Perhaps only one person was with Jesus through the last fifteen or sixteen hours of his life. It was not his mother, Mary, nor was it one of his disciples. The one person who accompanied Jesus through the closing hours of his life was someone who didn’t choose to be there. He was there on assignment. There because it was his duty to be there. He was a Roman soldier, a centurion.
We know very little about the man who would accompany Jesus the last hours of life. We do not know his name, age, whether he had a family or not. We very little, but there are still things we can extrapolate from his title.
Centurions were the backbone of the Roman army. Given charge of approximately 100 men, it was their duty to keep the peace in their assigned region. A centurion had to be able to lead and think quickly. This was in an age long before advanced communication systems giving commanders the ability to communicate to the battlefield. When a centurion was dispatched he had to be trusted to carry out his assignment and make decisions on his own. It could be weeks before his commanders would know if he carried out his duty
The centurion had battle experience. He was a man acquainted with death. He had seen men die on the battlefield. Taken the life of many himself. He had witnessed many men die by execution. Death was not a novelty for him. That would have long ago worn off. Now death was a duty to be carried out.
I believe we can also extrapolate even further about this man by virtue of the location of his assignment. Jerusalem was a tough city to lead in. It was a complicated city with a complicated relationship between its religious communities and the government. Not much has changed today. It was a city that seemed to always be on the verge of an uprising. It would take special skill to lead an occupying army in such a place.
Why do I say all this about this man? To help us see that he was not a man prone to rash judgements. He was a man of character and experience. He was a man who did his work and did his duty many times.
On this day, it was his duty that leads him to take a detachment of soldiers to accompany Jesus the final hours of his life. This was no ordinary prisoner, this was a man who really had no reason to be a prisoner at all. But it was not his duty to question he had a job to do. He would take him to the religious leaders, the house of Caiaphas, the high priest. Witness the spectacle of witnesses being paraded by as they attempted to find a charge worthy of death. He would take Jesus to Pilate then to Herod and then back to Pilate again. The whole time witnessing the strange scenes of questioning and trial.
There at the cross, posting a guard, he would witness one man dying as so many before had. Cursing everyone and everything around him. He would see another who would begin as expected but then somewhere in the day something would change for this man. He would hear the extraordinary conversation between Jesus and this other man. “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
Then there was the man Jesus himself. No one had ever died like this before. In response to the taunting of the crowds, he would pray for forgiveness. When Jesus would say “forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” would there be an unease in the centurion’s own soul? Could Jesus be meaning him as well? But what reason could he need forgiveness? He had done nothing wrong, he had only done his duty. No man had ever died like this before.
Then the moment of death would come. In a loud voice, Jesus would cry out and then lay back his head and die. Die as though one who commanded death. Die as one was just laying back his head to go to sleep. John records the words Jesus cried out, “It is finished.” No man had ever died like this before.
Witnessing all of this the centurion would exclaim, “Surely this man was the Son of God.” Matthew records that these words were spoken in fear by the centurion.
These were words of truth and yet incomplete words. This was a centurion, a soldier, a Roman official. He was no Jewish theologian or Christ follower. His testimony would not have meant the same had to come from the lips of the Peter, James or John. Certainly not what it would have meant if they had been spoken by the High Priest. It was an incomplete testimony.
But in a sense, all of this is beside the point. No two persons have every called Jesus the Son of God and have said it the same way or with the same meaning. Each of us comes to God by his or her own path. No one ever speaks the confession perfectly, from an objective point of view. Each of us speaks through the lens of our own experience and life. But it makes the confession no less real.
Paul says to us in Romans, “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
What does it mean to confess Jesus as Lord? None of us know fully what those words mean. None of us could fully comprehend what it means for our lives to make such a confession. It is an incomplete confession but it is no less real.
But one thing surely is true. If you come to the cross and in your soul hear the great shout of victory, “It is finished” you must respond to it. Whether fully understanding or incomplete we can all say “Truly this man was God’s Son.”
Stephen
Giving credit where it is due:
The concept for this series of blog posts and its accompanying sermon series draw from the masterful work, Seven Words to the Cross: A Lenten Study for Adults by J. Ellsworth Kalas.