by Joan Wolf
The Court of the Gentiles was also packed with foreigners; we may have been the only ones from Judea in the whole place. John said that local people would have been to the Temple yesterday for the sacrifice of the lambs and were probably at home with their families.
I thought Nicodemus would be in the Court of the Women, so we pushed our way up the staircase and finally spotted him standing by the Nicanor Gate. Nicodemus shepherded us to a quiet spot near the Chamber of Oils.
“Caiaphas brought forward a parade of false witnesses to testify against the Master, but they kept contradicting each other. The high priest was furious and finally turned to the Master, who had been silent during the whole proceeding. Caiaphas asked him one question: ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?’”
I shut my eyes, afraid of what was coming next.
“The Master said, ‘I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power of God and coming on the clouds of heaven.’”
We were silent as those words resonated in our minds and hearts. A child came running past us holding a dove in a cage, and my eyes followed him while I tried not to think of what must have happened next.
Nicodemus continued, “The high priest said to the Sanhedrin, ‘Why do we need witnesses? You have all heard this blasphemy. What is your decision?’”
Mary pressed her hand against her mouth, and I put my arm around her, as much for my comfort as for hers.
Nicodemus said, “The Sanhedrin answered that he should die.”
“The Sanhedrin doesn’t have the right to execute prisoners,” John said quickly.
“They took him to Pilate,” Nicodemus said.
I was starting to feel frantic. “Pilate won’t condemn Jesus! Calling himself the Son of God isn’t a crime against Rome.”
Nicodemus shook his head. “Too many people are calling him king of the Jews, and that’s a political, not a religious issue.”
John lifted his head to stare around the crowded court. “Then we will rouse his followers to free him. Think of all the people who threw palms at him the other day! They will rise to defend him. I know they will!”
I had to force the words through my closed throat, “But those aren’t the people who are in Jerusalem today. You said it yourself, John. The people here are foreigners, not followers of the Master.”
Mary said, “If my son has been sent to Pilate, then that’s where I must go.”
“That’s where we will all go,” John said. We left Nicodemus and once more fought our way through the crowded streets of the city.
It was turning into a beautiful day, and the blue skies and bright sun seemed a mockery of what was happening in Jerusalem. Apparently word had gotten around that the Sanhedrin was asking Rome to execute a Jewish dissident, and crowds of people were flocking to see, like vultures to a wounded animal.
The fortress of the Antonia, the most visible sign of the Roman occupation in Jerusalem, was a huge building just north of the Temple. Though chiefly a military garrison, it also contained a fortified palace for the Roman procurator to use when he was in the city.
A crowd had already gathered when we arrived. Caiaphas and a group of priests from the Sanhedrin were standing in front of the palace. A contingent of Temple guards kept the crowd at a distance. There was no sign of Jesus.
Speaking in Greek, John asked the man standing next to us what was happening. The man said, “They have some fellow in with Pilate who has been going around saying he’s the Son of God. The Sanhedrin wants him executed, but Pilate has been trying to get them to change their minds.”
We stood waiting, sick with fear. I couldn’t get the image of John the Baptizer out of my mind. Pilate wouldn’t behead Jesus. His Father would never allow such a dreadful thing to happen to His Son.
We saw movement among the group of priests, and John, who was tall, told us that the procurator had come out.
We could all hear Pilate’s voice as he told the Sanhedrin that he found no fault with this man.
The priests of the Sanhedrin yelled back. “He has said he is the Son of God. Crucify him!”
All around me the crowd took up the cry. “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
Crucifixion was for common criminals. How could these people be asking for crucifixion?
John grabbed the arm of the man we had been speaking to and shook him. “You don’t even know him! How can you call for him to be crucified?”
The man tried to pull away. “Are you mad? Let go of me, or I’ll have you arrested!”
“John,” I said, tugging on his robe, “don’t do anything stupid. We need you.”
I could see the effort it took for him to contain his fury, but finally he stepped away from the angry, frightened man.
The crowd had quieted, and Pilate’s raised voice came clearly. “Do you want me to crucify your king?”
A chorus of voices shouted back, “We have no king but Caesar.”
I hated them. I hated every single person in that crowd of foreign Jews. How could they say such a thing? How could they?
Pilate’s voice sounded for the last time. “Take him, then, and do with him as you please. I will put my guards at your disposal.”
“Hold onto my Cloak and stay behind me,” John said to Mary and me, and he began to push his way forward. He must have looked like the Son of Thunder that Jesus had called him, because the crowd fell away before us.
We were almost to the front when I saw him. They had put a circle of thorns on his head and pressed them in so that blood ran down his face. Blood stained his robe as well. They must have whipped him. His face was drawn and pale and set like stone.
Mary made a whimpering sound, and I put my hand on her shoulder.
As we watched they put a great wooden crossbar on Jesus’ back for him to carry from the Antonia to his place of execution, a distance of about two miles. He would have to walk first through the narrow streets southwest of the Antonia, then cross the hot Tyropoeon Valley to Golgotha.
