by John Smelcer
I tried to appeal to his compassion.
“But it is just a dove, not a lamb. The last time I came here it cost half as much to sacrifice a dove. Surely you can help a worried father,” I said.
“If I do it for you, others will expect the same, and then where would we be?”
“Please,” I pleaded. “I must save some money for my daughter.”
“You offend God with your excuses,” he said coldly, turning to the next person in line.
“You offend God,” I replied angrily, as I turned and left the Temple.
Once outside in the sunlight, I found Alexander and Rufus where I had instructed them to wait for me.
“Come, my sons,” I said, grabbing the rope around the donkey’s neck. “Let us sell the last of the wine and find a healer for your sister so we can leave this accursed city.”
We pushed on through the crowd to a lane busy with commotion.
With so many people lining the narrow lane on both sides, it was impossible to cross to the other side.
“What is happening?” I asked someone.
“The Romans are crucifying a man from Nazareth. He comes this way even now,” he said pointing.
I pressed a little closer so that I was able to see a man trudging my way, struggling to carry a heavy cross. His face was bloodied from a crown of thorns, his long hair a mop of blood. The burden of the heavy cross was too much for him. As I watched, he crumpled beneath it. Three centurions stood over him shouting at him.
“Get up!” the tallest soldier barked in broken Aramaic as he whipped the man.
“Get up, dog!” screamed the one with a scar across his cheek and eye.
The shortest soldier kicked the man.
Onlookers on both sides of the lane jeered, their faces twisted in a frenzy of hatred. I saw one man throw a glancing stone at him.
The bloodied man tried to rise, but he collapsed again, the weight of the cross smashing his face against the cobblestones.
He did not move.
I thought he was dead.
It was then that I saw his back. I have seen my share of the horrors the Romans are capable of inflicting on the body, but I have never seen anything like the scourging of this man’s back. It was as if a lion had ripped away every piece of flesh until his ribs were exposed.
One of the centurions rolled him over to see if he was still alive.
It was then that I saw that his chest had been lashed almost as savagely as his back. His arms and legs were crisscrossed with bleeding stripes. I wondered if there was no place on this man’s body that was not lashed by scourge or whip.
As I watched, the man struggled to his knees.
I was amazed that he was still alive, so much did he resemble a corpse.
Just then the shorter centurion approached me.
“You there! Come here!” he demanded.
I looked around, thinking he meant someone else. But then he grabbed me brusquely and pulled me from the crowd.
“You look strong as an ox. Get over there and help the dog carry his cross.”
I protested, but the soldier pulled his short sword and thrust it against my chest.
“It will be my neck if he dies before he is crucified.”
“What is that to me?” I replied.
“You dare defy a Roman?” he growled.
I sized up the man. Though he had a sword, he was no match for me. I was a head taller and many stones heavier. I could break his neck as a dry twig. But that would only bring the wrath of the Roman Empire upon my family. How would it help Avigail if I were imprisoned?
Alexander grabbed my arm from behind.
“What is it, Father? What is happening?” he asked.
“Stay here with the cart,” I said, as I pulled the money purse from beneath my garment and gave it to him. “Guard this and the wine.”
As the centurion pulled me away I could hear Alexander yelling for me.
“Father! Father!”
“I will be back!” I turned and shouted. “Do as I say!”
I straddled the fallen man and raised the cross from him. It was heavy, even for a strong man such as I was back then. With the long beam braced against a shoulder, I reached a helping hand to the man.
“Get up,” I said. “Your burden is lifted.”
“Not yet,” I heard him whisper, as he struggled to his feet and steadied himself against me.
The short centurion snapped his whip at us. The lashing end bit into my calf.
“Get moving!” he demanded, drawing his arm back as if to whip me again.
I turned and glowered at the man, who held his hand.
With the cross astride my left shoulder and my left hand gripping it, I held my right arm around the weak man’s waist to support him. Together, with our arms around the other, we stumbled along the way, the rough-hewn beam rasping the flesh from my shoulder. It was then that I noticed the wound on the shoulder of my companion. The abrasive beam had stripped away all flesh and laid bare the bone.
I shuddered at the thought of the unbearable agony he must be suffering.
As we staggered past the raucous spectators, the man occasionally looked up at my face, as if to see what manner of man I was.
At such times, I had to look away, unable to endure the depth of sorrow I saw.
But there was something more than sorrow there. For nearly forty years, I have tried to comprehend what I saw in his eyes that day. I cannot describe it. It was not despair or profound dread, as you might imagine. I think what I saw, what I felt in his glance, was Love. But how does one see love? We witness it in deeds; we hear it spoken in words. But I swear I saw love residing within his sorrow.
I stand by it, though you think I am an old fool.
Our going was slow. I worried about my sons, but I knew that they would obey me.
At one point I spoke to my companion.
“What is your crime to be punished so brutally?” I asked. “It must be heinous. Are you a murderer?”
“I am a teacher.”
