Jesus

by James Martin

  From the modest plaza one cannot gauge the size of the church. On the morning of my first visit on my own, I stood outside and looked at the great door, which itself is an emblem of the contentiousness within the church. Every night at eight o’clock the door is locked by a Muslim guardian (apparently to prevent any of the Christian groups from squabbling) whose family has been entrusted with this job for thirteen hundred years. The door is opened every morning at four in an elaborate ritual in which religious representatives hand the guardian, who stands outside, a ladder through a small square opening in the massive wooden door. The door is unlocked with a foot-long iron key and great fanfare.

  When I walked in, I heard singing. From somewhere before me came the unmistakable harmonies of chanting. To the side, in a small Catholic chapel, a group of Franciscan monks said their morning prayers. Immediately in front of me was a long marble slab that a man knelt to kiss. This was the Anointing Stone, on which Jesus is supposed to have been anointed before his burial. Murphy-O’Connor dates it to the twelfth century. I kissed it anyway.

  Overwhelmed and overjoyed, I wandered around the complicated edifice, trying in vain to identify all that I was seeing. Within a few minutes I located the Tomb of Christ, positioned under the rotunda and housed in what can only be described as another small church—a small Romanesque structure, called the Aedicule (a small shrine) topped off with a dome. In front of the holy site, the place where Jesus’s lifeless body was brought, dozens of hanging lanterns burned brightly. On the exterior walls of the shrine were shelves that held lit candles. Behind the Tomb were the Coptic monks whose chanting I had heard. That morning a long line of people—perhaps a hundred in all—waited to enter the Tomb. Entering looked impossible, so I knelt down a few feet away, beside a column under the rotunda on the cold marble floor.

  The area surrounding the Tomb was the perfect place to pray, and was in fact my favorite place in the Holy Land for prayer next to that balcony overlooking the Sea of Galilee. And how different the two were. On the balcony all was fresh air and sunshine and breezes, and I was by myself. Inside the Holy Sepulchre, it was dark and claustrophobic and musty, and I was surrounded by scores of pilgrims. But I could pray nonetheless. I took out my New Testament and read the story of the Passion from each of the Gospels.

  THE STORY OF JESUS’S death is complex, and one that I will not examine line by line. Taken together, the four Gospels provide an extensive account of his last hours—even if they don’t agree on each detail. But they align on most of the basic points. Harrington sums up those as follows: “Jesus was arrested, underwent two hearings or trials, was sentenced to death by crucifixion, and died on a cross.”5

  Immediately after Jesus’s agonizing prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane at night, the Gospel of Mark describes a “crowd” sent from the “chief priests, the scribes, and the elders” who arrest Jesus. He is identified by Judas with a kiss; all three Synoptic Gospels include Judas’s distinctive act of betrayal. It is likely that the authorities’ arrest of Jesus at night shows his renown with the crowd: they did not dare to act against him publicly during daylight—at least for the time being.

  Jesus’s “trials” included three inquests before Jewish authorities—one each before the Jewish leaders Annas and Caiaphas and one before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish governing body. They would find him guilty of blasphemy—for admitting, as he does in Mark, that he is the “Messiah, the Son of God, the Blessed One.”6 The Jewish penalty for blasphemy was stoning. Depending on the Gospels, two or three inquests conducted before the secular authorities (first Pontius Pilate; then Herod Antipas, the local Jewish client-ruler under the Romans; then Pilate again) led to his condemnation for sedition (rebellion or treason). The number of trials or hearings and the individuals involved vary in the Gospels.

  The Gospels portray Herod Antipas (in Luke only), the Sanhedrin (in the Synoptics only), Annas, the father-in-law of the high priest (in John only), and the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate as maneuvering to force someone else to take responsibility for the elimination of Jesus. At times, the Gospels can lead one to conclude that both Jewish and Roman sides held equal sway (or that “the Jews” were the driving force). Ultimately, though, Pilate was responsible for the death, since the only person with authority to condemn a person to die in Roman lands was the Roman procurator. It is also important to recall that when the Gospels talk about “the Jews,” we should consider this as a particular group of Jewish leaders in a particular place at a particular time—not all the Jews. After all, Jesus’s followers were Jewish.7 So was Jesus.

