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The Son Of Man Came To Seek The Lost . . . Seeking Hardened Soldiers

            I recall listening to the passion history as a kid and waiting to hear at least one heroic statement of faith from one of Jesus’ followers.  There weren’t any.  You can scour all four gospel accounts – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – and you will find the Twelve grousing about the amount of money Mary of Bethany spent on perfuming Jesus’ feet or arguing about which of them is more important.  You can hear Peter claim, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you”(Mark 14:31).  Thomas asked, “Where are you going?”and Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father”(John 14:5-6) as if their ears had been stuffed with cotton the previous three years.  But you won’t find any stout-hearted statements of faith from them until after Jesus ascended.  During his passion, they ran away.  So, in addition to the all physical pain and the mental agony Jesus endured, he also had to suffer the desertion of his closest friends.  By Friday afternoon, who was left?  Only John and a few of the women who had followed him were there to watch as he died.

            In the vacuum of their weakness and silence came a lone voice from beneath the cross, a shout from a man from whom we would least expect to hear anything positive or profound.  We can’t look into hearts.  Only God can do that, and God chose not to give us a definite thumbs-up or thumbs-down on whether the statement of this man was springing from new-found faith or just spurting out from surprise.  I’m opting for the former, not the latter.  After all, who’s to say that this Roman centurion, who was in charge of carrying out the execution and guarding the dying bodies of Jesus and two other criminals, was not hit hard by all that he was seeing and hearing?  Who’s to say that as God was dying his undying love wasn’t still at work, softening the heart of this hardened soldier?  We might want to classify this military man as one of Jesus’ enemies, yet what he said makes him sound more like one of Jesus’ friends, “Surely he was the Son of God!” For, even in his death, The Son Of Man Came To Seek The Lost . . . Seeking Hardened Soldiers.

A soldier who was terrified

              Since the middle of the nineteenth century so-called “scholars” have tried to popularize the notion that the Bible’s miracles are myths, legends, fables.  The miracles of that first Good Friday have not escaped their theorizing and unbelief.  Matthew says that the earth shook and the rocks split (Matthew 27:51).  The doubters drone, “Coincidence.  Earthquakes are common the world over.”  But why couldn’t the God who made the earth shake it?  Matthew writes, “From noon to 3 p.m. darkness came over all the land” (Matthew 27:45).  A US News & World Report article from several years ago said, “Some scholars speculate that a spring sirocco, a dust-laden, desert wind, could easily have darkened the midday sky.”  But why couldn’t the God who made light turn it off for a few hours?  We can’t be sure the soldiers saw the other Good Friday miracles, but Matthew tells that at the moment Jesus died the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51).  Could the earthquake have caused the curtain to tear?  Maybe.  But would it tear neatly into two halves top to bottom from an earthquake?  Unlikely.  Why couldn’t the God who commanded the Israelites to have a worship facility with a thick curtain to demonstrate that sinners can’t have access to the holy God now show that forgiven sinners have access to him by tearing that curtain?  Matthew also reports, “Tombs broke open and the bodies of many … people who had died were raised to life … and appeared to many people” (Matthew 27:52-53).  There’s no natural explanation for that!  Scholars may theorize about myths.  But we say, “Let the biblical record stand.”

            The big question is “why?”  Why did God cause these miracles at the death of his Son?  Anyone with a passing notion about some higher power or some supreme being, seeing nature behave so unnaturally, would have to make the connection that whatever higher power is out there is not happy.  That is exactly the message God was sending.  He was angry because of human injustice and cruelty not just on display in the Good Friday gangs but by every human since Adam and Eve crumpled up his kindness and tossed it in the garbage.  “God is in his heaven.  All’s right with the world,” the poet Robert Browning wrote (Pippa Passes, 1841).  But when things are so obviously wrong with the world, even a Roman soldier could draw the conclusion, “God is in his heaven.  Nothing’s right with the world, and he’s angry!”  When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified.”When
God causes nature to do what it did that day, what else could that soldier do but be terrified – not merely the fear of facing a disastrous physical death but the fear of being accountable for sin and facing an angry God.

            That is the first step God uses to build a relationship with sinners – a healthy terror about what he can and should do to people who sin.  No one here, no one anywhere, can escape.  Just because we took time out of our day to worship on Good Friday does not mean that this house of God is a refuge from God’s holy gaze on us, nor does it mean that you and I are immune to sin and what we deserve because of it.  No one here is perfect, and imperfect people deserve to be the targets of God’s wrath.  Left on our own, we would end up more hardened than those soldiers …

A soldier who was listening

            … who not only saw those unusual signs in nature meant.  But they also heard the unusual words which onlookers shouted at the man on the middle cross, “Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’ ” (Matthew 27:43).  The centurion might have understood if they had said, “He said he was a son of the gods.”  Roman mythology related how the gods occasionally dropped in on planet earth.  But these were Israelites.  They worshiped one God.  Why were they shouting something about this man’s claim to be the Son of God?  This soldier started thinking.

