|
CHAPTER VIII Place of the Skull
The sun had not yet risen high enough to cast a shadow upon the dial positioned near Pilate's Seat of Judgment.
Rumors had it that sundials were now almost as accurate as Cleopatra's Needle, an obelisk which now stood in the city of Alexandria that carefully marked the points of each hour in the day. While the Jews counted days from sunset to sunset, they counted hours from dawn or six hours after midnight. Such are thoughts of the passage of time at a time like this. Each instant dragged into the next, each event unfolding seamlessly into the next. The trial had taken an hour and a half. Yet there were no shadows except for the terrible shadow of this event.
For most, faces in the crowd hold little meaning. They are a blur, a mere passage of scenery, not even registering in consciousness. On that day as they laid the crossbeam on the shoulders of Jesus, on that day as he staggered helpless under its weight--on another day, the weight of this instrument of death would have been as nothing for such broad, carpenter shoulders to bear--but on that day, the weight was laid upon a back bleeding from lashes unmerciful, on that day it was laid upon a mass of raw, exposed sinew and bone and on that day a face was seen in the crowd.
It was the bronzed face of a man who stood head and shoulders above the masses gathering along the streets of Jerusalem as if to watch a parade, for a parade it was. His name was Simon, a son of Cyrene, a town along the northern coast of Africa, east of Namibia and west of Egypt, the father of two sons, one he called Alexander, the other he called Rufus, both of whom were known to the church of later years, one famous, the other infamous.
But they are another story for another time.
The Roman centurion, horsed upon his stallion, seeing that Jesus would never make it to the place of crucifixion allowed his eyes to trace over the mass of faces in the crowd. He thought of Jesus, a man whom he had come to despise and he thought of his mother, whom well he knew. For the man placed in charge of the crucifixion and death of Jesus of Nazareth was none other than the son of Hermas, Urbanus, warrior, Centurion of Caesar, Centurion of Rome. Urbanus, whose dress uniform bore the medals and ribbons of many campaigns. Urbanus, whose exploits were known even to Caesar, had grown up from the eight-year-old boy under the tutelage of a Nubian slave. Perhaps had the prisoner been someone other than the son of a family he once loved, a family so close to his, he would not have noticed and would have allowed the continuance of the whip to motivate the criminal to work harder. Somewhere in the heart, calloused by continual exposure to inhumanity, lurked a compassion for Mary and Joseph, friends of his own mother and father, and a trace of mercy toward their son who staggered in his own blood before him.
Seeing the powerful form of Simon standing among the sea of faces, he gave command that his soldiers arrest him and compel him to carry the bloody crossbeam. To this task Simon took willingly, for he himself could not stomach the scene before him. He knew Jesus to be no criminal, for he had seen his eyes not so very long ago. Those who returned the gaze of the Son of God never forgot the moment. One cannot erase from memory such a glimpse of the face of God. Lifting the beam from the stumbling form, he set it upon his own shoulders and felt the blood smear upon his own bronzed skin. What was that? A tingle? A rush of what? He felt energy surge through his body and lifted the beam as if it were a toothpick. He motioned, commanding that the centurion lead on. Urbanus, commander of a hundred warriors of Rome, obeyed.
When one is in searing pain, it is difficult, if not impossible, to be coherent in one's thoughts. One experiences the agony of helplessness at one end of the spectrum and outrage at its cause on the other. Jesus was no less human because he was God. Indeed, the hypostatic Sameness with God guaranteed it. All of the feelings connected with being both in kinetic union assailed him, producing emotions and thoughts consistent with what humans feel while in pain and what God feels when wounded and bruised. A large number of people followed, among them the women of Jerusalem who wept loudly at the sight of this suffering. Perhaps they were paid for their performances. Somewhere Jesus found within himself enough breath to address them, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me," cried he. "If you must wail and carry on so, then weep for yourselves. Weep for your children." This did not seem to help. The wailing increased with each word he spoke. He tried to raise his voice but could not. Rasping and defeated the voice of God whispered, "The time will come . . . the time will come when you say, 'Women without children are blessed above those whose sons . . . whose sons play about their feet! Wombs that never gave birth are blessed above those who have felt . . . such delicious pain! And breasts never graced by the lips of infants are blessed above those . . .'" The crescendo of howling drowned him out, but his lips continued to move. God still spoke words of human agony in fusion with holy rage. "Then," envisioning some future horror, "then you will say to the mountains, 'Fall on us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!'" Holding his manacled hands in the air, arms streaked bright with crimson he cried--or tried to cry, "If men do these things when trees are green, what will happen in winter, when trees are cold and black and barren?" He may as well have spoken to a wall, for that is what it was, a wall of faces, of bodies and minds as uncaring and impenetrable as stone.
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 Jerusalem. Large flies buzzed. The stench of discarded waste haunted the air. Seagulls from the Great Sea came the distance to feast on the carrion. 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. Two soldiers fitted the crossbeam, notched at center, to the vertical beam which had previously 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 to die 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. One soldier held his arm in place while another took a mallet and crudely fashioned nails. Fitting the point against his opened palm, with a single blow, the soldier drove a nail through his hand and a second nail through his wrist, into the wood beneath. From each wound blood issued, bloodying the hands of the executioner. Wiping them, he went to the other hand. This, a routine detail. If he didn't do it, someone else would. Remarkably, 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 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 hole in the earth. It hesitated at the edge for the briefest of instants, its lip crumbling beneath the weight, then plunged the three feet to its depth 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.
|