  So who was responsible for Jesus’s death? Again, Harrington’s explanation is to the point: Jesus was executed under the orders of Pontius Pilate, with the cooperation of some of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.8

  Before his crucifixion, Jesus was beaten, which was the custom, and whipped. (Jewish practice also prevented anyone from being whipped more than forty times.)9 The Gospels describe soldiers mocking Jesus by adorning him with symbols of royal power and authority (a purple cloak, a crown of thorns, and a reed). The irony is not lost on readers: he truly is a king even if the soldiers are unaware.

  Forced to carry his crossbeam to Golgotha, the place of his crucifixion, Jesus was marched through the streets of the city he had triumphantly entered the week before. Golgotha was an abandoned stone quarry just outside Jerusalem. It is named for its shape, a rounded knoll. The Synoptics describe the Romans pressing into service Simon of Cyrene to help Jesus carry his heavy burden. John omits this (perhaps to emphasize Jesus’s command of the situation). In Luke Jesus speaks to a group of women on the way to the cross.

  Jesus was nailed probably to a T-shaped cross, not far off the ground, and guarded by soldiers, who were posted to prevent anyone from taking him off the cross. Over the cross was placed a sign reading either “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” or “This is the King of the Jews,” a title evidently ordered by Pilate. The Gospels describe Jesus uttering several remarks from the Cross—traditionally called the Seven Last Words.

  Witnessing the Crucifixion were, in the Synoptics, several women. The Gospel of Mark, for example, lists Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome. In John’s Gospel, Jesus’s mother stays by her son, along with three other women, and “the disciple whom he loved.”

  Some victims of crucifixion died quickly, due to a loss of blood, but others survived for several days, the nails pulling horribly on the hands, before succumbing to either dehydration or more likely asphyxiation, as the weight of the body made expanding the lungs difficult. To prolong the agony, the victim’s feet would be nailed or tied to the beam, so he could push himself up in a desperate struggle to breathe. In order to expedite the death, the soldiers could, if they desired, break the legs of a victim. By any measure, it was an appalling way to die.

  The Gospels report that Jesus died after several hours. (According to Mark, Jesus was crucified at nine in the morning, the sky darkened at noon, and he died at three o’clock in the afternoon.) He was placed in a tomb secured for him by Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man who had asked Pilate for permission to care for the body. The burial was done quickly, because it was a Friday afternoon and the Sabbath was about to begin. The body was placed in a tomb and anointed with a mixture of spices, according to the Jewish tradition.10

  THE FIRST THING I noticed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was a stairway under a stone arch to the right of the main door. I wondered why there would be a second floor in the church. Then it dawned on me that the steps led up to the summit of Golgotha, around which the church is built. As I walked up the stairs I realized that I was ascending the same or nearly the same hill that Jesus had climbed, and I was moved to tears.

  This was another spot in the Holy Land where I felt intimately connected to Jesus. Sometimes one can surmise where Jesus “might have” walked, say, along the Sea of Galilee, or “might have” stood, say, at the Pool of Bethesda, or what he “might have” seen, say, in Na
zareth. But each of the Gospels records his being crucified on the very hill I was now ascending. I felt embarrassed, unworthy to participate in this act in such a physical way.

  At the top of the stairs two small but ornate chapels commemorated the Crucifixion. They are built directly on top of Golgotha. Once again, I was unprepared. Before coming here I had assumed that the church would be built in a general way around the supposed spots where the Crucifixion “might have” happened. But the building conformed precisely to the terrain. Murphy-O’Connor describes the location of the two chapels with none of the “probablys” or “maybes” that pepper his book: “The floor above is on a level with the top of the rocky outcrop on which Christ was crucified.”11

  Under an elaborate altar festooned with icons and illuminated by lamps, pilgrims lined up, and knelt. What were they venerating? Perhaps an icon or a fragment of the “True Cross.” But they seemed to be reaching down into a cavity.

