“Even as I am writing this, I am still crying.”
_________________________
It was more than two thousand years ago, and if I remembered, John was the only male still hanging around after He was crucified and left badly bloodied and hanging on a Crossbeam of two dried pieces of wood. His Mother, Mary, was there, sobbing incessantly. My eyes had dried out. I could only stare vacantly. That was the sacred of all moments in time…those very minutes as I watched Him dying slowly.
The Sea of Galilee was experiencing a tidal wave. The Dead Sea surged…its waves reaching fifty feet high. The River Jordan was fast flowing, as were the Rivers Nile, Naija, Senegal, Congo, Orange, Limpopo, and the Zambezi across Africa’s wild plains; their banks were breached. All the world’s oceans were in various forms of agitation: Tsunami-like waves were barreling through large swaths of ocean space. It looked as if the world was coming to an end.
HELLO! MY NAME IS MARY. I AM FROM MAGDALA. I WAS THERE, AND I SAW IT ALL!
Even as I am writing this, I am still crying.
It was nighttime in East Africa’s Serengeti at the same hour that Yeshua Ben Josef died. Even with all that darkness, it looked like it was daylight. A full, enthusiastic moon had risen, showing off all animals on the range at the time, while it exposed a dry patch of field, one mile long, and spitting dust into the air. At this time of the year, the trees were without leaves, and the grass that defined the range had withered. Somehow, most animal lives were coming together from different directions…toward an open grassland in the middle of the moon-drenched savannah. Prey and predators were in an unusual co-existence. The animals had their eyes up in the night sky, at the magnificent moon with her unusual brightness. It was as if they knew the moon would succumb and give up on her shine on this night. It was exactly what happened. The moon disappeared and took the stars with it. The Serengeti was thrust into pitch blackness. And for good measure, lightning flashes and thunder blasts were coming in short intermittent strikes. The animals never tried to run for cover.
In the South and North Poles, Nature was just as angry. The massive, frozen water and lands were cracking, like an earthquake of icesheets was happening, shooting up geysers in the process. Mammoth-sized sheets of frozen water were breaking off and falling atop frozen sea waters. Way up in the northern hemisphere, a volcano erupted in the Roman city of Vesuvius threatening everything in its path. But back in Jerusalem, it was fifteen minutes past the fifteenth hour of the new day, and face with the Blood and bruises was still hanging where the damned Romans left it. The erstwhile dark sky had begun to clear, leaving a flawless, pristine-looking cloud for a quaint panorama. This scene of so much unkindness would live in people’s memory; the unforgiving aspects of it would be hard to shed. It would be replayed for future references. This view of Yeshua dead on the cross, smack in the middle of a shining firmament, was at odds with the heartlessness imbued here; a spotless looking horizon that seemed to diminish the pain and agony of the one who had suffered it. But here is the point, and a fantastic one at that; the sky’s crystal clearness was deliberate…and a silent Singularity of Music, as in the rising symphony of Angels in a choral tribute and pageantry to the Son of God had begun. But for the evilness of man against another, the contorted Body hanging loosely, with his head grotesquely drooped must mean they had gotten their sinfully joyful pleasures, gladness, and the ecstasy and thrill that could only originate from the sixth-hundredth vein of Hell. A dark art. The darkest of art. A grand life-size poster of torture was on display on this day. For loneliness and desolation, it hit the mark. For meanness and heartlessness, it was a glaring success. It was how and where they wanted Him to be at the end; to die alone, and to feel forsaken. For some, especially those that got him here, it was charming and justifiable imagery for blasphemy…and for all others, the bloodhounds especially, the form of Yeshua on the Cross represented their artistry in viciousness, the crafty spitefulness, and how much rancor they had bottled in. This was an aesthetic overkill; an artistic absurdity from an overzealous, demented, and mindfully exaggerated group of artists who painted this mural in the sky. Only the brushstrokes were fueled by real blood, powered by real pain. The canvas itself was thin and flimsy and had begun to flap in the wind and would soon be turned loose to dwell among the Otherworldly greats in the domain of stars and other flares in grand unending orchestration. The bloodied Man on the crossbeams would lead an ensemble of musicians whose every composition was vast, unimaginable in scope…whose sonatas were agile, her concertos written and performed in that all-powerful gesture of munificence and forgiveness.
Man’s activities in Jerusalem and the world at large would have been affected because of this one inglorious murder. Everything that man did and how he lived…at least for the moment would indeed be affected. Man, at the time, would have no way of knowing this. Active wars could have stopped; trading could have slowed considerably, if it hadn’t stopped altogether. Despair and sadness, the frolicsome nature of Rome could have fallen into misery. Sinful predestinations slowed to crawl. Rabid, noisy condemnations took a back seat to a mild-mannered recitation of benediction. No one would know with any certainty what had happened and what was happening…the origins of it.
The world and her psyche were under a rewrite from the second that terrible death occurred on the hill. A greater shift would come from those with psychological wherewithal and steadiness to feel these shifts…because they will be experiencing these oddities in their interpersonal relationships with the world they lived in. The three men; Caiaphas, Herod, and Annas, would be seated with dismal reflections wondering how unenthusiastic the world around them had turned. They would be too dumb to reflect on the conspiratorial parts they each played in writing the text of the slaying to enrich themselves and to stay in power until they themselves were dead. Their scheme was absolute and finessed by the kind of greed that eventually led them to commit a planned decapitation, and then assassination. It caused the shift in the realities as they knew it.