Even his teeth were bloodied.
I looked over the man again, at his terrible wounds, skeptical that a teacher would be so tortured.
“Surely Pilate is not crucifying rabbis for teaching,” I asked, concerned that the Romans might be imposing new laws on Judaea that restricted our religion.
“My crime is treason,” said the man.
For some distance, I wondered what he could have taught that was treasonous. Finally, when we were stopped while the centurions ordered some spectators to push a broken cart out of the way, I asked him.
“What did you teach?”
“My father’s message.”
I remember wondering what it was his father must have said that the son was so punished. I had never heard of a son being punished for his father’s crime.
Bystanders and passersby continuously jeered and mocked the man, shaking angry fists. This far from Herod’s Palace, I wondered if they even knew this man’s crime. Surely they could not all have heard Pilate’s sentence. Besides, with so many pilgrims in the city for Passover, I suspected that a good many of the spectators weren’t even from Jerusalem. All they saw was a man carrying the all too familiar instrument of his destruction.
And so they taunted and tormented him.
One man spat on him. When I scowled at him, he cowered back into the hissing throng.
Another man flung a handful of donkey dung, which struck me as well. I dropped the heavy cross and grabbed the man by his neck until his eyes bulbed in his head.
“I am not a criminal like him,” I snarled, shaking the man like a rag and straw doll.
Just then the centurions grabbed me and made me release the man, who fell to his knees choking and holding his hands to his throat. At sword point they forced me back to
the cross.
“Pick it up! Move on!” ordered the soldier with the scar on his face.
As I bent over the cross, the rabbi said to me, “Do not hate them, but love them and forgive them as I do.”
I looked at him curiously as I heaved the bloodied cross to my shoulder. By now, the roughness of the beam was laying bare the flesh of my shoulder. Already my tunic was covered with his blood, and now his blood mingled with my own.
“Where are your followers, Rabbi?” I asked, cringing as the cross slid down my shoulder like a rasp. “Are there no friendly faces amidst the crowd?”
The rabbi’s countenance became sadder, if that were possible.
“They who love me, have abandoned me. I fear it will always be so. But I forgive them, for fear is a tyrant.”
I looked at him, this broken shell of a man, with a mounting pity. He was marching with only a stranger to his certain and long and painful death. How lonely he must feel; a dead man walking among the living.
“I’m sorry,” is all I managed to reply.
I felt his arm tighten around my waist, as if in embrace.
“Love is God’s greatest gift,” he said, “but it is also the most tenuous.”
Just then a woman bolted toward us from the line of onlookers. With a cloth she wiped blood and sweat from the rabbi’s face as she wept. Almost immediately, the scar-faced centurion pulled her away and shoved her roughly to the cobblestones. She clutched the bloodied cloth even as she fell.
“Keep back, woman!” he yelled. “All of you . . . keep back!” he shouted at the mob, brandishing his sword.
I watched as the woman arose to her feet, kissed the cloth, and vanished into the scowling multitude.
“It seems you have one friend still,” I said.
The rabbi nodded weakly.
“Blessed are women,” he replied feebly, “for they are the Mercy Givers.”
I was beginning to respect this man. Even now, his heart did not harbor hate or resentment. Nor was there fear in his eyes. Nothing he said or did seemed seditious to me. Nothing he said seemed to threaten Rome’s peace. I began to question his guilt.
Perhaps the Romans had made a mistake.
Almost as if he had heard my thoughts, my companion looked up at me kindly.
Just then he stumbled.
With my strong right hand clasping his, I raised up the man yet again, and held him closer to me so that I might better support his frailty. By now not only was my tunic soaked with his blood, the hair on my right arm was matted with it.
As he stood, I saw him press his cheek against the rough wood and kiss it. I’m certain he was unaware that I had seen. Where his lips touched, I noted a knot in the wood and a tool mark made by the woodworker’s draw-knife as he hewed the beam.
Together, we pushed on again. At times the crowd pressed upon us so that we could scarcely move. At such times, the centurions dispersed them.
The soldiers whipped the rabbi when he did not move fast enough.
Sometimes they whipped him anyway.
Several times their wicked lashings found the flesh of my back, instead of his. I could feel the warm blood beneath my tunic.
And through it all, despite his mortal injuries, the man continued on with a strength of will as constant as the stars. I couldn’t understand what kept the man going. He was already dead. Why did he not just quit and die on the path instead of suffering the agonizing crucifixion that awaited?
“How is it you keep going?” I asked.
I did not understand his answer.
“His will be done, not mine.”
I imagined he meant Pilate.
As we approached the city gate, I spied a man kneeling along the way surrounded by the scornful bystanders. His face was wet with tears and his countenance abounding with sorrow.
The rabbi saw him, too.
As we passed, their eyes locked in embrace, and the man on his knees burst into lamentation as if he were the one hoisting the cross, as if it were his flesh that was torn from his body. I shall never be able to forget the grief engraved on his face and a sorrow as lonely and desolate as a castaway afloat in the middle of a raging sea.