  “What are they touching?” I whispered to another pilgrim.

  “Golgotha,” he said quickly.

  As I moved closer, I noticed, to my amazement, a hole cut in the marble floor. When my turn came, I crouched under the altar, with several pilgrims jostling me, and I gingerly stretched out my hand through the opening, wondering how far I would have to reach. My hand touched the cold rock. Immediately I withdrew it out of shock.

  FOR THE DISCIPLES, Jesus’s public ministry probably seemed to end with terrifying speed. Let’s look mainly at the Gospel of Mark, with some help from the Gospel of John, to understand better Jesus’s final few hours.

  The Gospel narratives describe those final hours—Jesus’s journey to Golgotha, his crucifixion, and his death—simply. Mark, Matthew, and Luke paint his death in swift strokes.12 John even omits the traditions of the Via Dolorosa, or Way of the Cross, the saga of Jesus’s path from his condemnation by Pilate to Golgotha. The story of Simon of Cyrene also is absent from John. So is Jesus meeting the women of Jerusalem, from Luke, in which Jesus, bent under the weight of the cross, says, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.”13 These absences are sometimes a surprise for Catholics accustomed to praying with what are known as the Stations of the Cross.

  In fact, the Via Dolorosa is a late addition when compared to many other traditions in the Holy Land. Scattered around the Old City, affixed to the sides of buildings, are gray metal disks that mark the Stations of the Cross with simple Roman numerals. Usually a knot of pilgrims is stationed before them, along with a guide telling the story of Jesus’s suffering at this particular point or leading a prayer or a hymn.

  While I had expected the Stations of the Cross to be one of the highlights of our pilgrimage, for some reason I found myself largely unmoved. Oddly enough, I experienced more powerful reactions when praying with the stations in local parishes, either alone or in a group, usually during Lent. Catholic tradition includes fourteen stations, from “Jesus Is Condemned to Death” to “Jesus Falls for the First Time” to “Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross,” and the walls of nearly every Catholic church include these artistic vignettes from the Passion, though some are not included in any Gospel.

  But here in the Holy Land the stations held little appeal for me. Maybe it was the touristy setting. Underneath the station marked “Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus” was a metal rack stuffed with postcards. My response was also influenced by having read that the devotion had started, at the earliest, in the fifth century and that a few centuries later there were actually two routes followed by pilgrims. So though clearly Jesus made his way through Jerusalem, the specific sites were not well attested. Bargil Pixner writes, “Jesus’s bitter path probably did not pass along today’s Via Dolorosa.”14

  In the fifteenth century, Christians in Europe began to promote the practice of praying with the stations in their home parishes (because few people could make the trip to Jerusalem). They arrived at the standard fourteen stations. But this posed a problem: in Jerusalem there were only eight stations. Over time the fourteen European stations took hold even in Jerusalem. The general route that Holy Land pilgrims know today wasn’t fixed until the eighteenth century, and some stations did not have their final locations set until the nineteenth century. All of this made it harder for me to appreciate the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem.

  Other people, however, have told me that the Stations of the Cross were among their most powerful spiritual experiences in the Holy Land. Walking where Jesus walked—even if it wasn’t the precise historical path—moved some of my friends to tears. Different places evoke different feelings from different people. While I had intense experiences at the Pool of Bethesda, others told me the site left them cold. Why did I once experience strong emotional reactions to the stations on a chilly mountainside in Lourdes, France, instead of in the city where Jesus had actually walked? Grace is mysterious. So is pilgrimage.

  MARK BEGINS THIS LAST stage of Jesus’s earthly life by telling us about Simon of Cyrene, whom the Romans pressed into service. Roman soldiers had the right to require any civilian to help carry out a task for them. Simon is described as the “father of Alexander and Rufus,” so presumably Mark’s readers would have known him.15 (A Rufus is mentioned in Paul’s Letter to the Romans.16) Although it’s possible that the Romans asked Simon’s assistance out of compassion for their prisoner, it’s more likely that Jesus, weakened severely after his torture, was unable to carry the crossbeam on his own.

