fathomed a single one of his convoluted concepts. Except for that last part: He cared not. It mattered not. Nimrah and his henchmen no longer inflamed him with fear. Nor could that fear be provoked by any other person or thing. If Joshua could make himself so unconcerned, why couldn’t I? I strained to adopt his frame of mind, slip it over my head like an ill-fitting garment. If he was right, what else mattered? What in this life would ever matter again if . . . if what he said carried a particle of truth? Of what consequence was anything if that Man was truly about to do the thing that Joshua described? It was nonsense! It was a miracle. It was idiocy! It was history’s greatest event. My mind flitted to and fro like a moth bashing itself against the pane of a lantern’s fatal flame.
Joshua walked closely behind me. I paused. Sabrina, Gid, and Melody were no longer crouching at the place where they’d been. Jesus and His followers had also moved on. My eyes searched until I registered movement in a small clearing. At its center was a stone wheel balanced upon a platform. The circular edge of the platform was indented with a ditch. The mechanism was designed, I surmised, to crush the fruit of these trees—olives—into oil. Four wooden benches, crude and weathered, surrounded the olive press. I pictured families assembling here at harvest time, chattering, singing, dancing. All very festive.
Moonlight, mingled with the light of the disciples’ lanterns, bathed the scene with a supernatural sheen, gold or bronze, as if a royal raiment had been circumspectly laid upon it. The faces of Jesus and his followers peered out from the folds of that raiment, glowing eyes and patriarchal beards adding a luster of their own. Framing the event on every side were the tenuous webs of olive trunks and boughs, thrust upward toward heaven, like hands set in prayer.
The benches presently served as places of respite for the exhausted followers of Jesus. They’d slumped down to ease their troubled minds and weary limbs. One—Philip, I think—curled up on the farthest bench and laid down his head, desperate for a moment’s reprieve. Some disciples sat on the grass, resting their backs against each other or snuggled inside the massive folds of olive roots. The breadth of the moon seemed to expand overhead. It was almost intimidating, making us feel small and vulnerable. The protective shadows of boughs and leaves had been earnestly sought.
Jesus was kneeling on the hard soil next to the press, head bowed, consumed in prayer. Vocal prayer. The crisscrossing shadows seemed to make way for Him—avoid Him. He prayed in full view of His followers, though some of them seemed to find it difficult to concentrate. Their composure was spent. Beguiled. Depressed. Willpower crushed, or so it appeared, by a weight not unlike that olive press.
To our left I could make out the silhouettes of Sabrina and Melody, cleaving to the shadow of an ancient tree. It looked so misshapen that I wondered if it was the ancestor of every other olive tree on this mount. We crept toward Sabrina, Melody, and Baby Gid.
As we settled in beside them, Melody whispered, “You missed so much.”
“What?” asked Joshua.
In that instant, from afar, we heard the dying echo of a trumpet peal from the compound of the Holy Temple, announcing the beginning of the next watch and a changing of the guard.
The sound seemed to disturb Melody and diverted her attention from answering Joshua’s inquiry in any great detail. She tried to assuage her cousin by offering a hasty summary of a few of Jesus’s prior statements: “I am the true vine . . . Love one another, as I have loved you . . . If I do not go away, the Comforter cannot come—”
Sabrina further abbreviated Melody’s summation by raising a hand and softly shushing her. It was already hard enough to hear Jesus. We were situated at a greater distance from His company than before. Besides, He was engaged in prayer, so His tone was naturally muted. I caught only occasional phrases.
“. . . I have glorified you on the earth by completing the work that you gave me . . . now glorify me with your presence, Father, with the glory that I had with you before . . . They were yours, and you have given . . . All that are mine are yours, and yours are mine . . . coming to you, Holy Father, protect them . . .”
He spoke plainly, each sentence carefully enunciated. More than half of His disciples appeared to have nodded off. I felt I could glean why. Though relative stillness prevailed across the environs of Olivet, interrupted only by an occasional rustle of leaves, the grove itself exuded a scintillating energy, a fulmination of creation. But rather than invigorate the senses, the reverie’s effect was to enchant, to hypnotize. Its aroma permeated the skin, suffused the lungs, and intoxicated the mind, pressing downward, naturally, upon the eyelids. Even at this distance we could sense the garden’s effluvium, but the disciples of the Messiah would have been utterly defenseless against this atmosphere.
The moonlight and lanterns had awakened a murmuring of benign insects that flitted and fell, scurried among the flowers, weaving a panoply of colors between the moon’s rays and the dark, verdant density of foliage, a scattering upon looms of branches and bushes, ever enjoined by refreshing odors and what seemed to me the music of creation. The harmonies of genesis.
