The Insurrectionist

Now it was the governor’s custom at the festival to release a prisoner

chosen by the crowd.[1]  

Lawyer

Quick. Brothers. Be brave. Hear me!

Our time flickers as a flame, and soon it may fade. So we must be brief and bold. The choice has been handed to us. The two men are known to us all. Let us consider them both fairly, one after the other. One is a Teacher—wise, virtuous, innocent as a spotless little lamb. The other, to speak plainly, is a Rebel—violent, lethal, silent as a fox. Which do we save?

Some false feeling of conscience may say the Teacher. His goodness doesn’t deserve death, I admit that from the beginning. But we must not be rash. We must consider the bigger picture, the harm our actions can cause. That’s our responsibility; we can’t just do what we like, like impetuous little children.

Consider the Rebel—they say he killed thirty men or more. Imagine the possibilities then, with thirty others like him, we could wipe out 900 at least. The calculation is simple fact, not faith. If we multiply his followers, they would multiply their victims exponentially. You must realize what this means.

We’ve won freedom through arms before. We may yet again. We may still drive the Empire into the sea, rid the sacred land of their cursed presence. Realism is our refuge now. This is the way—our only way—to find freedom, to claim justice, to cleanse the land and possess it perfectly! Don’t you see the Providence at work? Take it as a miracle, a divine deliverance—an extra victim handed to us at precisely the right moment to redeem the Rebel.

Crowd

                                                                [hushed, fearful]

Not so loud. The Governor will hear. We will surely suffer because of this. We can have no king but Caesar.

Lawyer

Peace. Peace. You will not surely suffer because of this. The Empire needs rebels. It relies on them—to justify its own power. And besides, he would never have given us this choice if he didn’t want us to make it for him, one way or the other. It’s up to us.

Crowd

Your reasoning confuses us. We are not wise. We are not politicians or prophets or lawyers. How can we decide? How can we decide a man’s death and life?

Lawyer

Listen a little longer then, and I will answer, with the wisdom I’ve been given. Some accuse the Rebel, claiming he’s cold, immoral, murderous, heartless even. After all, you have heard it said: “You shall not kill.”

But I say to you: If you fail to kill to protect the lives of others, you will be guilty of murder. Truly, you must kill—to be innocent of murder. The more the Rebel kills the oppressor, the more innocent lives will be saved in the end.

And as it is written, he who saves one life, it’s as if he saved the world entire.

Crowd

     [murmuring, vocal disquiet]

So murder becomes salvation? That’s not the normal definition. Even we know that. But we know the Teacher saved lives—literally.

He’s still jabbering. He said he would be brief. We still must prepare for the festival. We still have to decide.

Lawyer

What else do you have to hear? The Teacher is exceptional. No one denies that. If everyone could be like him, the world would be a better place, Edenic and serene. There is no argument there. Love your enemy, he says. Forgive—seventy times seven times. Make your enemies your friends, until no enemies remain. Or so the logic goes, a dream of peace on earth.

But that is a false teaching. That is an impossible world. We must know by now—humanity doesn’t work that way. His teaching is dangerous, and alien, he doesn’t fit our world. But we must live here—in reality—in the only possible world.

The Teacher doesn’t belong. He is the real rebel, while the Rebel, it is the Rebel we must follow. Only then will we have freedom. Only he can save us. The Teacher has accomplished all he can. He doesn’t need saving, and perhaps he doesn’t want it. Who then do we save? The Rebel. The Rebel should always be redeemed.

Crowd

But we had thought . . . we had hoped . . . the Teacher would be the Promised one.

The Chosen one.

He saved others. And we let him die? We should be grateful.

Lawyer

No! Don’t you see it yet? He is only Chosen if we choose him. If we don’t choose him, he can’t be the Chosen one.

Crowd

That seems true. It must be true. Yet . . . let’s not decide. We could be wrong. We can cast lots instead.

Lawyer

    [aside]

Cowards.

[to the Crowd]

That is a worthy idea. But we can’t leave it to chance. I won’t leave it to chance. We must choose the Rebel now, renounce the Teacher’s teaching.

The Teacher trusts in God; let God deliver him, if he desires him. But if he is forsaken, then we must forsake him too.

Listen carefully now. Scattered among you, armed and ready, trained for this moment, stand deadly sicarii. Half a dozen or more, waiting for my signal. If you choose incorrectly, if you don’t choose the Rebel, I promise I will let them loose, and there will be more than one scapegoat today. Do you hear now? Is that clear enough for you?

Crowd

So that’s the argument! Violence! We see it now. Now we see your true colors. At last, you’re done talking!

Quiet. Don’t provoke him. We must save ourselves. We must endure.

Yes, yes, we’ve made our choice. . . .

We choose the Rebel.

Let them kill the Teacher.

Lawyer

Quick. Go. Tell the Governor. Call the Rebel.

Crowd

See how he smiles. So pleased with himself. We will see if the rebellion lasts, if it is not crushed with blood-spilling violence, and him with it.

Look. Look. The Rebel comes. His face bears his disbelief, how he’s delivered from death. Now he smiles. He embraces the Lawyer. They whisper.

But listen. How the faithful women begin to weep and mourn, broken-hearted.

Rebel

[to the Lawyer]

Well done. Faithful friend. So strange . . . how I’m saved from death.

Lawyer

Yes, fate or chance favors us. Or God. But let us leave the sacred city, await a better time—more auspicious.

Rebel

So be it. Let us go from here. I will not witness the hell that happens next.

Lawyer

God forbid.

Crowd

Let us go and see what happens next. Praise God, we’ve saved ourselves.

But we may yet mourn, lament our loss this strange and holy day.

[1] Matthew 27:15.

Author’s Note: 

For any readers who may be unfamiliar with key context, allusions, or source material supporting the story, a few points may prove useful. First, in ancient Greek drama, the chorus often would function as an expression of societal conscience, to some extent. The crowd, here, is not unlike the ancient Greek chorus. Second, while the lawyer may appeal to realism or facts at various times, some of his language actually riffs off of, or borrows from, the devil’s lines in the Bible (along with others’). Suffice it to say, there may be some irony or satire at work here, though there’s more to it than just that. Arguably, it’s also ironic that some of the same methods and mentality of the lawyer character—who renounces the central figure of Christianity and helps engineer his crucifixion in this narrative—have apparently been adopted by individuals who actually claim adherence to Christianity, at least as evidenced by recent events and actions in Washington, DC on January 6th of this year, for example. But, unfortunately, hypocrisy is nothing novel.