16 For dogs are all around me;
a company of evildoers encircles me.
My hands and feet have shriveled;
17 I can count all my bones.
They stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my clothes among themselves,
and for my clothing they cast lots.
Darkness covered the whole land from noon until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice. The temple curtain was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the centurion underneath, seeing how Jesus died, confessed, “This man was God’s Son.”
John saw the soldiers gambling under the foot of the cross and remembered these verses from the psalm. Like Judas, and the beatings, and the cross, it had to be this way. The scriptures said it would.
In Lloyd Douglass’ The Robe, we meet the soldiers who gambled under the cross. The leaders of the soldiers have to get drunk in order to perform their duties because they knew how awful it would be, a task no sober person could complete.
We are pretty well practiced at picturing the disciples, Jesus’ mother, and Mary Magdalene, and witnessing the cross from their perspective. But the rest are mere caricatures—the Pharisees, the soldiers, the Jews. Douglass personalizes the matter. We meet the Tribune wins Jesus’ robe, the seamless garment, a treasure of Galilean homespun.
The robe haunts him and his slave, and drives them to learn more about this anonymous Jew whom they had crucified, who went to death so willingly, with such courage and compassion.
The novel does make me wonder what happened to the soldier who won Jesus’ robe. Where did he keep it? What did he do with it? How did it affect him? I wonder if it was the same robe the woman with the bleeding problem had touched and been healed. Did it have stains from food spilled during any one of Jesus’ meals with sinners and tax collectors? I wonder what it would have been like to hold that robe in your hands. Jesus’ robe was won by dice. It hadn’t been handed on like Elijah’s. But did it still have power?
Jesus sees the soldiers under his cross. How does he see them? How does he see the people who stare and gloat? What do Jesus’ eyes say to you?
I wonder what happened to that centurion. And the rest of the crowd.
On Good Friday, we’re left in wonder.
A Pilgrim's Way 