A COLD CASE?

 

                   

                                        

This is an attempt to clear up a mystery, a “cold case” from way back. 

 

How can it be that the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion coincide so remarkably with the references in at least two Psalms (22 and 69)?

 

If we exclude the possibility that the Evangelists were deforming the reality in order to make it conform to the Psalms, and if we also, at least for now, discount the idea of a mystical and prophetic conformity of the Psalms to the later reality, we need to find some probable and realistic explanation. Here is a possibility:

 

The Sanhedrin and its mob bring the captured Yeshua to Pontius, howling for his blood. Pontius is awoken disgracefully early to deal with this. I do not believe that he saw Yeshua alone. A colonial Governor like him would always have staff on hand. And on that staff I postulate one Marcus Manlius ‘Judaicus’, his expert on the local population and its culture. (Even Manlius may have had staff under him.) He might have gone native to the point of having married a Jewish woman. But he is of good family and highly cultured, and indispensable to Pontius (who, historians tell us, is a faily average colonial administrator). 

So, Pontius tells whoever wakes him to call and summon Manlius immediately, to assist at the hearing. 

            We know how the hearing went. Yeshua is his usual taciturn self, replying only with two enigmas: first “the words are yours”, and later “my kingdom (basileia) is not of this world.” However, it is clear to Pontius (and to Manlius, who has not spoken but watched and listened) that this chap has done nothing that should lead Romans to execute him. He curtly says so to the Sanhedrin people, who insist that he is challenging the authority of Cæsar (and imply that they may send a complaint directly to the Emperor if Pontius doesn’t give in). 

            So eventually he goes along. Now for my insertion. I imagine a conversation between Pontius and Manlius, along these lines:

 

P. OK, I guess we’ll have to crucify him, but boy, does it go against the grain. Those bloody Jewish elders! You know, he genuinely made me wonder with his kingdom. I’m wondering if he mightn’t be genuine, and important. And we’re going to string him up?

M. I know what you mean, sir. I felt the same way. 

P. If we do crucify him, isn’t there something we can do to show that we do it reluctantly and that we take him seriously?

M. Well, there might be something. In fact, I can think of two things. First, as we always put up a sign above each cross with the description of the crime, how about in his case putting one up that simply says “Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judæorum”? That will placate those who believe in him and infuriate the elders.

P. Brilliant. And the second?

M. The Jews have a prophet, Yeshayahu, who describes the Meshiach, the great future king and liberator of Israel, not as a conqueror but in terms of a suffering sacrificial lamb, slaughtered for the sins of the people. This Yeshua of ours clearly identifies with that character. Now, they also have a Psalm that closely describes what could be seen as his execution: “they pierced my hands and my feet,” “they cast lots for my clothes” and so forth. These texts are known to all the Jews. How would it be if we conducted the crucifixion precisely as described in their texts?

P. Sounds a bit different.

M. Well, we don’t usually nail them to the cross, but it has been done on occasion. And as for the lads drawing lots for his clothes, we can tell them to do that, and perhaps put something decent on him before we nail him up so it’s worth dicing for.

P. Manlius, I like it. At least we can make them look foolish, even if he has to go.  Carius!

[enter Publius Carius, the Centurion in charge of today’s executions]

C. Sir?

P. This latest prisoner, Bar-Yosef, we’re going to do something different with him. It’s important for the effect. So you get the armourer to make up some 12-inch nails, and instead of tying him to the cross you nail him. Here’s the text for the notice on top; and I need the execution detail to put on a little show once he’s up. [describes the dicing]. And prepare some gall and some sour wine to put up on a stick if he calls for it. I know it sounds odd, but it’s important  for the politics of the thing.

C. Yes, sir. May I say, sir, how sorry I am to have to execute this fellow? He’s a truly good man, who healed my servant a year or so ago, quite miraculously and at a distance.

P. I know, Carius, but the situation is tense enough, and I really cannot let him go. After all, if he is who and what he seems to imply he is, this may not be wholly the end of him. Anyway, get the men together and get this show on the road. I want all three of them up there by noon. 

