Jesus Is Nailed To A Cross - Short story contest TheWritersBlock - Religious fiction

The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus.

I made sure that John put my name in the story. As soon as I heard that he was writing about those terrible times, I went straight up to him in the agora and ordered him to say who his father was. I’ve got to take my share of the blame.

As far as all the others are concerned, I’m just another of the Jerusalem converts. There’s not many people that know my real identity. Probably stone me if they knew. The father of the traitor. How d’you live with that? How d’you make amends, assuage the gnawing guilt and horrible sense of responsibility? I don’t know, but maybe my name in the book will be a start.
And maybe you’d like to know a bit more about this most infamous of men. And his father.

The first thing to tell you is that we weren’t really proper Jews. We sometimes had quite a hard time of it in Jerusalem, where everyone’s so ultra-orthodox. Things got even harder when the Romans appointed that fat slob Herod as King of the Jews. No one was happy about that. There was a whole list of reasons why he was a bad choice, but for some reason people fixated on his race. He’s not even a proper Jew! He’s from Idumaea! He’s a dirty Arab! Well, that happened to be our homeland too, a tiny village in the Arabian deserts, called Keriot. We were soon tarred with the same brush, ostracised. Judas was even refused a bar-mitzvah. That lot up at the Temple knew a half-cast when they saw one. Purity of race was everything and we just missed the cut.

I think that it was this sense of exclusion, of being the outsider that first drew him to Jesus. The movement always prided itself on social inclusion. Anyone and everyone was welcome to join. Jews, Greeks, Romans. Even Samaritans. There was no problem at all with a darky being one of the inner guard. One of the trusted twelve. He wasn’t exactly James or John, but he was still a proper disciple. He was even given a special job. He was the one entrusted with the money. It was my son who collected the tithes and the donations at the end of the prayer-meetings. It was my son who liaised with all those wealthy widows and grateful centurions. It was my son who arranged for proper taxes to be paid to the Romans, for appropriate poor-relief and, of course, for food to be bought for the Master and his disciples. It was a responsible job and one that required intelligence and an absolute honesty.

You might ask how I know all this. I got it straight from the horse’s mouth. From Judas himself. We’d always been incredibly close. His mother died soon after we left Keriot and I never had the inclination to marry again. So there’s always been just the two of us. Simon and Judas. Neither of us went in for friends or socialising. We used to spend every evening together, eating, laughing and talking. It was a blow when he left to follow Jesus. It was a terrible blow, as if my left arm had been cut off, but I had to tell myself not to be selfish. He had to leave home some day and what better reason that this? He came home as often as he could and told me everything that had happened. Everything that Jesus had said and done. As I said to John the other day, perhaps I should be writing a Gospel, too. The Gospel According to Judas. Maybe I will one day. I still remember it so well. The sermons, the miracles. The love.

But there’s one bit I’ll be leaving out. A great black hole in the narrative. The one bit I’ll never understand.
Why did he do it?
I lie awake at night, torturing myself with that terrible question. Why did he accept thirty pieces of silver to betray his teacher, his friend, his God? Oh, he regretted it all right. Almost as soon as he’d done it, he wished he hadn’t. But by then it was too late. The inexorable wheels of Roman ‘justice’ were in motion. Regret, yes. But that still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I keep asking myself if there was something wrong in the way I brought him up. I force myself to accept the lion’s share of the blame. But how? What exactly did I do wrong? Was I too strict, too soft? Should I have married again? Did he lack the woman’s touch? Should we have stayed in Keriot? Should I have carried on marking the fasts and feasts, even after they refused to accept him as one of them? Should I have apprenticed him to a trade, kept him tied in Jerusalem?

Questions, questions, questions, but never any answers. And always the memory of that terrible last night. He came to see me soon after it’d happened. I was woken up by a crazy banging on the door at two in the morning. I groggily drew back the bolts, wondering who on earth such a late-night visitor could be. I was surprised to see that it was Judas.

Surprised, but not wildly so. After all, I knew that he and the others were celebrating the Passover in the city. I was just cracking a smile of joy and welcome, when I saw the look on his face. It’s a look I’ll never forget. The wide-eyed, crazy look of absolute terror. As if he were already damned. The story came out in great, wracking sobs that shook his whole body. He was soon sobbing like a child, hugging himself and rocking back and forth like a mad-man.
He told me that there was only one thing left to do. He did that, too. As you’ve probably heard.

When I got there, the nailing had just started. It had gone a bit wrong, too, by the look of it. One of the others, a great, swaggering brute, was pinned to the cross by the soldiers, but the nailer’d hit an artery. Great spurts of blood were arcing up to the sky.
This was my chance. Surely, this was my chance. Everyone else was distracted by the fuck-up next door. I darted quickly under the fence and soon found myself only two feet from Jesus himself. I knew that I had to act quickly. Before the Romans saw. Before the disciples saw. Before he fainted.
He was sitting, naked, on the ground, patiently waiting his turn. Silent. Still. Completely alone. He was miles away, praying maybe, and gave something like a start when I spoke.
‘Rabbi’
I’d meant to speak quietly, but I was so desperate that it came out more as a shout. He span round and looked straight into my eyes.
‘What do you want?’
‘Please forgive him, Rabbi. Please, please forgive my son. He gave up everything for you. And he’s so sorry. He’s so desperately sorry for what he did.’
He hadn’t any time to reply. The execution squad was already upon us. They threw me out PDQ and start their grizzly task. I watched, horrified. And as I watched, I heard.
‘Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.’
He said it so quietly. It came out a dry, rattling rasp. It was almost impossible for him to breathe, let alone speak. But I had to believe that he was speaking to me as well as to God. That he was forgiving Judas, just as he was forgiving the soldiers. He was forgiving him, excusing him. My poor son didn’t know what he was doing.
That was enough for me. That was the start of my new life. His death was my birth. I watched it all. With the others. That’s when I first met John. And the Maries.

I saw him die, but I never saw him risen. It’s funny, that. I always seemed to be in the wrong place. I’d just left to buy some wine, to put my house on the market, to plant lilies by Judas’ grave. They told me all about, of course they did. It was their favourite topic of conversation and still is. They tell everyone all about it all the time. All about his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension. Anyone who’ll listen gets the same story. It’s an incredible, wonderful story. I’m not denying that. There’s not many who survive a nailing.
But, for my money, it’s something else entirely that made Jesus the Son of God. It’s that short sentence he squeezed out just as they were banging in those bloody enormous nails. They alone are enough to create a new heaven and a new earth.

by Mimi L. Thompson
An avid researcher of ancient world customs, cultures and religions from original texts in Latin, Greek and Hebrew

You can see my other recent post here

https://steemit.com/writing/@britlib16/golden-horse-chapter-1