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Mary in Transit

By Donald A. Bemis

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In the Empire of Rome, in the Kingdom of Judea, in the City of Jerusalem, in the Temple of the Most High God, in a room full of priests, in a bowl on a table, was a ball of baked clay. It lay among numerous others, identical except for the names embossed into their surfaces. A hand reached into the bowl and swirled its contents. Two fingers and a thumb closed upon the ball and drew it out. The eyes of a seated priest read the name and scanned the assemblage.
“Zechariah.”
Two men stood up. One was barely twenty. An excited smile parted sparse whiskers that would eventually become a beard. To be selected the first time he came was almost too much to hope for. The priest who had called out the name inspected the young man’s face, then the ball, and the face again.
“This is an old one. Sorry.”
The disappointed young priest sat back down. The other man remained standing. Below a head cover grown thin from many launderings, above a grizzled beard, and framed by gray earlocks, a pair of eyes shone back from a wrinkled face.
Old Zechariah had wondered if he would ever be called again. He was pushing fifty, the age at which priests were retired. His group, the Abijah division, reported to Jerusalem twice a year for one week of Temple service. Even after a priest arrived, he would have no idea what he would be doing. Tasks were assigned by lottery because there were more priests than special duties. Surplus priests might find themselves inspecting cattle, slitting sheeps’ throats, or gutting goats all day.
Incense duty was a prize, highly visible but not difficult. Twice a day, a priest would enter the Temple to burn incense at a special altar, and he would pronounce a blessing on all the people as soon as he exited through the great doorway. Priests told horror stories among themselves about colleagues who had forgotten the words of the blessing, stumbled over the edges of their robes, died in the portico, or otherwise humiliated themselves and (if it were possible) their God. Older priests especially relished telling the stories to newer ones.
The time came for the evening incense offering. Crowds watched and waited in the courtyards of the enormous building. Even though the Temple complex was far from completion, the setting already was impressive. Some people came out of devotion, some for the spectacle.
Zechariah had been a part of the spectacle twice a year for thirty years, but he still was awed. He straightened his vestments, took the unburned incense issued to him along with a glowing coal from the main altar, and stepped through the entrance. There was no door, just a maze of heavy draperies to separate the inside from the outside. The curtains were spaced far enough apart that a careful priest would not accidentally set them afire with his coal.
Beyond the curtains, the only light would be from seven yellow flames atop a golden menorah. The burning incense would not substantially add to the light. God Himself had ordained the formula for the incense. He had designed it to smoke, not burst into flame. Priests who had previously been assigned duties inside the Holy Place all commented about the inability of the menorah to adequately illuminate the vast hall.
Zechariah was accompanied only by the tinkling of bells sewn to the hem of his robe. The draperies increasingly muffled the sounds of the outside world as he wound his way inward.
Soon he would be alone in the Holy Place. One curtain at the back of that hall would ultimately separate him from the Holiest Place, empty except for the presence of the God of the Universe.
The old priest secretly wondered if God was especially present there, given the fact that the Herod who built the Temple had so little use for Him. No heavenly fire or celestial voice had congratulated the king at the dedication of the new building. Maybe God had preferred its predecessor, five centuries old, built by grateful Jews after their return from exile.
Zechariah still remembered the wrench in his gut fifteen years earlier when the solid, square form of the old Temple had dissolved into a pile of rocks, and the sun intruded into places that had not seen the light of day for half a millennium. He himself had been a part of the destruction, as well as a participant in the construction of the new Temple that replaced it. Over a thousand priests, including a then younger and stronger Zechariah, had done all the work. Now the building was young and he was old, alone with his thoughts.
His next thought was that those other priests had exaggerated. Light from inside the Temple clearly illuminated the path between the last two rows of draperies. Maybe his eyes were adjusting to the darkness. Oddly, though, it was a steady white glow, not the yellow flicker of oil lamps. Zechariah’s coal, which had glowed so orange only a few seconds earlier, took on the gray appearance of embers in daylight.
