Wednesday, 14 Nisan
Sunset: The Day Commences
In the western distance, low clouds dance with colors of purple and gold and imaginary flashes of green, yellow and red. Soft, how sweet the night approaches, how deceptively it steals one’s soul, how false its raiment of radiance. Somewhere near the twelth hour from dawn, (6 p.m.) the most deleterioius day in human history inaugurates.
Approaching the third hour of the day (9 a.m.)
The sun did not rise this day. Instead the expanse above cowered itself with shame as low clouds scudded in dismal pall. After a trek from the palace of staggering and falling, staggering and falling for almost one and one-half hours, through the Gate of Refuse and up the Hinnom road, at length they came to a vacant expanse of earth outside and south of the city, the place of the Skull, called Golgotha. It was a place of execution, a place for the offal of Jeusalem. Large flies buzzed. The stench of discarded waste haunted the air. Seagulls from the Great Sea came the distance to feast on the refuse. Why the name, “Place of the Skull?” It owes simply to the long-enduring tradition that the skull of Adam, the first man, was buried here. This is an authentic tradition reaching back many years before the birth of our Lord, and is no doubt, the reason for the name. If it were actually true, (and it likely is not), how ironic that the Second Man should die here!
Simon the Cyrenean was ordered to place the crossbeam on the ground. Notched at center, two soldiers fitted the crossbeam to the vertical beam which had hitherto arrived, brought here by executioner workers. These same workers set about digging holes of the size and shape for three crosses to stand upright with rigidity enough to do their odious deed against three malefactors. Jesus would not die alone. With him were two criminals, each for his own crimes.
A Roman soldier extended a cup to Jesus, a solution of vinegar mixed with myrrh intended to act as an opiate for the torture he was still to endure. Jesus, unknowing, with trembling hands, lifted it to his lips. No sooner had the deadening liquid entered his mouth that he spewed it out. He would not numb himself with ought but love to mitigate the Pain. Four soldiers took him by the armpits and legs and laid him out on the cross, arms stretched to extremity in each direction. They removed what remained of his garments. His nakedness visible to all. His humiliation evident to all.
A soldier held his arm in place while another took a mallet and crudely fashioned nails. Fitting the point against his opened palm, the soldier drove each nail through his hands and again through his wrists into the wood beneath. From each wound blood issued, making the hands of the executioner bloody. Wiping them, he went to the other hand. This, a routine detail, if he didn’t do it, someone else would. Jesus made no sound, not so much as a whimper. His only response to the wounding was a grimace each time the mallet struck the nail. With each blow of the mallet, the sound of steel penetrating flesh and wood reverberated for however long both in distance and time, the noise would carry, and for the hearts of those who heard this terrible, hollow sound, it carried through eternity. The balls of his feet were pressed flat against the wood as the nails were driven through, scraping bone, penetrating wood. Jesus lay naked, clothed only in clammy sweat, his chest heaving, writhing, nailed to the wood.
Soldiers now took the deadly instrument in hand and with combined strength lifted it while another guided its foot toward the pre-dug hole in the earth. It hesitated at the edge for the briefest of instant, its lip crumbling beneath the weight, then plunged the three or so feet to its bottom with a jarring thud. Jesus gasped and exhaling, emitted a low groan. Straightening the cross, two soldiers shoveled dirt back into the hole around its foot, tamping it, making it secure. It stood straight. There they crucified him, and with him the two criminals -- one on his right, the other on his left. The Scriptures were fulfilled: He was numbered among the transgressors. It was 9 a.m., the third hour of the morning.
Jujube thorns had done their rapacious work. Streaked with liquid crimson, the body of the Son of man hung there, crucified, between the stars and the skulls, his body heaving convulsively, painfully trying to breathe. He inhaled; holding his breath, pushing against pinioned feet, only to exhale when he could hold it no longer and sink once again in dark oblivion. His clothing lay nearby in a disheveled heap; his purple robe, his undergarments. Jesus had nothing to wear on the cross. He hung exposed to catcalls and mockery, an exemplar of all that civilized society despised.
The soldiers who crucified Jesus were rank and file men, not officers. These had yet to campaign. They wore no medals or medallions, no hashmarks of years of service. They had yet to see combat other than the minor police skirmishes in and around Judea. They had lifted the cross, they had inserted it into the ground and they had made it secure. They had followed orders. They had done their duty. Observing now the results of their work, they sat as privates do, and waited for yet another privates detail.
In a moment, they took note of the bloody clothing lying nearby. “Look at that,” said one, “the royal robe from Herod’s palace. Cleaned up, it should fetch a royal price.”
