The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  Jesus watched her coming. So did Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas the high priest. The woman’s features were hectic with fear and a wild hoping.

  “No,” she was calling, “not Jesus of Nazareth, but Jesus Barabbas! My son! My son! Set my son free!”

  Jesus recognized the rage of maternal love in this woman, and he admired her.

  Caiaphas seemed to catch fire as she came nearer. He reached for her, took her elbow, escorted her to the very lip of the platform and, trembling with compassion, cried to Pilate, “Yes! This woman’s son. If you choose to honor the custom, sir, release unto us Jesus Barabbas!”

  A handful of Zealots clapped their hands and yelled, “Barabbas! Barabbas!”

  The governor was stunned. “The man is a murderer,” he said. “You yourself asked for his arrest, and I agreed!”

  Caiaphas said, “I know which is more dangerous to both of us!”

  Pilate snapped, “Only one of them has killed a Roman.”

  But Caiaphas and the chief priests were already encouraging the crowds, common folk of common loyalties, who drowned Pilate’s words with their chanting: “Barabbas! Son of Father! Release unto us Barabbas!”

  This grew to a thunder in the square. People came rushing from everywhere in the city. More and more voices took up the chanting. The crowd was swelling into a mob.

  “BARABBAS! BARABBAS!”

  Only those on the tribunale could hear the governor issue orders to a centurion: “Take him to the barracks. Whip him. And make it bloody, man!”

  Four soldiers grabbed Jesus and dragged him back through the Praetorium gate. There was no care in their going. Haste! Brutality. The multitude was achieving that swollen rocking rhythm which every Roman feared, because riot was at the heart of it.

  Make it bloody, man!

  In the barracks soldiers stripped the clothes from Jesus’ body. His hands were tied to a post with thongs. Out of nowhere a lash whistled, stung his shoulders with little pinchings, then ripped backward and set his flesh on fire.

  Again, the whistle and the lash and the nettle-stings. Again, an audible tearing of his skin, then he heard someone cry out in sympathy.

  The whistle, and Jesus couldn’t help it: he flinched. The whistle: he drew one knee up to his stomach. The whistle: and Jesus realized who was crying out. The whistle: it was himself.

  The whistle. The whistle. Jesus began to taste blood in his breathing, in his mouth and nose. He stopped making noises. Darkness closed around the edges of his thought. The whistle. He sagged. He hung heavy from his wrists.

  The whistle.

  As though from far away, Jesus watched several soldiers place on a man’s brow a circlet of thorny briars. Next they threw over his back a billowing purple robe, as huge as the sky.

  Hail, king of the Jews! Ha ha! Hail, robed in blood, thou bloody king!

  But then Jesus himself was on his feet. Walking. Under rough fibers his skin was sticky and wet. A thick liquid was running down his legs. The soles of his feet kept slipping in it. His back was unbendable. Jesus knew that it would hurt soon. This was the Father’s will.

  Then he was standing on one side of the tribunale, confronting the multitude. Pontius Pilate was gesturing toward him and shouting: “Behold, the man!”

  On the other side of the tribunale now stood another man, athletic, dark-eyed, fiery, and very clean. How neatly combed was he! Jesus strove to stand erect, but failed. His robe was woven of iron and stone.

  Pilate shouted, “Now what do you say? Which man should I release to you—Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus of Nazareth?”

  The multitude had found a single voice. “BARABBAS!” it bellowed.

  Pilate looked troubled. “Then what shall I do with this man?” he cried.

  “CRUCIFY HIM!” came the thick-throated chorus, priests and people and Zealots and pilgrims, but no distinction among them now. They were the mindless mob: “CRUCIFY HIM!”

  Jesus lifted his eyes and looked to the southeast corner of the square, where he had seen some of his followers in the dirty dawning. Suddenly he gasped and nearly collapsed.

  “Why should I crucify him?” Pilate was crying. “What evil has he done?”

  Caiaphas leaped to the platform and shouted at the top of his lungs, “We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God!”