A procession formed, with Roman soldiers in front to clear the path, then Jesus with his cross, and then another group of Romans on horseback behind him. A crowd of Jews began to fill in behind the procession, and John managed to edge us into the front, directly behind the horses.
The narrow city streets were lined with people as the death march wound along the prescribed route. Many of the watchers shouted vicious remarks at the vulnerable figure of the Master as he passed, bent under the heavy crossbar, but a number of women called out blessings and tried to follow him from the side. One woman even dashed into the street to wipe his face with her veil.
The Romans pushed her away.
We passed through the city gate and came out into the sunlight of the valley. We couldn’t see over the horses, so we didn’t know what had happened when the procession suddenly stopped.
“The prisoner’s down!” someone shouted.
I shut my eyes. Please let him be dead, I prayed. Please, dear Lord, don’t make him go through the horror of crucifixion. Take him home to paradise. Please let him be dead.
John shouted at the horsemen in front of us, “What’s happening?”
One of the soldiers turned his head, “They got someone else to carry the crossbar. The prisoner can’t do it anymore.”
John’s face was ashen. He said, “He’s exhausted himself with his preaching. He’s lost too much weight.”
I looked at the crowd of strange Jews behind us and thought, Where is everyone else? Peter? James? Andrew? Where are they? They should be here for him. Where are they?
The procession started to move again, and we followed. I looked at Mary. This was worse for her than it was for John and me. But she never faltered; she kept walking steadily under the hot sun, stepping over the leavings of the horses, until the hill of Calvary appeared in the distance.
Two men were already hanging there, and between them was a single empty post.
My knees started to buckle. John grabbed my elbow and h
eld me up. I looked at Mary. Her face was set in stone, just like her son’s. She wasn’t going to collapse. She was going to see this through.
I strove to pull myself together. The least I could do was see it through with her.
“I’m all right,” I said to John. “I will be all right.”
A large crowd had assembled by the time our procession arrived, pushing us farther away from the Master. The Temple guards and some of the Roman soldiers went up the hill with him while the horsemen remained behind to keep the crowd under control. People were shrieking, and children were crying.
Children, I thought in horror. How could anyone bring a child to a crucifixion?
Mary said to John, “We have to get through. I have to be with him.”
John made a battering ram with his elbows and pushed through the crowd. The people he shoved out of his way cursed him, but Mary and I held onto his belt and followed him through.
As we reached the front, we saw the Romans raise the middle cross.
Mary’s hand closed on my arm so tightly that it would leave bruises.
John said to the horseman in front of us, “Let us through. We’re friends of Jesus of Nazareth.”
“No one gets through,” the guard returned, swinging his horse’s haunches toward us to keep us back.
I stepped forward boldly and said, in the aristocratic Latin I had learned from Julia, “You must let us through. This is Jesus of Nazareth’s mother.”
The guard gave me a sharp glance but repeated his refusal, this time in Latin.
I summoned up my most arrogant expression. “I don’t believe you understand. I have friends in Rome—highly placed friends. They won’t be pleased to learn you denied my request.”
The guard looked at me suspiciously, taking in the way I was dressed. “You don’t look like a Roman. You look like a Jew.”
“What I am is a close friend of Marcus Novius Claudius. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop wasting my time and let us through.”
“How do you know a man like that?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Stop asking me useless questions, and let us go stand by the cross. Now.”
He grumbled, but he backed his horse up and let us pass.
I couldn’t look at him.
This is unbearable.
But Mary moved forward, and John and I followed behind her. He was so thin. He was like a skeleton covered with a thin layer of flesh as he hung there under the brilliant sun. His eyes were closed. We stopped at the foot of the cross, and Mary reached up, put her hand on his bloody foot, and said, “Yeshua, I am here.”
His eyes opened. She looked up at him, her spine straight, her face concentrated, willing him to see her, to know that she was with him, to know that he was not alone.
He said nothing, but for a long moment they looked at each other. He was the Son of God, but she was his mother, and I knew he was glad for her presence.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
We remained there beneath him, Mary, John, and I, as the clouds covered the sun and the sky grew dark. When Mary could no longer keep her arm up to touch his foot, I took her place. Then, when I tired, she took mine.
It was unspeakable. Jesus was silent, acknowledging us only once, when he asked John to take Mary into his care. She was incredibly strong. She stood with him until the end, once or twice murmuring to him so he would know she was still there.
I thought, There is more bravery in this small woman than in the entire army of Rome. Jesus didn’t get his strength only from his Father.
I felt as if it would never end, that we would stand enduring this agony until the end of time. It was late in the afternoon when Jesus whispered in a cracked voice, “I thirst.”
“Get him something to drink,” I snapped in Latin to the soldiers around us.
They dipped a sponge in the bucket and held it to his lips. After he had tasted the drink, he looked up to heaven. This time when he spoke his voice was clear.
“It is finished.”
His head dropped forward, and all his muscles, which had been concentrated on bearing him up against the tearing of the nails, relaxed.
“He’s done for,” one of the soldiers said.
