33 A.D.  “In addition to all the hullaballoo of those Jews and their Passover, we had the additional tension of a capital punishment.  I’m not sure why the chief priests didn’t like him, he seemed like an okay guy to me.  All the people from up north liked him, better than they like the Pharisees for sure.  I thought it was excessive to scourge and crucify him but we were just following orders.   I justified it by saying to myself…”just another Jew, everybody dies, it’s just a question of where and when.” I felt relieved with that thought until Sunday morning.  I wasn’t assigned to the crucifixion crew so I spent some time in the bars, slept and waited for my next assignment.  On Saturday, their “Sabbath,” Pilate assigned me to guard the grave of the dead Nazarene.  I thought, “Am I being punished or trusted?”  “Why guard the grave of a dead man?”  Well, it turns out that the chief priests heard the dead guy say he would rise from the dead on the third day.  They were afraid his followers would steal his body and make up stories about him to rally people to their cause.  We only had to stay put through Sunday and then our job was done.  Saturday passed without incident.  Whatever else I don’t like about the Jewish religion, I like Sabbath!  Easy peasey as they say.  The night passed by quickly but then at first light the ground shook and a soldier like I have never seen came down from the sky.  That 800 pound stone was tossed to the side and the being from the sky sat on the stone!  Needless to say me and the boys fell over like school kids.  My body remained motionless but suddenly my mind was racing.  There had been darkness on Friday from noon to 3.  There was an earthquake when he spoke his last words.  The Nazarene even died before his legs were broken.  Many of the rumors I heard about him started coming back to my mind.  People said he had raised a dead guy from Bethany back to life.  One of the guys who arrested him on Thursday night had his ear chopped off AND put back on.  Who does that!?  I laid there playing dead and when the light soldiers went into the tomb, we all bolted.  We were no match for those guys who looked as bright as lightening.  Two of us were so overcome we couldn’t do anything but hide.  The other two went to the chief priests to tell them what happened.  The priests gave them money to say that his followers had stolen his body.  What a scam.  There’s no way.  There’s no dead body.  I was there and I’m telling you, though I am not sure what it all means, HE IS RISEN AS HE SAID.”