  Jesus had spied his mother. She was clinging to John. Woman of no means, woman who had borne him, woman whose clothing was dark with the morning rain—she was staring at him with horror, her mouth wide open. The will of the Father! The will of the Father!

  Pilate was shouting at Jesus, “What’s the matter with you, man? Have you nothing at all to say?”

  Caiaphas, too, was shouting: “Crucify him, Magistrate, or else you are no friend of Caesar’s, because he pretends to be a king like Caesar!”

  “CRUCIFY HIM!” The huge crush of people was wheeling toward riot: “CRUCIFY HIM!”

  “What, then?” shrieked Pontius Pilate. “Shall I crucify your king?”

  The high priest turned purple with fury: “We have no king but Caesar!”

  And the voice of the multitude resolved itself in an endless, ponderous roaring: “CRUCIFY!”

  So Pilate sank down into the judgment chair and gripped the armrests and delivered his verdict. He released the man that had been arrested for insurrection and for murder.

  But Jesus of Nazareth he turned over to the will of the people. He ordered a centurion and a small contingent of soldiers to lead him outside the city and to crucify him.

  V

  JESUS IS DRAGGING a heavy wooden beam up the center of the street.

  In fact, two soldiers tried to lay it on his shoulders, but the weight of the rough wood startled the lacerations in his back, and the pain became so intense that something like light exploded in Jesus’ skull, and he slipped to the ground in a faint.

  So now he is cradling one end of the beam under his left arm and bumping its other end over the stones of the street.

  Each stone is a Sinai.

  There are spike holes near the extremities of the beam. It has been used before.

  Jesus is moving north, slowly, toward the Garden Gate.

  He is wearing his own robe again, and his tunic, though they have lost their shape, scabrous, befouled by human discharge.

  His hair, because he bends so far forward, hangs nearly to the ground.

  The sandaled feet of a centurion are walking in front of him, just within his vision. He is following these feet.

  There is the sound of wailing behind him. He has heard such lamentation before, sometimes genuine, sometimes conventional. For Lazarus. For Jairus’ daughter. For the son of the widow in Nain.

  The beam sticks between two stones. Jesus groans and drops to his knees, and the lumber hits ground. He doesn’t blame the crossbeam, the patibulum to which he will be nailed. He just can’t carry it any more.

  Motion makes his skin scream. And beneath all, his bones are weak and tired.

  Someone is parting his hair and drawing it back from his forehead. He is able to see. An elderly woman, her eyes swimming in tears, wipes his brow with a rich linen cloth, then presses it into his hand.

  And the centurion seems kindly enough, middle-aged, gruff. He has spoken to the soldiers—Gauls, by the look of them—who even now are placing the wooden beam on the back of another man. Jesus is overcome with gratitude. His chest heaves with weeping.

  He rises and finds his body very light.

  He walks forward.

  Immediately the procession lifts its voice again in lamentation.

  Jesus turns, shaking his head. “Daughters of Jerusalem, don’t weep for me,” he says. “Weep for yourselves. The days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never gave suck.’ In those days people will beg the mountains to fall on them and the hills to hide them.”

  Jesus hands the linen cloth back to the woman who had wiped his face with it. �
��For if they do these things when the tree is green,” he whispers, “what will happen when it is dry?”

  The cloth is bloody. He is sorry for that. But he turns and walks.

  The morning drizzle has turned to rain. Everyone is wet. And the sky is more than merely grey now. Darker clouds are rolling in from the west. There is a breeze. It’s nine o’clock in the morning, Friday.

  Out through the Garden Gate they go, and yet farther north. The stone city wall runs north and south on his right-hand side. Jewish tombs are cut into the rock on his left. Here is a hillock by the side of the road, a rocky mound in which four stout poles are fixed, forever ready to receive the crossbeams and the bodies of criminals sentenced to crucifixion. The hill allows a public viewing. It is called Golgotha.

  The centurion halts here and hands Jesus a jar of liquid. He lifts it to his lips and tastes it, but then refuses to drink. This is wine mixed with myrrh, a narcotic. It is not in the will of the Father.

  Four soldiers strip Jesus down to his loincloth.