  John’s Gospel affords the Way of the Cross scant attention. His account begins simply: “So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha.” The site of execution would have been visible to all, perhaps set by the road deliberately to deter other criminals or insurrectionists. This, after all, was a public execution. As George often told the inmates on death row at San Quentin, Jesus is the most famous victim of capital punishment.

  The descriptions of the actual crucifixion in the Gospels are stripped down, as if the evangelists could barely bring themselves to describe anything but the naked facts. This is sometimes baffling to those who have seen films or read books that focus on the horrible act itself. But there might be another reason for the unadorned description: the early Christians knew well what crucifixion was.17 Victims were first affixed to the kind of crossbeam that Jesus carried by ropes or by nails driven through the wrists or forearms. In earlier times that part of the cross (which the Romans called the patibulum) was a piece of wood used to bar a door. The crossbeam was set into a vertical wooden beam that stood perhaps six feet high. The victim was placed in a small seat and perhaps a footrest—not out of any attempt to comfort, but to prolong his agony.18

  To breathe, victims were forced to prop themselves up momentarily on the footrest in order to draw air into their lungs, but the pain in their nailed feet and cramped legs would have gradually made it impossible to support themselves, and they would have slumped down violently, pulling on the nails in their wrists, tearing the skin and ripping the tendons, causing searing pain. It would have been nearly impossible for any human being (with a body involuntarily trying to avoid physical pain) not to experience panic. The awful process would have been repeated over and over. Victims of crucifixion died from either loss of blood or asphyxiation.

  There was little need to explain this to the first readers of the Gospels.

  Kai estaurōsan auton, writes Mark simply. “And they crucified him.”

  Jesus may have been stripped of his garments and left naked, completing the shaming intended by crucifixion, but this is unclear. Roman practice was to crucify the victim naked, but there might have been a nod to Jewish sensibilities. All four Gospels, however, describe the soldiers’ gambling for Jesus’s outer garment, which John reports was a well-made cloak, “seamless.” But the most that Jesus would have been wearing was a loincloth.

  Pilate’s inscription—Ho Basileus tōn Ioudaiōn—which Mark calls the “accu
sation” or “charge,” was affixed to the cross as a savage warning to insurrectionists or anyone with messianic designs. Beside Jesus were crucified two “thieves” though the word (lēstas) may also imply a kind of Robin Hood figure—“social bandits,” as Donahue and Harrington suggest.19 Jesus died as he lived, in solidarity with outcasts, in this case criminals.

  We can imagine, then, a public scene calculated not only to warn, but also to magnify the shame for the victim, who suffered an agonizing death. All were invited to watch and comment. The Gospel of Mark describes passersby blaspheming. They “shake their heads,” and Mark recounts a common word—oua—that begins their taunts, “Aha!” or “Well, well.” They scorn him: “Aha! You who would destroy the Temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross.” Next the chief priests and scribes come to deliver their own imprecations: “Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.”

  In Luke “the leaders” (archontes, most likely, some of the Jewish leaders) scoff: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers join in, saying: “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.” Their taunts of “save yourself” mirror what he heard when he was tested in the desert.

  Jesus does not answer. Most likely he could barely breathe.

  All three Synoptics describe a darkness coming “over the whole land.” In Mark’s Gospel the darkness lasts from noon to three. Then Jesus shouts out, “Elōi, Elōi, lama sabachthani!”

  Many translations say that he “cried out in a loud voice,” but “scream” may be more accurate. The Greek eboēsen is indicative of “intense physical suffering.”20

  Mark’s narrative preserves the words of Jesus from the cross in Aramaic, a sign of their authenticity.21 Jesus’s screaming these words from the cross must have so imprinted itself on witnesses as to be unforgettable: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”