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Joseph Caiaphas stood rooted in one spot, looking upwards to the top of the torn curtain, gap mouthed. In the utter silence of the dedicated space he could hear nothing more than the soft in-and out-of his own breathing, and it was as dazed and hushed in awe as the rest of his being as he looked without seeing. Seeing, without comprehension, He tried to will the return of natural sounds and preoccupations of the priests to be enacted behind him, as if this were an ordinary day, albeit, a sacred holiday which had started at sundown last night with plans for the arrest of the Nazarene once his accomplice was willing to identify him apart from his near in age cousin, the son of his mother's sister-as though he didn't exist-as though several layers of sacred cloth and velvety hide standing from ceiling to floor of the Temple of the Most High hadn't been torn in two, as if by the fearsome grasp of a giant hand-but the silence was so profound it hurt his ears! The earth groaned beneath his feet and the rock heaved, threatening to topple the out-sized lamp stand unto the table of freshly baked loaves, as his knees buckled in fear. But the stones held firm and the cries ceased as abruptly as they started, isolating him even more from human contact. A breeze from within the heart of the closed building blew apart the torn edges of the curtain, as if in the breathing of an unseen creature; moving it from the other side- evoking childhood images of Ezekiel's 'Wheel within a wheel' and the 'living beast' with four faces that carried the Spirit of the Ancient of Days, Blessed be His Name, where in there. Now! Waiting-but for what? [1] That was as difficult to seize as the realization that the veil ordered by GOD to shield mere mortals from His Presence when the Shikinah glory filled the Holy of Holies had somehow been ripped asunder, risking contact between them! Words came to his mind, and he was a bored youth again, struggling against the weight of his elder's expectations, before he'd resigned himself to do the will of those who preceded him in their sacred appointment.
" And Moses said, 'Hereby shall you know that the LORD hath sent me to do all these works for I have not done them of my own mind. If these men die the death common to all men; the LORD has not spoken unto me. But if the LORD make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they shall go down quick into the Pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the LORD'. And it came to pass as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground cleave asunder that was under them. And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. They and all that appertained to them, went down alive to the Pit, and the earth closed around them, and they perished out and they perished from the congregation, And all Israel that was round about them fled at the cry of them, for they said, 'Lest the earth swallow us up also'. And there came out a fire from the LORD and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense. " [2]

            Clearly El Elohe Israel the LORD GOD of Israel wasn't a Being to be fooled around with or taken lightly! And the mere thought of it shook his stout frame with a sobering shudder, and he instantly lowered his head and dared not look again even on the aperture between them, lest he perish of his own conceit.
            " That man on the cross, Jesus of Nazareth, had said the same thing, that he wasn't speaking his own words but the words of the Heavenly Father who sent him!' His conscience spoke in this rare moment of personal vulnerability, as man rather than High Priest, representing himself rather than the people, and for an instant he wished he had the cord tied around his ankle as if he had dared to step INSIDE that holy space, even standing where he was, in the chamber of service before the Most Holy Place. But Caiaphas greeted the thought with resentment and humiliation at the memory of this morning's treatment at the hands of the Roman Procurator Pilate! 'Pontius-I'm-superior-to-you-Pilate! Pontius-I-know-what-you-want-of-me-but-you-have-to-grovel-in-front-of-me-and-ask-me-for-it-Pilate!'
         Undaunted the same gentle Urging came to him, using verses memorized in his youth when he was still questioning and open to answers that he knew would please the Master at whose feet he learned on a daily basis. .
          "' Come now, let us reason together ', saith the LORD, 'though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool...If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land" [3] The next words in the passage angered him more than he thought possible after the strain of the last few days! The last week of dealing with the populace's blind acceptance of that impostor!

"And what about his stirring up the government against them?" The Blasphemer whispered, having recourse only to a portion of the mortal man he was attempting to wrest from the Holy One's influence.

