The Redemption of Pontius Pilate (48 page)

Pilate wasn't sure how much he wanted the young man's help, but he saw no harm in helping him fulfill his mission. “The man you really want to talk to is Gaius Cassius Longinus,” he said. “He was my
Primus Pilus
Centurion until a week or so ago. He has left the legion in order to join the followers of this Jesus. He lives in a village called Capernaum, where Jesus often taught.”

The next morning Phillipus took off, bearing a letter of introduction from Pilate, who was somewhat relieved to see him go. However, his relief was short-lived. A week after Phillipus rode off in search of information about Jesus, yet another irate delegation from the High Priest showed up, led by his eldest son Alexander. Pilate's head was splitting with the cumulative effects of sleep deprivation and too much wine, but he donned his toga with its purple borders, symbolizing his Proconsular rank, and went out to hear their grievance.

“Well, what brings the Temple leadership all the way out to Caesarea?” Pilate asked as charitably as his mood allowed.

“Governor, you must intervene!” snapped Alexander. “Ever since the Feast of Pentecost three days ago, the followers of this Galilean have been running amok!”

“Are they murdering Roman citizens, destroying public property, and flouting the laws of the Republic?” asked Pilate, knowing the answer already.

“They are flouting the Laws of Moses! They are flouting the traditions of our Elders! They are undermining the authority of the Temple!” shouted Alexander, a younger and less restrained duplicate of his father.

Pilate yawned. “None of those are an offense under Roman law,” he said.

“They blame us for the death of their leader, the Nazarene!” snapped the priest.

“So do I, when it comes down to it,” said Pilate. “Your father manipulated me into crucifying him!”

“These men must be put to death! Or at the very least, sold into slavery far from Judea!” snapped Alexander.

Pilate allowed the beast within him to stare out through his eyes. “Listen to me, you self-righteous fraud, and listen well! We tried that! We put the Galilean to death, and guess what? Three days later he was up and walking again! I don't know how he did it, and I don't care, but I will NOT be manipulated into killing his followers too! First of all, it did not achieve the desired end of getting rid of the man's teachings. He seemingly has more followers now than ever. Secondly, it seems to me that this is a religious problem of the Jews, and unless and until the followers of Jesus pose a clear and present danger to Rome's rule in this province, I will not lift a finger to harm a one of them! Tell your father and the Sanhedrin he commands that from now on they do their own dirty work. I will not act as their executioner again!”

The delegation was utterly quailed, and they turned and made their way back to Jerusalem. Pilate wondered if they would report him to Tiberius again, but apparently word of Marcus Phillipus' mission had got back to them, and they kept their silence this time. Evidently something remarkable had happened at Pentecost; the disciples of Jesus, who had been relatively quiet since the events of Passover, suddenly stepped forth boldly and began preaching their new faith, The Way, on the very steps of the Temple, publicly charging the Sanhedrin and the priesthood with conniving to murder the Messiah of Israel, one of the names they were now calling Jesus.

Converts flocked to hear them, especially the three fishermen who led the group—Peter, James, and John. When Pilate came to Jerusalem that fall for the annual festival season, he passed by the Temple steps on the way to the Fortress of Antonia. On each side of the Temple, the long porticos were covered with hundreds of men, women, and children, quietly seated, listening as the followers of Jesus repeated his teachings from memory. As he and his lictors walked by, trailing two centuries of legionaries, a bearded man rose from where he sat and greeted Pilate by name. It took him a moment to recognize Cassius Longinus.

“Jupiter!” he said, taking his former officer by the hand. “You look like a Jew!”

Longinus laughed. “So many of the brothers were nervous at having a former Roman officer join The Way that Andrew told me I should let my beard grow out, and find a new name to go by. So now I am simply Brother Gideon to most of them. It makes it easier for me to fit in; the Apostles know that I was part of the crucifixion detail, but the others do not. If they asked, I would tell them—but I am not volunteering that information right now.”