The first day of this unpacking following the death and entombment of the man they had killed was the unheard-of tranquility about a city that traveled faster than a strand of light would travel. Jerusalem’s character was that of a mean hound dog; it barked loud, and it had a ferocious bite. And now, that personality that defined her and had brought merchants to her shores from the world over could be adopting a mellowed stance to replace that belligerence. A change was coming, and the brokers of hate and suppression did not want that change. They loved it that they were able to rule with heavy-handedness and fear, all wrapped under the guise of devotion to faith. They wore elaborate and colorful mantles to hide who they were. It was the uncanny aspects of her new, one-day dispensation running loose and threatening to define the city from there on that scared these power brokers. The many thousands of Jewish citizens suckered by the elders and the Sanhedrin were seated uncomfortably in their homes wondering what they had done.
The small stipend each had gotten to propagate those falsehoods had been spent inside of the first twenty-four hours the man they helped in torturing had died. What would be wracking their minds and sending them into death spiral modes would be that they had done these things to keep the corrupt ruling class in power…the same power the masses had wanted taken away from those they had deemed corrupt. They would all survive their roles in the scheme because the One they railroaded had asked that they be forgiven. Therefore, a measure of peace would find these hardened, undeserving souls too. But a great many Jews whose lives were touched by a Rabbi of God, whose death had caused rifts in the earth’s core, would be wondering why the meek Rabbi was killed. These groups would use that as the wedge between those believed that the Man is God and those who believed otherwise. One thousand births could have happened in Jerusalem alone since the death of this Merchant of God.
By the second day after His death, Galilee, Judea, Samaria, Decapolis, and Perea, were not the same. Rain had been falling and had filled her valleys with brown water.
I left my house in Jerusalem with my mother and grandmother. We had with us a jar of ointment. We were on our way to anoint the Body of Yeshua. Just as we stepped outside, the deluge began to subside. We were three miles from the gravesite, ambling with the determination of a trio of wounded she-lions. For the first time in the past twenty-one years, my life, these last two days, that is, was at its lowest ebb…as it was distressingly harrowing. I hadn’t eaten in those two days, and neither have I stopped crying. When we embarked on this trip to anoint His Body, I was counting on the residual determination, and the support of my mother and grandmother would ferry me to the gravesite. To walk around carrying searing images of Yeshua and His exceedingly supernatural attributes, which I had sat ringside for three decades, a mind and body gravely bust-up, and weakened by unequivocal, naked emotions, I’d consider myself lucky if I ever made it to His Tomb. I was that weak, that much scrubbed and gutted out from within. Losing a friend like that was tantamount to losing one’s life. Right now, my life without Yeshua’s physical presence was not worth staying alive another day. In truth, besides my parents, He was all I knew. I was craving Him, madly. You would have to have been in my life, walked with Him for several years, slept by His side, to understand my state of mind.
Biko! I screamed.
My mother and grandmother held me against their bodies…saying nothing. I was a wreck and they knew it. The blistering images of Yeshua, the unfathomable, rip-roaring Truths about His Divinity were the unquenchable fire burning inside me that kept me rational. As far as ambling goes, this trip to His Tomb was marked with rainclouds-filled-sky and thunder-roaring kind of solemnity. My mother and grandmother were themselves, playing out in their minds, past disarming incidents of before-their-eyes-healings Yeshua had performed; they were shedding tears, copiously, but were strong enough to remain standing, and to walk steadily on their own, while they held me up, well enough, to walk with them.
THE RESSURECTION
Jerusalem was asleep. Her people were asleep. But the Heavens above the city was in a boil. One-thousand strong Angels, clad in immaculate white linen, surrounded the gravesite. The Angels of God were about to dance…if it were anything, it would be for steadfastness and doggedness…that Yeshua won the ultimate fight between God and the forces of evil. The wings of these Angels were in blue flames. The Rocks strewn about the area were alight, including the one covering the Tomb of the Anointed One. Atop the Rock that was the grave, a purple fire was blazing forth, towering into the night sky as a raging inferno. The panorama was breathtaking in colorful, dream-like shadings of lights. Way up in the night sky, a musical pageantry was borne, and the Angels in this scheme were clad in flaming blue, towing a tapestry of music makers in this gorgeous chant. These Angels, the Musicians, landed inside the purple fire and chanted away. And then, the Rock covering the grave rolled off. Inside the Tomb, a solid White Flame was billowing, and the Image of THE Christ (Yeshua) was seen rising from the position of death. The scene outside the grave erupted in the most hypnotic chant to herald His Resurrection. The Risen Christ walked out of the Tomb and the scene died a sudden death. Everything vanished like a plume of smoke in the wind, including the Risen One.
HAPPY EASTER!
Mary of Magdala
♦ Don Okolo, Professor and filmmaker, is on the Editorial Board of the West African Pilot News. He is the author of many books.