Finally the Holy Place began to be visible through the opening at the end of the fabric passage. Beautifully finished wood-paneled walls reached all the way to a lofty and equally dazzling ceiling. There was no darkness. It was not at all what he had imagined, stepping from the curtains into the room.
Not at all, indeed.
He was not alone! There, by the incense altar, stood a person who obviously was not a priest, nor even human. No man would outshine seven lamps as this person did.
An angel! Zechariah thought with terror. What could this mean?
“Don’t be afraid, Zechariah,” the angel soothed. But it was not especially soothing. “Your prayers have been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth, will have a son.”
Zechariah was stunned. He had quit praying that prayer several years earlier. He barely heard the next part of the promise: that the boy—already named John—would delight his parents, the world, and the Lord. Zechariah did hear the warning that the boy would be a Nazirite, dedicated to God from birth. That would complicate meal arrangements. Anything that had ever been a grape would be off his menu. The part about him coming in the spirit and power of Elijah was too much to comprehend. Prophecies and angelic visits had ended centuries earlier.
Zechariah shook his head. “How can this be? My wife and I are both too old for such a thing to happen.”
The angel did not agree. “I am Gabriel,” he answered…as if that explained everything. “Now, because you won’t believe what God has sent me to tell you, you will be speechless until it happens.”
Zechariah opened his mouth to protest, but it was too late. Not a word came out.
Outside the Temple, people were getting restless. Incense usually didn’t take that long to offer. The priest already should have pronounced the blessing, but he was still inside.
“Do you suppose he died?” some asked.
“He looked pretty old,” others agreed.
Finally small bells could be heard again. The draperies moved. The priest apparently had not died. If the volume of the jangling meant anything, he was indeed more vigorous than most. Dwarfed by the great doorway, he tottered out, his eyes wide with shock, and his body trembling violently. His mouth hung open above a quivering beard.
A murmur arose from the front of the crowd. Zechariah raised his shaking hand and they quieted. He opened his mouth.
Silence.
His lips moved. Still there was silence.
“Do you think he’ll last long enough for the blessing?” one man whispered to his neighbor.
A pair of priests detached themselves from a clump of their colleagues and ran to Zechariah’s assistance. “What’s the problem?” they demanded in low voices.
The murmur of the audience increased to a buzz.
Zechariah tried vainly to speak. Then he turned and pointed a wavering arm toward the Temple. He looked up at the sky, waved both hands at the heavens, and finally pointed at himself.
More priests, lured by the pantomime, joined the ecclesiastical cluster.
“A vision?” one asked.
He nodded vigorously.
“Of what?”
He again tried to speak, with the same lack of results.
The impromptu conclave drafted a priest with a voice to pronounce the blessing, and they hustled Zechariah away from the excited crowd.
“Another horror story for the new priests,” commented one rabbi to another.
“For old ones too, I suppose.”
Zechariah remained speechless and trembling for the remaining few days of service. He tried to relate his experience with pen and ink, but his handwriting, already unsteady from age, was illegible.
Finally his term was through for the last time. It was an odd trip back home to the hills. His birthday wasn’t to come for a few more weeks, but he was as good as retired. For three days he traveled in silence, alone with his thoughts and unable to communicate with anybody else on the road.
“Some sort of vow?” some wondered.
“Unfriendly,” observed others.
Zechariah’s trembling slowly subsided as he adjusted to his new situation.
Finally he came within sight of home. Elizabeth’s back was to him as she raked their empty garden. She had pulled up the last of the vegetables while he was gone, and now, to keep herself occupied in her husband’s absence, she was preparing the plot for winter. She was old, and he was old, but their love for each other would last as long as either of them was alive.
If she raked the ground any smoother, thought Zechariah, it would reflect. He stooped slowly to pick up a pebble, straightened as much as his back would let him, and tossed the stone into the middle of the garden.
A puff of dust and a tiny crater marred his wife’s work. She whirled around, dropped the rake, and hurried to hug him. “So, my man, gone two weeks, what do you have to say for yourself?” she teased.
He did not reply. His lips moved, but that was all.
Elizabeth went pale. “Are you all right? No, not a stroke! Come in. Lie down.” Her arm dropped to his waist, and she tugged him toward the house.
Zechariah shook his head violently. He pulled himself free and scrawled in the dust with the end of his staff:
VISION
She gaped. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. Then he scratched again in the dirt:
BABY
She hustled him to the garden. Tapping the smooth earth with his stick, she ordered, “Tell me more.”

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