Chapter 19

Esther had not been forbidden nor had she been invited to accompany the Master and his twelve close companions on their journey to Jerusalem.

No plans had been made for it and no advance announcement had been made of it. The portentous decision had come as a stunning surprise. Jesus, in his prescient wisdom, made no mistakes. How often they had all agreed that this was true! How often they had had occasion to chide themselves for questioning his actions! But this time, they all felt, he was headed—quite unnecessarily—for disaster.

Peter, deeply depressed, heart-sick with foreboding, had brought the distressing news to the supper table in Bethsaida on a Sabbath evening. They were leaving early in the morning, he said, travelling fast and with light equipment.

‘Dear old Bartholomew!’ murmured Esther. ‘What will become of him?’

‘He’ll probably die of a heart attack,’ said Peter, ‘but he intends to come along.’

‘And you think I’d better not go?’ queried Esther.

‘There will be nothing for you to do,’ said Peter. ‘No meetings along the way, no healings; just a steady march to the city—and into who knows how much trouble.’

For an hour they discussed the probabilities. Yes, Peter agreed, there would be hundreds, perhaps thousands of pilgrims in the city who had heard Jesus speak, scores and scores who had received marvellous benefits at his hands; but these friends of the Master were not organized; they could not be expected to defend him.

‘They’re country people, mostly,’ Peter went on, ‘people like Andy and me, and Johnny and James and Thad, people who lose their confidence and courage in the confusions of a great city.’

‘But—surely,’ exclaimed Esther, ‘no one would dare to harm the Master when he is innocent of any wrong-doing!’

With a despairing sigh, the Big Fisherman tried to explain the dangers that threatened them. Jerusalem was the stronghold of all the mutually intolerant religious sects and political parties. They were ever on the alert to silence new voices that spoke the restlessness of the people.

Again and again, remembered Peter, deputations from Jerusalem had appeared in the Master’s audiences asking questions intended to betray him as a seditionist. The very fact that the populace hung on his words and found comfort in them was an indictment of his loyalty to the ancient institutions of Jewry.

On the occasions of the Passover, these stubborn men were particularly attentive to any indication of a movement among the people in defence of their common rights. Indeed, it was said that during Passover Week when the city swarmed with home-coming Jews from the provinces—habitually ignored and neglected by all officials save only the tax-collector—the Roman patrols were under orders to disperse even the little groups that gathered on the street to hear a blind beggar sing!…Now—Jesus would appear in Jerusalem. There would be hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in the city who would crowd about him and entreat him to speak to them; and undoubtedly he would do so…’Oh, why does he put himself in this danger?’