Barabbas Page #6

Gladiator Barabbas, you're becoming

quite a legend among us, I hear.

For your remarkable persistence in life...

...we have a traditional answer

to this public acclaim.

We make you a free man.

We give you your liberty.

Here is the symbol of your freedom.

I brought him to you.

This is where he would have wanted

to be buried.

Our brother Sahak.

So you had to carry

your dead conscience here.

Did he have to die

before you cared about him?

Are you more concerned with his body

than his life?

You were willing to let him

go to his death alone.

Why should you help him

now he doesn't need you?

How could I have helped him

by being killed?

He made his own death.

What good has it done?

I had to go on living, he said.

-There was something I still had to do.

-Barabbas, why should you believe it?

When the light shone,

you wouldn't accept it.

When the dark came, you denied it.

When the spirit of God beckoned,

you refused it.

When Sahak says

your life is kept for some purpose...

...why should you believe it?

To make a gag for your conscience,

is that it?

You believe it because it suits you.

Or maybe if Sahak stood before you now

then you would say you believed.

You would repent and love God.

It would be easy.

But what strength

would your belief have then?

What would it matter?

Jesus of Nazareth was killed instead of me.

There must have been a reason. Why me?

Why did he choose me?

Where have you gone?

You!

Where are you?

Wait for me.

Wait!

You wait!

For God's sake, where are you?

Show me the way! I'm lost!

Which way shall I go?

-What's happening?

-Rome is burning.

Can't you see? Rome is burning.

-What happened to make the fire?

-The Christians tried to burn down Rome.

-Move! Move that case. Come on.

-Christians?

-The Christians are burning Rome!

-It's the Christians!

Fire!

They're burning away the old world.

The new kingdom is coming.

God.

You won't find me failing this time.

What are you doing, madman?

Fire of God destroying the old world.

The hour has come when all is to perish.

-Are you a Christian?

-Yes, I am.

And I'm ready for Him!

The whole world will soon be ablaze.

Do you hear that?

We're burning the way.

We're ready for his coming.

-Take him away.

-The Master!

-The Master's coming to build a new world.

-Away!

Let me go!

I must make ready for his coming!

Let me go!

Here! Get yourself out of this one.

Here's one of your kind who was caught

in the act, setting light to a storehouse.

He admits he's a Christian,

burning the city to start a new kingdom.

The only honest man among you.

Who are you?

We've never seen you before.

Is it true?

Were you setting fire to a storehouse?

Yes.

-We've never seen you before.

-Who are you?

My name is Barabbas.

-Barabbas, the robber.

-Barabbas, the acquitted.

This burning city is no work of ours.

This isn't how the new kingdom

is going to be made.

You were wrong.

Who are you to tell me I'm wrong?

Many years ago we spoke together.

You remember?

No.

You asked me why I was making a net

so far from the sea.

Jerusalem.

The street of the potters.

You were mistaken of us then

as you are again now.

We didn't set fire to the city.

You've done the work of the wild beast,

the Emperor.

-Are you a lunatic?

-It was his fire, you fool, not God's.

Why can't God make himself plain?

What's become of all the fine hopes?

The trumpets, the angels?

All the promises?

Every time I've seen it end up the same

way, with torments and dead bodies...

...with no good come of it.

All for nothing.

Do you think they persecute us

to destroy nothing?

Or do you think that

what has battered on your soul...

...for twenty years has been nothing?

It wasn't for nothing that Christ died.

Mankind isn't nothing.

In his eyes,

each individual man is the whole world.

He loves each man

as though there were no other.

I was the opposite of everything he taught,

wasn't l?

Why did he let himself be killed

instead of me?

Because being farthest from him,

you were the nearest.

-I'm no nearer than I was before.

-Nor any farther away.

The truth of the matter is,

he's never moved from your side.

I can tell you this.

There has been a wrestling in your spirit,

back and forth in your life...

...which in itself is knowledge of God.

By the conflict you have known him.

I can tell you as well, that so it will be

with the coming of the kingdom.

That wrestling back and forth

and the labouring of the world spirit...

...like a woman in childbirth.

We are only the beginning.

We won't see the time

when the Earth is full of the kingdom.

And yet, even now, even here...

...we are at the end ourselves.

The kingdom is within us.

There is nothing more to fear.

Upon us, the years will be built.

Many years, many martyrdoms.

The ground of men is very stubborn

to mature.

But men will look back to us in our day

and will wonder and remember our hope.

Itis the end of the day.

We shall trust ourselves to a little pain...

...and sleep.

Saying to the world:

"God's speed."

What hour is it?

Night or day?

The sixth hour goes...

...when darkness....

Darkness....

I give myself up...

...into your keeping.

It is...

...Barabbas.

Rate this script:3.3 / 3 votes