Rufus wished he were anywhere but here. He had never wanted to come to Palestine in the first place, every legionnaire in the Empire knew that it was a lousy assignment. No loot, no glory, no chance for advancement. And he couldn’t even get decent duty like chasing bandits in Galilee. No, he had to be posted right in the heart of Jerusalem, doing riot control out of the Antonia fortress. He had had a bad feeling ever since the first year he drew the assignment, when the governor tried to put up a statue of the emperor in the temple. The riots went on for weeks. There was no glory in killing civilians, but what else could you do when even greybeards who ought to know better were throwing stones? And he had seen with his own eyes a group of temple scribes standing barehanded and unmoving on the temple steps, guarding the gates against a line of slowly advancing pikes. It still bothered him, the memory of their deaths. Eventually the governor had gotten orders from Rome that the Jews would be exempt from the directive to include the emperor when they paid tribute to their gods.
But unrest had continued to break out here and there all over the province, and every time the Jews had one of their big festivals their commander had to triple the city patrols. They were so touchy, you never knew what was going to set them off.
Rufus didn’t understand religious fanatics, that was for sure. Nobody else in the empire had any trouble with offering incense to the statue of the emperor, after all, they were enjoying peace and prosperity the likes of which nobody had seen in generations! A little respect seemed a small price to pay.
He had gotten curious enough to try and figure out what was behind the Jews’ intransigence. And he had to admit there was a lot to admire about their religion. Their morals were as high as the stoics, and their god wasn’t as greedy and capricious as most of the other gods he knew about. If it weren’t for the diet - he really couldn’t see giving up ham and oysters - and that horrible rite of self-mutilation they called circumcision, it would be a very suitable religion for a soldier, very disciplined and structured. And apparently their God had actually fought alongside them, or had sent angels or something to make sure they were victorious. That was a long time in the past, although Rufus gathered that another intervention was expected any day now.
Rufus really didn’t quite get what this “Messiah” business was all about. There was simply no consistency to the rumors! He couldn’t figure out if they were waiting for a fighter or a teacher or a king. Most of the time it didn’t come to anything, though. There’d be a flurry of excitement and the next thing you knew people would be running around the countryside after another preacher or healer or whatever, and then the fuss would die down until the next one. Occasionally you’d get a bandit who got a bigger than usual following and they’d have to go clean the nest out - Rufus really hoped his unit would get tapped for the next operation, he wanted to get out of Jerusalem. A couple of years ago there had been that firebrand - what was his name? Johann or something like that - who had been preaching down by the Jordan. Herod had executed him for insulting his wife.
And now this one. Rufus hated execution duty at the best of times, when there wasn’t any question about whether it was deserved or not, but there was something really wrong about this one. Even the governor admitted that this Yeshua hadn’t done anything that warranted execution. There had only been one really disruptive incident, the uproar at the temple earlier this week with the money-changers' tables being overturned and the merchants themselves being whipped down the steps. Rufus grinned to himself. He wished he had seen it! They really were a bunch of rip-off artists! You had to use shekels to buy the sacrificial animals, and the mney-changers doubled or tripled the exchange rate for the big festivals when the town would be full of people who only had Roman or Egyptian coins! A captive clientele indeed.
But most of the time this Yeshua wasn’t any trouble at all, except for the crowds, but they were never rowdy. Rufus had gone to hear him once, and couldn’t see anything wrong with what he said. It didn’t sound political at all. Apparently he was quite the healer. The centurion who commanded the other cohort said that Yeshua had cured his body-slave from a distance! So he couldn’t even be anti-Roman, if he was willing to heal a soldier’s servant.
And the scene this morning outside of Pilate’s palace had been disgraceful. Those soldiers who had participated in the horseplay with the crown and robe would hear from him when they got back to barracks, that was for sure. Rufus wasn’t going to dress them down in public, it was bad for morale, but it did them no good to break discipline like that in front of the natives. Roman soldiers simply shouldn’t act like that, it was beneath their dignity. And so he was keeping a closer eye on his men than he would ordinarily have had to do. There was a bigger crowd of onlookers than was usual, too, and there was an ugly undertone. Rufus had been told to keep an eye out for Yeshua’s followers, in case they might try to break him free, but except for a handful of weeping women, most of the onlookers seemed to be hostile to the prisoner. A couple of them had thrown donkey droppings at him, but the soldiers had driven them off with the flats of their swords and they never got close enough to land.
