“Where have they taken Him?” he asked.
“The merchant Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body,” Pelonius said. “He and the lawyer Nicodemus took it away a short while ago. I heard them say they were laying the Nazarene in Joseph’s own tomb in his garden.”
Peter knew the place, for both Joseph and Nicodemus had been followers of Jesus. It was not far away.
“I will go there,” he said. “They may need my help.”
“Be careful how you show yourself,” Pelonius warned. “The Pharisees know Jesus said He would rise again, so they asked Pilate for a guard to keep the tomb sealed.”
Peter nodded. “I will be close by.”
“The Nazarene was a righteous man,” Pelonius said.
III
Jesus had died around the ninth hour. Joseph and Nicodemus had come for His body as soon as they could make the necessary arrangements. They were forced to move rapidly because the Sabbath began at sunset and they wished to lay Him in the tomb before then. Toward the end, one of the Roman soldiers had thrust a spear into Jesus’ side to make sure that He was dead. Joseph and Nicodemus had time only to wrap the bruised and lacerated body in cloths soaked in myrrh to preserve it against the real preparations for burial, which could be made now only after the Sabbath, and to lay it in the empty tomb hewn from a rocky outcrop in Joseph’s garden. This done, they had helped close the door of the tomb, swinging on hinges pivoted in the stone, the guards sent by Pontius Pilate at the request of the Sanhedrin rolling a great stone against the door of the sepulcher to seal it.
Through the night and the day of the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene with two other women kept watch in the garden near the tomb. The disciples did not come nearer, for with Roman guards present, there was danger of their being recognized and arrested. Simon Peter, finding in work some surcease from his grief, was busy bringing together the rest of the disciples and planning for their departure to Galilee after the proper burial of Jesus’ body had been completed. As he worked, Simon was more and more inspired by the growing conviction, which had begun to crystallize as he stood looking up at the empty cross, that he was doing what Jesus wished him to do.
With the coming of sunset, the Sabbath was officially ended and Mary went into the city to buy the spices with which to prepare Jesus’ body for proper burial the next morning. The soldiers guarding the sepulcher had refused to let them open the tomb that night, for their orders were to keep it intact until the third day on which Jesus had said He would rise again. The women had therefore remained in the garden during the night in the shelter of the building where Peter and the others were, planning to come early to the tomb and pay their last tribute to the Master by anointing His body properly for burial and watching the door close for the last time.
John had taken Mary of Nazareth away long before death had come to Jesus on the cross. Distraught with grief, she was in a state of collapse and he had made himself her guardian while she rested and recovered from the shock of seeing her son nailed to the cross.
Mary of Magdala had been weary from the night and day of watching and the trip into Jerusalem to buy spices. She slept soundly but in the hours before dawn found herself suddenly awake. The other disciples and the women who had also remained in the shelter were still asleep, for it was not yet dawn. Without awakening Peter or any of the others, Mary arose from her pallet and left the house.
She could not have told why she took the path through the garden to where Joseph’s sepulcher had been hewn from the rock, nor did she know what she expected to find there. So it was that when she came into the clearing before the tomb and found the great stone rolled away and the door open, she could think only that the authorities must have taken Jesus’ body away for some final act of desecration.
Without going nearer, she turned and ran back to the shelter where the others were sleeping. She aroused Peter and John. “They have taken the Lord out of the sepulcher!” she told them.
With Mary of Magdala, Peter and John went at once to the sepulcher. When they saw the stone rolled away and the tomb opened, it did seem that Mary had given the explanation. For the guards, too, were gone, which almost certainly meant that they had taken the body out during the night.
John bent down and looked into the tomb but all they could see, spread out on the empty stone shelf where it had lain, was the linen cloth with which Nicodemus and Joseph had wrapped Jesus’ body. Peter came from behind John and, stooping because of his great height, went on into the tomb to see for himself that it was indeed empty. John then followed Peter’s lead, and together they examined the rock-hewn chamber carefully for some sign of what had happened. But nothing gave them a clue. Except for the linen cloths which had been soaked in the aromatic spice and wrapped about the body, nothing remained.
