Choosing To Kill The Christ

This night, I traveled back through time two thousand years ago. I found myself inside a large enough hall fitting almost three hundred souls, all clamoring to see the unfolding spectacle. I had to violently pull the man beside me just to ask what the commotion was all about. “They have just brought him in for trial this morning!”, he shouted, laughing. “Who?” I asked. He looked annoyed but was too lost in the jubilation, he shouted at me,  “The Nazarene carpenter!”. My heart stopped for a brief moment at the mention of the words, I can only think of one person. I frantically looked around as the crowd suddenly roared in one direction. A man of dignified appearance slowly stepped out into the balcony overlooking the hall, with him a crippling, half bent man, wrapped in a scarlet robe, torn from face to foot, unrecognizable. I pushed my way through the crowd and somehow managed to get to the front line until a soldier blocked me from stepping any closer. I strained my neck and struggled just to see his face. "Could this be him?", I asked myself over and over.

For a moment he lifted up his face. There was no face. it was all covered in blood, mangled beyond recognition. Eyes puffed shut, cheek and lips swollen and cut. I have seen instances like these in the news when the public manages to catch a robber and beats him almost to death. He was naked underneath the robe that miserably failed to cover him, but it doesn't seem to matter, because he was cut all over inside badly there was no skin to see, only exposed, torn flesh.

The man in authority haggled with the crowd in words I couldn't understand. He looked like he was asking something as he presented the crippled man beside him. A man from the crowd shouted back an answer angrily and the crowd roared violently in agreement. The soldiers attacked those in the front for pushing against them. There was a brief scuffle, momentarily stopped by the man in authority as he lifted his hand, and commanded one of the soldiers to go down to the crowd. He proceed down the stairs, turned to my direction, and handed a leaflet to me.

It was a poll. In it were just two words, foreign to me, but I understood it simply to be YES and NO. I stared at it wondering what "yes" and "no" meant in relation to all of this. I looked back up to him, I couldn’t speak, but I was asking him in my thoughts what the two words in the paper were for. The crowd hushed as the man in authority spoke directly to me, not in any language I know, but I understood it.

“I cast the lot to you randomly because I know that out of the greed of his enemies, this person beside me now stands condemned. What should I do to him then? I see no cause to put him to death, but your priests have delivered him to me to be sentenced nonetheless. So you decide. Mark the paper in your hand with your decision now! What you choose, will be.”

I looked at the paper. I knew who the crippled man was, but I was frozen in my place with fear. I know why this man had to die. I know that he died. But at this moment, it had not happened yet. I was being given the decision. Yes – to crucify him. No – he lives.  The gravity of the situation now dawned on me as never before. A dark, heavy, and foreboding shadow slowly crept over me like a blanket. Knowing what I know about why he had to die, and how he would die – I just could not reconcile everything with why I had to choose between killing him and setting him free from the sentence. I was blank. I stared at the paper for the longest time, until a small nudge pulled me back to reality, a soldier’s hand was at the tip of the paper, waiting to take it back to the man in authority. “Mark it now, friend.” I looked up, and standing before me was the crippled, bloody man. It was he who was asking. So with a bitter hand, I did.

I awoke.