Cross Words
The following could be a document that was not destroyed by a Roman official prior to his departure from a 1st century, middle eastern assignment.
Not sure if I should call you Governor or your excellency or what. I doubt that you are going to show this little missive to any of Emperor’s crowd, as you wouldn’t want it known that you got your brother-in-law to spy for you. If you had only listened to Sis, you would have had nothing to do with this, but you minor, back-country officials are always looking for a chance to escape by ingratiating yourself with the collaborationists. Well, enough of my distorted views on power politics. But it is a good reminder of why you chose me for this mission—no matter what, I won’t pull any punches.
Anytime a former laborer and itinerant preacher from nowhere draws a very lively crowd to watch him die, something interesting is up. The slightly unruly mob cheering on the temple boys guarding the dangerous Nazarine were well paid to keep things stirred up. And we Romans thought we invented that one. Oh, and let me compliment you on the prisoner release you so neatly conducted, giving the revolutionaries their hero to keep them quiet, knowing full well that he will probably be back for a return engagement or soon find himself at the point of no return.
By the way, tell your overzealous scourgers soften the whiphand a bit. This guy was staggering and falling practically out of the gate. If you’re going to make the doomed man walk to the death site, at least leave him enough strength so he’s not finished before the finish. As expected, when he fell, the crowd surged, and the so-called guard fell apart. Two women rushed in, one being his mother and the other trying to clean him up a little, Zeus knows why! Our finest had to step in and restore order, gently removing the ladies, and bringing in some big ditch-digger from out of town to help with the cross.
A well-muscled Roman presence somewhat calmed down the paid agitators, though it was still noisy and crowded, with disorder and calamity only push or a shove away. Nobody paid any attention to the other two convicts, being your garden variety criminal which we execute by the hundreds in outposts throughout the world. Our star attraction was soon falling down again, landing at the feet of some more women anxious to speak with him. Not that he seemed in any condition to do much more preaching. However, he did give them some kind of warning about their future or their families’ future or maybe all of our futures. You know how these street-corner Hebrew prophets are. The soldiers again shooed away the females, and the slow progress continued.
As I previously stated, the object of all this fuss barely made it to the end of the line, and this is where things get a little strange. The crowd had thinned out considerably, and like any good arena mob during the kill, had grown quiet as we affixed the object of their ire to the wood. While we drove the nails into his flesh, he barely made a sound, though his face showed he was in excruciating pain. I was certain that he would be dead before the cross stood very many minutes.
Surprisingly, he seemed to get his second wind once he was hanging before the onlookers. And a fairly distinguished bunch it was. There were several Hebrew holy men there in full regalia, and though the enthusiasm had waned from the death parade, they attempted to liven things up with some half-hearted taunting, and a running commentary about what a failure their kinsman was. My favorite part of their pitiful diatribes was the complaints about the sign you put up declaring this convicted criminal their king.
Also disconcerting was the fact that not only did he have the strength to talk, but his voice seemed to carry over a considerable distance. His most significant pronouncement was the royal amnesty given to all involved: “Forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.” Very nice, I suppose, but from the Roman point of view it translates to, “Let them off, they are idiots.” And who was he talking to? The only legitimate authority present was aiding and abetting those religious folks having him removed from existence. And with only one God in his spiritual arsenal, and that one apparently represented by hostile officials, the appeal for forgiveness seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
I found the whole tableau somewhat eerie, and you know that I have no imagination, superstition, or religion whatsoever. In the midst of this seemingly routine execution, a man is offering paradise to one of the other condemned criminals, making arrangements for the care of his mother, calling out to his god—essentially taking care of those around him, even those who could care less. The strangeness of a dying man taking control of his own execution gave me a sense of foreboding, which I did my best to shake off. After all, what danger could there be? The troublemakers were celebrating their hero’s release elsewhere, the Sanhedrin boys were slowly edging away, and our own soldiers were gambling to stave off the boredom of having to watch more of the empire’s enemies breathe their last.
And your appointed, condemned king did finally do so, announcing it with his last words. What followed was some natural phenomena—sudden darkness, storm. Maybe served up by the Hebrew god, or maybe one of our own, but it did add to the general tension and the outpouring of grief by this man’s loved ones. I have seen many executions using various means, but this is the only one where it appeared that the condemnation was on the condemners and their accomplices, not on the one who died. Somehow in his dying he left a more profound impression than he did all during the preliminaries. In spite of my rationalism, I believe that something happened here that I still don’t understand, and that it will have consequences that none of us have foreseen.
Just to top it all off, two of the Sanhedrin who slipped out at the end, came back with permission from you to take the body down so that it could be entombed prior to their sabbath. That wasn’t so unusual, but they actually did this themselves, not having servants handle the dirty work. From what I know about their beliefs, because they handled a corpse, they wouldn’t be able to fully participate in the holy day, being ritually unclean. They were willing to step in for this insignificant laborer from an outpost that even their people think little of and give him a tomb that he could not have afforded. What’s in it for them? A dead king is no king. Figure that one out if you can.
And afterward there was that cross. This unregarded rabbi’s last lectern. And I can’t get it out of my mind. No different from any other I have seen. Except for the one who—what exactly did he do? I guess his last act was to give himself, even to those who wanted only his death. That’s what is so disquieting—the sense that we didn’t take his life, he gave it.
As I said before, you should have listened to Sis. And since you didn’t pay any attention to her, I doubt that you’ll follow my example. I’m leaving Palestine as fast as possible. Something tells me this thing isn’t over. Maybe it’s hysteria or maybe just a way of unsettling us Roman interlopers, but I’m not waiting around to see if the dead will rise up from their graves or if the Hebrews will rise up against us. I don’t know where it will be safe, maybe not even in Rome where I’m not particularly welcome—why else would I be here? But if you have any glimmer of sense in the midst of your imperial idiocy, you’ll pull whatever strings you can to remove yourself from this smoldering volcano. You’ve gotten involved in events that have their origin in a time when our people were dressed in animal skins and worshiping fire and wind and anything else they didn’t understand. It’s too late for you to become just another inconsequential Caesarian toady. You will be remembered for what happened here, even if none of us know just what that is. Good luck at running away from that.
