It had started like any other day. Up at 5am in the cold before dawn; stamping his feet to keep warm as he formed up his detail and marched them off to relieve the night shift at 6.
It isn’t easy being a soldier in an occupying force. You’re far from home, among people who would prefer that you weren’t there. In March, 2007 the BBC and three other news organisations commissioned a survey of more than 2,000 Iraqis. They found that 78% of the population of Iraq opposed "the presence of Coalition forces," that 69% believed the presence of U.S. forces was making things worse, and that 51% of the population considered attacks on coalition forces "acceptable."
It isn’t easy being a soldier in an occupying force. You’re always watching your back, never sure who’s friend or foe. Trained to fight, you find yourself on security details. And life is made up of hours and hours of boredom; occasionally punctuated by the odd span of sheer terror.
That’s what he had to look forward to that morning as he marched his squad up to the palace. Boredom, crowd control, police duties.
Pretty soon they had some business. A bunch of locals had brought in some kind of insurgent and, after the governor had taken care of sentencing, his squad was charged with taking him into custody and getting things ready for the execution.
The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is,
the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a
purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him.
And they began to call out to him, “Hail, king of the Jews!” Again and again they
struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees,
they paid homage to him.
When the media reported the practice of
mocking and demeaning prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in
The reason we have rules about how prisoners are treated is because, if we didn’t, this is the kind of thing that would happen. What happened to Jesus was commonplace. It is what those in power do to those they have conquered, and again it makes clear that Jesus was being executed as an insurgent of some kind.
20 And when they had mocked him, they took off the
purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify
him.
21 A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of
Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they
forced him to carry the cross. 22 They brought Jesus to the place called
Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what
each would get. 25 It was the third hour when they crucified him.
“It was the third hour when they crucified him.” All of this; the appearance before Pilate, the mocking by the soldiers, the walk out to the place of execution; all of it took about three hours. The Romans divided the day, from sunrise to sunset, into twelve equal parts. “The third hour” means that Jesus was crucified around 9 o’clock in the morning.
So far, for the centurion leading this execution detail, this has been a pretty ordinary day. Pick up a prisoner. Have a bit of fun with him. Escort him to the place of execution. Execute him. Just regular duties.
So, how is it that, by the end of this passage, just six hours later, this hard-bitten, professional soldier will look up at the body of the man that he has just crucified and say, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”?
It’s not like he hadn’t seen a crucifixion before. He was a Roman soldier. This was part and parcel of what he did for a living. He must have seen thousands of men on crosses, been involved in hundreds of executions himself. A day like today, with only three to take care of, might even have been a slow day for him.
So
what was so different about this crucifixion?
Well, for a start, he probably knew who
Jesus was.
More than that, in Matthew 8 we read that
Jesus had healed the servant of a centurion. Now, it’s very unlikely that this
was the same centurion, but they probably knew each other. There was a Roman
legion stationed in
So,
what was different about this crucifixion?
Mark doesn’t go into much detail around the crucifixion. That’s normal. Mark is the shortest of the gospels. But other writers tell us about some of the things that this centurion would have witnessed
Take for instance Jesus on his way to
Then there were his words on the cross itself.
Crucifixion was a form of torture as well
as execution. It was supposed to strike fear into those watching, as a warning
not to buck the authority of
But not Jesus. He is able to not only comfort one of the men beside him with the promise of eternal life, he also comforts his mother and his best friend. It’s not that Jesus didn’t feel the pain, it’s that even as he died, his focus was still on others, not on himself.
It was hardly how the centurion would have expected the execution detail to go, but he saw it all.
He saw the sign over Jesus’ head, “The King of the Jews.” And he saw the way Jesus’ own countrymen treated him. He heard those who passed by hurling insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" (Matthew 27:39-40) Probably the first time that he heard Jesus called "the Son of God."
He heard “the chief priests, the teachers
of the law and the elders mocking him. “He
saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! 32 Let this
Christ, this King of
He saw it all. He heard it all. And, though this may not have been his first crucifixion, this one quickly became different from any that he has ever overseen before. You can almost sense his awe as he watches Jesus die and then utters those words… “Surely, this was the son of God!”
So,
what was so different about this crucifixion?
