Jesus believed that the Messianic Age promised by the prophets would come-not when the Jews were militarily victorious, but when they became pure of heart. He believed that this inner purity was to be achieved not just through a life of outer virtue, but through a submission to the terrible mercy of God. And He believed that this mercy extended to the whole of Israel: to the untouchables, the impure, the outcasts and the sinners. Through His healing and exorcisms He demonstrated the reality of that love.
Jesus was the Golden Mean between the divine and the human. No wonder His appeal was electric;
He seemed able to make the most wretched sinner feel close to God.
But few in this occupied nation were sophisticated enough to understand His message. Jesus grew impatient at the clamoring demands for Him to reveal Himself as the Messiah. And the Iestai who were attracted to His charismatic presence began to see in Him a convenient focal point for a rising against the hated Romans.
Trouble coalesced.
David wandered through the small, boxy rooms like a ghost, watching the people, women, servants and children, come and go.
The house was more impressive than he had expected. It was built on the pattern of a Roman villa, with a central open atrium and various rooms opening off it, in the manner of a cloister. The setting was very Mediterranean, the light dense and bright, the rooms open to the still air.
Already, so early in Jesus’ ministry, there was a permanent encampment outside the house walls: the sick, the lame, would-be pilgrims, a miniature tent city.
Later, a house church would be built on this site, and then, in the fifth century, a Byzantine church that would survive to David’s own day-together with the legend of those who had once lived here.
Now there was noise outside the house: the sound of running feet, .people calling. He walked briskly outside.
Most of the inhabitants of the tent city-some of them showing surprising alacrity-were making their way toward the glimmering sea, which David glimpsed between the houses. He followed the gathering crowd, towering above the people around him, and he tried to ignore the stink of unwashed humanity, much of it extrapolated by the controlling software with unwelcome authenticity; the direct detection of scent through WormCams was still an unreliable business.
The crowd spread out as they reached the rudimentary harbor. David made his way through the crush to the water’s edge, ignoring the temporary dimmings as Galileans brushed past or through him in their eagerness.
There was a single boat on the still water. It was perhaps six meters long, wooden, its construction crude. Four men were patiently rowing toward the shore; beside a stocky helmsman at the stem was a piled-up fishing net.
Another man was standing at the prow, facing the people on the shore.
David heard eager muttering. He had been preaching, from the boat, at other sites along the shore. He had a commanding voice which carried well across the water, this Yesho, this Jesus.
David struggled to see Him more clearly. But the light on the water was dazzling.
… And so we must turn, with reluctance, to the true story of the Passion,
Jerusalem-sophisticated, chaotic, built of the radiantly bright white local stone-was crowded this Passover with pilgrims come to eat the Paschal Lamb within the confines of the holy city, as tradition demanded. And the city also contained a heavy presence of Roman soldiers.
And, this Passover, it was a place of tension. There were many insurrectionist groups working here: for example the Zealots, fierce opponents of Rome, and iscarii, assassins who would customarily work the large festival crowds.
Into this historic crucible walked Jesus and His followers.
Jesus’ group ate their Passover feast. (But there was no rehearsal of the Eucharist: no commandment by Jesus to take bread and wine in memory of Him, as if they were fragments of His own body. This rite is evidently an invention of the evangelists. That night, Jesus had much on His mind; but not the invention of a new religion.)
We know now that Jesus had links to many of the sects and groups which operated at the fringe of His society. But Jesus’ intent was not insurrection.
Jesus made His way to the place called Gethsemane-where olive trees still grow today, some of them (we can verify now) survivors from Jesus’ own day. Jesus had worked to cleanse Judaism of sectarianism. He thought He would meet the authorities and leaders of various rebel groups here, and seek a peaceful unity. As ever, Jesus sought to be the Golden Mean, a bridge between these groups in conflict
But the humanity of Jesus’ rime was no more rational than that of any other era- He was met by a group of armed soldiers sent by the chief priests. And the events thereafter unfolded with a deadly, familiar logic.
The Trial was no grand theological event. All that mattered to the High Priest-a tired, conscientious, worn-down old man-was to maintain public order. He knew he had to protect his people from the Romans’ savage reprisals by accepting the lesser evil of handing over this difficult, anarchistic faith healer.
That done, the High Priest returned to his bed, and an uncomfortable sleep.
Pilate, the Roman Procurator, had to come out to meet priests who would not enter his Praetorium for fear of being defiled. Pilate was a competent, cruel man, a representative of an occupying power centuries old. Yet he too hesitated, it seems for fear of inciting worse violence by executing a popular leader.
We have now witnessed the fears and loathing and dreadful calculations which motivated the men facing each other that dark night-and each of them, no doubt, believed he was doing the right thing.
Once his decision was made, Pilate acted with brutal efficiency. Of what followed, we know the dreadful details too well. It was not even a grand spectacle-but then the Passion of Christ is an event which has taken not two days, but two thousand years to unfold.
But mere is still much we do not know. The moment of His death is oddly obscured; WormCam exploration there is limited. Some scientists have speculated that there is such a density of viewpoints in those key seconds that the fabric of spacetime itself is being damaged by wormhole intrusions. And these viewpoints are presumably sent down by observers from our own future-or perhaps from a multiplicity of possible futures, if what lies ahead of us is undetermined.
So we still have not heard His last words to His mother; we still do not know if-beaten, dying, bewildered-He cried out to His God. Even now, despite all our technology, we see Him through a glass darkly.
At the center of the town there was a market square, already crowded. Suppressing a shudder, David forced himself to push through the people.
At the center of the crowd a soldier, crudely uniformed, was holding a woman by one arm. She looked wretched, her robe torn, her hair matted and filthy, her plump, once-pretty face streaked by crying. Beside her were two men in fine, clean religious garb. Perhaps they were priests, or Pharisees. They were pointing to the woman, gesticulating angrily, and arguing with a figure before them, who-hidden by the crowd-was squatting in the dust.
David wondered if this incident had left any trace in the Gospels. Perhaps this was the woman who had been I condemned for adultery, and the Pharisees were con; fronting Jesus with another of their trick questions, trying to expose His blasphemy.
The man in the dust had a phalanx of friends. They were sturdy-looking men, perhaps fishermen; gently but firmly they were keeping the crushing crowds away- But still-David could see as he approached, wraithlike- some of the people were coming near, reaching out a tentative hand to touch a robe, even stroke a lock of hair.
I do not think His death-humiliated, broken- need remain the center of our obsession with Jesus, as it has been for two thousand years. For me the zenith of His life as I have witnessed it is the moment when Pilate produces Him, already tortured and bloody, to be mocked by the soldiers, sacrificed by His own people.
With everything He had intended apparently in ruins, perhaps already feeling abandoned by God, Jesus should have been crushed. And yet He stood straight. A man immersed in His time, defeated and yet unbeaten. He is Gandhi, He is Saint Francis, He is Wilberforce, He is Elizabeth Fry, He is Father Damien among the lepers. He is His own people, and the dreadful suffering they would endure in the name of the religion founded in His name.
The major religions have all faced crises as their origins and tangled pasts had become open to scrutiny. None of them have emerged unscathed; some have collapsed altogether. But religion is not simply about morality, or the personalities of founders and practitioners. It is about the numinous, a higher dimension of our nature- And there are still those who hunger for the transcendent, the meaning of it all.