        But he was shut out by the man too and he faded in renewed humiliation, seeing the Kingdom soon to be forbidden to him and raging within and without with unimaginable fury in his helplessness. Leaving one of his dark princes to guard the small portal they still maintained. TIME was suddenly impressed in him for the first occasion in his immense existence as the greatest of all created beings, and he sharply disliked the very tool he used on the fragile clay to be turned against himself! He was immortal! The Holy One couldn’t take that away from him! He'd failed once, but these pitiful creatures with their malleable minds and vivid imaginations would be more easily defeated. He'd stop the message, even if he failed to stop the Messenger, and make void the terrible Sacrifice being enacted on Calvary’s ignoble brow, whatever the cost, he promised himself grimly.

          Joseph turned sharply to rebuke the mere priest who'd dared to intrude on him when it was his authority alone to make the decision on what to do next, but as real as the feeling had been, he found himself alone in the narrow half of the room where the door to the courtyard steps and the Golden Laver were still shut tight. Then an odd sigh, the light around him seemed to dim, though the golden Menorah continued to give its light from the seven upturned branches without flickering in the breeze that raised goose flesh on his arms, and the curtain pieces fell backwards and were still. This time he was truly alone.
          Despite everything that had happened since he was shaken from his bed by a shattering earthquake that had left the world realign around him, this was the least comprehensible. They'd accomplished their goal, though it had taken most of the night and it had been difficult to find a consensus between all twenty-three priests involved in the High Sanhedrin, and he'd laid down of sheer exhaustion, expecting to be wakened only by he cautious shake of his servant's hand on his shoulder to rouse him in time to join his guests downstairs for the lengthy Passover ritual which would begin at sundown. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the horrific memory of seeing the three crosses on the skull shaped hill as dark, broiling clouds lifted the darkness that had seized his eyes-he must still have been dreaming after all-for when had such a terrible void overtaken the living earth? He tried filling his mind with the necessary mechanics under his control as a means to escape its haunting memory. The men he chose for the cloth to cover the gap would have to be purified, of course, many of them had done that on their own for the Seder tonight, but more would be needed to be done.
        'He needed to pick two men whom he could trust to carry a fresh linen panel even now being selected to cover at least two cubits on either side of the massive gap, perhaps three...' He thought to himself, grimly shutting out the trembling within at standing so naked of rationale and excuse before the eyes of the All Seeing One, Blessed Be His Name, for fear of what his eyes would see if he looked too deeply within the cleft formed in his inner being at the thought. Duties, tasks...these were easier to accept than the concern for what he suddenly found lacking as he stood alone, as though before the Throne of Judgment with The Ancient of Days as all men would one day face.
           He walked slowly toward the doors so lavishly created by the Idmudian interloper and he suddenly found himself seeing the lesser glory of it as though through the eyes of his family predecessors, or to King Solomon's eyes himself when Israel was a sovereign nation deeded him by his father David's death when he had prayed to be strengthened enough to wisely lead the people of Yahweh Elohim and he was suddenly confronted with an odd sadness. Even using the best of the jewels and the lumber and the craftsmen left to him by his father the King, it was only work done by mortal hands and they hadn't been able to keep the LORD here. He wept softly, closing his eyes against the vivid image of the three men hanging naked on rough crosses, the smells of the crowds, the buzzing of the stinging insects, the odor of his own body sweat as he had trudged farther than he normally did, although he stayed fit if only by crossing up and down the staircase reserved solely for the priest's entry into this place of uncommon worship, but he couldn't seem to make the mocking voices go away, the cries of the tortured on the side crosses pleading for a god who was as indifferent to their plight as to the people called by His name as they fought for existence as surely as the convicted men on the instrument of torture just outside the priest's gate for sheep. He'd waited so long, been so energized by the arrival of an apparent prophet at the river's edge that he'd used a great deal of his own money from his bazaars on the side of the Mount of Olives to prepare a transition team for the new king, who by the Almighty One's power would make the Roman dogs lift their heel from bowed Israel's neck, and what did he get? A mild mannered dreamer, a carpenter from gentile Nazareth, the long dead home of dead priests and priestly hopes for this very house of worship, who destroyed centuries of holy dedication and work to their unspeakable and awesome GOD but refused to instigate anything in its place, annoying and rejecting every form of religious principal in the nation! What then had he thought to offer if he'd succeeded?
