by John Smelcer
To Rufus, I said to fetch a length of rope and two flagons of wine from the cellar.
While my sons dressed, I leaned over Rachel and kissed her on the head, as I often did to awaken her.
“Wha? . . . What is it?” she asked groggily without opening her eyes. “Is it morning?”
“No,” I whispered, so as not to awaken Avigail. “The boys and I are going back to Jerusalem.”
Rachel looked into my face through the darkness.
“Must you go at this hour?”
I spoke of the vision, telling her that there was something I felt compelled to do.
And though my wife begged me to wait until daylight, I told her what I had to do must be accomplished before sunrise. I couldn’t explain why, but I felt its urgency.
Beneath a shadow-casting full moon, and draped in a warm spring breeze, my sons and I began the journey. As before, no one spoke as we trudged along half asleep, the only sound an occasional yawn and the clip-clop of the donkey’s hooves and the crunching of the wheels on the rough stone road.
Sunday
Who abides in love abides in God.
(1 John 4:16)
We got to Jerusalem two hours before sunrise and went directly to the place where I had left Jesus. We secured the donkey and cart in bushes where they would not be seen in the dark. Two soldiers were sitting beside a small campfire when my sons and I came up over the hill.
Our approach must have startled them.
“Who is there?” one of them called into the darkness.
“Three weary travelers,” I answered. “A father and two sons. May we come closer so that I may speak with you?”
“Come!” came the gruff reply.
Standing beyond the shadowy light of the fire, the soldiers looked us over. From where we stood, I could see the outlines of two crosses with corpses still on them. Undoubtedly, the soldiers were posted there to prevent the families of the two men from removing the bodies for burial. A cross lay on the ground near where Jesus had been crucified, but I couldn’t tell if it was the cross. His cross. I would need a closer look.
“What do you want?” asked the taller of the two.
“Just a place to sit and rest and watch the sunrise,” I lied.
“Go somewhere else,” said the other soldier. “Jews aren’t allowed here, unless you want to end up like them.”
“Come, sons,” I said, pretending to leave so that the centurions could see the two flagons of wine strung over my shoulders. “We will find another place to sit and drink our wine.”
“Wait!” ordered the taller soldier. “Let me see those bags.”
I handed him one of the flagons. He opened it, smelled it, and took a cautious drink. Satisfied, he smiled and handed the skin bag to his companion.
“I see no harm in sharing this place until the sun rises,” he said. “Come and join us.”
Before climbing the trail up to Golgotha, I had told my sons only to make believe to drink of the wine. I told them that I needed them sober for what we were to accomplish. But I also warned them of the danger of what we were about to do.
“If something happens to me, you must get away and go home to take care of your mother and sister,” I said sternly.
“But why, Father? Why must you do this?” my sons pleaded.
“Because my visions told me to,” I replied. “I can’t explain it to you.”
As we sat down around the small campfire, I recognized the taller guard as the scar-faced centurion who had whipped Jesus and me, the one who shoved the young woman who ran out to wipe Jesus’s face, the one I had spoken to only the day before while he played dice with his comrades. Of the hundreds of centurions in Jerusalem, why did it have to be him?
My plan would fail if he recognized me.
But I was committed.
For the next hour, we five passed the flagon about, our reverie increasing as the flagon emptied. At one point I stood, pretending to stumble in my drunkenness.
“Where are you going?” asked the scar-faced centurion.
“So much wine. I must relieve my bladder,” I replied, steadying myself.
The soldiers laughed as I made my way through the darkness to the cross lying on the ground. When the centurions were not looking, I got down close and searched for the knot and the tool mark. I was delighted to see that it was indeed the cross that I . . . we had carried. I placed a hand on it, feeling the familiar roughness.
When I returned to the merrymakers, I nodded to my sons.
After I sat down, the other soldier tossed a few sticks on the fire. As the fire blazed, the scar-faced centurion leaned toward me from across the stone ring, searching my face in the flickering light. I saw by his expression some dim recognition was forming.
“I have seen your face. Where do I know it?” he asked.
I said nothing, but leaned closer into the firelight, allowing him a better glimpse.
His eyes opened wide with astonishment.
My muscled tensed, ready to fight if I had to.
“You! The one who carried the cross.”
I nodded.
“The same,” I replied, my eyes narrowing as I slowly reached for the knife I had concealed in the leather straps of my sandal.
“What do you want with me?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Why are you here then?”
I decided to tell the truth. My original plan was ruined.
“I have come for it,” I said relaxing and nodding at the cross lying on the ground.
“The cross? What do you want of a hunk of wood?”
“I have had . . . visions,” I said.
“What kind of visions?” he asked.
I could tell the centurion was sincerely interested in my dreams. I released my grip on the knife handle.
In the twilight, with dawn approaching, I recited the contents of my dreams to the soldiers. I told them of the paradise with the magnificent tree that transformed into the cross and of the miraculous healing of my daughter and the scars on my back. I told them that the man they crucified was no ordinary man and that the dreams urged me to safeguard the cross.
