“Observations from a neutral party”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Saturday, September 9, 2023
Mark 15:33-39 (Forward, p. 42) CEV p. 1051
The concluding comment from the Roman centurion is most interesting—and most informative. He was clearly an independent, non-aligned party to the proceedings. He was neither a partisan of the pro-Jesus faction nor a partisan of the pro-Sanhedrin party. He was simply there ‘to do his job’, and so his observations and conclusions are most telling. When he saw how Jesus died, he said, “This man really was the Son of God!”
So, well we might ask, just what did he see that day that brought him to that conclusion? The centurion, brought up both with the Roman soldier’s appreciation of bravery and stoic endurance and the Middle Eastern male valuing of those same characteristics, would have certainly taken note of Jesus’ demeanor on the Cross. Here, he would have thought, is ‘a real man.’
However, this centurion saw something else in Jesus: he saw divinity. What, then, would have let him to that conclusion? Mark’s rendering of the account tells us precious little, only Jesus’ non-retaliation to His mockers, Jesus’ cry of dereliction from the Cross and the rending of the veil in the Temple—which the centurion would not have seen or been privy to, but the other gospel writings do give us some suggestions:
-His bestowing of forgiveness to His persecutors;
-His loving care for His mother, even at such a time;
-His compassion and care for the condemned man on a cross beside
Him;
-His final surrender, a surrender to the care of God;
Surely, the centurion would have seen lots of other reactions from condemned men being crucified: crying out in pain, almost for certain; cursing and swearing, probably, certainly nothing of the calm assurance that Jesus manifested, and certainly none of the care and compassion that Jesus exhibited even when He was in such dire straits Himself. All of these would surely have singled out Jesus as someone significantly different from ‘all the rest.’ He had never seen such a person as this!
And, indeed, he was mostly certainly correct in his estimation of Jesus, a man who willingly surrendered His divine prerogatives and attributes and assumed the full identity of a human being, along with all its frailties and limitations. And did this solely out of His incredible love for us. Wow.
Forward notes: “Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last” (v. 37).
“The writer of Mark could have used the Greek verb for ‘he died.’ Instead, the author draws attention to Jesus’s final exhale with a word that means ‘he expired’.
“For me, this sharp zoom on Jesus’s last breath is like listening to a musician play the final note of a song. All the breaths that filled his life up to that moment somehow fill this breath too. How alive his body was and how that life looked, sounded, and moved around in the world throughout the gospel story somehow flood his body as life leaves the body. The injustice of his death also punctuates this last breath, a breath that should not have been cut off from a body that should not have been killed. All the breaths that could have been somehow course through his exhaling body.
“As gut-wrenching as this scene is, attending to Jesus taking his last breath turns me toward the marvelousness of his irreplaceable embodied human life. His fierce but fragile body was unlike any other human body that has breathed and walked this earth. And he breathed and walked it with us.”
Moving Forward: “Pay attention to your breath during your prayer time.”
A concluding note: I beg to differ with today’s author on one point: “His fierce but fragile body was unlike any other human body that has breathed and walked this earth.” His body was exactly like ours, in every single aspect and part of it. That’s what the Incarnation was all about. As one famous theologian said, “What He did not ‘assume’, He could not redeem.’ Yes, He was unique in terms of His character, His personality, and His obedience to God the Father, but He was like us in every other way. End of story.