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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