Well, they’d gotten the distasteful business of crucifixion over with without any other incidents. Rufus had offered the prisoner the usual mixture of wine and myrrh that was supposed to deaden some of the pain, but he had refused. Rufus shrugged, and braced himself for some kind of incendiary speech to his followers from the cross, or maybe a curse on his enemies. Although not very many people were actually strong enough to make themselves heard. And Yeshua was especially weak, too, because of bleeding from the flogging and the thorns. But then things started to get really strange.
First of all, when they shoved the cross upright and it thudded into position, Yeshua didn’t make any sound at all, except for a gasp. Rufus had never seen anyone who was still conscious keep from crying out as their full weight pulled down on the nails. The shouting from the crowd had died down as the hammer struck home; you could hear every sound. And then instead of cursing or raving or promising vengeance, Yeshua looked down at the soldiers who had done the deed and forgave them. Or maybe he forgave everybody who was there. Rufus wasn’t sure. He hoped, uneasily, that he was included.
In the silence that followed people started looking guiltily at one another. One of the priests - Rufus recognized him from the trial that morning - shouted something insulting, trying to revive the earlier raucous atmosphere, another chimed in - that was another thing that was odd, there were far too many of the religious leaders there - they usually stayed as far away from the execution ground as possible. A couple of the soldiers started to join in the mockery, but Rufus looked at them sternly and they fell silent. Nobody else joined in, and the eerie silence descended again so they could all hear that very strange conversation between Yeshua and the bandits crucified on either side of him. Time stretched out, punctuated by more half-hearted and unsuccessful attempts on the part of the priests to drum up some more invective.
Toward the middle of the afternoon Yeshua said goodbye to a women who turned out to be his mother. His voice by this time had gotten very hoarse. The soldiers had put away their dice by this time, and one of them dipped a sponge in his canteen and put it on a long stick so Jesus could drink a bit of the sour wine. The sky kept getting darker, with a sort of eerie greenish glow that Rufus had never seen before. It felt as though the very earth were holding its breath. There weren’t any clouds in the sky, that wasn’t it, it was more as though the sun was shrinking. Or burning out, like a lamp running out of oil.
A harsh cry split the afternoon. “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” It was filled with - not pain, Rufus had heard cries of pain a hundred times before. No, this was more like - he groped for the word - desolation. Abandonment. “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” As if something new had happened, something more than just pain and insults and humiliation.
All of a sudden it struck Rufus with a terrible certainty that Yeshua’s followers had been right all along - not only that he was innocent, but that he was actually who they claimed he was, God’s anointed, the Messiah. But how could that be? If he were really sent from God, then God must be really angry at what was happening here. If he were - “Oh my God,” thought Rufus with no sense of blasphemy. One of the charges against Yeshua had been that he claimed to be the actual son of God. And the Jewish God was in charge of absolutely everything. He could wipe out the entire universe like swatting a fly. Maybe the sun was really going out. Maybe this was it, the very end of everything. Maybe that dreadful cry was about feeling God departing from the world he had created and leaving Yeshua behind, abandoned like an mutineer left behind on a rock that would be swallowed up at high tide.
Was it the Jewish authorities who accused him that God was angriest at? Or was it the Romans who had crucified him, knowing he had done nothing wrong?
It didn’t matter, thought Rufus with utter, dreadful conviction, we are all guilty. We have all done this. It doesn’t matter that I couldn’t have stopped it. I could have walked away. Yeshua cried out again, and Rufus looked up, and heard his last words, “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit!”
And on that sound there was a crack, like thunder, and the earth seemed to slide right out from under Rufus’ feet. The three crosses shook like reeds before a high wind. There were cracks in the once smooth execution ground and some of the rocks scattered around the area rolled into them. Rufus heard them hit the bottom, a long way down, and he held his breath. Surely this was the end. But maybe there was time, still, to stand up for the truth. He braced himself against the continued trembling of the earth and said loudly and clearly, “Truly this man was God's Son!”
