The Advocate

by Randy Singer

  Pilate ordered a bowl of water brought to the top of the steps. It was not a normal request for the middle of a trial, and it took several minutes for the servants to return. The crowd waited, murmuring about what the request might mean.

  The silver bowl was placed on top of a pedestal a few feet away from the judgment seat. With his eyes on the crowd, Pilate rose and stood behind the bowl.

  “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he declared loudly. He dipped his hands in the water and scrubbed them together. He shook off the remaining water, and his servant handed him a towel.

  “His blood be on us and our children!” someone shouted. Others quickly joined in. Pilate said nothing, dried his hands, and handed the towel back to his servant.

  The man loved ceremony, but the words of Cicero confirmed what I felt in my heart. “A stain on the soul can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any river.” Much less, Cicero might have added, by a small bowl of water. I knew Cicero was correct just as surely as I knew one other thing: Pilate’s soul was not the only one being stained. I was right there with him, having refused to stand my ground for an innocent man.

  Pilate returned to his seat and asked for the titulus board, a rectangular piece of wood about two feet long, coated with white gypsum. He passed the board to me, and I took a seat. A servant handed me a reed that I dipped into the black ink.

  “Three languages,” Pilate said. “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

  I began the first inscription in Greek. Next would come Latin. Lastly, the same words written in Hebrew.

  Annas placed a foot on the bottom step, and a guard moved toward him. The former high priest narrowed his eyes.

  “It should say, ‘He claimed to be king of the Jews,’” Annas insisted. A few of the other leaders voiced their agreement, but I kept on writing, finishing off the Greek.

  “What I have written, I have written,” Pilate said.

  When the titulus was complete, it was hung with a rope around Jesus’ neck, and the crowd jeered. But the shouts were less insistent now. The titulus was a clear sign that the prisoner stood condemned and would soon be executed.

  Pilate remained in his seat, and my mind seared the scene before me into my memory. The bloody rabbi, standing at the top of the steps, gazing toward heaven, a wooden sign around his neck. The chief priests in the front row of the crowd, still scowling. Pilate sitting above the fury, pretending to be a man in charge, though everyone knew he had been emasculated. And the empty second-story window where Procula had stood earlier that day, symbolizing the futility of even a dream from the gods.

  “He is condemned,” Pilate said. “Let him be crucified.”

  The crowd roared, and the soldiers wasted no time descending on the prisoner and pulling him down the steps. In the next few moments, despite the dozen or so guards surrounding Jesus, the crowd seemed to swallow him.

  I watched with my stomach in my throat as the band of soldiers and the crowd pushed the prisoner across the courtyard and through the gates at the other end of the stone pavement. I knew they were heading for the area the Jews called Golgotha, the place of the skull, where the soldiers would nail his body to a cross as soon as possible. Two others were scheduled for execution as well—thieves who were supposed to be the bookends for the crucifixion of the notorious Barabbas. Instead, they would hang on either side of Jesus.

  I watched until the last person left the courtyard and the soldiers swung the massive gates shut and secured the large iron lock.

  The silence that followed was disorienting. There was still a trail of crimson baking in the sun, a trail that marked the prisoner’s movements that day—up and down the stairs, into the Praetorium, across the courtyard. There was a large puddle on the stones at the foot of the whipping post. But the servants were already scurrying about, anxious to scrub the floors of the palace and the steps of the portico. Others would take down the whipping post, storing it until it was needed again.

  The silence gave me a moment to reflect. When I closed my eyes, I could still see him—his face bloodied, bruised, and swollen; the crown of thorns pressed low on his brow; that ridiculous purple robe hanging from his shoulders, the cloth sticking to his wounds. I could still hear his voice and feel his eyes piercing my soul. “I was born for this,” he had said, “and for this I have come into the world: to testify to the truth.”

  He had a sense of destiny, which shamed me even more.

  I once had a sense of destiny too. Or at least I thought I did. I was born to be an advocate for the truth, to fight for justice, to speak for the powerless. But in my greatest test I had failed miserably. I had lost my nerve and at a critical moment abandoned my principles.

  Now the rabbi would pay with his life.

  What is truth?

  It hadn’t been Pilate’s finest hour either. Yet he had escaped another explosive incident and didn’t seem to care about one man’s life. The truth of Pilate’s legacy was this: His past misdeeds had hemmed him in. He could no longer do what was just.

  He seemed determined to shrug it off. He rose from the judgment seat and unhooked his red cape, handing it to his servant. He dismissed the remaining guards and cast one last glance at the window where Procula had once stood.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “And I need to finish my shave.”

  I was grateful that he didn’t ask me to join him. I headed straight for my room, my thoughts consumed by the role I had played in the death of Jesus. I replayed the flogging, the stoic prisoner absorbing each blow as Pilate counted them out. I knew the whole affair would have turned out differently if not for my gambit with Barabbas.

  The thought of it sickened me, and I reached for the washbowl, leaned over it, and threw up.

  CHAPTER 28

  I couldn’t stay away.

