Man in White

by Johnny Cash

  Stephen still stood unmoved, his expression unchanged. There was a strange, unearthly air about him—he seemed at peace in all this turmoil, even seemed to emanate a sort of joy.

  The two witnesses now crouched near the tall double doors. The high priest gave them a stern look, and a Temple guard pushed them back into the room. The doors had been kept closed at Saul’s request. Many of Stephen’s companions had wanted to come into the council chamber, but Saul had kept them out and closed the hearing to them. The room became quiet, and the high priest spoke to Stephen. “You have been accused of speaking in the name of Jesus the Nazarene. Your accusers have also heard you say that this same Jesus will destroy this holy place. Are these things so?”

  Stephen blinked and finally seemed to become aware of his whereabouts. He turned and looked at Saul—a look not of malice but of kindness. It was met with a hostile glare. He glanced at his accusers, who dropped their eyes, unable to meet his. He looked around at the faces of the Sanhedrin, and then he began in a surprisingly powerful, authoritative tone. “Men, brothers and fathers, hear me,” he said. “The glory of God appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he moved to Canaan, and God said to Abraham, ‘Leave this country and your people, and go to a land which I will show you.’He came out of the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. He was sent by God to this land where we now live.”

  What is this ploy? Saul wondered. What does the story of Abraham have to do with his answering the charges against him? Does he hope to prove his innocence simply by telling the story of our people? His eloquence will not nullify his blasphemous words. He looked anxiously toward the high priest, but Jonathan, seeing Saul’s impatience, made a motion for Saul to remain silent.

  Stephen continued. He talked for many minutes. He recounted the history of Israel from the call of Abraham, telling of how the Jews were a people set apart and chosen by God to deliver his word and his salvation of humankind. He correctly related the stories of Isaac and Jacob, of Joseph and his brothers, and of Moses. He told how Moses talked with God, how God gave him his oracles, the Ten Commandments. He spoke in articulate Hebrew, and his words filled the hall. The longer he talked, the more Saul’s hatred for him burned within him.

  Saul’s mouth was dry. My tongue would cleave to my mouth, he thought. He snapped his fingers for a Temple servant to bring a tray of refreshments. From the silver tray, Saul took a cup of the red fruit juice and wine mixture, poured a little honey in it, and rattled the mixing stick loudly as Stephen continued. He’s well schooled in oration, thought Saul. A typical Greek god himself. A polluter of the Covenant. He has no right to call himself a Jew. To remain silent while this man stands here and tells stories of our people with the high priest and the Sanhedrin for an audience after he has blasphemed the very name of Israel . . . Saul sipped his drink as Stephen related the times of David and Solomon and the building of the first Temple.

  When Stephen mentioned the Temple, Saul sat alert. Will he trap himself? Would he make those claims again about his Jesus being able to destroy this sacred sanctuary?

  Stephen, however, quoted the Prophets. “The Most High does not live in temples made with hands.”

  He’s trying to impress us with his knowledge of the Scripture, thought Saul. No one will be taken in by this traitor.

  “‘Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. What houses will you build me?’” Stephen continued, quoting Isaiah. “‘Haven’t my hands made all these things?’” Stephen paused.

  Saul clutched his drink hard in both hands.

  “You stubborn and jaded in heart and mind. You do not have the spirit of holiness just as your fathers did not. They killed the prophets who told of the coming of the Just One,” Stephen said loudly, pointing his finger at the high priest. “You were given the Law by divine dispensation, and you have not kept it. You are betrayers and murderers.”

  Saul was up on his feet instantly. He flew at Stephen, bellowing a death cry. His heavy silver cup was drawn back in an upraised hand when he left his seat. It struck Stephen on the side of the head with a heavy, dull sound and sent him sprawling backwards.

  The high priest shouted, “You, Saul, a master of the Law, have struck a man who still stands in judgment—an unlawful act!”