Pilate nodded. “Then you probably do not want to stand here talking to me for long,” he said. “I'll be staying at Herod's palace for the season. Come by and visit with me; I know someone who is anxious to meet you.”

“I shall do that,” said Longinus, and returned to the lovely Jewish woman and three small children who waited for him on the Temple steps. Pilate realized it was the first time he had ever seen Longinus' entire family. They all seemed so happy there, hanging on the words of the tall, rugged Galilean who was speaking to them. Pilate's Aramaic was not the best, but nearly seven years in Judea had enabled him to understand most of what he heard, even if he could not repeat it. The big fisherman was repeating some form of verse, each stanza beginning with the same phrase: “Blessed are.” Pilate heard something about hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and wondered what that would be like.

After settling the guards in, Pilate walked across Jerusalem to Herod's palace. Ever since the trial of Jesus, the Tetrarch of Galilee had bent over backward to accommodate the Roman Proconsul, although Pilate did not understand why. He found the king pacing back and forth in his audience room, the lines on his face deeper than ever. He seemed glad to see the Roman prefect.

“Lucius Pontius!” he said. “It is good to see you again, sir! What do you make of this time of wonders?”

“What wonders do you refer to, King Herod?” asked Pilate.

“The Nazarene, of course!” Herod said. “How many men have you crucified that have actually returned from the dead?”

Pilate paused for a moment. He was not sure he wanted to share what he really thought with the slippery tetrarch, but on the other hand, the man was well disposed toward him and he had no interest in provoking his ill will, either.

“It is inexplicable to me,” he finally said. “If only one or two had seen him, it would be easier to discount it. But between the empty tomb, the stunned guards, and the multiple eyewitnesses, it is very difficult to write this off as a fraud or a case of mistaken identity.”

“So you don't believe his disciples stole the body?” asked Herod.

Pilate snorted. “Do you really think that a rag-tag band of frightened rabbits who wouldn't even fight for the man while he was still alive would risk life and limb to retrieve a broken, battered corpse?” he asked derisively. “And that they could be so effective that not a single one of them perished, nor a single one of the guards? Believe me, Herod, the story of the stolen body was a desperate ploy by the High Priest to try and detract from something he could not explain.”

Herod nodded slowly. “Do you think that he really was—well, that he really was what his disciples are now claiming him to be?”

Pilate paused for a long while. “I don't know,” he finally said. “Did you speak to him when I sent him to you that night?”

“I questioned him for an hour, but he never said a word to me,” replied Herod. “He would not even look me in the eye.”

“He spoke to me only a little,” said Pilate, “but his words shook me to my core. He said that he was indeed a king, but that his kingdom—how did he put it? He said his kingdom ‘is not of this world.' He said that those who turned him over to me were guiltier than I was. In all honesty, King Herod, he made me feel like I was on trial—more than that, he made me feel like I had been weighed in the balance and found wanting! I have sent many men to the cross in my lifetime, and most of them richly deserved it. But I have never wanted to set someone free as badly as I wanted to release the Galilean.”

Herod looked at him curiously. “Then why didn't you?” he asked.

Pilate sighed. “They had me betwixt Scylla and Charybdis,” he said. “The High Priest was threatening to report me to Caesar for supporting insurrection if I didn't give him what he wanted. My position here is somewhat precarious, and after being reported to Rome several times already over different matters, I simply didn't have it in me to fight them anymore.”

Herod nodded. About that time the steward announced that Marcus Balbus had arrived. Pilate introduced him to the King and then the young legate settled on a couch between them as food was brought in. Pilate explained to Herod why Marcus was there, and then asked the young man to discuss his findings.

“At first I thought that it would be very difficult to get Jesus' disciples to talk to me,” he said. “But when I explained my mission they were delighted to tell me everything I wanted to know! One of them—a huge, grizzled fisherman named Simon, although the others call him Petros—he could recite many of the Galilean's teachings by heart. I found that there was much wisdom there, although there were many ideas and concepts that were very foreign to me. Another one, a former
publicanus
named Matthew Levi, cited one Scripture after another from the Jewish holy books that he said were direct prophecies of this Nazarene. Apparently Jesus was descended directly from some ancient Hebrew King named David.”

