“There is no need for flight,” Pilate urged. “I’m merely asking a question.”
Yet as the silence lengthened the audience gradually dispersed until only the man on the wall and the older man hunched before him remained.
“Are you Jesus of Nazareth?” Pilate asked again.
“The prefect asks a question. You should answer,” Ceint declared loudly, hand on the hilt of his short sword.
“Yes. I am Jesus Christ, son of Jehovah our Lord in Heaven.”
“Hmph.” Pilate raised an eyebrow. “Okay. What about you, old man? We’ve met before.”
The old man got to his feet and bowed curtly. “I am Peter, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, son of Jehovah, our Lord in Heaven.”
“I see.”
Pontius Pilate sat atop his horse, wondering how this “apostle” had gotten here so fast, and wondering what he should say next. There was nothing in what the man was saying about God that should concern an emissary of Rome or require his intervention. He had seen several Jewish sects of this kind spring up lately. That is, they purported to be sects, even though they rarely displayed any original thought or had anything new to say. Most were led by provincial priests who had been barred from joining the kohanim and so sought another way to make a name for themselves by proselytizing on their own.
So why are the kohanim so upset about this man? He barely seems capable of drawing a crowd, even here in Jerusalem. Not to mention that from the look of the rags he’s wearing, he doesn’t have many supporters. Is that blood on his feet?
Ceint moved closer to the wall. “Carpenter of Nazareth who calls himself Jesus! What is your true name? There are plenty of Christs around, but few Jesuses. I’ve heard the people here call you Yeshua?”
“That is my name. I am Yeshua of Nazareth.”
“Good official,” spoke Peter, “it is in truth his name. In the land of Nazareth, there are many with the name of Yeshua.”
“Are there now?”
“What’s troubling you, Ceint?” Pilate asked quietly, knowing full well what his advisor was about. He was seeking to turn this chance encounter with Jesus of Nazareth into a pretext for taking the man into custody.
“Ceint?”
“Prefect—the people of the town are watching. The supporters of the kohanim are among them. We must be wary.”
Pilate glanced at the plaza behind them. Where it had appeared only sparsely populated before, it now seemed unexpectedly crowded—as if every citizen who lived off every side street that opened into the plaza had suddenly decided to put in an appearance. Fully half of the broad space was packed with people, all standing in utter silence, intently watching the discussion between Pilate and the shoddy-looking preacher.
“Jesus of Nazareth. Tell me, this ‘final judgment’ of which you were speaking—”
“Is something the matter?”
“Yes, something is the matter! Where did you hear such nonsense?”
“It is not nonsense. Good official, are you a follower of the Jewish faith?”
Ceint smiled a cool smile. “The Romans have no religion. At least nothing like the kind of ‘faith’ your lot goes on about.”
“That is because your spirit has withered.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Romans pilfer the gods of the Greeks and call themselves pious!” The preacher’s voice grew suddenly louder. “There is only one true God. No ‘god of the sun,’ or ‘goddess of the moon,’ or ‘god of lightning,’ or ‘god of the sea.’ So many gods and they all mean nothing!”
The outburst left the loquacious Ceint tongue-tied. While most Romans understood that the gods were to be feared, they were also inclined to treat them as a kind of game, often evoked for little more than entertainment. Romans knew little of hardship; they had managed to cope rather well with the challenges and sorrows of their world, and they saw very little need for a savior in the true sense of the word. The gods of the Romans cast light shadows on the empire. In truth, for most they were little more than seasoning to add a touch of gravitas to the citizens’ daily lives.
This conversation had been doomed from the start. The carpenter-turned-preacher spoke from a spiritual height that the pragmatic Ceint could not fathom.
Pilate leaned forward on his horse. “I’ll admit that the concept of a final judgment is an interesting one,” he said, his tone that of an instructor reprimanding an impertinent pupil. “Yet will the ignorant people not fear you for your dire predictions? It does not seem the best way to gain followers. There are a lot of men popping up these days saying very similar things, you know. They talk about how the gods will judge us, and how those with evil hearts will be burned with fire.”
“But it’s true. I saw it,” Jesus said.
“That’s what they all say,” Ceint spat, unable to restrain himself any longer. “Every one of them. I saw it. It was me. Me me me. The sun lost its light, the moon and stars fled, and in the eternal darkness that followed the great God in Heaven appeared, ripping the void in two, and cast a shining spear down upon the sullied land. And where the spear falls it rends the land, molten rock spews forth like a fountain, the seas rise up and sweep the land clean, all life perishes . . . blah, blah, blah.”
“Ceint,” Pilate interjected, a sadness in his voice, “there’s no need to take this man back to the guardhouse. Tell the kohanim they have nothing to fear.”
“But, Prefect!” Ceint whispered urgently. “Should we not first take him back with us? We can release him later if we feel it is the right thing to do. If we simply let him go now, it will seem to the crowd that the representative of Rome challenged him and lost.”
Pilate sighed. At least I tried. “All right, do it.”
Ceint motioned with his eyes to the captain of the guards. Within moments the prefect’s bodyguard pulled the man from Nazareth down from the wall. They held him roughly, pinioned by both arms.
“Ow! That hurts!” the carpenter yelped. “There’s no need for such violence. I’ll go peacefully.”
“What about the old one?” Ceint demanded.
“I don’t care about him. Let him go.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Pilate’s advisor thrust the apostle Peter aside with a sour look.
“Time to leave.”
With Pontius Pilate at its head, the Roman entourage led Jesus from the plaza. The prefect hurried them along, eager to get away from the growing throng.
The crowd that gathered now around the fiery poinciana watched the Romans’ departure in silence, faces dark with betrayal, brows creased with a nameless yearning.
What the prophet says is true.
Surely the Kingdom of God will appear before us, a beautiful, ideal land. What need have we of harsh rules and privations, and petitioning our masters for forgiveness?
God forgives. Jehovah takes pity on mankind and forgives us all our sins. We must pray to Him.
Only those who truly let God into their hearts may reach the kingdom of Heaven. God is absolutely fair. God’s heart is big enough to hold our entire world many times over . . .
Such was the God that the people wanted. They dreamed of the glory and the blessing of the Kingdom of God that would come one day to relieve them of their endless toil, their sickness and their poverty.
And yet, the carpenter of Nazareth had miscalculated.
“You know, I’d rather drink then get picked up by some God when the Final Judgment comes.”
“When is this final day coming anyway?”
“Sometime, according to what he says.”
“So when is sometime?”
“How should I know? Probably not while we’re still alive.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“Maybe if we live our lives right and pray to God, our children or their children will be saved at the time of the judgment?”
“Well, I don’t have any kids, so who cares?”
The crowd muttered and began to disperse, flowing back into the alleyways and arcades like a receding tide, leaving the flowers of the poinciana to flutter by themselves like lonely flames. Peter, the wizened disciple, had also vanished. Most of the citizens of Jerusalem had already forgotten about the man who was taken away—most would never again think on what had happened in the plaza that day or remember the man who called himself a carpenter of Nazareth.