I love to read the Bible. I find it fascinating the amount of history that can be found. Even if you don’t believe any of the stories in the Bible, there are still a ton of facts about civilization, humanity, and creation from when the stories were written. For example, we know that the Egyptians were a great army at one point and the Romans were also a great army. We know a lot about the geography of the area, names commonly used at that time, how women used to be treated, what people worshiped, and a slew of other things. We also know that crucifixions were real as there are numerous sources outside of the Bible that prove that crucifixions happened.
Sometimes I get so caught up in a story that I try to picture every detail and I will tell you, picturing a crucifixion from every angle and from all of my senses is probably one of the darkest places my mind has ever gone. I imagined what it must have felt like when a bolt was driven through my skin and then how those same bolts would be removed. I imagined hearing the screaming and cheering of the people watching. I imagined the smell of the guards that hadn’t cleaned themselves as they lifted the log with my body into the hole in the ground. In the story below, I take the stance of a bystander, watching as Jesus is removed from the cross only a short time after he had raised me from the dead.
Soon afterwards He went to a city called Nain; and His disciples were going along with Him, accompanied by a large crowd. Now as He approached the gate of the city, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a sizeable crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, He felt compassion for her, and said to her, “Do not weep.”
And He came up and touched the coffin; and the bearers came to a halt. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother.
Fear gripped them all, and they began glorifying God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and, “God has visited His people!” This report concerning Him went out all over Judea and in all the surrounding district.
The “King of the Jews” hangs motionless on the cross. Just look at him hanging there, so limp and so powerless. My savior, my king, my lord, has been murdered and I did nothing about it. I stood and watched as the man that is responsible for me being here today grasped for air, one small breath after another, bleeding from all parts of his body. I rise up from my kneeling position to walk away in shame but darkness surrounds me and the ground begins to shake.
Luke 7: 11-17
The prisoner on Jesus’ left is unable to cry as he fights for air but with every exhale he takes, comes a soft, slow moan. His legs dangling over the nail, as they are no longer able to hold him up. His face gives the appearance of someone without hope. A lost soul just wishing his pain and agony were over. The prisoner on Jesus’ right has not been able to break the smile from his face, even as the guards took an iron hammer to break his knees, he saw himself in paradise.
I believe that if I had just done something, anything, that I could have prevented this from happening. I notice a man approach the centurion with a note. A group of women near me have been crying and praying but they also pause while some Roman guards begin to approach the dead man’s body. The centurion reads the note, looks at the surrounding guards and points at Jesus.
One of the guards takes a piece of cloth from the man, ties it around the crossbeam and Jesus’ shoulders and chest while another take a pry bar and begin to wedge the nails from Jesus’ left wrist. I can hear the sound of iron grinding against bone as he repeatedly moves the pry bar back and forth. As the nail falls to the ground and kicks up dirt, I can see dark sky through his wrist as it hangs in the air being held up by the cloth. The image is hard to look at so I find myself glancing back over at the women and see they are now talking to the man that brought the note.
The crowd has mostly dispersed and for a moment, all is still. During this moment, I begin to question my faith. The man that brought me back to life and told me to arise, is now lifeless, hanging from a cross. If only there was a way that I could bring him back to life as he brought me back to life.
The stillness didn’t last long, the guard begins to work on His right hand. He has begun wiping his own hands on his shirt and is having trouble holding onto the bar. He is yelling that just hours earlier he was hammering these same nails into the cross and then he began mocking that the King of the Jews was not even able to last a day. As he fought to get the nail out, he looked down at the man that brought the note, held the bar out towards him and called him over. I stood and watched as the man struggled to release the nail from His hands. I could feel the anguish he was going through as he was trying to be both gentle and swift as to not harm the body any more and to not delay the burial. The women watched in agony. The prisoners witnessed the centurion proclaiming that this was surely God, and that He was an innocent man, yet doubt remained in me. How could this man that raised me from the dead now be dead himself?
I heard a clink sound as the man was finally able to jar the nail free. The nail spun it’s way to the ground as it landed in a pool of blood and water from the wound in the man’s side. It made a big enough splash that some droplets got on the Roman guard. I could see the anger in his face as he was about to make the man pay for what he had done but he glanced at the centurion who was staring at the guard with a very stern face as if advising against doing whatever he was about to do.
The guard quickly shifted his plan and instead offered to remove the final nail from the man’s feet. Light was shining through the hole in the wrist of the man that was hanging on the cross. Within minutes of the guard attempting to remove the nail from the man’s feet, the centurion takes the pry bar from his hands and begins to work it free himself. I hear repeated sounds of a metal hammer hitting the bar over and over again. The centurion sets the hammer and bar down and removes his armor. Starting with his helmet and then his chestplate. The remaining guards are all looking at the centurion in shock and wonder. Some of them move into a ready position, as if to protect him from anyone in the diminished crowd that may want to take a stance against the Romans. Glancing around the crowd, I don’t see a single person that looks like they are in a stable enough position to stand up against a Roman soldier. The centurion picks the hammer and bar back up and continues working on removing the nail. As the sounds get higher pitched, the centurion calls the guard over to hold the feet of the man on the cross up against the tree.
As the final nail falls to the ground, a steady flow of blood and water fall to the ground. The centurian makes his way to the cloth that was wrapped around the man and begins to ease it off of him while the guard catches the falling body. The guard looks over at the man that brought the note and signals for him to come near. He hands the limp body to the man. The man reaches out his hands and accepts the body knowing his nice clothes will be ruined forever. The centurian gives the man a pat on his back and a gentle nudge as he wants the body removed from his sight in a feeble attempt to push those feelings of remorse and regret away.
The man returns to the group carrying the body while the rest of the audience continue to watch in wonder. They carry the body off into the distance and out of my sight.