An Easter Tale - Rex Futurus, Part 3

A lot of things changed over the years. The idea of Jesus changed in a lot of people’s eyes, after what happened that third day. I watched it from a unique vantage point: how Pilate’s son reacted.

Perhaps not enough is said about him. Often we tend to overlook someone’s family when dwelling on them; they get lost in the shuffle when you’re busy worrying about how you think about just the one person. You overlook the context. That’s how a lot of people reacted to Jesus, as I found out later, the more questions I asked about him, how for most of his life he was merely the carpenter’s son, who took up the family trade, who was best known for the work he did, never took pains to draw attention to himself, just focused on doing a good job, being someone who was easy to have around, who put you at ease, was easy to take for granted, and then for a few years was something else entirely, and then was executed. His father was long dead at that point, and his mother was said to be one of his biggest supporters, who constantly talked about him, who even inspired him to show more of himself to the world. 

I can’t really imagine what she must have thought, what she must have gone through, as all that played out. It’s said that later, he would openly talk about what needed to happen, that he would have to die and actually come back again. The business about the sealed tomb and then the empty tomb, the mad scrambling that took place that third day, the confusion, and then all the talk that it had actually happened, for her it had to have been the best and worst experience of her life, worse than seeing him die, since of course for her she had still had to experience that and then there he was again, just as if it had never happened, and then he was saying that he was only back for a little while. 

I can’t explain it. I know many people talked about seeing him. Some said he had somehow faked his death, but let me assure you: crucifixion is many things, but it is not something you can fake. The whole point is that you can see the whole process play out. Usually it’s a slow process, which is the point. For Jesus they sped up the process, because of the Sabbath, or at least that was the intention, but he died of his own accord; the other two they broke their legs so they could no longer support themselves to draw breaths. They made sure he was dead. They pierced his side and saw what could only come from a dead body flow from it. They gave his body to his mother to hold, after. I saw this myself.

Anyway, years later people still talked about Jesus. They still talked about him. This was many years, decades. The way the Romans continued to talk about Julius, the way he died, it was very much the same, except for Julius it was a tragedy that gave way to life very much as it had always been, except it codified exactly what everyone had feared about Julius, and so was an irony. With Jesus it was very much the opposite: his death was supposed to end the problem, and yet it only magnified what he had tried to accomplish in life, show people that there was another way, to reject the brutalities we can so often inflict on each other, to suggest love conquers all.

Pilate’s son was in a unique position to appreciate this. For him it was inescapable. Everywhere he turned he encountered people who only knew him as the son of the man who had unsuccessfully tried to end the Jesus problem. The Jesus problem never went away. His followers never went away. In fact, they only multiplied. They became perfect pariahs of the Romans, scapegoats, easy to blame for any little mishap, fodder for the circuses, their deaths mere entertainment, but somehow this never dissuaded their faith. In a lot of ways they were only emboldened. When they started telling the story of Jesus, some accused them of shaping the events of the trial to flatter the Romans, but it could only be an embarrassment. Just ask Pilate’s son. Just try to look at it from his perspective: his father failed to end the problem, and he was going to be the one who would have to live with the results, the constant proof of that failure, and everywhere he turned he couldn’t hope to avoid it.

A funny thing happened, though. As far as I can tell, he began to believe. Pilate himself was removed from Jerusalem, having been judged ineffective to the task. His son followed him back to Rome, but the whispers of the whole affair followed. The itinerant preacher Paul, who was himself Roman, who showed up a few years later, had never met Jesus himself, not even after the mysterious resurrection, the event that had galvanized the faith for so many of the followers, the impossible thing, spread the message far and wide, so that it became truly inescapable. Pilate’s son learned this better than anyone. Often he found himself jeered. His response was remarkable. He would tell anyone willing to listen that he was actually proud, that if anything his father had been vindicated, that if his judgment had been challenged, then perhaps that had been the whole point all along. A point rebuffed must be reconsidered. This is the task of any rational mind, and any such mind that refuses to accept such a challenge isn’t worth taking seriously. This is how he chose to view it. This is what he told those who stopped to listen. This is how he came to believe.

He gave up everything. Some say he didn’t have much to begin with, the son of a man considered a failure, who couldn’t subdue a troubled province, who seemed to actually have made things worse. No prospects, no hope for a future. Willing to grasp at any straws. 

Well, maybe I view it differently since I myself came to believe, so I was willing to extend him the benefit of the doubt. Some say it was easy to believe because it offered an alternative to the Romans, suggested that if you simply endured then you could envision life after them, to life on terms without them again. But I don’t think that was ever the point. I heard that Jesus once said, render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Accept life as you find it. But know there is something greater. Know you don’t have to define life by the terms in which you find it. This is to say, there is the standard around you, and then there is the standard you hold for yourself. If your standard is greater, hold that closest to your heart. If you find the standard set by Jesus, then you won’t need to worry about the lower standards around you. All you can really do is hope one day more people will see things the way you do.