            He heard more.  The religious leaders called out in a mocking tone, “He’s the king of Israel” (Matthew 27:42).  This soldier may have been guarding Jesus throughout his trial before Pilate.  If so, he would have heard Pilate struggling to understand Jesus’ kingliness and may have begun wondering, “If this Jesus is a king, what sort of king is he?  Why doesn’t he look more like a king?  Over whom, over what does he rule?”  This soldier kept thinking.

            Most puzzling of all to a man familiar with the judicial system, “Why did Jesus end up on a cross?”  The “Jesus movement” had caused a great stir throughout Galilee and Judea.  Jesus was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people (Luke 24:19).  Many of the common people loved him   He helped people.  He healed people.  He preached with authority.  Three times Pilate insisted, “I find no basis for a charge against him” (John 19:4).  Everything the soldier had heard got him thinking, “Surely this was a righteous man” (Luke 23:47).  A stranger passing by might look at the cross and assume Jesus was guilty, but anybody who knew him or anybody who heard the court proceedings would be thinking, “Really?”

            That’s the second step God uses to build a relationship with sinners.  He wants people to hear and recognize who Jesus claims to be, the Son of God and the King of kings.  There’s no way to appreciate the meaning of Jesus’ weakness, humility, and death unless you know that the one who died is the all-powerful, all-glorious God.  Otherwise, he would be just another sad martyr case.  There was an insert in the paper this week with religious writing about the meaning of this week’s worship services for Christians.  Over and over it emphasized that Jesus is a model of meekness, humility, and love so that we can bear our crosses in life with meekness, humility, and love.  Not once did it hit on the core of what this week, this day, this Good Friday is really all about – God in our place, doing what we do not want to do, dying to pay for all our sins.

A soldier who was convinced

            The soldier, of course, had watched other men die on crosses.  He had seen them exposed to jeers and abuse, hanging there for days in a kind of living death, cursing, spitting, shouting profanities, and praying to the gods to strike their enemies dead.  But the soldier never saw anyone do what Jesus did.  Jesus didn’t vow to get even.  He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).  He didn’t spit back anger at the other criminals being crucified who mocked him.  He extended mercy, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).  He didn’t focus on himself but cared for his mother, making sure someone would care for her after he was gone.  Others being crucified died after long periods of agony, often unconscious.  Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “It is finished!” (John 19:30).  He sounded triumphant!  This was a victor’s shout!  Then Jesus said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).  It sounded like someone who had been sent on a noble mission, which was now accomplished, a man at peace, glad to be going back home.  After those shouts, the centurion saw him bow his head and give up his life.  This soldier may have been the one was to make sure Jesus was dead by sticking his spear under the ribs to pierce the heart and hasten death.  But Jesus was already dead.  No one took his life from him.  He gave it up.  What kind of a man dies like that?  The soldier was convinced.  “Surely he was the Son of God!”

            That’s the third step God uses to build a relationship with sinners.  The evidence and words have power to soften hardened hearts so that we know and trust who Jesus is and what Jesus did.  There are some people who will attend a worship service on Good Friday because it’s the thing to do, like displaying the flag for the Fourth of July or eating turkey on Thanksgiving.  But you can’t come away from the cross unshaken any more than the soldier did so long ago.  You are never the same after you hear this account.  We put the miracles together with the testimony and with the soldier we are convinced of the great Good Friday miracle – Jesus is the Son of God, who died to give us a close relationship with God!

            Scruffy beard, dirt under his fingernails, toes blackened from dusty trails, salty sweat dripping from his brow, stringy hair sticky from under his helmet, a chafe mark under his chin from the helmet strap, knuckles swollen from arthritis, a scar over his right eye from a rock thrown by his kid brother and another long thick line of scar tissue across his thigh from a training accident, aching back from a bulging disk after lifting so many cross into place, a dark cavity on one side of his mouth from the rot on three teeth, exhaling garlic – this hardened soldier was real, and the Son of Man really came to seek and save him.  The Son of Man really came to seek and save you.  On this Good Friday make the soldier’s confession your own.  “Surely he was and he is the Son of God, and he is my Savior!”   Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on April 2, 2010

Services

Sundays 7:45, 9:00 & 10:30 am

Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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