One of the centurion’s whips found my back.
“Keep moving!”
After passing, I asked about the man.
“Was that one of your followers?”
“He is my brother, James.”
I thought about the sorrowfulness of brother witnessing the insufferable torment of brother. Such grief must be unbearable.
“I thought your followers had all forsaken you?”
“All but James. My brother alone has not abandoned me, and yet shall my followers abandon him.”
Again, I did not fathom his meaning.
I looked back in time to see the brother of this man, the one he called James, stand and wipe his face with a hand, and then vanish into the raucous crowd.
There were fewer spectators once we passed through the gate and beyond the wall of the city, mostly pilgrims who were camped outside. Ahead of us, the winding way led through a vineyard and up a rocky hillside with hollows in its craggy face that made it resemble a skull.
They call the place Golgotha, a fitting name.
The stony path ahead grew steep. The soldiers ordered us to stop at the base so that we could muster our strength for the final push upward. I think the break was for their benefit, not ours. One of them had gone back to fetch a pail of water.
I stood straight, stretching my aching back. The Rabbi rested on his knees with one hand holding on to my tunic for support.
“Almost there,” I said, gazing at the lofty crest bounded by a blue sky.
He did not answer.
I turned to look.
With his eyes closed, the man was swaying gently, his head moving as one rapt in prayer.
“Rabbi?”
He did not answer.
I shook him, careful to touch the shoulder that was not savaged.
Slowly, as if awakening from a dream, he opened his eyes and looked up at me.
“Do you not hear that?” he said.
I heard nothing but the wind in the trees and the soldiers complaining.
“What?”
“That music.”
I strained to listen.
“I hear nothing.”
“It sounds like the music of Heaven. That is why birds sing. They remember the beautiful music of the Creator, the sound of Heaven. That is how it is with prayer: all prayers ascend to God as song; the multitude of prayers arising in a chorus.”
I have heard how some people are said to see or hear things at the moment of their death.
Just then one of the centurions shouted at us to get a move on.
“The hill is not getting any smaller!”
I hoisted the cursed cross upon my raw shoulder, repositioning it to get a better grip on it.
“Come,” I said, pulling my companion to his feet. “It is almost done.”
With his scourged and whip-torn arm around my shoulder, we began our ascent with renewed vigor. I swear it was as if he were pulling me onward. I marveled at his strength, at his commitment despite the horrors that awaited him at the hilltop. His was no coward’s soul.
There were more centurions awaiting us at the top. There were also two naked men already crucified.
The soldiers took the burden of the cross from me and pushed me to the ground.
Instantly, they seized the rabbi, stripped him naked, and dragged him upon the cross. From practice, centurions at each point of the cross pulled his arms and feet into position.
From my knees, my hands clutching fistfuls of earth, I watched intently as one of the soldiers took up an iron mallet and a long iron spike.
“Stretch it further!” he barked at the
soldier holding the rabbi’s right hand. “Hold it still!”
He was just about to drive the spike when he noticed me.
“You!” he shouted, brandishing the mallet. “Go home! Unless you want some of this.”
One of the other centurions took up his lance and threatened me.
I scrambled to my feet and backed away.
From where I stood, I could see my companion’s bloody face. His mouth moved, but no word ushered from his lips. Still, I knew that he had said to me, “Go.”
I do not know how to describe the feelings that welled inside me. After our dreadful journey together—me mostly wishing that I had never been forced to help this man—I found myself feeling something like . . . kinship. Although I wanted to stay with him to the end, I had no desire to witness the horrible suffering he was about to endure. His body had already suffered enough. But then I thought of my two sons waiting for me and of my little daughter back home whose life depended on me. I could not leave them to grow up without a father.
As I struggled with my desire both to flee and to stay, I saw the rabbi nod, telling me without words that it was all right for me to leave.
I turned and ran down the steep path, the sound of the clanking mallet ringing in my ears pushing me ever faster down the hill. In my haste, I almost crashed into two women coming up the path, the oldest accompanied by a young man who steadied her.
“Forgive me,” I said as we passed.
I ran all the way back to the city without looking back, my fear and guilt pushing me headlong like a hard wind.
I found my sons where I had left them. No misfortune had befallen them. They were alarmed when they saw my tunic soaked in blood, the reddish brown blood dried on my arms and hands, the streaks of blood on my tunic from the lashings on my back, and the blood-soaked place on my shoulder.
I told them that it was not my blood and not to worry.
After more assurances that I was unharmed, Alexander related how he had sold five amphorae of wine, haggling a slightly better price for them than I had for the others. I looked at the cart and saw that there were only five vessels remaining. Alexander handed back the coin purse.
“You will make a shrewd merchant,” I said.
“Come,” I said, taking the reins of the donkey. “Let us sell the rest of the wine and find a healer for your sister so we can go home.”