And that’s how Pilate’s son saw it. He could have considered his future bleak, his loss of station, of potential within the empire, that he would never reach the same heights his father had, certainly never surpass him. But he chose instead to embrace the idea upon which this failure had been achieved. He humbled himself quite happily. He became just another Christian. In his quiet way, if like me you noticed him at all, later, marveled that he never shied from being treated like any of the rest of us, subject to the same perils, you saw how the story had come full circle. Like his father he had washed his hands of the business, but in his case he washed his with ours, to break bread with us, to share the same  bounty. And so, perhaps, like father like son. That’s what I like to believe, anyway.

The whole thing was an affirmation. That’s how I saw those three days play out, and how they spoke through the years that followed. I commemorate the experiences to this day. How could I not? I believe. I believe in Jesus. I believe in his way. I believe in humanity, even when it seems I shouldn’t. Not for some selfish reason. Not because I believe I will receive some reward for it. Because my faith in humanity is the best way to inspire that same belief in others, that they will see there is a better way, a way that sees value in others. Pilate, his wife, his son, they had impossible journeys to be a part of all this. Believe what you want to about them. For me, they are essential. 

An Easter Tale - Rex Futurus, Part 2

The next day people began to talk about Pilate’s wife.

Now, let me get something out of the way. I’m really curious as to how all this will be talked about in, say, two thousand years. I think I know. I think so because I know how it’s being talked about now, how the story is already taking shape.

It would be one thing if Jesus were turning into legend. Legends take one of two paths. The first is that they become an epithet, the epitome of evil in the eye of memory. The second is that they become impossibly heroic. The legend would be that Jesus tried to overthrow the Roman Empire itself. He would be cautionary tale in one, a glorious victor in the other. Imagine if this idea of his becomes state religion at some point, what his detractors would say. What the believers would!

But he was just a man (in one sense). He died as a man. He was condemned both by his own people, and under Pilate, by the empire, too. History officially has little space for him now. He was executed in a group. I saw him hang there myself. Surrounded by common criminals. Forget what Pilate had nailed to the cross above his head. From a distance all you could see was three dying men gasping for breath. 

What they’re saying about Pilate’s wife, though. They say all through the ordeal yesterday she pleaded for this man’s life. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It doesn’t matter if it’s his followers putting out a false narrative. The man was just executed by the state. You can’t argue, logically, realistically, that they make themselves look good by suggesting only that it was his own Jewish authorities responsible. I know the Romans. It will be a long, long time before they even consider sympathy for this business. They’re going to kill a lot more of them, these followers of the way of Jesus.

Why would this story circulate, then? He died. Yesterday. End of story. Consigned to history. Forgotten. Except the story continues, and it takes interesting turns. They say she thought he was not only innocent, but an innocent, one of the truly good people. As to whether he was innocent of the basic charge of intended or implied mutiny, that’s debatable. I don’t particularly see it that way myself. It’s said that he preached those who live by the sword die by the sword. Apart from the temple incident he abhorred violence. It’s said he once preached those eager to cast stones in judgment of another must surely be themselves entirely blameless. 

It’s said she thought he was such a person. Perhaps the only such person who ever lived. He was a preacher, first and foremost, who never went out of his way to promote himself. Drawing attention for the sake of attention was never his ambition. His message gained followers, his wisdom. It’s said he performed miracles, and there were those who believed in him because of this, only because of this. It’s said his message finds parallels in other cultures. In the far east there’s said to be a tradition of holy orders very similar to his ideals, except theirs believes ultimate removal from daily life is the key to satisfaction in this world, where he always argued radical acceptance of even the worst trials, such as the one he himself endured. 

I don’t think the acceptance of pain was his message, or even the seeking of it for penance. That’s what he had to experience. It’s said even as he died he asked forgiveness for those who put him up there.

Last night and into this morning I have been struggling to understand all of this, which is why any scrap of additional insight is so valuable. It’s said his followers almost to a man abandoned him in his final hours, that only his mother, some family friends, some secret friends, and the youngest of his disciples were present. Such a motley crew wouldn’t be sending such stories out so quickly. It was a strange business, what happened. Strange stories are going to be told. But maybe not as strange as this.

Pilate’s wife. It’s said she was plagued with nightmares. In their culture such things have meaning. That’s how they interpret the world. She worried about what her husband’s decision meant. It’s said he washed his hands of the business. He put up that sign. Somehow I doubt she thought that was good enough.

So what do I believe? I believe such a story. I’m starting to believe. I believe this is not the end of the story. 

An Easter Tale - Rex Futurus, Part 1

Someone tried telling me the sign was because Pilate and this Jesus fellow were friends. In the moment it almost made sense. I imagined a whole scenario where they hung out together for years, out of the public eye, complaining about Jewish politics. Jesus was a carpenter, that’s probably how they met. One day he delivers a table or whatever to Pilate, they get to talking, discover how much they have in common, and it just blossoms from there.