The soldiers listened intently.
“I too have had dreams,” the scar-faced soldier stated when I was done. “The dreams began the night we crucified that man. They are so terrible I awake screaming. They are relentless. No sooner do I close my eyes than they return. I am afraid to sleep. Take the damned thing. I want no more part of it.”
I seized the opportunity, rising and gesturing for my sons to follow me.
We separated the two beams of the cross. We could not risk being stopped. What would Roman soldiers or fellow Jews think of us hauling an instrument of so much horror? Alexander and I carried the upright beam, while Rufus carried the shorter cross member by himself.
I stopped beside the scar-faced soldier before heading down the stony trail.
“Thank you,” I said, handing him the second flagon of wine.
He took it from me, acknowledging the gift with a slight tilt of his head and with a look in his eyes that could best be called . . . regret.
My sons and I started down the hill, but before we had gone a dozen steps I stopped and turned my eyes uphill.
“If it matters to you,” I called out, “he forgives you for your part in his death.”
Quickly, with no time to waste, we loaded the cross into the cart, secured it with rope, and covered as much of it as we could with straw. As we plodded along in silence, I wondered what to do with the two timbers once I got them home. I had not thought that far ahead. When we were a safe distance, I looked back toward Jerusalem.
The sun was already rising.
For thirty years after that, I visited James and Peter often in Jerusalem. We became steadfast friends. Jews and
Romans alike came to know James as “James the Just,” recognizing his virtue. I watched John Mark grow into the man known only as Mark. He was the first to write down the story of Jesus’s life and death, the only one who had known him. He even mentioned me and my sons in his story.
Followers said the body of Jesus was gone when they went to the tomb on the morning I stole the cross. They said he arose from the dead and walked among the living. Some even avowed that he was the son of God. Others whispered that the high priest ordered his body to be removed so the place would not become a martyr’s shrine. Others still said it was just James masquerading as his dead brother. But I knew them both, and I can tell you that James did not look enough like Jesus to perpetrate such a deception. I believe the stories that Jesus arose from the dead, because James and Peter told me how they saw him and spoke with him. I heard others did as well.
I am among them.
A few days after they found the empty tomb, I saw Avigail standing far off in the vineyard. She seemed to be speaking to someone, though from where I stood she looked to be alone. I called to her.
“What were you doing?” I asked when she came running up the hill to where I stood with my arms across my chest.
“I was talking to a man.”
“What man?”
“The nice man in the vineyard,” she replied happily. “He asked if I was feeling better, and I told him that I was. Then he smiled and said he was glad.”
Her words concerned me.
“How many times have I told you not to talk to strangers?”
“Oh, but he wasn’t a stranger. He said he was your friend. He said you helped him do something important and that he was the one who made me well.”
When I went down into the vineyard to investigate, I saw no signs of him whatsoever, yet Avigail was certain she had seen and talked to a man.
That wasn’t the only strange event in the weeks following Jesus’s death.
Thirty days after I carried the heavy cross, I was hurrying home from Jacob’s house one evening when I saw a crippled old man in rags sitting on the side of the road. As I passed, he held out an open hand seeking charity.
“Peace be with you,” he said.
I walked by without hardly a glance or a word of kindness.
From behind, I heard him call out to me, “Do your eyes not see, Simon?”
I was startled. I had never seen the man in my life. I turned and addressed him sternly.
“What did you say?”
I saw that both of his eyes were clouded gray. I wondered how he could have seen me at all.
“Have mercy, friend,” he replied. “Even beggars are sent by God.”
“How do you know my name?”
“What you do to the least of your brothers,” he said in a voice that sounded familiar, “you do to me.”
I studied the beggar’s face closely. I did not recognize him.
But I was in a hurry to get home for supper.
“Here, old man,” I said, reaching inside my tunic and removing a coin from my purse and pressing it into his open palm before I turned and walked away.
After a short distance, I remembered Jesus had said the same things to me. But when I turned to look, the old man was gone.
Take the encounter for what you will, but I know who I met on the road that day.
As for the rest of my story, my family became among the first followers of the teachings of Jesus. We attended many of their meetings at which they proclaimed the message of Jesus. Often was I asked to recite to those assembled how I carried the cross with Jesus to Golgotha and to describe my wondrous vision.
Those who listened were spellbound.
Many wept openly.
Over the years, I came to realize that the cross was a symbol not of suffering, but of selfless love.
I became one of their purveyors of wine and olive oil. My family prospered during those many years. When she was old enough, Avigail married one of the followers of The Way. But things changed after James was killed about eight or nine years ago. Those were dangerous times, full of whispers of rebellion. I heard that Peter was killed in Rome two years after that. I never knew what happened to Mark.
