This is the second in a three-part
series of Advent poems on the wife of
Pontius Pilate.
If you missed the first one, it's online
and you can both read it and listen
to it this afternoon to get up to
speed.
And, God willing, there will be one more
next week.
So, the wife of Pontius Pilate, part two.
She knew that he was teaching in the
temple court all week.
There had been reports to Pilate that the
crowds were seething with unrest and clouds of
rage were gathering among the Pharisees and scribes.
His tongue was like a trumpet of a
long-forgotten truth, an ancient song of mercy,
well concealed within the ordered sounds that scribes
had been arranging from the fragments of God's
holy masterpiece, the love song of the centuries.
She heard the fragments of his word and
savored every piece and prayed that Pilate would
be moved and made awake from all his
slumbers of conceit, from putting peace above the
truth and fearing every face that seemed displeased,
as if his place as procurator of the
state hung by a thread and all the
weight of truth a threat.
With all her heart she prayed that somehow
even part of Jesus' words would penetrate her
husband's soul and there create a noble ruler,
strong and free, a man of truth and
bravery.
Oh, how she wanted to admire the man
that once held her desire.
The sixth day of the week her sleep
was fitful.
Pilate rose to keep, she thought, some early
rendezvous with Jewish men who chose to do
their Roman business in the dark.
If Pilate ever leaves a mark, she mused,
it will, if I am right, be how
he governed in the night.
At last she slept and in her sleep
she saw as in a dream a sheep
with eyes as deep as ocean caves and
caught in thorns among the graves.
It made no effort to escape and all
the others watched agape while cruel winds turned
thorns to spikes with force the way a
soldier strikes and all its spotless wool was
made like scarlet with its wounds all laid
in order as if by design.
Then far beyond the meadow line there stood
a shepherd named I Am whose back was
turned against the Lamb.
She woke with sudden fear that it was
Jesus in the dream.
She split the curtains in her room and
there with torches all around a pair of
soldiers stood on either side of Jesus.
Pilate sat legs wide like Roman Caesars splayed
before some victim who might now implore for
mercy and bestow on small and anxious governors
the all-important look of regal power as
stable as a summer flower.
She knew this look on Pilate's face and
that the time was short.
Her pace was quick.
She took a charcoal shard and scribbled on
a board, Look hard at what you are
about to do, my husband, in my head.
Are you about to judge a man for
fear of his accusers?
Pray, give ear, O Pilate, I have suffered
much this night because of him.
O touch not any hair upon his head,
for none in all your realm has spread
more good than he.
I have it in a dream that he
will bear the sin of wicked men and
is the Lamb of God, but how will
God not damn the man that puts his
son to death?
She rang the servant, took a breath and
said, Take this at once and give it
to the governor.
I live and by my life do swear
no harm will come to you.
Let no alarm upon his face deter you
from this charge.
Now go and bring me some reply from
Pilate's lips.
She took the servant's arm and whispered, Look
in Pilate's eye when he has read the
board and say, The mistress calls him Lord.
She knelt and prayed, O God, if it
is possible that Pilate quit his cowardice and
risk his throne to speak the truth and
stand alone against the enemies of Christ and
not one good be sacrificed, then grant him
courage, Lord, to stand.
If not, then do what you have planned.
In half an hour he returned.
My mistress, Pilate said, I learned some twenty
years ago how much to listen to my
wife and such fond counsel is the reason
I am deaf to her desires.
Tell my good wife that dreams are fickle
things and if her mind again sprouts wings
and flies away from reason, then perhaps she
should perch like a wren among the branches
of a tree and chirp her little prophecy
into the wind where it belongs.
With tears she smiled and said, The wrongs
you carry are well said, good friend.
I thank you.
You may go.
And tend your marriage well.
You see where it can end.
When he was gone, she split her royal
gown in two and fell in sobs upon
her bed.
So well do you reward me.
Twenty years of marriage, she punches Pilate.
Tears, my daily tears you feed me, lest
I thirst for something sweet, some blessed embrace.
It is a strange device for keeping me.
And such a price we pay.
I thought perhaps the Lord had meant that
we would be restored.
I thought that was his oath.
But now it seems I lose you both.
Then suddenly there was a great commotion in
the hall.
The hate spilled into the praetorium.
Six hundred soldiers pressed to come into the
great hall just outside the room where Claudia
had tried to save the Christ.
She tied her gown, ran through the door
and started down the stairs, but stopped as
Pilate grabbed her by the arm.
Let go, she jabbed him in the side.
What's going on down there?
Let go, she screamed.
It's gone beyond what you would want to
see.
It's not for women.
Come with me.
She jerked free from his hold and ran
down to the floor and saw the man
she knew was Jesus, but would not have
recognized.
The air was hot with sweat and breath.
The soldiers roared with laughter every time the
Lord was struck.
His eyes were swollen shut.
He couldn't see from where the butt of
one spear or the next would come to
crush his rib or smash his thumb or
knock his breath away.
His hair was matted, scarlet, woven there among
the thorns, half sunk inside his head from
being struck.
She spied at last his back and almost
fell faint to the floor.
What means in hell had they devised to
grind his flesh like that?
And now, as if to thresh his skin
were not enough, they made sport of his
holy soul and flayed his tender heart with
blasphemies.
We hear you are a prophet.
Please, make known from whom this message comes
and what's the point and if it plumbs
the depths of God.
The soldier stood behind and sank the sharpened
wood tip of his javelin the length of
one long finger in the strength remaining of
the Savior's thigh.
He gasped and fell.
The woman's cry made every soldier turn.
She rushed between the ranks and as they
hushed, she fell beside the body of the
Lord and wept the tears of love that
she had held so long and laid his
head upon her lap and made a bow
as if to kiss.
But no, she stopped and listened to the
low and almost breathless words.
And then she lay his head down once
again upon the marble floor, stood, turned, and
climbed the steps where Pilate burned with rage.
Well, what sweet nothings did your Jesus say,
my dear?
I bid you tell me what he whispered
there.
His blood-stained wife paused on the stair
and looked in Pilate's shallow eyes and said
to him, When Jesus dies today, the world
we know will be no more.
Now wait and you will see.
And I will tell you what he said
when he's long risen from the dead.
The light of candle two is dim like
love and hope in many grim and dying
marriages.
What light lay on the floor that awful
night in the praetorium?
Was it the final spark of life once
lit by love now gone?
Or was it more?
Let every husband ask, therefore, and every wife,
Which is the true and faithful view?
Is candle two the fading light of day
withdrawn?
Or is this flame the light of dawn?