Blood Of Thorns

By Kevin Schmitt

  On a hill top overlooking the rocky outskirts of a city, two men bent their backs with unaccustomed labor. More than that, they took blood mixed with rain onto their expensive clothing and gripped the cold and clammy flesh of a corpse that bore the markings of Roman cruelty. Yet they were fortunate in a way. Most often a condemned man would be left hanging after a crucifixion. There was nothing like a rotting cadaver to remind people that life and death are the only realities in the world. Holy causes cease to exist with a man’s last heartbeat. At least that’s the message that the occupation forces kept driving home.

 But because this execution had been special, Pontius Pilate had ordered the corpse taken down immediately after death. The legionnaires who made up the execution detail were told that cult followers might show up to protest the ill treatment of the body, but the truth was something quite different. The Roman governor knew perfectly well that most of the members of the Sanhedrin would object to taking the body down, and that’s why Pilot gave the order.

 He hated the governing council that stood (in most cases) between himself and the people. Not that he wanted to deal with the people directly, but he hated anything that even vaguely resembled a theocracy. Priests were supposed to conduct religious ceremonies and let logical men govern the country. The fact that these so called spiritual elite wanted a man crucified just for speaking his mind was further evidence that he was the governor of a lunatic country.

 In any case, it was an angry country, infested with men who would never accept the fact that Judea was now part of Rome. One man in particular felt that way. He was young (which made perfect sense) and possessed a warrior’s physique. But he was intelligent enough to hide his muscles, as well as his politics. He stepped forward now and offered to help the two men who intended to move the body down a hill that was now slick from an unnatural storm.

 The two men were Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus of Jerusalem. Both men were prosperous and also members of the same  Sanhedrin that had clamored for the death of the rabbi Jesus. Now they stared suspiciously at the younger man, but also noted that the soldiers were gone and the women folk were stumbling down the hill ahead of them, bent in an effort to support  the dead man’s mother.

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