Now, I’ll admit I didn’t know either one of them personally, but people talk. They were both gossip magnets. Pilate for obvious reasons, and Jesus, because he went around the whole region with his little group of friends in recent years, and it was kind of impossible to avoid what people said about him, the miracles, the idea that he was the messiah, but basically how he was unlike anyone any of us had ever met.

Then of course he ends up arrested, they push through a trial overnight, and this was just last night, mind you! And this morning he’s shown before Pilate, asked to explain himself, and Pilate is essentially backed into a corner, something about sedition, I guess, which is the one thing a Roman governor can never be soft on, and he has no choice but to order yet another execution. 

To be a fly on the wall when they spoke in private! That’s what they say, that Pilate kept pulling Jesus aside, which is strange enough. To listen to most of what Pilate’s reputation suggests, you’d think he’d hardly think twice about the matter, that he would hardly give such a criminal that had been presented to him so early in the morning the time of day! And listen, I don’t really care what they say about the Jews. I’m just a merchant, here, I’m not Roman, I’m certainly not Jewish. If anything I should be mad at Jesus for that outburst at the temple. It was all but a personal attack, right?

But the trouble is, I got to thinking. Not just about why Pilate would humor such a man, why he would stick such a note on the crucifix, “King of the Jews,” what he could possibly have meant (Romans aren’t known for their humor; they’re best understood for their tragedies, since in all things they are always chasing Greeks), but why I should take this Jesus seriously, if I thought for even one moment a Roman governor did.

It’s not because he clashed with his own people. I get that he probably gained some of his followers that way. There will always be contrarians, and hopefully I am never one of those! I think, rather, that he had something worth believing in. A sign says “King of the Jews” above his savaged body, you have to think about that for a moment.

They say he championed the humble. Sometimes it’s easy to believe that anyone willing to do that is just trying to gain their favor, do the state the favor of making such people somehow feel good about their lot, and someone far more cynical than me would then draw the conclusion that Pilate and Jesus bonded in this way. Well, not me.

I think he did it for the very reasons he himself suggested, that, and if you believe what people have said, that he was the son of the Jewish god, and certainly all the Jewish stories in that book of theirs proves what good storytellers they are, and that this story of his was the best they ever produced, because he further suggested he was born to once and for all reconcile his father and these people, and in fact everyone else, too. And he had to do it by dying today.

Ritual sacrifice is an old religious tradition. I think every culture has it at some point. It’s not so common for the sacrifice to be the son of the god. It’s not so common for such a grand gesture. Well, if it is, I haven’t heard about it. 

King of the Jews. Clearly it got me thinking. I’m not saying Pilate believed one thing or another. But perhaps he believes Jesus himself believed it. I don’t think he posted it to antagonize the Jews. I think it was about respect. I think he recognized, for one reason or another, that Jesus was more than just another agitator.

I’m starting to believe a lot of things.

Star Trek: 2063

My favorite author is certainly Jo Belano, the Chilean expat who spent her final years in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where I was fortunate enough myself to grow up. The library always displayed her book 2063 prominently, and I must have sat there reading it, and borrowing it, about half of my first twenty years on this planet, which, thanks to the era in which she lived, ended up being my last twenty, after I agreed to live in Tycho City on the moon. And of course I’m taking a copy of her book with me.

2063 is a kaleidoscope of the the millennium as she understood it. She opens with a story about the Bell Riots from 2024, knowing many of her readers would have forgotten the massive reforms already happening before First Contact, most of which stayed in place even when WWIII broke out. She’s one of the few historians of any extraction to link the riots, and the efforts of Gabriel Bell himself, to the war, the desperate attempts to prevent it, after the Eugenics Wars had all but precipitated it, the conflict between Starling and Cochrane that launched a thousand ships into space, one of Starling’s of course containing the infamous Khan Singh in cryostasis. She also talks about the final World Series in 2042, how the aging baseball star Buck Bokai volunteered himself for the draft after playing in the last game as a symbolic gesture of unity.

The book really hits its stride for me, though, as she describes President Rios’s difficult path to the White House, how the country very nearly split apart upon his election, and then First Contact occurs on his watch, and he transforms the controversial Cochrane and the backwater town he had exiled himself to in rural Montana into a beacon of hope, inviting the world’s leaders to an international summit with the new Vulcan ambassadors. 

The way she weaves all this together, this rich tapestry of humanity’s potential, at a time when we had just begun to live among the stars…So I’ll live on the moon, now, and sometimes I wonder if I’ll go deeper still into space. Even Cochrane is thoroughly respectable these days. He’s talked about the “final frontier,” as he works on his new warp engines, like a credo, and…we really don’t know what we’ll find out there. But it seems like a challenge worth taking. I wonder what Jo would have discovered, there. Sometimes I wonder if I should be the one to write about it. Following her example.