  At the same time another group of soldiers arrives. They bring two more men with crossbeams on their backs. These men do drink. They drain their jars completely dry.

  All three now are stretched on the ground, each beside a different pole. Jesus stares at the black clouds lowering. His back is a field of fire. He cannot swallow. He wishes he could swallow, but his tongue is thick and stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  Someone lifts his head by the hair, then pillows it on wood.

  His arms are yanked left and right as far as they will go, palms up.

  A cold point touches his wrist.

  Jesus hears the thump of a maul on metal: once, twice. He feels a spike probing the bones in his right arm: once, twice, three times. As the bones separate and the spike bites hard wood, a dull pain pulses up into his armpit and his neck. This is the will of the Father.

  His left arm, likewise, is nailed to the crossbeam.

  Then, by pikes and human strength, Jesus is lifted bodily from the ground. Soldiers climb ladders behind the stout pole, hauling him up and allowing him to swing from his arms alone until the patibulum is lashed to the pole and the cross is formed. The soldiers descend. In front of him they bend his knees and drive a third spike through his ankles. His muscles convulse. He begins to tremble as if he were very cold. His teeth chatter. He bites his tongue but doesn’t notice, except that there is the taste of blood in his mouth.

  “Father.”

  Jesus speaks through bloody foam and through shivering, even while one of the Roman soldiers climbs the pole behind him.

  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

  That soldier hangs a shingle at the very top of the cross. Printed on it in Hebrew and Greek and Latin, by order of Pilate himself, is the legend: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

  Now the troops responsible for these crucifixions settle on the ground and begin to divide the criminals’ clothes among themselves. They cast lots for the various pieces.

  Rain falls steadily now, and the breeze is stiffening. Nevertheless, pilgrims still travel up the road and into the city. They see the inscription above him and grin.

  Certain Pharisees are standing by, nudging one another. “He saved others,” they laugh. “What do you think? Can he save himself? Ha ha.”

  Derision is common at crucifixions. It takes a man so long to die. Citizens participate. But Jesus’ shoulders are pulling apart. He can scarcely hear human voices over the shrieking of his own pain.

  “If you are the Son of God, prove it by setting yourself free!”

  “Hey, King! King of the Jews, jump down from that cross and we will believe in you!”

  The criminal hanging to his left is laughing. “Messiah! Messiah!” The man is gasping in genuine laughter. “Ha ha, now I meet Messiah! Been waiting all my life, ha ha! Been waiting since the days of Daniel, hee hee! And look! He shows up dying! Well, Messiah,” he hisses at Jesus, “save yourself and save me, too!”

  “How can you say that?” The other criminal is not laughing. “Don’t you fear God? We are justly condemned, but this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus?” he whispers.

  Jesus, roused by the devotion in the utterance, lifts his head and looks. The man’s tendons are cracking through his neck and shoulders.

  “Jesus of Nazareth, you healed my mother of bleeding,” the criminal whispers. “Doctors nearly destroyed her. I hated them. I hated everyone in authority. But you said that her faith had saved her. Now I am touching you, Jesus, as she did. And I’m begging you to remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

  The poor child! Frightened of dying, casting his life to the one crucified beside him. Jesus struggles for breath and answers: “Truly, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

  All at once the wind dies. Black clouds close like fists in heaven. Even the beasts are silent, and travelers hurry toward the city now. A storm is coming.

  Jesus drops his eyes, sees familiar women at his feet, and involuntarily cries out. This is the sorrow! This is suffering greater than whips and spikes and a universe of derision. His mother is there. Mary, still supporting herself by gripping John’s arm, is looking directly at him, pleading with him. Her face is at the level of his waist. She is crying. She is fifty years old, grey and frail, and her eyes are begging him: Why? Why are you dying?

  Jesus wants to howl his grief to the black skies. He cannot touch his mother any more. He cannot receive her love any more. Oh, God!—in his condition he is not worthy of the love of anyone. And this! Is the will…of the Father!

  “Woman, woman, woman,” he murmurs to his mother. He rolls his head toward John. “He is your son now.”