“Nor yet is that all to consider,” declared another. “Mark, this shall be a day to record. This was no ordinary man. Historians will write of him. Anything he owned will be worth a price.” Already they spoke in the past tense. Already Jesus was to them no more than tissue, a dead thing that would later require disposal. No doubt, they would get that detail as well. Still, they knew of the legend of this man, they knew that thousands followed him and they had witnessed for themselves the uproar among the people during the trial. “These rags will be valued, all of them, even the underwear.”
So they took the clothing and were about to rend it into four shares, one share for each of them. The undergarment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. “We should not tear this thing,” they said to one another, “it will be of less value torn to shreds.”
“Let us throw down stones for it.” This suggestion excited them. Laughing with anticipation, they threw smooth stones until one of them had won the robe, and another the seamless under garment. Thus was the scripture fulfilled, “They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.”
From the cross, the battered, bloody prisoner groaned. His eyes on the soldiers and their game, Jesus spoke barely above a whisper, “Father, forgive them. They do not know what they do.”
Above the head of Jesus Pilate had fastened a notice to the cross written in three languages, Hebrew, Latin and Greek. It read:
JESUS OF NAZARETH
THE KING OF THE JEWS
That it was written in Hebrew, no one questioned and required no explanation. That was for the sake of the Jews. Many of them read this sign, which is exactly what Pilate wished. None would miss its meaning. All Jews would know that this is the end for any jewish pretender. Rome crucifies kings. Still the priests protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews.’ This man was not our king. Write instead that this fool claimed to be king of the Jews.”
“What I have written,” said Pilate, “I have written.” The Procurator was unmoved.
Latin the language of the erudite, Roman aristocracy. The message to them was, “Take comfort in what you witness on this cross. You have nothing to fear from this rabble. We have the power to destroy their kings and any miscreants’ ambition to be their king. This is the end for all the enemies of Rome.”
Greek, once the language of nobility, now the language of commerce. The most ignoble of speech. Its message was, “Here hangs the consummation of all who oppose Rome. Lift your eyes in some groundless notion of dignity, and nothing awaits you but crucifixion, hence to be conveyed to the valley of Gehenna with the garbage of Jerusalem.”
“You who were going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross if you are the Son of God!” It would be a mercy that the insults went unheard, but Jesus heard them. To him, they were like spear points brilliant with white heat. He had given the best he had to these people. He had healed their sick, comforted and encouraged, and raised their dead. How often would he have gathered them to himself. How much he had loved them. Words are not supposed to hurt, but they do.
The most prominent priests, the legalists and the elders of the faith he loved, mocked him. “He saved others,” they laughed, “but he can’t save himself! Now observe the King of Israel! Let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him if he wants him. He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ Then let the ‘Son of God’ heal his own wounds. Let him blunt the thorns. Let him rip out the nails. Look at what mere men do to the almighty Son of God!”
The four Roman soldiers also mocked him. Leaning a ladder against the cross, one of them climbed up to offer him a flask of soured wine. “So! King of the Jews, save yourself!” Soured wine! Good for nothing but a corpse. His companions thought this hilarious.
One the criminals also being crucified, hurled insults at him. “Aren’t you the Christ? Then save yourself and us!”
The insults were withering. Remarkably, relief came from this most damning of insults – from those dying with him – relief came from an unexpected source. The other criminal shot back, “Have you no fear of God man? Look at you! You also are condemned! You and I are getting what we deserve. But this man is innocent. He has done nothing wrong.” Turning his head to Jesus, he pleaded, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
The sight of these three nailed to their respective crosses was macabre and grotesque. Jesus, in the middle of the other two, was the only one whose body was beat up, bruised and streaked with blood. Their bodies heaved each breath in staggered cadence, their rib cages surging beneath clammy skin. Pushing their bodies against horribly secured feet, allowed them to breathe and as they grew weaker and weaker, each breath became shorter and shorter, until breath eluded them -- they could not breathe at all. Crucifixion is by far the cruelest approach and denuement of death, excruciating pain in each breath finding relief only in the brutality of forced suffocation. As his lungs filled yet one more time, Jesus spoke, “I tell you the truth. . . my friend . . . today you will be with me . . in paradise.” Knees buckling, the weight of his body fell again against blood-saturated wood. The words emitted a hoarse whisper, but loud enough to be heard by those nearby. It was noon. He had been borne on the cross, impaled, for three hours.
