Fifth Gospel(145)
We sat then for a time with our memories until he stood to leave.
I told him to go with God.
His face broke out in a wrinkled smile. ‘And you!’
When he left my heart grew weary and sad and I sat upon that rock looking out long after the sun had set. I had said goodbye to a dear friend that I hardly knew! For in all the years I had seen him barely a dozen times. This strange, paradoxical friendship would only be made clear to me in the upper room when Lea came again to spin her words. For it was then that I would begin to see who Matteu had been in lives gone past, though I would not know our bond until much later, as you will see.
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Joseph had remained awake all night after the trials. He had watched the scourging and had followed the dismal procession to Golgotha. He was now on his way back again to the gallows, after receiving Pilate’s authority to remove the body of his Lord to the place of burial.
As he walked beside his friend Nicodemus he realised what a fool he was to have thought himself near death all these months. For when his master had asked him to go home to prepare his grave he had meant that he must build a sepulchre in which His body could be laid. And as Joseph toiled the road to Golgotha now he held this goal firmly in mind.
Behind him his servants carried the articles necessary for the burial, vases of water, bottles of unctions, bundles of linen and a litter. Nicodemus carried costly spices in barrels of bark strapped around his neck, while Joseph himself carried a lantern in one hand and in the other a flask of wine and the cup of Jasper used by Christ Jesus at the Passover feast to fortify those who had remained at the cross.
The sun had been dark all afternoon but now it began to hide itself altogether and the wind came up like a living thing, playing with their robes, flustering the flame in the lanterns and taking the cloths from out of the hands of the servants. A sudden, sonorous rumble was heard and a number of hastening temple guards passed their group, taking themselves to the place of execution. By the time the little party had reached Golgotha Joseph caught a glimpse through the mayhem of windblown rubble and chaos, of a spectacle – a man was piercing the side of his master with a lance!
For the first time in his long life Joseph moved without a thought. Thrown away was his prudence and let go was the lantern and the flask. He ran through the storm of dust to the cross. How could he allow his master’s blood to fall on the ground? In a moment he was kneeling beneath the stream of blood, holding the cup to catch its flow.
Afterwards he looked at the centurion and a feeling passed over his heart that one day he would see that spear which the man held in his hands and it would give him a vision of this moment as he stood beneath the cross.
He stammered when he told the centurion that he had a dispensation from Pilate to take the body down from the cross in order to bury it in his own tomb. And he was surprised to find both the centurion with the spear and the other man, strangely full of tenderness for the body of his master. They tied it with cords and drew the nails out one by one, lowering it slowly from ladders, one rung at a time, and gave it into the hands of Nicodemus. Together the three men took it to the mother, who sat upon the ground with the woman, Magdalena.
The wind paused and the rumble grew quiet. In this sudden, otherworldly silence, Joseph was taken by a vision.
Clouds parted to allow a soft light to console the mother, who held her dead son. The world lay in hushed adoration of it. Even the moans and sobs of the women who had come to join them in their doings were now paused. Standing before this vision, holding the cup in his hand, a second realisation came. Joseph fell to his knees. Here was that image that he had seen in the heavens standing in his garden those months ago, but then it had taken the form of a slice of moon holding the dark disc of the sun! He looked to the cup and he looked to the mother in that light-radiance. He understood – mother and cup were one. For a mother’s soul held her Son like the cup in Joseph’s hands held His blood!
The light faded and night was drawing near. Joseph had to quite his thought to lead the others to his tomb for soon would commence the Sabbath.
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‘It was later, after Jesus had been laid in the tomb and near the hind of morning, pairé, that Joseph, replete with sadness, was making his way home again. Through the dark and windy streets he walked contemplating all that had come before when not far from his house he was arrested by armed soldiers and taken by force to a tower, a deserted turret that formed a part of the city wall. There he was locked in a cell.
‘Legend tells that it was among the rats and the dampness that Joseph would experience the full teachings of the risen Christ, even as the other disciples experienced it, and so nourishing was it for his soul that though he was given no food and no water he did not die. All were astonished when they set him free, especially those high priests of the Sanhedrin who had ordered his arrest. But Joseph knew, pairé, what they did not know, that a man does not live by bread alone.