Whereas behind us as well as ahead, beyond the garden’s periphery, a deathly pall seemed to hold the landscape in a vice-like grip, the garden was an oasis of life’s essence, the very breath that gives vivacity to clay. Everything inside that circumference of moonbeams exclaimed the opposite of mortal suffering and pain. The opposite of death. The opposite of whatever oppressed the spirit and countenance of Jesus who, though situated at its nucleus, appeared wholly immune from its enlivening and sedating fragrance.
At first Jesus didn’t seem to notice that most of His disciples had nodded off. Or He wasn’t particularly concerned. His mind was absorbed in meditation. Only one set of ears, He apparently felt, needed to hear this particular prayer: the Father God. Though I could not perceive every individual word, a certain beauty and perfection resonated in His tone, seeping into my veins like water nourishing the soil. It made a perfect grasp of His words unnecessary—even distracting. It was a song of its own. Like the wafting strains of a faraway melody that causes the heart to ache and yearn. Tears welled in my eyes, and I wasn’t the only one. Watery paths also glinted on Melody and Sabrina’s cheeks. Baby Gid cooed, yawned widely, and drifted back into solemn slumber.
Joshua’s expression was severe, intense, eyes squinting, then widening, frustrated by our less-than-perfect position. He glanced about, tempted to move closer, but the layout of the clearing didn’t allow it. Josh huffed in aggravation, arriving at the same conclusion that had been reached by his aunt and cousin. If we moved any nearer, we’d be exposed. Just relish His tone, Joshua, I wanted to say. Hear the music. But I kept silent, not daring to interrupt. Any sound I uttered would have shattered the air, disturbed that sacred refrain.
“. . . foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these ones know . . . so that the love with which you loved me may be in them . . .”
He prayed on, whispering. I could see only slight movements of His lips. I doubted if even His closest disciples heard what He was saying. Not that it would have made any difference. Each of them had drifted off. Instead of rousing their faculties, Jesus’s prayerful cadence calmed them. Soothed frayed sensibilities. Allowed them to find refuge in the midst of oblivion. Who could blame them? He’d portended impending separation, change, upheaval, and death. Yes, His words also promised reunion and hope, but what mind, after being forewarned of so much inescapable tragedy, could simultaneously fathom any message of reassurance? Worry not about the awful coming things, He seemed to be saying. All will be well. That second part could only infiltrate the mind like a voice in a dream: nebulous, murky, asphyxiated by the former.
Jesus remained on His knees, fingers kneaded, face directed heavenward for several more interminable seconds. I leaned forward, disquiet eroding the furrows and edges inside me. Did He . . . ? Was this Messiah weeping? The moonlight confirmed it. Tears escaped both eyes. One splashed onto the dirt. This shook me. The Savior of the world wept? How could a God—even in human form—exhibit a trait so . . . so weak?
This threw me. It jolted me. It filled me with dysphoria. What was I thinking? Oh, Hamira, you simpleton! I’d nearly been taken in. Joshua’s words, the setting, the songs!—had almost persuaded me. I’d very nearly drifted into the same drunken state of adoration as the rest of them. But this . . . this exhibition of all-too human passion . . . from a Son of Father God? It jettisoned me back into a maelstrom of doubt. Gods do not weep. This flew in the face of everything. It contradicted all that I understood about the universe. Everything I’d been taught. Or rather . . . all that I’d imagined. Envisioned.
He started to rise—ineptly, knees nearly buckling—and approached the three disciples at the nearest bench. It was Peter and John and . . . John’s brother. I didn’t recall his name. All were fast asleep or nearly so. John sat cross-legged on the ground, head laid on his brother’s knee like a pillow. The brother’s head was tilted back, mouth agape. Peter was bent forward, forehead nestled in his folded arms.
Jesus spoke their names. Three heads snapped alert. After wiping the moisture from His eyes, He declared, “My soul is sorrowful to the point of death.” He added more. Instructions. I only made out, “. . . be watchful.” Whatever happened next, Jesus wanted them to see it. Or He just didn’t want to be alone.
As the three men fought to jostle themselves to alertness, Jesus returned to the spot where He’d been praying, about a stone’s throw away from the bench where Peter and the others remained. He was just about the same distance from us. There, in the epicenter of this place that I’d perceived as an oasis of vitality and creation, the Rabbi from Nazareth knelt again and bowed His head among the plants and grasses. Some blossoms were close enough that He might have kissed them. At one point His arms seemed to stretch out of their spacious sleeves, then folded tightly inward, embracing Himself. Or rather, as if He would have embraced the world, enfolded creation itself into His arms, yearning, hungering, aching to transform it into something different than it was. Or perhaps just to somehow draw it inside Himself, purify it, heal it.