  To John Jesus whispers, “And she is your mother. Please take her away. Care for her.”

  He shuts his eyes. He is occupied by elemental things, life and death. His body hangs heavily from the extended arms and the metal spikes at the ends of them. Whenever he moves, his bones make grinding sounds and the pain descends into his pelvis and he loses control of all his physical functions. He groans in human filthiness.

  Jesus opens his eyes again. His mother and John are gone.

  The day is dark with a thick darkness.

  Thunder rumbles deep in heaven. There is a pause of preternatural calm. Then lightning forks the belly of the clouds. The crash follows immediately, and all at once the wind is shrieking down the Jewish tombs. Trees bow and rise again, the leaves torn forward like women’s hair.

  The road to Jerusalem clears swiftly of people. The soldiers huddle on the lee side of the hill.

  It is noon. And now, when the flashes of lightning themselves are extinguished, the earth is utterly black. Darkness an hour—while the fierce wind makes the rain sting like sand on the skin, and no one, no one exists in all the world but Jesus and his wretched body. If he should call out, who would hear? The wind pulls and snaps his hair like a banner. All his wounds have tongues. They are screaming in pitches higher than hearing.

  Darkness another hour—darkness, coiled and thick, itself a power entoiling him, binding his chest and his heart and his mind. Jesus can neither think nor breathe. He is sunk down in tehom, the great engulfing flood of the dead, the deeps that boil beneath creation. He has been swallowed by chaos. This is the place: it is here that he is dying.

  Darkness the third hour—and now he knows obliteration. Jesus has been blotted out of the Book of Life. Not even God is here.

  “Eli?”

  No, not even his Father, whose will he is even now obeying, the Father who has loved him from the beginning, whom he has loved, whom he has called Abba.

  “Eli? Eli?”

  Where is his Father now? Has the Son become so foul that even God cannot look upon him?

  It is Jesus of Nazareth who howls out of Sheol. None but him. He can hear the words. They are his own words. He howls them up to heaven:

  “My God!” he shrieks. “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

  Silence
.

  The universe is silenced by that cry.

  Jesus throws his body outward from the cross. His ribs splay apart in the straining. His shoulders form hollows at the pits of his neck. His mouth is an empty canyon.

  Someone says, “Was he calling Elijah?”

  “I don’t know,” says someone else. “Wait and see.”

  A third person is running through the darkness toward the crosses.

  Jesus allows his body to droop. The weight of it draws out his arms, closing the cage around his lungs, constricting his breathing. He can breathe only in faint pants. But he whispers, “I’m thirsty.”

  “Yes! Yes!” cries the person who has been running toward him. “Yes, drink this.”

  On a long stalk, this most civil individual raises a sponge to Jesus’ lips. He sucks and tastes a common wine. He drinks. Jesus has never drunk so sweet a drink in all his life before.

  The rain has ended. The wind has died. A little light sifts down like flour from the clouds.

  “It is finished,” Jesus gasps. “Father. Into your hands I commend my spirit.”

  His body falls far forward. His head sinks down between the wings of his rising arms. His heavy black hair, his long wet hair falls over his head like a curtain. An everlasting sigh issues from his open mouth, and that is the end. He dies.

  VI

  THE CENTURION UNDER WHOSE WATCH three men were executed outside Jerusalem on the Friday of Passover week retired soon afterward. His twenty years were up. He might have continued in the legions, of course, seeking promotions. But his spirit could no longer be committed to the military.

  Nor to Rome, for that matter.

  He felt, in fact, released from all the entangled demands by which his life had been lived.

  His name was Longinus.

  He told the story often, how the man on the middle cross died quickly, almost as if it were an act of volition, a choice he could make.

  Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews: there had been a spring storm more terrible than any Longinus had experienced before; and then, as the world was emerging from the darkness, Jesus asked for a drink and he, Longinus, having anticipated the request, was already coming by with some thin wine in a sponge. He lifted the sponge to Jesus, who drank and who then bestowed upon the Roman such a generous and completely personal smile of thanksgiving, that Longinus caught his breath. So to be known! he thought to himself. How can this man possibly know me?