The Triumphal Entry----Elizabeth

Someone skittered past the door outside, noisy sandals slapping across the dry ground, thirsty for rain. Abba turned in from his place at the door. He smiled at me. I squinted at him with the bright light framing his stocky figure. With a smile I went back to piling the mattresses in the corner and grabbing the blankets to pound the dust from them. A group of loud adolescents scurries past the little garden mother tried to force pomegranates out of. Abba shakes his head as a small huddle of older men saunters past, whispering secrets into their small circle. “Something must be happening in the city,” I murmured. He nodded, glancing out the door as another group passed.
“You should go,” he said with a rare smile. I shook my head.
“I have much work yet to do before sundown.” He sighs and shakes his head.
“I think I shall go and sit at the city gates.”
“Go then,” I smiled encouragingly, “bring me back some news of what goes on in the city this day.” He turned to go out the door when Esther, my younger sister, burst past him, bringing the dust of the street into my freshly scrubbed household. “Esther,” I scolded, “keep your head covered, and do not run. Look at my floors! Can’t you shake the dust of your sandals before coming in?!” Esther rewrapped her head scarf hastily and looked almost apologetic about my newly cleaned household. But her face brightened as she remembered the reason for her sudden entrance. With Abba once again leaning on the door post she exclaimed in an excited voice.
“You’ll never supposed who’s come to Jerusalem! Elizabeth, it’s so exciting! With Passover next week, and now they’ve come! Oh, Abba, Elizabeth, it could be like old times!”
“Who’s come dear one?” I murmured with a faint smile at her energetic excitement.
“James and John, the sons of Zebedee!” she said breathlessly. Her eyes danced. My heart leapt into my throat. James and John. The boys who had come to Jerusalem every Passover week as children. Often, they had rented the apartment beside ours. John and I had been near to childhood sweethearts. Mother had teased me often,
“He’ll have to buy that rundown apartment next to ours, since there is no room to build on the betrothal addition!” she would laugh at my reddened cheeks. Though she knew just as well as I that according to custom the addition would be built onto John’s own family home in Galilee.
Galilee. James and John had begun to spend their Passover weeks there as adults. I had not seen John in near to two years. The last time, my mother had been dying and we had only seen each other in passing as his family came to grieve with ours and offer prayers.
Esther’s laughter brought me out of my memories. “My dearest sister!” she said in her sparkling voice that I had envied for many years. “You are day dreaming of John, hardly moments after his name is mentioned!” My cheeks bloomed in color, I could feel the heat rushing all over in my embarrassment. Abba shook his head.
“Have only the sons of Zebedee come?” he asked. Esther shook her head.
“No, they are here with a Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, and there are other disciples with them.” She looked back to me, my hands clammy and hot, trying to smooth my tunic, “but the sons of Zebedee, they are the handsomest.” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. Abba shook his head again.
“Have they entered the city yet?”
“No, but they are on the way. Many people have gone out to meet them.”
“I will take my place at the city gates.”
“Abba, might I go out to greet them with Hannah and her brother Ezra?” Esther asked, her eyes wide and pleading. Abba gave in easily.
“Of course.” Esther hardly said another word as she hurried from the house and into the street, kicking up dust as she sprinted to Hannah’s home. He smiled at me, “You ought to go, daughter. You have grown up much too fast since the death of my beloved, go, and for one day enjoy yourself, forget your responsibilities here in the home.”
“You will be sadly missed at the gates if you do not go soon.” He nodded with a sigh and turned to leave. I waited until he was out of sight. Running into the back of the house I threw open a chest of what would have been my dowry, had my mother not died and left me in charge of the household. I dug through to the bottom and finally discovered what I was looking for.
A long, wide, purple piece of fabric embroidered with gold thread. I wrapped it around my head and threw one of the ends over my left shoulder. I looked down at my tunic, sadly stained from constant cooking and cleaning. The two pieces of clothing looked horribly mismatched. I found another chest containing Esther’s clothes and hoped I could still fit into them. There was a white tunic with a creamy yellow wrap. It didn’t quite match the gold thread, but it would have to do. I changed faster than ever before and rushed to the door.
