The Gospel According to the Son

32

Since I wished my people to feel heartened by our entrance into Jerusalem, I sent forth two of my disciples and told them: "Go into this village before us and ask for a colt on whom no man has ever sat. When you find one, bring him to me. Tell them that the Lord is in need of such an animal."

And they went away and soon found a colt, young and spirited, and led him back. I sat upon this animal, which, until now, had been ignorant of a rider, and I held to its mane. For if I could not subdue such a young beast, how then could I calm the uproar in the hearts of men awaiting me at the Temple?

In time, the colt jumped less and pranced more, and we were able to walk in procession. And I liked the animal. I also felt as hungry as if I might never eat again.

Whereupon, seeing a fig tree that was heavy with leaves, I trotted toward it in order to take my fill. Yet on its branches I found no ripe figs.

Did an ill wind blow toward us? I said to the fig tree, "Let no man eat fruit from you again."

But a weight came upon my heart for cursing the roots of another. "I am the Son of God," I told myself, "yet also a man; by a thread does man live without heedless destruction."

So I also knew that Satan still clung to me. Like a hawk who searches the fields below for one small creature, then swoops for the kill, so had I scourged the tree.

Now the crowd of men and women who walked ahead of me took branches from the palms we passed and strewed them on my path. They sang, "Hosannah! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the kingdom of our David who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosannah in the highest." And some cried out, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord." These people of Jerusalem (and most had not seen me before) were full of favor; in the windows, many waved. Word of our good deeds had come to Jerusalem before us.

Yet I did not forget the fig tree. Its branches would now be bare. Such thoughts made me brood upon the end of the city of Tyre. A thousand years ago it had dwelt in splendor, renowned for its tables of ebony, its emeralds and purple linens, its stalls of honey and balm, its coral and agate and chests of cedar. Yet the sea had washed it all away. Would this yet be said of Jerusalem, as wealthy in this hour as Tyre once had been?

I gazed upon great white buildings with columns so tall that I could not know whether I beheld a temple or a seat of Roman government. I said to myself, "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches," but the words were too pious (for my heart had leaped at the sight of these riches). So I also said: "The mouth of a strange woman is a deep pit. And a great city is like a strange woman."

Yet I could not scorn Jerusalem. The people of Israel lived with as much magnificence now as in the time of King Solomon, when his palanquin had been made from cedar of Lebanon, its pillars fashioned of silver, its base of gold. The seat of the palanquin was purple and its claws had been wrought by the daughters of Jerusalem. Wondrous was Jerusalem in the time of Solomon, and wondrous was it now.

Yet my followers could hardly share such glory. I saw a Roman noble stop before our procession and stare at our hundreds walking by twos and by threes and fours in the lane. Some were well attired, but most of my people were in plain clothing, or in rags.

I, too, now stared at this throng that belonged to me.

The people of Jerusalem were joining us in large numbers; and I was seeing as many faces as there are aspects of man. Among those who followed were many who could be counted as less than believers but were rather among the curious and the tormented and the cynical, and these last were accompanying us to jeer at the Pharisees and thereby repay them for old rebukes.

Some of these new followers were solemn. So in their eyes shone the hope that I might provide a new piety that weighed upon them less than their old piety, which had turned drab in their hearts from too much repetition of the same prayers. And there were children who looked on all the sights and laughed at the wonder of God's bounty when it came to the faces of people; they were the closest to joy. There were also men with the fearful dissatisfaction of boredom on their brow.

And there were the poor. In their eyes I saw great need, and new hope, and much depth of sorrow; they had been disappointed many times. And I spoke to all, good and evil equally, as if they were one, since changes for the better can occur rapidly at times like these. In a bad man, evil and good can shift more quickly than in a good man; bad men are familiar with their sins and often weary of the struggle to deny remorse.

As the throng increased, so was the colt full of many wicked spirits, but they were young and without the foul odors of more practiced devils. Still, my beast would

buck, and I knew it was in his mind to throw me over his head onto the stones of the road. Yet I rode him. He was the colt for me. And for this moment I felt like the master of good and evil.

Only at this moment, however. For as I approached the Temple, I grew solemn with awe. I could not believe I was more than a Jew with a modest trade approaching a great and consecrated edifice. We were coming near to the Temple of Temples, and they had built it on a mount.

Even before I came to it, I remembered that its steps would rise from courtyard to courtyard, facing ever more august chapels and sacred sanctuaries, and there would be one chamber into which only the High Priest could enter and then only on one day of the year. That was the Holy of Holies. I was the Son of God, but I was also the child of my mother and so my respect for the Temple was, with each breath, growing larger than my urge to change all that was within. I shivered when the men and women in front of me, on mounting an incline in the road, began to cheer, and soon I too, on mounting the hill, saw the Temple walls.

But as I took in the sight, so did I also know that the future of this magnificence was in peril. In years to come, enemies would be ready to tear down the walls until nothing would remain but one wall. Hardly a stone would be left to rest upon another. All this would pass unless the priests of the Temple came to understand that my message was from the Lord.

Sitting upon the colt, I wept openly at my first sight on this morning of the Great Temple. It was beautiful, but it was not eternal. And I thought of the words of Amos, who had said: "The houses of ivory shall perish." It was then that I dismounted, and continued on foot.