  But his words went unheard as others rose to follow Saul’s attack. The elders came out of their seats as one and, amid shouts, attacked Stephen. Cononiah and Shemei joined in, relieved that the hearing had gone in their favor. The high priest called for order, and finally, Saul, most of his fury spent, stood up and held the others back. “Take him out and stone him!” he said to no one in particular but to everyone present.

  “Stop!” the high priest shouted. “The man has not been found guilty. Saul of Tarsus, you have no power to give an execution order!”

  Saul was seething. He whipped around, eyes aflame, to face the high priest. “Call a vote!” he shouted.

  Jonathan ben Annas’s eyes turned from Saul to the agonized body of Stephen, who was trying to raise himself up. He felt a strange kind of pity for him. What a handsome man this Stephen is, and how different from the dozens of other ragged rabbis, some of them gathering great groups of followers, who were reinterpreting and often discovering new beauty in the Scriptures. His interpretation of the Scriptures, though, had evidently gone beyond illumination to become heresy.

  Jonathan, addressing the Sanhedrin, said, “All judges who find this man guilty as charged of blasphemy stand before me with left hand raised.” They all stood except Gamaliel, who was carefully meditating on Stephen’s speech. Four or five Sadducees who didn’t care one way or the other sat unmoved.

  “This tribunal finds this man, Stephen, guilty as charged,” said Jonathan ben Annas.

  Suddenly, before they could lay hands on Stephen to take him out, he sat up on the floor, opened his eyes, and looked straight ahead in Saul’s direction. His eyes were glazed over, and a smile played on his bloody lips; his hands were raised in a gesture of praise. The expression on his face shocked everyone into silence for a moment, and in that moment, Stephen said joyfully, “Look, I see the heavens open, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.”

  Everyone faced the direction Stephen was looking. Saul, finding that all the eyes were turned toward him, quickly glanced behind him. Then, embarrassed at being stopped by an obvious trick, he quickly said to Cononiah and Shemei and the Temple guards, “Remove him from this place!”

  Stephen was taken by the Temple guards, servants, elders, and other onlookers, including the two witnesses, out of the Temple and down the streets to the gate that is called Golden. As they hurried the bruised and bleeding Stephen out of the city, many of the curious street rabble joined the mob, shouting at him and kicking him, happy to be a part of the excitement. Many who followed, however, were of the sect of the Nazarenes and had been waiting outside the council chamber praying for Stephen’s deliverance. Now they openly wept as they trailed along behind the mob led by Saul.

  On the brow of the cliff overlooking the Valley of the Kidron directly across from the Mount of Olives, they threw Stephen off the rocky ledge and watched as his body ripped and crashed its way to the bottom. Bruised, broken, and near death, he managed to pull himself to his knees, look up at his accusers, and cry, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

  “What’s he saying?” screamed Saul. “What’s he saying?”

  Most of the elders and the Temple guards had now left the scene and returned to the Temple. Saul sat on a boulder looking down at Stephen.

  “He is praying to his Jesus,” said Cononiah.

  “What shall we do?” asked Shemei.

  Saul turned to an elder and two guards and said, “Take off your Temple robes and lay them at my feet.”With none of the executioners wearing the raiment of Temple elders, no one could later prove that this execution was carried out with Temple sanction. They removed their outer garments and dropped them at Saul’s feet.

  Sau
l looked up at the fortress Antonia. Roman guards with bows and arrows in hand were looking down upon them. They were too far away to be of any threat to Saul now, but he hated this fortress, this all-pervading Roman presence, imposing itself upon the affairs of the Jews. He did not fear the Romans in the least, he himself being a Roman citizen by birth, but living with the Roman soldiers’ presence had caused him lifelong pain. He would never have peace of mind so long as they were in his beloved Judea, but he would never fear them.

  Saul stood up and raised his fist defiantly at the Romans, then spat loudly on the ground as an indication of his disgust at their presence. The soldiers turned away from what they knew was about to be another Jewish execution and ignored Saul and his companions.

  Saul pointed to Stephen and said sharply, “Kill him!”

  The first stones missed; then a large stone hit his shoulder and broke it. Still Stephen was upraised, his face covered with blood but his countenance joyous. Cononiah held a large, sharp stone, and as he raised it to throw it, Stephen cried, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” The stone found its mark, crushing the skull, and Stephen was dead.

