The Executioner's Epiphany--March 29, 2024

The Executioner's Epiphany--March 29, 2024

"Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, 'Truly this man was God's Son!'" [Mark 15:37-39]

If you were looking for God, the cross is the last place most people would point you.

And yet, to hear the gospel tell it, if you want to meet God, the cross is exactly the place to find God.

For church folks who are used to decorating our worship spaces, car bumpers, and jewelry with crosses, I'm not sure we really get just how outrageous an idea that really is.  But today is a day to let the sheer scandal sink in for us.  As Mark tells the story, the centurion standing at the foot of the cross--the pagan army officer of the enemy empire's occupying force, who has just overseen the torture and execution of the man nailed to that very cross--finally realizes he has been in the very presence of God's own Son by watching the way Jesus dies.  Not from hearing Jesus' wise teachings.  Not from hearing his shrewd and clever comebacks in debates with his intellectual opponents.  Not from watching a miracle or eating some multiplied loaves.  Not from seeing Jesus command fire down from heaven or wield lightning bolts to smite his executioners (which, of course, Jesus never does).  But it's from seeing this wretched, tortured human being, humiliated and mocked by the Political Powers of the Day with the smiling approval of the Guardians of Respectable Religion, and the way he draws his last breath, that this Roman soldier finally sees that he has been in the very presence of God.

Plenty of folks might talk about having a sense of God standing in the majesty of the Grand Canyon, or in the stillness of an old pine forest.  Plenty of people might feel like God was in the feeling of inner peace they get when they watch a sunrise... or in the ominous dread of seeing a hurricane's destruction or the power of an earthquake.  Still others will say they know God's presence when they get the cure they were waiting for, or the promotion they'd been hoping for at work, or even a good parking space.  But over against all those stories, Mark the Gospel writer says that we see God most clearly, not in power, wealth, or splendor, but in the Crucified One.  God chooses to be revealed, not in what the world calls "success" or "strength" or "winning," but in what the world names "failure," "weakness," and "defeat."  And of all people, the one who gets it is the officer on execution duty for the conquering empire of Rome.

Maybe it's finally in this moment that he's disillusioned from all the bluster and propaganda that came out of Rome.  Maybe he finally realizes that Caesar, for all his supposed power and might, can't bring himself to sacrifice his own life for the good of others.  Maybe he sees at last that it takes greater strength in Jesus' choice not to come down from the cross and save himself, but to bear all the worst of human hatred and vitriol and to smother it all like a fire with his own body.  Maybe the centurion doesn't have any words at all to explain why he knows it, but he just knows:  this was God's Son.

Once you start to see the world through the centurion's eyes, it rearranges everything we thought we knew about God.  We are so used to defining God as the biggest thing around, the most powerful being in the universe, or the ruler who governs the cosmos... and here, the executioner's epiphany says that God is best understood as the One whose love will bear death, violence, hatred, and cruelty, and exhaust them all.  Yes to all the rest, but only insofar as we see those through the clarifying lens of God on a cross.

And all of a sudden, the rest of the story makes a whole new sense.  Jesus doesn't call down an army of angels to fight back against Pilate, nor does he prod his followers to launch a violent insurrection to get his way, not because he hadn't thought of these possibilities, but because these are not in character with the way of God.  Jesus doesn't scorch his enemies with firebolts or avenge his own death by killing the centurion who held the hammer, not because he can't, but because God's way is to bear our hatred with unconquerable love.  The cross doesn't hide God behind the dark clouds that hover over Golgotha: the cross reveals that God is the One with nail-scarred hands and a crown of thorns, and that this is who God has always been all along.

I'm reminded of the counter-intuitive wisdom of Frederick Buechner, who points out how strange--and yet, in a way, how utterly perfect it is--that a means of execution is the central symbol of our faith, especially compared to the more pleasant symobls associated with other religions:  "A six-pointed star, a crescent moon, a lotus--the symbols of other religions suggest beauty and light. The symbol of Christianity is an instrument of death. It suggests, at the very least, hope."  But that does require learning a new way of seeing the world, as well as the God who loves that world.  It requires learning to see, as the centurion does, that the one on the cross is none other than the presence of God in a human life.  Only by that vision can we see God clearly as the One who would rather die for his enemies than kill them.  Only by that kind of vision can we dare to call this Friday "Good."  

But once we do, everything is different.

So hear the story again today.  Let your mind, heart, and vision borrow the perspective of the centurion at the cross.  And see the presence of God in the godforsaken one.  See the lengths to which Love has gone for us all.

Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.