· Unlike other victims he’d seen die, Jesus never cursed
· He never retaliated against those who mocked & taunted Him
· In fact, by contrast to the evil words of the passers-by who ridiculed and belittled Him… Jesus had responded: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
But none of that would have made any difference if the centurion hadn’t been looking at Jesus. It says… the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died,
He wasn’t the only soldier there that day. He was in charge of a detail whose job it was to execute these three Jews. When darkness fell at noon and the earth shook, Matthew tells us that everybody was scared silly, the soldiers and the centurion. But Mark only tells us about the centurion, and what he says is that the centurion stood in front of Jesus, looked at him, and heard what he said.
And what this centurion saw and heard from Jesus on the cross was forgiveness. That was because, unlike everybody else that day, the centurion was "looking at" Jesus on the cross.
It’s really easy to look around ourselves and see all kinds of bad stuff happening in the world, and in our lives, and be terrified by it. That’s what most of the crowd did when Jesus was crucified. They looked at the darkness and the earthquake and they were terrified. The centurion saw all that, but he also looked at Jesus, and in the way that Jesus died, that hardened soldier saw forgiveness.
But he only saw it because he looked at Jesus, not at the situation.
It’s only as we come to Jesus and meet him at the cross that we can experience his cleansing forgiveness.
That’s what the centurion saw that afternoon. He may not have understood it totally. (Does any of us have anything close to a total understanding of how God works in our lives?) But he understood that this Jesus was different from any person he had ever known, and he expressed it in the best way he could. “Surely this man was the Son of God!”
In 1976 Franco Zeffirelli made a mini-series called "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus was played by the fine British actor Robert Powell; Olivia Hussey played Mary, his mother; Anne Bancroft was Mary Magdalene; and Ernest Borgnine had a small but crucial role as the centurion whose servant Jesus healed and who was later present at the crucifixion. This is how Borgnine describes shooting that scene…
When it came time for my scene during the crucifixion, the weather was chill and gray. The camera was to be focused on me at the foot of the cross, and so it was not necessary for Robert Powell, the actor who portrayed Jesus, to be there. Instead, Zeffirelli put a chalk mark on a piece of scenery beside the cameraman. "I want you to look up at that mark," he told me, "as if you were looking at Jesus."
I hesitated. Somehow I wasn’t ready. I was uneasy.
"Do you think it would be possible for somebody to read from the Bible the words Jesus said as He hung on the cross?" I asked.
I knew the words well from the days of my
childhood in an Italian-American family in
"I will do it myself," Zeffirelli said. He found a Bible, opened it to the Book of Luke, and signaled for the camera to start rolling.
As Zeffirelli began reading Christ’s words aloud, I stared up at that chalk mark, thinking what might have gone through the centurion’s mind.
That poor Man up there, I thought. I met Him when He healed my servant who is like a son to me. Jesus says He is the Son of God, an unfortunate claim during these perilous times. But I know he is innocent of any crime.
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." The voice was Zeffirelli’s, but the words burned into me -- the words of Jesus. (Luke 23:34-46)
Forgive me, Father, for even being here, was the centurion’s prayer that formed in my thoughts. I am so ashamed, so ashamed.
"Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise," said Jesus to the thief hanging next to Him.
If Jesus can forgive that criminal, then He
will forgive me, I thought. I will lay down my sword and retire to my little
farm outside of
Then it happened.
As I stared upward, instead of the chalk mark, I suddenly saw the face of Jesus Christ, lifelike and clear. It was not the face of Robert Powell I was used to seeing, but the most beautiful, gentle visage I have ever known. Pain-seared, sweat-stained, with blood flowing down from thorns pressed deep, His face was still filled with compassion. He looked down at me through tragic, sorrowful eyes with an expression of love beyond description.
Then His cry rose against the desert wind. Not the voice of Zeffirelli, reading from the Bible, but the voice of Jesus Himself: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."
In awe I watched Jesus’ head slump to one side. I knew He was dead. A terrible grief welled within me, and completely oblivious of the camera, I started sobbing uncontrollably.
"Cut!" yelled Zeffirelli. Olivia Hussey and Anne Bancroft were crying, too. I wiped my eyes and looked up again to where I had seen Jesus. He was gone.
Whether I saw a vision of Jesus that windswept day or whether it was only something in my mind, I do not know. It doesn’t matter. For I do know that it was a profound spiritual experience and that I have not been quite the same person since. I believe that I take my faith more seriously. I like to think that I’m more forgiving than I used to be. As that centurion learned two thousand years ago, I too have found that you simply cannot come close to Jesus without being changed.