danger at Passover. It seemed each year some messiah or revolutionist was crucified.
I’d not laid eyes on the Temple in years, and the sight of it sprawled across the mount ahead brought me to a halt. I’d forgotten the vastness of it, the sheer splendor. Its white stones and gold filigree blazed in the sun, a spectacle of such grandiosity, it was easy to believe God dwelled there. Does he? I thought. Perhaps like Sophia, he prefers a quiet stream somewhere in the valley.
As if our thoughts were conjoined, Jesus said, “The first time we met in the cave, we spoke of the Temple. Do you remember? You asked me if God lived there or if he lived inside people.”
“You answered, ‘Can he not live in both?’”
“And you said, ‘Can he not live everywhere? Let us set him free.’ That’s when I knew I would love you, Ana. That’s when I knew.”
* * *
? ? ?
AS WE CLIMBED the grand staircase into the Temple, the cacophony of bleating lambs in the Court of Gentiles was deafening. Hundreds of them were crowded into a makeshift enclosure, waiting to be purchased. The stench of dung burned my nostrils. The crowds pushed and shoved and I felt Jesus’s hand tighten on mine.
Approaching the tables where the merchants and money changers sat, Jesus paused a moment to stare. “There is the den of thieves,” he said to me.
We pushed our way through the Gate Beautiful into the Court of Women, then wound through the masses to the circular steps where my mother had once restrained me from going any farther. Only men . . . only men.
“Wait for me here,” Jesus said. I watched him climb the steps and meld into the crush of men beyond the gate. The lamb was a white blur bouncing above the fray.
Jesus returned with the animal hanging lifeless about his shoulders, dribbles of blood on his tunic. I tried not to look at the animal’s eyes, two round black stones.
Passing back by the money changers’ tables, we saw an old woman weeping. She wore a widow’s robe and blew her nose on the folds of it. “I have only two sesterce,” she cried, and hearing this, Jesus stopped abruptly and turned around.
“Three are required!” the money changer snapped. “Two to purchase the lamb, one to change your money into Temple coins.”
“But I have only two,” she said, holding the coins out to him. “Please. How am I to observe Passover?”
The money changer pushed her hand away. “Go, leave me!”
Jesus’s jaw tightened, his face dark red, the color of ocher. I thought for a moment he would seize the man and give him a shake, or perhaps give the widow our own lamb, but surely he wouldn’t deprive us of Passover. “Do you have the sesterce from the Samaritan?” he asked.
I pulled it from my pouch and watched as he strode over and slammed the coin onto the table before the money changer. The din was too frenetic for me to hear what Jesus was saying, but I could tell he was expounding on the shortcomings of the Temple, gesturing indignantly, the slaughtered lamb on his back, jostling about.
Can God not live everywhere? Let us set him free. That’s when I knew I would love you, Ana.
Those words welled up in me, and I remembered the story he’d told me just before we found Tabitha on the road, the one in which he’d freed the doves from their cages. I didn’t pause to think. I walked to the crowded paddock that held the lambs, undid the latch, and yanked open the gate. Out they poured, a white flood.
Frantic merchants rushed to herd them back into the pen. A man pointed at me. “There. She’s the one who opened the gate. Stop her!”
“You rob poor widows,” I shouted back and fled into the small pandemonium—lambs and people merging like two rivers, bleating and shouting.
“Stop her!”
“We must go,” I said, finding Jesus at the money changer’s table. “Now!”
Scooping up a passing lamb, he placed it into the widow’s