  At the fifth hour, with the sun almost at its peak, I walked to Golgotha, a rocky crag north of the Damascus Gate, just outside the city limits. It was the preferred spot for executions because the criminals would be seen by everyone entering the city and because there was a cemetery nearby. On the sheer face of the hill, two small caves in the rocks resembled the eye sockets of a skull.

  I arrived and climbed the small dirt road that led to the top of Golgotha. The crowd had thinned, but there were still a few hundred people loitering around, watching the criminals suffer. Jesus was in the middle, with one thief on each side.

  I stayed on the fringes of the crowd, trying not to draw attention. One of the soldiers, playing a game of dice at the foot of the cross, caught a glimpse of me. He twisted his face into a question. I nodded in reassurance and he returned to the game. I had never shown up for an execution before, but I had no power to stop one unless I was acting on orders from Pilate.

  I knew the centurion in charge, a Roman named Quintus, who had made the trek with us from Caesarea. He was a member of the Italian Regiment, a decorated and loyal soldier. He had seen plenty of men die, but unlike many of Pilate’s other commanders, he did not lust for it.

  He and his men had driven long spikes through Jesus’ wrists, just below the palm, between the two bones of the forearm. I had seen them do it to other prisoners in the arena. I had watched the blood spurt out. Even now, as Jesus hung there, blood trickled to the ground.

  An angled block of wood had been attached to the cross as a footrest, and Jesus’ feet had been placed one on top of the other, then nailed in place. He hung, for the most part, with his head down. Periodically, he would pull himself up, rubbing his flayed back against the coarse wood of the cross. He would gasp for air and grimace as the nails pressured the nerves in his wrists and ripped the tendons in his feet. I found myself catching my breath with him, thinking about the pain and humiliation I had suffered as a boy, gasping for air and feeling the shame.

  I had been there—where he was—but this was no prank. There would be no friends to save him, no reprieve or pardon. He would hang there until he didn’t have the strength to take another
breath. Or, if the guards were merciful, they would break his legs with a steel rod and put him out of his misery.

  I had to look away.

  Most of the crowd was decidedly less sympathetic. “He saved others, but he cannot save himself!” one of the leaders of the Sanhedrin said.

  Another joined in. “He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross, and then we’ll believe in him. He’s the one who claimed to be the Son of God!”

  I made my way to a group of women standing with a solitary man. They were all crying, though the bearded Jewish man tried to wipe away his tears. I recognized one of the women from the Stone Pavement Courtyard, the one I suspected of being the rabbi’s mother.

  “What does this mean,” I asked the women, “that he saved others?”

  The one closest to me was a beautiful young woman with dark knotted hair, smooth skin, and almond eyes. She wore none of the makeup favored by Roman women, but even in her misery she possessed a raw beauty seldom seen in Caesarea or even the great capital city of Rome. Her eyes were red and puffy. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  She looked at me, and I couldn’t tell whether she recognized me from earlier or not. “He saved me,” she said. She didn’t sound indignant or defensive. Only sad.

  “How did he save you?”

  She stole a sideways glance at the other women as if seeking their permission. “I was caught in the act of adultery by those men,” she explained, motioning to the leaders at the foot of the cross. “They dragged me before Jesus and reminded him that the law of Moses required that I be stoned. They asked him what he thought.”

  I waited, shoving a small pebble with my sandal. The silence prompted her to continue.

  “He told them that the man who had never sinned should be the one to throw the first stone,” she said. “It’s another precept of the law of Moses.”

  “And that stopped them?”

  “It probably wouldn’t have. But then he knelt down and wrote in the dirt.”

  She paused and stared at the rabbi as if she had forgotten all about our conversation.

  “What did he write?” I prompted.

  She turned back to me. She didn’t exactly smile, but there was the slightest upturn of her lips as she remembered the moment. “The names of the women the leaders had been sleeping with. Jesus wrote them very deliberately, one by one, starting with the oldest man’s affairs first. They dropped their stones and left.”

  “He saved others, but he cannot save himself.” I wanted to tell this young woman that the rabbi seemed like a good man, but I knew those words would ring hypocritical and hollow. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, yet I couldn’t bring myself to say that either. So we stood there in silence as Jesus tensed and raised himself up for another labored breath.

  “After the religious leaders left, Jesus told me that he wouldn’t condemn me either,” she said. “He told me to go and not sin anymore.”

  “He sounds like an amazing man.”

  “He is.” There was a long pause. “Or at least he was.”

  She turned to the cross, and I took it as a cue that the conversation was over. I moved a few feet away and turned my attention back to the three crucified men hanging there, laboring to breathe. Every few minutes, more onlookers would peel away and head down the hill. Travelers on the road sometimes stopped and stared for a moment, but not many of them came up the hill.

  Men had been known to hang on the cross for days before they died. Tomorrow was the Sabbath. The Jews had work to finish before the evening.

  The defections were slow at first, a small group here or there. But by noon, the crowd had thinned to less than a hundred.