Standing near the cross on which Jesus writhed, pushing himself up and down, stood his mother. Mary could not take her eyes away from her son, yet could not bear to look at him. She remembered the verdant hills of Narareth where first she heard the angel speak to her. Had she known her son would end like this, had she known what it would mean for him to leave home, had she known . . ?
When Jesus saw his mother with John standing at her side, he said to his mother, “Mother, look, you have a new son,” he tried awkwardly to nod his head in John’s direction. His body sank to its lowest extremity and then raised again as he strained upward with his legs. “John,” he managed to speak again, “she is now your mother, too.” John put his arm around Mary and with great pain looked up at the crucified form, his Lord, his friend, and nodded assent. From that moment, John took her into his home of wealth, comfort and prosperity. She stayed where her beloved son put her for the rest of her life.
Dark, forboding clouds blanketed the expanse above. The noon of day had turned to night. Heat lightning snapped through the billows giving rise to distant rumblings. It seemed it was going to rain, but not a drop of revitalizing liquid fell from the sky. Like an Angel of Death, Darkness crept over the land shaken by an occasional thunderous streak of dancing white through the morass of black and gray. The winds lifted, debris rolled along the fields of Golgotha, urged on by invisible but powerful forces. The body of Jesus rose and fell with each strained, excruciating breath. The sun hid itself from the shame.
“Unhh!” groaned his cross.
“Unnnhh!” louder. His jaw distended and moving as though trying to form words..
“Eli!” The Name escaped his lips in whispered longing.
“Listen!” said a voice in the crowd. “I think he calls for Elijah!” A moment passed. Jesus labored each painful breath. Silence as he hung there. Flies, braving the wind, lick hungrily at his blood.
“Eli - i – i – i – i !!” The sound exploded from his writhing body as he screamed for the first time. He sank upon the cross. His breath evaporating, diminishing . . .
“Eli . . .”
“lama sabachthani?” It ended on a soft, whimpering upnote. Confused. Pleading.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The meaning was unambiguous. Could it be? Could God the Father actually turn away from God the Son? That his Son thought so, is clear. Could not even the eyes of omnipotent, unconditional Love behold such agony? Such shame? Or did this selfsame agony so derange the thoughts of Jesus that he merely felt forsaken? How does one fathom such terrible rage? For rage it was. I came to understand. I came to know far later than I should have that eternal Holiness was exhausting its wrath, exhausting all of the pent-up choleristic spleen, taking violent vengeance against evil in the miserable souls of humankind. There was Jesus, the solitary focus of the wrath of God, exhausting it, draining it of force, emptying it of meaning, sucking it of relevance. Only God could exhaust the infinite wrath of God -- and on that day of morbid darkness, it happened.
The terrible wrath of God . . . exhausted!
Beyond the lowering clouds, beyond the moon and sun, beyond the stars our eyes could see and beyond the stars we could not see. Beyond them. Far, far, unimaginably far beyond them. If one were to take flight from earth and rise higher and higher, it would no longer be higher, but away from. Earth would recede as if it were sucked away from our vision. It would shrink to a mere point of light, and then disappear altogether. Turning around we see more points of light now streaking across the blackness as we step across the barriers of time, until we reach the edge, the last cluster on the perimeter of the creation, the last star, the last source of luminosity in the blackness beyond. Finally we reach the most distant orb in the heavens, the final end, the extremity of all created: the last stop before we move into an abyss of beyond. Here we pause as we listen to silence. From the silence comes a faint sound of weeping. Somewhere in the black, is a Light that we cannot see. It is a Place. An Abode. A Home from which comes this sound of terrible brokeness. Then, at once, a shattering scream; heard not in vacant empyrean, but in the heart.
An infinite distance away on tiny earth, great granite boulders split as if they were a crumbling piece of clay. The ground beneath those that stood by, the watchers, shook uncontrollably as if in spasm. The cross moved, the dead mass of tissue and bone swaying like a sack of salt. The great curtain hanging in Herod’s Temple, seamless and thick, violently rent from top to bottom. There was nothing now to guard the place called the Holy of Holies. The altar, the candlesticks, all laid bare. In cemeteries round about Jerusalem, great stones rolled away from the doors of sepulchres. Bodies of loved ones, and some not so loved, humans long dead appeared in their entrances as if fresh from the finger of God. There arose an outcry of great fear. In all of human history, in all of the writings, in all of the stories passed down from ancestor to ancestor, there had never been anything like this. . . Wednesday, 14 Nisan, a day conceived in blackness, yet brought forth in the light of holiness.
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Copyright: Paul D. Morris, 2006