Reliving The Passion #34

Mark 15:37–39a

And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

And when the centurion who stood facing him saw that he thus cried out and breathed his last—

“A loud cry.” In Greek the words are phone megale, which, transposed, begin to look familiar: a mega-phone.

A shout of triumph!

Under other circumstances, this centurion commands a hundred fighting men, not four at a quick execution. He ranks with sixty brother-centurions in a legion of six thousand troops. He stands nowhere near the top of that brotherhood, but he isn’t a grunt, he isn’t the boy at the bottom.

So who is this “King of the Jews”? And why does his crucifixion require such attention? The storm cleared the hill of all but some women; no one’s attacked; no one threatens to “save” the crucified. No one, friend or foe, has endured the last three hours of furious skies. Apparently, fear of darkness is stronger than hate for this man. Or love. So what’s the point? The centurion has stuck it out. But why a centurion, after all?

No complaints, of course. None registered, at least. This commander is aging. He’s waiting his pension. He does what’s wanted.

See to it, Centurion!

I’ll see to it, sir.

And so he has seen to it over the years. Forced marches down stone roads, keeping the troops both tight and stepping; fighting hand-to-hand in the provinces. Not wars, really. Nations don’t challenge Rome these days—but there were battles of immediate noise and blood and danger and intensity. He had heard men die. He had heard the thick, liquid gargle of a final cry in blood. They drowned in it. He had heard the best of them whimper when pain overwhelmed courage, and they broke. Or they cursed—not in hatred, just in explosive comment on the suffering. Thrashed and cursed. Said, “Kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me—” And he has answered more than a few with a word from his gladium. The sword can honor a dying man. A dying soldier. Not a criminal.

I’ll see to it, sir.

And so he has lingered through a truly terrifying storm, a blackness three hours long, here on a hill, exposed to the wind’s lash, protecting…what? Whom? Who is this Jesus? The rain runs his body in rivulets, beard and hair stuck to flesh, head bent backward, upward. The rim of his top teeth shows. Whereas his companions have begun shivering and crying in the cold, till now he has held his peace. One curses. One weeps. Common responses. The man in the middle flares his nostrils and groans.

Then, just in the last minutes, he breathed deeply, he swelled his chest and bellowed a hoarse word: “Eloi, Eloi—” something. Can’t translate. But this, finally, is what the centurion expects. Right about now, six hours into the torment, even the best begin to break. Okay, then: so this Jesus of Nazareth is no different from everyone else who—

What was that?

A loud shout! Phone megale! What? What? No, this is not at all what the centurion expects. It’s a cry that he has heard before, to be sure—but never in defeat and never, never in death, always when the soldier has won the battle or the king the war!

This is a cry of triumph!

The centurion whirls around to see Jesus: he sees eyes like fiery darts in the darkness; he sees a mouth thin and thin, as thin as the blade of a sword, grinning!

Victorious? King of the Jews—victorious over what? What do these flaming eyes announce?

Satan, thou art defeated in my defeat! Sin, dispossessed of a people! Death, look about thee; thou art not mighty and dreadful. Lo, I close my eyes and die—and death shall be no more.

Then, suddenly, he dies. The centurion’s jaw drops. He stares, but he’s seen it before; he knows the signs: Jesus is dead. Dead. No coma, no deeper sleep than another sleep. All at once the eyes see nothing, the mind thinks nothing, the heart has ceased to beat—

—but suddenly! That’s what rivets the centurion. It is as if this man chose to go fully conscious straight to the wall of death, and there to strike it with all his might and, in the striking, die. Aware of absolutely everything.

See to it, Centurion.

I’ll see to it all, sir.

No, not all. One thing astounds the centurion: how can a crucified criminal act so convincingly like the victor?

O Christ!

When you died, you broke the wall that divided us from God: you struck it, you cracked it, you tore it apart—you made a door of that which had been death before.

And the sign was that “the veil of the temple was rent in twain, from the top to the bottom,” and the mercy seat was made open to my approach.

Amen.