C. Very good, sir.

 

And Carius gets together the execution platoon with a sergeant. They perform the ritual flogging, though without much enthusiasm, but several of the legionaries have had a few drinks before the distasteful task, and so they decide to have some fun with the prisoner. “Since we have to crucify a king, let’s dress him up as one. Jam some thorn branches on his head; here’s a broomstick for a sceptre, hey, anyone got a nice red cloak?” Private Varus has nicked one from the officers’ cloakroom, so they wrap him in it. Carius passes by and gets very angry. “Sergeant, take those men’s names!” he snaps. But it is in these improvised regalia that he is led to the waiting beams and nails. And it is for the stolen officer’s cloak that the soldiers draw lots . . . . .

 

Of course I have no idea if this is how it happened. But I’m morally sure that Caius Pontius Pilatus had a Manlius on his staff; and something like this makes the parallels at least plausible.  

COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE?

Fernandel as Don Camillo

Is Christianity no longer a religion for ordinary people?

 This sounds peculiar, I know; but it has been haunting me for a long time. There is, I admit, a splendid congruence between St Paul on the one hand and, say, Pope Francis on the other: both keep hammering away at the extraordinary nature of discipleship, the total availability expected of all followers of Christ, the complete scission beteen them and the “world”, the prodigies of charity we are called upon to perform, the complete solidarity we are expected to show at all times of day, week, or year with the world’s poor and miserable, the entire purity our motives and behaviour must exhibit, and the fact that, as disciples, everyone calling himself a Christian is expected to follow the Master to the Cross, to be nailed there like St Peter or stoned like St Stephen.

 This is the voice of the 21^st-century Church, faced with minority status, massive desertion, indifference on the part of both bond traders and jobless single mothers, and the loss of everything that gave its members simple joys and pleasures.

 Now go back to Giovannino Guareschi’s Don Camillo. Or to the Dutch novelist Aart van der Leeuw’s I and my Minstrel. They show a world – admittedly not in a mode of gritty naturalism – where a village can have a Catholic priest and a Communist mayor, where the former can discuss with the figure on the Cross, where a Sunday can begin with a Mass and end with a dance, where ordinary life (in other words) can be blessed by the priest’s holy water and where ordinary folk can be encouraged, shriven when penitent, and feel that their daily round, with all its difficulties, is regarded by a Father’s benevolent and smiling eye.

 Could it be – I sometimes wonder – that we have put the cart before the horse? That the changes in our Church are not, in fact, a reaction to its desertion by thousands but that said desertion is, on the contrary, at least in part a reaction to the changes?

 There were hundreds, if not thousands, that were touched, healed, fed by Jesus, all over Galilee and points South. There were twelve – count them, twelve – disciples, eleven of whom skedaddled on Good Friday; there were at most 72 apostles, sent to convert the planet. What about the others? What happened to the Roman officer, to the Samaritan woman, to the healed epileptic, to the diners at Emmaus, afterwards?

 To want to re-institute a Church that will bless daily life, expect confession but offer absolution, accompany ordinary people in their problems while projecting a timeless and benevolent authority, is nowadays to put oneself beyond the Pale. I find it deeply sad that not only the Anglican Eucharist but the Catholic Mass no longer offers absolution following the General Confession, giving the worshipper instead only the thin gruel of a conditional.

 The world does not consist only of wealthy financiers on the one hand and immigrant drug dealers in the housing projects on the other. The world mostly consists of simple people doing their best in difficulties ranging from indigence to Alzheimer’s. What they need from the Church is, among other things, a sense of stability, of visibility, of serenity, of being there for them – not (as Pope Francis said at the beginning of his Papacy but has largely negated since) as an activist NGO but as the father and mother they lack, as the kindly encouraging parent or grandparent missing in their world. Not the urgent and absolute love of a saint ready to be stoned for them: the comforting practical love of a family member ready to take them in for a meal, a song, a dance, and a good sleep. They need priests visible in cassocks, nuns visible in habits, timeless liturgies, and a blessing at the end of the day.  

P.S. The original of Guareschi's Don Camillo, Don Camillo Valota, was not only a parish priest but a fighter with the Partisans during World War II and a prisoner in two concentration camps.