Centurion's Thoughts (Good Friday)
MEDITATION
What was it like to be there that week? It was a holiday. The city swelled from 30,000 to nearly 150,000. It was a pilgrimage and exciting. The faithful traveled to Jerusalem to eat unleavened bread for seven days, sacrifice a lamb, and enjoy the Passover meal. However, out of their religious habit came opportunists. The pilgrims had to change their money to local currency at exorbitant rates.
Racketeers were milking the desperate, shifting the focus from worship to their financial pockets, adding another barrier to people connecting with their Creator.
In that context, the twelve disciples entered Jerusalem. The city's visitors blessed Jesus and gave him a royal welcome. The religious leaders were jealous and furious. They didn’t appreciate this display of pomp and circumstance.
They feared Rome would take this as a threat and remove them from power. A conflict boiled over. The leaders sought to assassinate Jesus’s character. They attempted to trap him with his words, yet each time, it backfired. Jesus turned the tables on his opponents, literally and figuratively. They went on the defensive and left in silence. They had to resort to darker measures.
Meanwhile, Jesus went to a private dinner and had his Passover. During that supper, he taught, prayed, and predicted his demise. His friends didn’t get it or believe it. Who in the inner circle would ever do such a thing? Why would one do that? Well, one would and did for a simple reason: money. The sellout left the party with a mission, a diabolical one.
Meanwhile, Jesus took the other eleven on a familiar hike up to an olive grove overlooking Jerusalem. It was the garden of Gethsemane. The men were exhausted. They had been traveling, listening, and eating with one another for hours, or was it years? They were comfortable. They started to pray. Their eyes got heavy. Their bodies must have felt like lead. Could they relax for a moment? What an excellent way to rest in prayer with your closest friends and mentor. Jesus retreated with three: Peter, James, and John. He asked them to stay awake and pray.
He was not doing well. He suffered. Something was tormenting him. He needed to talk to God, his Heavenly Father. So he prayed. He asked God to take his cup of suffering. He knew what was going to happen. Yet, his friends grew tired. They slept.
He woke them, asking for their help again. They heard his pleas and prayers. He assented to a metaphorical cup and his Father’s will. But all went silent one more time. His friends awoke, but this time not for more petitions and intercessions but to witness a confiscation. A light approached, but not from the sky but from the ground. Torches were climbing up the trail. Who approached? What was happening?
Judas led the way. He came to Jesus, greeting him with a kiss. He had switched sides. The friend had become a foe. Jesus confronted the double-crosser. Guards moved to take Jesus into custody. Peter grabbed a short sword and attacked, detaching an ear from the head. Jesus rebuked this display of violence and miraculously restored the ear. He allowed the captors to take him while his companions abandoned him.
Down the hill and up to the court, detained, he was insulted, spat on, and beaten. Initially, no witnesses could be found to establish guilt. Eventually, two came forward and said Jesus planned to destroy the temple. The High Priest, seeking to hear Jesus’s side, said:
“Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment?” They answered, “He deserves death.” Then they spit in his face and struck him. And some slapped him, saying, “Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who is it that struck you?” (Matthew 26:62–68, ESV)
To them, Jesus’s words smacked of blasphemy. How dare he claim to be the Son of Man, the Christ, the Messiah? Such a person was the one that Daniel had predicted hundreds of years before. Who would reign forever and sit at the right hand of God? Jesus was surely worthy of death unless he was telling the truth. The leaders did not believe it. They wanted him dead. Yet they couldn’t kill him. Only Rome had that power. So to Rome, they went.
Dawn. The Jewish leaders went next door to the Governor. The case was made. He wanted to hear Jesus’s defense. What did he have to say for himself? For the most part, nothing. Pilate saw what was occurring. This was a religious debate. Upon discovery that Jesus was Galilean, he passed the responsibility to King Herod. Herod interrogated Jesus but didn’t get what he wanted, so he returned him. Pilate gave Jesus severe torture, hoping that would placate this rabble. Yet, that didn’t pacify their blood lust. Pilate had another idea. He would provide people with an either-or choice that would lead to dismissal. The crowd could decide: would they want a cold-blooded killer or a miracle worker and teacher pardoned? The coaxed mob gave freedom to Barabbas, not Jesus. Pilate asked what they wanted him to do with Jesus. They responded, “Let him be crucified.”
At this point, literally, Pilate washed his hands of the ordeal. He wanted this problem off his plate. He assigned the task of punishment to his guards. A centurion took over.
Centurions led a hundred soldiers seeking a better life, pay, and adventure; they dealt with the harsher side of humanity, handling cases of insurrection, murder, and theft. They were the clean-up crew when things went haywire. Some were likely kind and just, while others possessed a sick joy in beating people to death. And here, the assignment was to kill three men on crosses.
The cross worked not by bleeding out but by asphyxiation. The perpetrators were nailed or tied to an X, T, or cross off the ground. The sufferer would have to push down on their hands and feet to garner a breath. Eventually, they would lose their strength and not be able to breathe. If they didn’t perspire, the guards would come and break their legs and speed up the process. That was the journey for Jesus and those on his right and left.
The guards took railroad-like spikes and drove them through his wrists and feet. And their bodies were hoisted up into place on the crosses. Hours passed. As the centurion looked on, things turned strange. Jesus was not confessing his guilt, nor was he spewing out hatred or returning insults for insults. He spoke with intentionality, other-centeredness, and clarity. He was caring for his young follower, John, and his mother. He was caring for a thief next to him. He was caring for those who crucified him, asking for their forgiveness. Who does that? Who could do that?
The sky went black, ebony. There was an earthquake. At his final breath, the thick curtain that separated the Holy of Holies in the temple was torn from top to bottom. God was making a way for people to have access to him. Other rumors of strange things spread: rocks split, graves opened, and the dead came back to life.
The centurion was blown away. Why didn’t he do something if Jesus was truly a miracle worker? If Jesus was so evil, why did he not incite something? What was going on? One person wrote, based on eyewitness accounts, this,
It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!” And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things. (Luke 23:44–49, ESV)
Jesus was innocent. The centurion was right. The Bible tells us that he was tempted in every way, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). But that is not all that the centurion said. Mark records,
“And when the centurion, who stood facing him [Jesus], saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’” (Mark 15:39, ESV).
Jesus was the Son of Man as mentioned in Daniel and Son of God as mentioned in the Psalms.
He was fully God and fully man, one and the same.
He was born but always existed.
He was perfect yet human.
He was God in skin and bone.
He demonstrated supernatural power to
multiply food,
walk on water,
calm storms,
exorcise demons,
heal the sick,
and raise the dead.
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