  I’ve never seen one die like that, thought Saul. For a long time Stephen held his attention. He hardly noticed as his companions reached down at his feet, picked up their robes, and left silently. Saul was alone, and disturbed. There was something different about this one, he mused. The man almost appeared to be happy about dying. He held the smile until his last breath. Saul’s thoughts were broken by the appearance of people on both sides of him climbing down into the Kidron. Men and women ran to Stephen’s body lying facedown in the dirt. They fell upon Stephen weeping and wailing.

  Saul’s anger rose again. “Where did all these Nazarenes come from?” he wondered out loud. “The caves along the Kidron? The Garden of Gethsemane? They’re everywhere! Hundreds of them!”

  They were now lifting Stephen’s broken body and carrying it away from the Kidron. Poor and ragged men and women fell in behind, forming a long, mournful train as they carried Stephen’s body away. Some of them cringed in fear as Saul stood up and shouted at them with clenched fists, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!”

  A voice behind Saul said softly, “But you, O Lord, are a God full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering and plentiful in mercy and truth.” Saul stood and turned to see the ancient, white-bearded face of Master Nicodemus, a senior member of the Sanhedrin. Immediately Saul resented this retort, and without wavering he returned, “Thus saith the Lord who created the heaven . . . I am the Lord and there is none else!”

  Nicodemus answered without pausing, quoting from Leviticus. “You shall not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”

  Saul held his temper. Nicodemus had not been there today when Stephen was convicted by his own words.

  “This man has been found guilty of blasphemy,Master Nicodemus,” said Saul. “Had you been with the Sanhedrin in session today, you would have cast your vote for his death.” An ironic smile played at Saul’s lips, for he doubted his own words—Nicodemus had never sat in on a hearing against one of the Carpenter’s disciples.

  Although Nicodemus was officially retired from the Sanhedrin and was the Temple Minister ofWaterworks, he occasionally sat in with the Sanhedrin to be among his old friends. Most of his duties as water supervisor he delegated to stewards and priests. He received a daily report on the purity and abundance of water flowing into the Temple’s many chambers and courts by way of the aqueduct from Solomon’s pools on the Hebron road.

  Saul stood his ground with Nicodemus. He quoted again from the Book. “He who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.” Saul spoke the last sentence slowly and bitingly. “Can the Scriptures be any clearer than that, Master Nicodemus? Is there any liberty to debate those sacred words?”

  With a sigh Nicodemus sat down on a stone a few feet away from Saul. His kind eyes looked upon Saul with pity as he spoke. His shoulders were stooped. His hair was a shock of white, flaring out like a halo under his head covering. His face, especially at the corners of his eyes, was greatly lined. His hands trembled slightly. Out of respect for his age and his office, Saul again sat and waited to hear what the old man would have to say.

  “No, I would not have cast my vote for that man’s death,” Nicodemus said. He glanced down into the Kidron, which was empty now. The only evidence of the execution was a few scattered stones and a dark shadow in the sand where Stephen’s face had fallen. “I would not wish such a death for any man, Jew or Greek, bond or free. These eyes have seen much death in their time, and upon reflection, I must say that men would do better if they ceased taking it upon themselves to bring about the suffering and death of other men.”

  “It was this man’s crimes against the Most High that brought about his death, Master,” said Saul.

  He had scarcely spoken to Nicodemus in the five or six years that he had known him. Nicodemus had personally known Jesus the Carpenter and had been overly tolerant of him. He had spoken with him on numerous occasions, he had listened to him preach, and he had not approved of his death when he stood convicted before Caiaphas and the tribunal.

  As he thought on these things and listened to Nicodemus’s grandfatherly speech, his anger began to rise again. “Tell me, Teacher,” Saul said testily, “did not the Galilean claim to be the Son of the Most High?”

  Nicodemus waited a long time before he answered, then said gently, “He did not make many claims of himself, Saul. He gave God as the source of all earthly power.”