That is the end of my story. You may wonder how it came to be written. I realized that the new religion around Jesus was growing and spreading, and that I was part of the story, albeit a small part. I, who was with Jesus the day he died, who walked with him and suffered and bled with him, wanted to tell the news of what I witnessed that day—for that is what I was, a witness.
But I also wanted to tell you, warn you, that every smile and act of kindness and mercy you afford to others is Jesus’s love shining through. Every judgmental scowl and effort to oppress the rights and freedoms of others and to cause suffering diminishes Jesus’s love from the world. When Jesus said to love and forgive your neighbor and your enemy, he meant all people, everywhere, not just those who look like you or talk like you or believe as you do.
I know. He told me so. He was adamant.
Jesus’s message was love, simply and invincibly love. He did not call upon you to be judges.
You deceive yourself if you believe otherwise.
The essence of Jesus’s message was, more or less, the belief that each of us can be one with God. Or, at the very least, we can diminish the distance between ourselves and God.
What did I gain from my experience, you may wonder?
I learned that possessing things cannot fill the emptiness inside you. Instead, strive to possess nothing, the entirety of it, and let love fill the void. I learned to surrender to the will of God, and in doing so I found the deep, shining peace that Jesus spoke of, a peace that only comes from loving God. Jesus was the Light, just as he had said. Light within light within light. I have often thought of the parable Jesus told me, the one of the calf and the cave and how some people refuse to walk through the door that leads to God.
But I have digressed too much from my story.
I apologize.
Last year the rebellion to expel the Romans failed. During the year-long siege, the Romans crucified ten thousand Jews in a ring around Jerusalem’s inner wall. Eventually, the Romans took back the city and Har Habayit, the Holy Temple. They plundered the Temple and hauled its wealth back to Rome. I overhead it would be spent to build a colossal arena. On the ninth of Av, they burned the Temple. The entire city was ablaze. I could see the glow of the fires even from my home. Afterward, the Romans dismantled the Temple and banished Jews and those who followed Jesus from Jerusalem, dispersed them into the wind like dust.
Fortunately, far enough away from the city, my family was allowed to stay on our farm so long as we provided a good portion of our wine and olive oil production for the large camp of soldiers, which was built outside the leveled city to ensure no Jews returned.
Times have been difficult since then, but my family survived.
Moreover, I am an old man who can barely walk or hear. My time cannot be far off.
Indeed, my sons have been taking care of their mother and me now that we are too old to take care of ourselves.
Concerned that the story of Jesus, and my small part in it, would be forgotten and lost forever, I asked my grandson to write it down for me. It no longer belongs to me. It is yours now. As I said at the beginning, perhaps you won’t believe what I have told you. Perhaps no one will ever remember that a man named Simon from Cyrene helped a Nazarene named Jesus, a prophet and healer who some called the Messiah, carry his cross through the streets of Jerusalem and up to Golgotha where he was crucified and died.
The younger Simon’s shadow fell across the earthen floor of the old goat house as he stood in the open doorway. His grandfather was sitting on a short stool prying the wax sealed lid from an ancient clay pot held between his legs. His cane leaned against the stone wall behind him. On the ground beside
him were a large candle and a box of matches. From where he stood, Simon could see a hole in the ground that looked to be a little deeper than the pot was tall.
“Have you read it all?” the old man asked, without looking up from his work.
“I can’t believe it. I have so many questions.”
“Yes. It is true,” replied the grandfather, anticipating the first.
“But, how? How did you come by it?”
The old man gently removed the lid from the reddish pot and carefully pulled out a papyrus scroll. He held it up.
“This is the original manuscript, written in Aramaic.”
The young man came and knelt beside his grandfather, who carefully unrolled only a little of the yellowed and brittle manuscript, revealing the handwritten symbols in black ink.
“See? It’s very old, almost two thousand years old.”
“It’s incredible,” replied the grandson. “Where did you find it? Do you understand the importance of this discovery?”
“It is no discovery, Simon. It has been in our family for more than eighty generations, ever since the first Simon buried it here.”
The young man was astounded.
“You mean . . . This is incredible! It’s unbelievable! If this is real, it has to be one of the most important relics in history. Grandpa, this is huge.”
The old man chuckled.
“That’s what I said to my grandfather when he first showed it to me before your father was born.”
“You mean you’ve had this for fifty years and you’ve never told anyone? This is important. It belongs in a museum.”
“I know it’s important,” replied the old man. “That’s why I’m showing it to you now.”
The grandfather reached into the wide mouth of the clay pot and pulled out another object, wrapped in white cloth.
“For twenty centuries, our family has safeguarded this secret, no matter the shifting winds of politics. The first Simon, our namesake, who carried the cross with Jesus, began the tradition of passing down the story to his grandson so that it would be preserved. Ever since, a son in every other generation has been named Simon, and he becomes the guardian of the secret. When that Simon becomes very old, he passes on the responsibility to the next Simon, and so on. In such a manner, our family has protected the treasure for two millennia.”