The two disciples were as puzzled as Mary had been when she first came into the garden. Only one explanation came to their minds at the moment; the high priest must have ordered Jesus’ body secreted somewhere lest the disciples abduct it from the tomb and claim that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead on the third day as He had predicted. Since they had no idea where the body had been taken or what had been done with it, they could do nothing but wait.
Simon and John returned to the shelter to awaken the others and tell them of this unexpected turn of events, but Mary of Magdala remained behind and, falling to the ground in front of the empty tomb, began to weep at this needless act of desecration upon the body of a man who had already died the most shameful of deaths.
Kneeling there, it suddenly seemed to Mary that the tomb was illumined for a moment and she saw two men in white sitting inside. When one of them spoke to her, saying, “Woman, why do you weep?” the vision and the voice were so real that she answered, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.”
The sound of her own voice in the silence that lay over the garden and the empty sepulcher startled her. When she felt a hand touch her shoulder, she drew back sharply.
A man stood beside her, only half visible in the dim light of early dawn. Kneeling, Mary could not see His face, but she recognized by His dress that He was not a soldier.
“Woman, why do you weep?” He asked. “Whom do you seek?”
Thinking that the man must be Joseph’s gardener or a servant, Mary spoke quickly as she got to her feet.
“If you have borne Him from here,” she said, “tell me where you have laid Him and I will take Him away.”
“Mary!” The gentle voice spoke only her name, but at last she knew who it was that stood beside her.
“Master!” Mary’s throat filled with happiness and she could say no more.
“Touch Me not,” Jesus warned her, “for I have not yet ascended to My Father. But go to My disciples and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father; and to My God and your God.”
Her eyes swimming now with tears of joy, Mary turned blindly toward her beloved Master but He was no longer there. The garden was empty with only the tomb and the wide-open door and the memory of His voice as He had spoken to her. Jesus had fulfilled His final prophecy. He had indeed been crucified and on the third day He had risen from the dead.
“Peter! John!” Mary cried as she ran toward the shelter where the others still were. “It has been fulfilled! Jesus has risen! Jesus has risen!”
IV
Dawn was breaking over the hills beyond the Mount of Olives when Jonas led Eleazar out through the gate on the way to the hillside to gather thornwood. It was the morning after the Sabbath and he had gone hungry through the previous day, having spent all his money to buy grain for Eleazar after depositing Elam safely at the Pharisee’s home. Troubled by grief and shame still because of the part he had played in the execution of the Nazarene, Jonas had hardly noticed his own hunger. But as he plodded along behind the mule now, letting the patient animal pick its way up the
familiar path, he found himself staggering with weakness.
The guards at the gate had been excited. Jonas had heard one of them telling the other that the body of the Nazarene had been stolen from the tomb during the night, but he was too distraught and too weak from hunger to pay much attention to their gossip. Hardly anyone was on the road this morning, and when he turned off along a path that wound up the hillside, he and the mule were alone. He had noticed a number of dead thornwood bushes in this area when he had gathered the green thorns for Abiathar several days before. At this season, there were not many dead thorns left, so it took longer to gather a load unless one was lucky enough to find a cluster of them.
Eleazar took the familiar path ahead of Jonas, the lead rope tied to his pannier for there was no need to guide him here. Jonas walked along behind, his head down, still sick with the grief that had assailed him when the crown of thorns had been pressed down upon the Nazarene’s head. That he had saved Elam’s life did nothing to mitigate his guilt and shame.
Suddenly Jonas realized that a man had fallen into step beside him. He had not seen the stranger appear nor heard footsteps overtaking him, but had been trudging along with his eyes to the ground and could easily have failed to see anyone approaching.
“Shalom,” Jonas greeted the stranger courteously.
The man did not speak but when Jonas raised his head, he found himself looking into deep-set eyes in which shone such a kindness and warmth that he felt an answering feeling rise within him.
