By
night we came to take him,
I
Malchus, and a cohort of Temple soldiers,
in the
still hours before daybreak,
we
servants of the High Priest stormed the garden
where
he stood. His fellows slept, in we crept
to
arrest him. And there he stood, waiting!
We were
following a direct order, to take him by number,
and led
there by his trusted fellow.
Some
awoke and then we could not find him,
not so
simple then, he stood there without resistance,
and
could not be seen.
And his
trusted one, our trusted one, went forward
greeting
him, kissed him in fellowship, as a signal,
our
signal – the Galilean looked at our man, his man,
with an
oddly resigned, yet penetrating glance.
I saw
it, then I beheld him, spoke my office and demanded,
Are you
he? He replied, I am.
And we
laid hold of him. Then it happened.
So
oddly calm, so in command of himself, suddenly
his
nearest, a bear of a fellow, leapt at me with a fair blade
and
whacked my left ear, nearly severed it.
It came
so fast, unexpected.
What
followed was still more shocking.
This
very Galilean held up his hand, stayed his friend,
admonished
him in dialect – then told us to let them all go,
we have
whom we came for. And without hesitation
he
approached me with that same hand and laid it
over my
gashed and throbbing ear.
When he
removed it, all was gone, the wound, the pain,
the
hearing, all I got was ringing buzzing, my brain went cold.
My men
had to nudge me to sternly fulfill my office,
I went
through the motions in a daze, I looked at him,
not
grasping, but grasping his shoulder I barely still heard him
saying,
By night you come to take me like some thief,
when
all the while I taught openly by day, open prey – now pray
do as
you are sent, that it may be fulfilled.
That
didn't help clear my thoughts,
and all
that passed thereafter in my lifetime –
my
leaving the Temple service and joining his circle,
sharing
its joys and its devotion, its bread and its wine,
its
destiny and its fate, in loving, serving and remembering him –
had its
birth and its prophecy, its torment and its promise,
in that
moment in that garden in that night,
when he
healed my ear, that I might hear.
