MANNA OF THE MANGER (PART 2) | KAIROS GLOBAL | FEBRUARY 2024

Author: Grace Maria

Recap

On the eve of the Passover festival, young Hannah and her little brother Joachim are at play. Joachim, a talented artist and who longs for the oft-heard manna, makes it with clay. Their Passover lamb interrupts the children; Joachim is sad that the lamb is to be sacrificed the next day.

Meanwhile the lamp leaps out of Joachim’s hands and dashes away. It ventures this time into the street across the courtyard. It's not a street, rather a primitive highway of sorts connecting Israel and Egypt. Joachim runs chasing the lamb up the historic highway. But all of sudden the lamb has been scooped away. It is a tall man, who ascends before the bewildered Joachim. A seasoned shepherd, he holds the lamb across the back of his shoulders with his left hand, a staff in his right. His head gear covers his forehead till his brows.

‘Who are you?’ Joachim asks the stranger.

‘Me? A wayfarer. Who are you?’ The stranger asks.

‘We? What do you mean...? We belong to this place... The children of Bethlehem.’ Looking around for his sister, Joachim demands, ‘Lay it down! That's our lamb.’

‘Bethlehem? That means my journey ends here.’ The stranger answers with a sigh of relief. ‘Well, I was also born here.’ A strange smile brightens up the visage of the hitherto wayfarer.

‘What?’ Joachim asks.

‘I mean... Some thirty-three years ago,’ the stranger explains. His journey has ended where his life’s journey had begun. Maybe that explains his smile which is now cast in the enigma of the twilight hour.

‘King David was also born here...a thousand years ago.’ Joachim jokingly retorts. ‘Give me my lamb back!’

‘No,’ the stranger asserts, ‘You will kill it.’

Joachim can't agree with him more. Hannah enters and is surprised to see the stranger. ‘All praise be to Jehovah! Aren't you Jesus of Nazareth?’

The stranger looks bemused. It appears that he doesn’t want to answer the question.

‘Two days ago, I saw you in the procession in the city. Riding around the holy city on a donkey, while the entire Jerusalem was hailing, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”’¹

She tells Joachim, ‘Bow, Joachim, he is a blessed person...Jesus of Nazareth. This is my brother Joachim. I am Hannah.’

‘Shalom,’ Joachim wishes Jesus.

‘Shalom. But I am Jesus of Bethlehem as well. I was born here. People are usually known by their birthplace. Aren’t they?’

‘Are your parents here? Are you here to visit them?’ Hannah asks.

‘My parents were travelling through Bethlehem when I was born. I was brought up in Nazareth. So everyone calls me Jesus of Nazareth.

‘Where are your friends? Why are you travelling alone? Hannah exclaims.

‘Friends, yeah... that I will tell you. First let me return the lamb. Like me, he too has set out all alone.’ Jesus smiled.

He hands over the lamb to Joachim saying, ‘There is no reason to sacrifice this lamb this Passover. Let him be with his mother.’ Joachim is more than happy to receive the lamb.

‘But how! Aren't you a Jew too? Can you disobey the Law of Moses? This is our Paschal lamb, the first born,’ Hannah quizzes him.

‘The lamb has been spared... for a ransom of thirty shekels of silver,’ Jesus says, looking up at the sky. ‘“If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them. So they weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver.”² Children, can you recognise these verses?’

‘It is from Prophet Zechariah.’ Hannah is thorough with the scriptures. 

‘Yes, Hannah. Prophecies are meant to be fulfilled, aren't they?’ She nods in agreement.

‘By now the best friend of mine, with whom I trusted money, has received my wages, the thirty shekels of silver from the guardians of the Law of Moses. That’s why I say that the lamb is free.’

Joachim, neither aware of the blood money that the thirty pieces of silver represent, nor the treachery of Judas and the conspiracy of the chief priests, is already on his way to the stable, carrying the lamb. Jesus and Hannah follow him. The lamb is set free into the stable.

‘Slurrp…’ A sound is heard. It is the lamb suckling at its mother. The ewe placidly glances at the onlookers. Joachim beams at Jesus. Jesus and Hannah smile. 

Mother’s milk washes away all the sins of the quadruped. It is the lamb’s baptism, in mother's milk – Hannah and Joachim being its godparents and Jesus the priest. Milk foams at the innocent lamb’s mouth. A drop of it drips on the dusty floor and the entire stable is soaked in peace, of an ethereal kind.

To be continued.

STORY WRITTEN BY GRACE MARIA

References

¹ The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ (Matthew 21:9)

² I then said to them, ‘If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.’ So they weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver. (Zechariah 11:12)