Herod shuddered. “It was always said that the Messiah would be born of David's line,” he said. “My father, about thirty-five years ago, heard some Babylonian astrologers say that the Messiah had been born in David's ancestral village of Bethlehem. He was so fearful of a potential rival that he had every male child in the village slaughtered!”

Balbus raised an eyebrow. “Remarkable! Matthew told me that Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem about that time, but that his parents were warned in a dream of Herod's actions, and fled with the baby to Egypt for a year or so,” he explained.

“So what are you going to tell the Emperor?” Herod asked.

“I am simply going to document everything that happened for him,” said Balbus. “But I am going to let him make his own decision about what to do with the information.”

Pilate nodded. “But what does Marcus Balbus Phillipus think about the whole thing?” he asked.

The young legate squirmed, not comfortable being put on the spot. “I think that every bit of evidence I have uncovered indicates that something supernatural happened,” he said. “What it was, what it meant, I do not know.”

“The Galilean's followers certainly seem to know,” commented Herod. “Or at least, they think they know. For the moment, I am content to wait and watch. But if I perceive a threat in them, I will silence them one way or another!”

Pilate nodded. “If I thought they were any kind of threat to Rome, I would be more concerned,” he said. “But for the moment, what I see is a large group of people devoting themselves to a religion whose chief teaching is love and obedience. Such men should be good citizens.”

Later that evening, after Herod had retired, Longinus was shown up by Pilate's faithful steward Democles. Pilate introduced him to Phillipus and then sat and listened as Longinus gave a detailed description of his own role in the execution of the Nazarene. When he was done, Phillipus grilled him for details on what had happened on that Sunday morning. It was long after midnight when he finished, and Longinus slipped out the door and returned to his family.

Marcus Phillipus sequestered himself at the Fortress of Antonia for several days thereafter, drafting a lengthy report for Tiberius on everything his investigation had revealed. Once he was done, he and Pilate sealed the document together and sent it off to Rome. Pilate remained in Jerusalem for an unusually long time that summer, partly because his poor sleep and wounded leg did not let him move about comfortably, and partly to see what would happen next with the followers of Jesus.

He did not have to wait long on that count. Early in the fall, Centurion Brutus Appius reported that a major confrontation had taken place after Peter and John had healed a lame man on the very steps of the Temple. Caiaphas had ordered the two fishermen arrested and beaten, sternly warning them to stop preaching in the name of Jesus. But the big fisherman, Simon Peter, threw the charges right back in the High Priest's face.

“Let it be known to all of you, and all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christos, the Nazarene, whom you crucified and God raised from the dead—by this name this cripple stands before you able to walk again!” thundered the Galilean.

The High Priest and his cronies huddled for a few minutes and warned the fishermen a second time against continuing to preach, but Peter simply said that he and his friends would have to obey God rather than men, and turned on their heels and walked out. Within the hour, backs still bleeding from the beating they had been given, he and John were standing on the steps of the Temple preaching—with the once lame man standing beside them and dancing a happy jig whenever they spoke about his healing.

“It was the best show I've seen since the last time I was in Rome, sir,” said the big centurion, who had wound up making a fine officer. “Old Caiaphas was opening and shutting his mouth like a fish out of water, but the crowd outside the Sanhedrin's chambers was so huge he was afraid to do anything!”

“So what do you make of all this, Brutus?” asked Pilate.

The burly officer sighed. “I don't hold much with the Jews' religion, to be honest,” he said. “Those priests are as slick and oily a bunch as I have ever encountered, living high on the hog while the common people scrabble for a living. But these fishermen—every penny anyone gives them they use to buy food for the crowds who come to hear them preach. They all live together in an upper room that someone donated to them, but I don't think any of them have two denarii to rub together. Say what you like about their teachings, those fellows at least practice what they preach.”