Esther was right. People were heading for the edge of the city in hordes. I joined the throngs and searched the crowds for a familiar face. I didn’t see Abba at the city gates in his place of honor, passed down through the family, despite our relative poverty now. The chaos of people pushing in every direction and craning their necks to see was too much.
Thankfully the crowd loosened after we poured out of the city. But even then there were seemingly impossible numbers of them. Men yelling to each other so I could hardly hear myself think. Women holding hands and trying to keep an eye on their young ones. Children underfoot, scrambling through the crowds away from screaming mothers. Pharisees and the beggar who sat at the temple doors. Even a few Roman soldiers and one centurion had turned out for the event. No doubt to keep things underhand and prevent a riot from occurring.
As I searched for John or James, or anyone I knew, I realized everyone was looking to my left. I glanced in the direction and saw a path in the middle of the crowd beginning to form. Someone was coming down to the city. Was he walking? Because he most certainly was not on a horse of grand stature—I would have been able to see him. Someone ripped a palm branch from a nearby tree and cried “Hosanna!” as they threw it to the ground.
I saw him in that moment. The Rabbi from Nazareth. Nothing extraordinary, just sitting there astride a bony donkey that couldn’t have been comfortable in the least. He was smiling, but there was something there. Something else that I could feel but not quite see or understand. Was it frustration? I wondered as someone threw down their outer tunic and yelled something extraordinary.
“Messiah!” Savior? Messiah? Then why was there sadness in the way his back hunched over slightly as he swayed with the step of the beast he rode? “Hosanna! Allelu Ya!” Yaweh? Then why was there a helplessness in the way he held the reigns? A sort of meager submissiveness? “Jesus!” Why was there pity in the eyes that surveyed the crowd?
He was getting closer to me, and people were being jostled out of their positions as others pushed for a better view. A young man beside me tore off his tunic in eager service and pushed to the edge of the crowd. He laid it on the ground gently and waved to the Rabbi as he came closer. “Hosanna!” he cried in a voice that cracked. But the Rabbi did not even look at the young man. He was looking at someone deeper in the crowd. He was looking at someone who was confused, unsure. He was looking at someone and trying to give them hope, despite all the commotion and the instability that was suddenly obvious in his eyes. He was looking at someone who hadn’t even come out here to see him. He was looking at someone who had lost all their hopes and dreams in the will of God, only to find them again in the Son of God’s eyes.
He was looking at me.
I gasped slightly and hardly even noticed it. The deep brown eyes probed down into my heart, and in a moment, he knew all the hurt I had ever felt. And what was more, he ached for me. He was not sympathetic or full of pity. He actually felt what I did, and he understood. He smiled widely, and this time, there was no trace of uncertainty or pity, no hint of sadness or submission, only a sense of security. That everything would soon be set aright, that there plans for me that I could not have ever imagined. But more than anything, there was hope for the future in him. Not just in his smile, but in him.
And then he was gone, past me, and smiling at someone else who would throw down a palm branch to smooth the journey for the tired donkey’s feet. Someone collided with me and held my upper arms tightly, shaking me in excitement.
“Elizabeth!” someone was crying into my ear. I tore myself away from his retreating figure to face a man with a full beard of dark brown hair that was almost black and deeply tanned skin. His brown eyes were dancing wildly under his prayer shawl that had somehow ended up on top of his head, crooked, with tassels flying in the wind.
“John.”
“It’s him!”
“I know, Jesus, of Nazareth.”
“No, not just that, I mean, it’s him!” he waved his hand after the man swaying with the gait of his donkey, “He is Messiah!”
“Messiah,” I said softly, barely feeling John’s arm as it encircled my shoulders, “Messiah,” the word was like honey on my lips. Sweet, smooth, comforting.
“He is the Christ.” I turned to look up into John’s sweet face and smiled.
“I know,” I paused as the crowd began to follow him back into the city and we were beginning to be alone. “I know.” He laughed slightly.
“You look as though you have just seen the glory of God like Moses, when his face glowed after being on the Mountain.” My smile widened.
“I just looked into the face of God,” I stared at the cloud of dust retreating after the crowd, “I looked into his face, and he smiled,” I laughed. “He smiled at me!”
“Allelu Yah.”
“Hosanna!”