Another short story from Stuart Thaman!
Give Us Barabbas!
A short work of religious fiction by Stuart Thaman
My church always went overboard during Lent. There was a running joke among most Lutherans that Lent was their favorite time of year. The forty-day period from Ash Wednesday to Easter was upheld as a sacred time when the church combined the most doom with the most gloom and each pew would compete for the record number of tears shed during service. A fine Lutheran tradition to say the least.
Most of the young people, myself included, attended Wednesday Lent services because all of the old folk cooked us free meals beforehand. Nothing like a little bribery to pad the attendance sheet. Assuming that my parents had been good Lutheran parents all throughout my infancy, I had attended twenty seven grueling years, over 100 Wednesday nights, of Lenten services.
I didn’t expect the twenty eighth year to be much different.
Wednesday night services rolled along with their usual familiarity. We all gathered in the undercroft before service to talk over bowls of free soup and slices of tasty homemade bread. For some of the real old-timers, Lent was a period of fasting. For everyone else, Lent meant getting a free meal and hanging out with friends before a dreary service. The low tones of dismal classics like Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted would get stuck in my head for hours after I left the sanctuary.
Needless to say, my attitude toward passion plays was even worse than my attitude toward attending church twice a week. Inner reflection and feeling ravaged by my life of sin never came easily to me. And for the record, I never really understood how so many people actually looked forward to that kind of thing.
Good Friday, the end of Lent and the saddest day of the church year, always concluded with a passion play. Always. The young kids would get dressed up in surprisingly accurate robes and sandals and act out the story of Jesus being condemned and crucified. Over the years, our passion play had gained a reputation for having the highest production value around. As it turned out, one of the old geezers in the congregation owned a theater production company back in his prime. Not only did he finance the entire play, he brought in professional makeup and effects studios to bring the play to life. It was a whole thing in the community. People came from all around just to see it.
I suppose the high expectations are what made everyone so complacent when the shit hit the fan. The kids were in the middle of the passion play, attempting to convince Pontius Pilate and Herod to send Jesus to crucifixion, when things took an unexpected turn. “Whom shall I set free?” a tall boy with dirty blonde hair asked the robed crowd of children.
As one, they lifted their fists in the air and chanted, “Barabbas! Give us Barabbas!” They had rehearsed for months and not a single voice was out of place. Then, inexplicably, Barabbas walked out of the sacristy and climbed atop the altar.
A few of the parents and grandparents gasped at first—probably at the sight of such dirty sandals marring the wooden altar, but they thought it was part of the passion play. We all did.
It took nearly half a minute for the collective audience to realize that this Barabbas wasn’t a child in Hollywood makeup. Pastor James slowly rose from his seat in the first pew and lifted a hand toward the man. When Barabbas spoke, everyone knew beyond a doubt that he was the Barabbas. The fucking Barabbas.
“Thank you,” Barabbas said loudly in Hebrew. With magic reminiscent of Pentecost, everyone in the church knew he was speaking Hebrew and yet could understand. Pastor James screamed and fell to his knees. A few others joined him. The rest of us sat in our rigid pews like deer in celestial headlights.
“I have come to herald the arrival of the Lord!” Barabbas shouted at the top of his lungs. Anyone screaming instantly stopped. The man’s voice carried so much authority that to speak at the same time as him would be to invite absolute disaster. But the power of his words had another effect as well. They were so loud I fell off the front of the pew to clutch my ears and hide. A few people grabbed their Bibles and whispered the Lord’s Prayer, but most of us just peered over the wooden seats and wondered what would happen next.
I learned in Sunday School that the rapture—the return of the dead and living Christians to heaven—would happen after the Time of Tribulation and the millennium of peace on Earth. I guess that our translation was a little off, because almost every member of the church vanished in the blink of an eye when Barabbas clapped his grime-crusted hands.
At once, all of the believers, presumably throughout the entire world, ascended. My jaw nearly hit the floor. I looked all around, but the only other person I saw was the grizzled Vietnam vet who played the organ and had an ongoing affair with one of the Spanish maids who cleaned the church.
“For now,” Barabbas continued in Hebrew that I somehow comprehended, “this world belongs to me.” His voice boomed and threatened to shatter the stained-glass windows to either side of the altar. He wore a soot-colored grin that made me sick to my stomach. Of all the things Barabbas could have said from atop the altar, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. What the hell did it even mean?
I didn’t get much time to contemplate. Sounds of chaos rising from the street outside stole my attention, and I knew beyond a doubt that the end of the world had begun.
Gulping down my fear, my eyes darted from pew to pew for anything I might be able to use as a weapon. The world would be in utter chaos, and I had no plans of living through the rapture just to die on day one of Tribulation. When the believers had been spirited away, their clothes, jewelry, even their glasses and contacts, were all left behind. There was a cop who sat a few rows behind me, and I could see his gun resting neatly on top of his clothes with his shiny badge and black leather belt. It looked like the cop’s wife must have had implants; two bloody, curved slices of silicone rested on top of her crumpled dress like a monument to human vanity.
I got down on my belly and shimmied under the pews until I reached the cop’s belt. I snatched it up, secured it around my waist, and made a run for the door. I could hear Barabbas maniacally laughing behind me, and his voice was overpowering. His cackles filled my mind and pushed out all other sounds until I could barely think.