         " What? "   He demanded savagely, but the echo of his own voice slapped at him with punishing intensity within the massive stone walls and his own conscience.
            The sun coming at him from its lowest place over the mountain rim before it settled for the night seemed unusually bright, like the worm of anger turning around inside his gut, reflected back from the shining stones to his right and his left as he stepped away from the heavy, ornate doors to the pillared columns and the steps leading down to the ordinary level of existence again from such dizzying heights. There was a surprisingly large crowd gathering in the brilliantly colored courtyard, its glare hurting his eyes and making them seep. Master Joseph of Aramathea and Master Nicodemus of Jerusalem were racing toward him, their hair giving off sparklets of water from the total immersion in the mikvah required of all men irregardless of their eminent status on the High Sanhedrin, aiming at him like burly arrows shot from invisible archers garrisoned on the walls surrounding the shining marble oblong immediately to his back, totally unaware of each other's presence but moving swiftly in a common goal, shoving lesser men aside in their haste lest he have the time to flee them where they were forbidden to go. But as he turned, with just that goal in mind, he saw a phalanx of his co-conspirators, who'd been willing enough to smile at his face and tell him how richly he would be rewarded by the Holy One, Blessed be His Name, for single handedly saving the entire Nation, and they were wailing and weeping like the women who'd lined the streets on his return here from Golgotha. He despised them to the depths of his being, though his face became a rigid mask and gave no sign of the sudden change formed within his strengthening resolve. If he had to do this single handed for his GOD, then he would, and the consequences be damned. The People, this Temple, the past deeded them down the centuries demanded no less of him, and he would have crumbled under the weight of his awareness of mortality had he been anyone else but the son-in-law of a family ordained by the Holy One himself to keep the faith-and the people-alive.
            The odor of the burnt incense to cover the blood burnt in sacrifice and the pound of footsteps from priests hastening to finish the last of the day's duties overwhelmed his senses as he raced past the weeping men, who made a failed attempt to seize his clothing as he raced up the stairs to avoid the older two men, lest like sheep, these men seized up Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea as their shepherds and huddle behind their staff of authority to bleat their feigned innocence in the terrible deed they'd all agreed upon. Rome-Pontius- could not be allowed to see any division against their united front, not now, the fate of the nation still rested in their trembling hands.
        He used the force of his presence to keep the gate open to allow him to pass into the surprisingly fragrant and pleasant air outside the massive walls and towers. On the slope of the Mount of Olives he paused at the narrow stone stairway to his house reserved solely for the family’s use, a path worn in the native stone from generations of feet passing this way to and from the wooded hill to the walled city on the other side of the valley cleft and he saw the Golden Gates closed for the night, and the sun striking them at an unusual angle. His mind was forced to see the vision that had so enraged him on the first day of the week, the waving palm branches, the singing, hysterical crowds, and his lips pulled away from his teeth in contempt. Today was the true Sabbath at sundown, the Feast of Unleavened Bread would begin tonight, yesterday being a holy day of Shabbat by the falling of the third most important holiday in Judaism on a Thursday this year, in accordance to their seasons as ordained by Yahweh, and the would-be 'Mashiach' and King hadn't even lasted a week! How could a day which had begun so good end up in such confusion? It hadn’t always been so. He turned and fled the rest of the way upstairs to cleanse himself and change his clothes for the coming feast night, as if he could move fast enough to outpace the messenger of Sheol biting at his heels!

How could this Passover have ended so badly when it became so well with last night’s promise of ending that Nazarene’s sway on the mob?

End Chapter 70

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