“I did not observe you on the road, sir,” Jonas said. “You see, I am sad because I gathered thorns here for the crown they put upon the head of the Nazarene.”
The stranger smiled as if He understood and somehow Jonas did not find it odd that He still had not spoken a word.
“I tried to reach the Teacher and beg His forgiveness,” Jonas went on, “but I was kept back when Elam was stabbed. If Jesus had forgiven me, I would not be sad now.”
Just talking to the stranger who walked beside Him without speaking seemed to bring peace to Jonas’s troubled mind. And when the other man reached out to put His arm across the great hump on his back in a gesture of friendly assurance, the little woodseller felt an inexplicable warmth flood his soul. Most startling was not the stranger’s gesture nor its effect upon Jonas, but the fact that now he distinctly remembered having had this same sensation once before.
It had been a long time ago when, cold and afraid, he had looked up in the sky above the courtyard of an inn in Bethlehem and had seen the brilliant star hanging there and felt its warmth drive all fear and pain from his body. The feeling was as distinct and as comforting now as it had been on that night more than thirty years ago.
The stranger’s arm was like a protecting mantle about Jonas there on the hillside. When the little woodseller turned his head, he could see the other’s hand where it rested upon his shoulder and, as plainly as if he had seen them himself on the hill of Golgotha, Jonas detected the print of the nails which had fixed the outstretched hands to the patibulum.
“You must be the—” Jonas stopped for he was alone. In fact, there was not even the print of a sandal in the dusty track beside him to mark where the stranger had walked.
Standing in the roadway, Jonas shook his head slowly. “I have been dreaming.” he told himself finally. But the feeling of peace that flooded his soul and the touch of the stranger’s arm which it seemed he could still feel about his bent and gnarled shoulders were not a dream.
“The Nazarene claimed He would rise from the dead,” he said, unconsciously speaking aloud. He did not finish the sentence for it was incredible that the man to whose shameful death he had contributed should have risen and come here today to comfort him in his grief. Such a thing could not happen to Jonas the woodseller. He was not even a follower of Jesus nor had he ever spoken a word to the Nazarene—unless it had been just now.
Noticing that Eleazar had gone on ahead and was out of sight around a turn of the path, Jonas hurried to catch up with the old animal. As he rounded the hill and saw stretching before him the broad patch of burnet where he had gathered the green thorns he stopped with a feeling of awe and joy. Now, at last, he knew who had comforted him a few moments before on the road. What he was seeing could only be a sign that Jesus of Nazareth had indeed risen from the dead and had forgiven him his own part in the shameful death of the cross.
In the center of the patch of thorns, exactly where Jonas had gathered those for the crown, a mass of the green burnet had bloomed overnight with thousands of blossoms shaped like drops of blood making a scarlet slash of color across the green hillside that was like a burning beacon in the dawn.
Long, long ago, Jonas had been allowed to give the first gift to a child who, the shepherds had said, was announced to them by the angels as the Son of God. Now, many years afterwards, he knew he had also given the last gift, a crown for the King who would rule forever in the hearts of men.
Copyright
The Crown and the Cross
© Copyright, 1959, by Frank G. Slaughter.
Previously published as a World Publishing edition in March, 1959
1st printing: February, 1960
PERMABOOK edition: April, 1960
First printing in 2012 by eChristian, Inc. as a derivative work, © Copyright, 2012 by Frank G. Slaughter, Jr. and Randolph M. Slaughter.
eChristian, Inc.
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Scriptures in the text are adapted from the King James Version.
Scripture quotations at the beginning of the chapters are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover and interior design by Larry Taylor.
Produced with the assistance of Livingstone, the Publishing Services Division of eChristian, Inc. Project staff includes: Dan Balow, Afton Rorvik, Linda Washington, Linda Taylor, Andy Culbertson, Joel Bartlett.
ISBN EPUB: 978-1-61843-066-3
ISBN MOBI: 978-1-61843-067-0
The Crown and the Cross: The Life of Christ Page 44