She cupped her chin in her hands. “We’re having Passover with them this weekend. Christian ceremony. Want to come and surprise her?”
I chewed my bland chicken, wishing we’d gone out like I’d suggested, that I’d ordered the ribs I really wanted right now. “Sure. Why not?” At this point, the thought of surprising anyone but myself sounded pretty good.
They called him by another name, but I recognized Him immediately.
Yeshua.
Emmanuel.
Jesus.
God.
In a dimly lit parlor scented with lamb, rosemary and honeyed apples, somewhere between the bitter herbs and the matzo ball soup, Jesus became alive to me again.
Though I’d taken many communions, read all the Gospels, sang all the songs, it wasn’t until I sat around the table with a bunch of strangers that I realized that my life was not about me paying the price for my past or even making some holy tangle of rules and rituals, but rather an offering, much the same as the one made for me, however woefully inadequate it seemed.
As I envisioned the blood on the doorpost of those Hebrew slaves and the haste and hope with which they ate this meal, my anger, confusion and pain at recent events melted away, swirled into a burst of color and then ran together in one red line across my mind.
A bloodline.
“Most folks have the wine, you know. The real thing.” Mrs. Shapiro’s peppermint breath feathered across my cheek. “I had a bad time with the drink a long time ago.” She pointed upward. “He delivered me from it, but no sense in forcing the issue, eh?”
I nodded, sliding the lamb off my fork. No sense in pressing the issue indeed. The music swirled around me as she patted my hand and moved on to the next person around the table, a colossal oval that reminded me of the conference room back at Scents and Savings. Only here, people smiled.
God had brought me so far since then. Out of the stress and pressure of that world into…my own stress and pressure? The absurdity of the thought startled me. So did the gentle rushing of the music, washing over me in waves of Hebrew. The men around the table echoed the words in throaty tones. I smiled at the underlying drumbeat, eerily reminiscent of a famous rap song.
Nothing new under the sun.
Austin winked at me from across the table. Her husband waved, then gripped her hand. She blushed and I laughed, both at her and myself. She’d seemed so savvy and cosmopolitan, but in the presence of the man she loved, she acted like a sixteen-year-old girl.
They moved in to kiss and I turned away, but not before a pounding at the door sliced through the beat of the music. Austin’s stern but pleasant husband leapt from his seat and ran from the table with expectance. Austin shook her head. “Men,” she mouthed, trying to regain her composure.
I nodded, narrowing my eyes in agreement, knowing she was trying to recover. She needn’t have bothered. Her melting at the sight of her husband had only endeared me to her more. She was a sistah indeed.
Her husband returned to the table with a laughing mouth, pulling a leather-clad man behind him.
A man I knew all too well.
My fork clattered against the china. Grape juice splashed over the rim of my glass and seeped into the linen, purple raced across the table as if highlighting the path to the newcomer. “Adrian?” I choked out his name as I righted my glass.
He looked at me, first puzzled, then delighted as he grabbed a napkin to help sop up my mess. “Dana,” he said like music. “I see you found my little Bible study after all.”
Chapter Fourteen
The grape juice came out of the tablecloth, but that night stained me forever. Though I’d spent many nights since Dahlia’s confession wondering what I’d say to Adrian when we did talk again, only Christ mattered that night. We sang to Jesus. Prayed to Him. Drank Him in though worship and Word. We laughed and cried.
More intimate than any kiss or rendezvous was the simple sweetness of our Savior and one look across the table after the last prayer left me seeing Adrian as if for the first time. Seeing Jesus for the first time. As if knowing how much the night had meant and not wanting to spoil it, Adrian slipped away first with a simple wave.
“I promise not to stay away so long next time,” he said to them, while looking at me.