  Saul did not need to question Nicodemus to know what Jesus had taught. He knew the words of Jesus almost as well as he knew the words of Moses. Many times over the past few years, he had heard Jesus’ teaching expounded and discussed. He had been filled with disgust when he heard those self-righteous fanatics proclaim their independence of the Law and their salvation by mere faith in Jesus. These people were defilers of the Law, the sacred Law. The holy Torah was Saul’s everything. The Word, the richness of the Word, was something to be delved into deeper and deeper, something upon which to grow old and gray, something to make new joys burst upon the mind every day. There was no better pursuit in life than the study and contemplation of the Book. Though Saul knew that perfection was an attribute of God only, his aim had long been set for the ultimate life’s achievement—the goal of fulfilling all 613 commandments and observances of the Law. Impossible or not, this was the height toward which he would strive. For one to be a complete Jew, Jewish sentiment was not enough—practice and observance were required. The customs, feasts, rules, and traditions of his people were engraved in Saul’s soul. He could only love the Law more as he grew older.

  His total fulfillment came from the joys of inspiration that study of the Scriptures brought; his spiritual satisfaction, which suppressed his human needs, was found in that and in the practicing of the customs, feasts, and traditions of his people. He had no time or place for a family, and worldly wealth had no appeal to him.

  When my hair is white like Nicodemus’s, thought Saul, I will not sit on the fence in confusion over my covenant with God. I will live and die by the Law, and I will carry the Word and the Law in my heart all my days.

  Saul stood and faced Nicodemus. Calm now and sure of himself, he lowered his normally high-pitched voice, but his words still had bite.

  “Teacher,” he said, “the Shema, proclaiming the oneness of the Lord, is the first thing I memorized as a child. To worship the one God is our first commandment. The Carpenter’s people, in baptism, in prayer, and in ritual, worship three Gods—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For this reason, if for no other, I find these people an affront to all I hold sacred. The sword of his Word pierces my heart to think of their claims. God’s Son crucified by the vile Romans! Does the Creator of heaven and earth need help from a man who cannot keep himself alive
to finish his work?” His voice was pleading now for Nicodemus to understand. “Are we to allow people to live among us and call themselves Jews who go about proclaiming the divinity of a Nazarene who died a shameful death by crucifixion? Was the one promised for hundreds of years meant to come and go like a bad mistake?”

  Nicodemus looked at Saul with compassion.

  “And the third deity which they claim dwells within them is the Holy Spirit,” Saul continued. “Master Nicodemus,” Saul said, slowing up a little, remembering that, after all, even though he had no feelings for the man, Nicodemus was a chief priest and leader in the Sanhedrin, “the Holy Spirit of the blessed God of Israel was the divine inspiration of our patriarchs and prophets. May I ask you, Teacher,” he continued, “can weak, corruptible flesh contain the very Spirit, the Holy Spirit?”

  “God is a spirit, Saul,” said Nicodemus, “and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

  He’s quoting the Nazarene, thought Saul bitterly. A master of the Temple of God sits before me quoting a dead rebel . . .

  “You will excuse me, Master,” Saul said, hurrying away.

  Nicodemus sat with his head bowed. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” he said weakly. He gathered his robe about himself and, taking one last look at the bloody spot where Stephen had lain, turned and walked slowly, with a heavy heart, back toward the city. He must go to the family of Stephen and offer words of consolation. A chill ran through Nicodemus as he remembered the fiery look in Saul’s eyes. A new round of bloodshed was just beginning.

  Saul took great strides back along the eastern wall of the Temple. The farther he walked, the faster he walked, his long, muscular arms swinging in time with the determined paces of his short legs. He was a fearsome, formidable sight, his cloak waving behind him, his dark eyes staring straight ahead, his long, curling eyebrows shooting up to almost touch his turban. His attire alone was enough to make people stop and stare. His headdress and robe signified his position in the Temple, but over his shoulders was a vest of mail, and on his feet were heavy sandals like those the Temple guards wore, with wide leather lacings strapped up to the knees.