I looked at his chest, to see if it was moving. It wasn’t. He was dead.
Thank God.
They lowered him from the cross, and we ran to kneel next to him. There was blood on his face, but he looked peaceful, as if asleep.
“He is with his Father,” Mary said, brushing his hair away from his forehead with a steady hand.
“Yes, he is.” I took off my cloak and settled it over him gently, as if afraid that, even in death, he might feel it on his poor wounded body.
The Temple guards who had been watching with the crowd came up to us, and one of them said to John, “The Sabbath begins at sundown. You must take him away before then.”
John and I looked at each other, the same thought in both our minds. Where could we take him?
The crowd had grown bored with the spectacle and dispersed. The two other men were still hanging in their agony, watched over by the soldiers. The sky was gray, and it was growing cold.
“We have no place to put him,” John said.
The Temple guard shrugged in supreme indifference. “We cannot have a dead body lying here on the Sabbath. Take him away.”
Then, as I looked wildly around for some kind of help, I saw Nicodemus and another man toiling up the hill.
Neither the Roman nor the Temple guards attempted to stop them. Nicodemus fell to his knees next to Jesus, and tears ran down his cheeks. “They are evil men,” he said. “Evil men.”
I didn’t think he was speaking of the Romans.
Mary was still kneeling beside her son, and Nicodemus said to her, “Don’t worry, dear woman. I have with me one of the Master’s followers, Joseph by name. He’s recently purchased some land over there.” He gestured toward the area north of Golgotha. “There’s an empty tomb on the property, and Joseph wants you to have it for the Master.”
Mary held out her hand, stained by her son’s blood. “Thank you, sir. With all my heart, I thank you.”
I tried to think practically. “He’ll have to be washed and anointed.”
“I have servants coming after me with burial cloths and oils.” Nicodemus looked toward the city and then pointed. “There, do you see?”
I looked and saw two men approaching the base of the hill.
John said, “We will carry him to the tomb, and your men can follow us. We must get him away from here as soon as possible.”
Nicodemus agreed. “The three of us can surely carry him. It isn’t that far.”
“No,” said John, his voice adamant. “I will carry him myself.”
He bent and lifted Jesus into his arms as if he weighed no more than a child, and we started off. A Roman soldier and a Temple guard followed behind.
It was a long walk, but John never faltered. Joseph’s property turned out to be a small garden dotted with almond trees at the end of their bloom. The delicate pink flowers lay scattered all over the ground, dying. A rocky hillside formed one of the property lines, and carved into the hillside was a cave. It was there that we carried him.
Nicodemus’ servants caught up to us, and as John laid Jesus on a rocky shelf inside the cave, I said to Mary, “Do you want to help me with the anointing? Are you able to face this?”
“I think so,” she whispered.
I put my arms around her. She was shivering. “Go with John. You’ve borne enough. I will see to this for you.”
As we were speaking, the Temple guard came into the cave. “You must clear out now,” he said. “The Sabbath will begin within the hour and you must be away from here before then.”
“I am not leaving until I’ve prepared his body!” My voice shook, I was so angry. If I had been a man, I would have punched him in his broad flat face.
“You can come back when the Sabbath is over,” and he gestured impatiently for us to
leave the tomb.
The Roman guard said, in Latin so the Temple guard couldn’t understand, “I will roll a smaller stone in front of the entrance, one you can remove easily when you return. Don’t give your friend’s enemies a reason to take his body someplace where you can’t get to it.”
I stared at him, uncertain.
“Be smart,” he said softly. “You can come back and perform your rites tomorrow.”
The Temple guard was scowling. “What did you just say to her?” he demanded.
The Roman shrugged. “I told her she had better do as you asked, or she would be arrested.”
“He’s right,” the Temple guard said to me. “You don’t want to end up under guard at the Antonia, do you?”
My fingers twitched. I wanted so much to slap his ugly face. But I said to the others, “We must leave. We’re no good to the Master if we are arrested.”
Nicodemus instructed his servants to leave the oils and burial cloths, and the Temple guard herded us out of the cave, telling us to get to our homes before the Sabbath began. As John, Mary, and I looked at each other in bewilderment—where should we go?—Nicodemus said, “I’ll take you to the others.”
John nodded and beckoned to us to follow, leading us back into the now-empty streets of Jerusalem.
Nicodemus told us the disciples were gathered in the room where they had celebrated Passover the night before. It was located in the Upper City, near the house of the high priest. Like Nicodemus, the owner was a secret follower of the Master.
We walked quickly through the silent streets until we reached the house. Nicodemus led us through a side door and up a flight of stairs. As we ascended, I heard the sound of men talking, but once we knocked at the door the voices stopped.
“Who is there?” I recognized Peter’s voice.
“It’s Nicodemus. I’m here with John, Mary of Magdala, and the Master’s mother.”
Peter opened the door and closed it quickly behind us. I looked at all the pale faces staring at us. They were all there except Judas.
Peter spoke first, his booming voice no more than a husky whisper. “Is he dead?”