Something new happened. Jesus collapsed, literally, flat onto his face, as if He’d fainted. Sabrina and Melody started forward, ready to bolt from the shadows and lend Him aid. They stayed put, but it seemed to require considerable self-restraint.
Peter also looked concerned. He started to stand, but John’s brother grasped Peter’s elbow. He didn’t yank Peter back, didn’t force him onto the bench. It was more a touch of reassurance. Maybe it was a warning not to interfere. Reluctantly, Peter lowered himself back into place.
Jesus said nothing for a long while. Nevertheless, something was underway. Almost without warning, He unleashed a great outpouring of . . . Was it grief? Misery? I couldn’t name it. Jesus had started blubbering like a child.
No, the term childlike is not correct. It was more. And less. I wish I could evoke the right word. Whatever He was experiencing, it was not . . . “godly.”
Jesus seemed to groan from His deepest depths, some hidden inner place that He’d never before perforated. He uttered something broken and rambling: “. . . if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.”
I heard this phase clearly, but what did it mean? This “cup?” A metaphor? Was that what it was? I pondered it: Let this cup pass from me. Jesus wanted to avoid something. Something He considered exceedingly unpleasant. The plea sounded so . . . peculiar. Unexpected. Out of character. A moment ago, He’d devoted His whole Being to assuaging the minds and hearts of His disciples. He’d begged them to trust Him. He’d implored them to trust His Father. Now this Messiah, this Rabbi of Nazareth, was pleading . . . for Himself? What was happening? What kind of exhibition was this? What an unnerving, shameful display!
Joshua, Melody—they believed this “being”—this incarnate representation of the Father God’s own Son who, they were convinced, possessed the very keys of salvation and eternal life. Now this mere human—this mortal Man—expressed His fervent preference to toss all that away. Give it up. Abandon such keys. Bury them deep in the earth. Confer them on someone else. Was this even a prayer? Was He addressing Father God or muttering incoherent garble? I decided this was not a prayer. Not even close. Its nature and character were different. Distinctively unmusical. Inharmonic. Discordant. They were the words of someone who would have opted to be a thousand miles distant. As far as the edge of the earth. The dark side of the moon. Anywhere but here.
In disgust I thought: Go then! Run away. Hypocrite! Grifter!
What fools we were. What a fool I’d almost been! I’d nearly swallowed His intoxicating bait. I’d been on the verge of devoting all my faith to this . . . this pretender. This weakling! He was no different from any other creature of flesh and blood and bone. If He thought He was the Messiah, He was a victim of His own despicable self-delusion.
Here was the truth: a Messiah did not beg. A God did not ask for strength. He did not plead or petition for anything. He did not appeal and beseech to have His burdens placed upon the backs of others, even that of Father God. Only men did that—the ordinary, run-of-the mill rabble of hill and gutter. Men invariably begged to have their burdens removed. Wasn’t this humankind’s most frequent, parroted request? Not that I was any better. Then again, I wasn’t expected to be any better. On the other hand, a Messiah, a Savior, a God—!
Once, Joshua had tried to instruct me on the finer points of prayer. A proper start, as I recalled, was to express thanks. Admittedly, I hadn’t prayed very often. It was assuredly not an entrenched habit. On those rare occasions when I had prayed, I’d invariably rushed past that “expressing thanks” part. Or ignored it altogether. In every infrequent prayer I’d uttered in my life, my overriding plea was: Ease my burdens! Remove my trials! Take away the trials of others! It’s what I’d always asked for—even in the brief prayer I’d expressed earlier that night.
It was precisely for this reason, I decided, that I could not compel myself to pray often. The concept itself of imploring aid from some higher being irked me. It was cowardly. Who needed it? Not me. I could take whatever misery or fate Father God meted out. Bring it on, merciless heaven! I could endure it. Endure it or die. Therefore, ought not a Messiah—a son of God—have endured it too? God did not grovel. He did not weep. He didn’t demur or equivocate. A Messiah marshalled His power. He mustered His supreme will. By His very nature He transformed His wants—His desires—into the starkest, most palpable reality. Else how could He deem or declare Himself a God? How could He dare boast such a proclamation to others? No, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t true. I winced and squirmed. My disapproval was visceral. This display was . . . unseemly.