  For some reason, I couldn’t walk away. The sign I had written with my own hand had been nailed above his head: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. His face was marred and bruised. He grimaced in pain and had an awkward way of sliding up and down the wood, tensing every muscle to catch his breath. I wanted to give an order to put an end to the man’s suffering.

  “So you’re the Messiah,” one of the thieves said. He pulled himself up for a breath. “Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it!”

  Jesus looked at the man with sad eyes. But he didn’t defend himself.

  “Don’t you fear God?” the other thief asked, gasping. “We deserve this, but this man hasn’t done anything—” he stopped to catch a breath—“anything wrong.”

  The argument drew me closer. I had been there during the second thief’s trial. He had perjured himself and tried to intimidate the witnesses. He had shown no remorse. And now he had found humility?

  He lowered his voice, but I still heard what he said: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

  Jesus glanced at him with great sympathy. I could have sworn the rabbi tried to smile.

  He raised himself up, inhaled, and spoke with calm assurance. “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

  That was all he said, but it seemed to be enough. The thief dropped his head on his chest and muttered something that sounded like a prayer.

  And then, without warning, the sky went dark.

  CHAPTER 29

  I had experienced an eclipse before, and I knew there was nothing miraculous about it. The moon covered the sun, creating a few hours of darkness at midday. It could all be explained rationally.

  But all Romans, myself included, believed there could be supernatural causes as well. When Augustus died, an eclipse of the sun—greater than any previously known—so darkened the skies that the stars came out at the sixth hour. The body of Augustus rose from the funeral pyre to become one of them.

  The son of god ascending.

  And now, with another man who called himself the Son of God, hanging on a cross, the sky had grown black again. Could it be just coincidence? Of course. But something deep in my troubled spirit told me there was more to it than that. The gods were angry.

  Perhaps they were angry at me.

  I stood there, like the others, trying to get my bearings. Nobody had prepared for this. Soldiers don’t bring torches to a midday execution.

  For a moment, I considered the possibility that when the sun reemerged, the cross would be empty. That the rabbi would pull off the greatest disappearing act in history, wiggling his way down under cover of darkness. It was ludicrous, I knew, but so was darkness at noon. Imaginations run wild when the darkness disorients.

  I instinctively moved closer to the cross, near where the Roman soldiers stood guard. I bumped into a few people along the way. I didn’t think the followers of Jesus were numerous enough or strong enough to take advantage of the darkness and pull the rabbi down. And if they tried, I wasn’t sure whether I would help them or resist them. Either way, I wanted to be close to the action just in case.

  I waited, but nothing happened. In the silence, you could hear the labored breath of the condemned men as they pulled themselves up, inflated their lungs with a few gasps of air, moaned, and then slumped back down. There was a rhythm to it, punctuated by an occasional curse from the recalcitrant thief.

  The darkness had an intriguing effect on the crowd. A few of them talked about trying to return home. The soldiers no longer played games. Quintus dispatched two of the men to bring back torches.

  There was whispered conversation about what the darkness meant. The soldiers tried to shrug it off—this was not the first eclipse in history; it wouldn’t be the last. But the religious leaders had been silenced. Nobody mocked the rabbi now.

  As the silence lingered, I edged closer to Quintus.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this?” I asked.

  He had been on the battlefield. The man had experienced some things. Still, I wasn’t shocked by his answer.

  “Never.”

  A half hour later, the soldiers returned, and Golgotha danced with the shadows of firelight. Most of the crowd had left, except for some members of the Jewish religious establishment, the band of soldiers under the command
of Quintus, and a few friends of the rabbi.

  Time passed slowly.

  I thought about a lot of things. Strangely, I remembered the story that Seneca had told me about the German gladiator who killed himself in the lavatory, choking himself to death by jamming a sponge down his throat. “That man defied everyone, choosing the manner of his death!” Seneca had exclaimed.

  Romans were fascinated with death. Who could face it with courage, and who would shrink away? What bizarre things could we concoct to prolong the agony of it? And most important, as Seneca had noted, who could choose the manner of his own death?

  I sensed that the rabbi, nailed to the cross and slowly suffocating, was still somehow in control.

  Three hours after the darkness descended, long past the time that an eclipse should have lifted, Jesus rose up one last time and pierced the darkness with an anguished shout. “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” My limited Aramaic didn’t keep me from understanding the words. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

  I stared at him, waiting for more. They were the first words he had spoken in three hours. One of the soldiers thought he had asked for a drink and filled a sponge with sour wine. He held it on a reed stick so the rabbi could quench his thirst. Jesus tasted it, turned his head, and spit it out.

  He then cried out at the top of his lungs. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”

  It sent chills down my spine. A young woman gasped. The woman I thought was the rabbi’s mother covered her mouth with her hands, sobbing. Jesus dropped his head to his chest and said, in a barely audible voice, “It is finished.”

  And just like that, he stopped breathing.

  I was holding my own breath, watching his chest, and realized that the man was finally at peace. The silence was broken only by the sobs of his mother and the other women who had followed him to the cross.