Truly this Man was the Son of God!

 Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"  Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, said, "Look, He is calling for Elijah!"  Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, "Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down."  And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last.  Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.  So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, "Truly this Man was the Son of God!" 

- Mark 15:33-39

Yesterday we read that they brought Jesus to the place Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull.  Then they gave Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, but He did not take it.  And when they crucified Him, they divided His garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take.  Now it was the third hour, and they crucified Him.  And the inscription of His accusation was written above:  THE KING OF THE JEWS.  With Him they also crucified two robbers, one on His right and the other on His left.  So the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "And He was numbered with the transgressors."  And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, "Aha!  You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself, and come down from the cross!"  Likewise the chief priests also, mocking among themselves with the scribes, said, "He saved others; Himself He cannot save.  Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe."  Even those who were crucified with Him reviled Him.

  Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"  Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, said, "Look, He is calling for Elijah!"  Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, "Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down."   This sixth hour is noon; the ninth hour is 3:00 PM.  My study bible refers us to the prophesies of Zechariah and Amos (see Zechariah 14:6-7; Amos 8:9).   Jesus is praying Psalm 22, which foretells even the details of the Crucifixion.  If we take Jesus' words without the rest of the psalm, we would understand this only as a cry of despair.  But if we see Christ in His true identity, as both fully human and fully God, we understand Him to have taken on all of human nature, and here He experiences our alienation from God.  He therefore knows our suffering and distress, but He is not despairing.  These words, my study bible says, are spoken in the name of humanity, completely identifying with us in our condition, but in His divinity He is never forsaken by the Father.  It was prophesied that before the Messiah came into His Kingdom, Elijah would return first.  Jesus Himself referred to John the Baptist as Elijah, returned in spirit (see Matthew 17:12-13, Mark 9:11-13).

  And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last.  Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.  So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, "Truly this Man was the Son of God!"  Jesus' death on the Cross is voluntary to the very end, my study bible notes.  Even at until this point of death, His life could not be taken from Him against His will.  He accepts death on the Cross neither to receive punishment on our behalf, nor to satisfy the Father's need for blood-justice, my study bible says (for why would God demand this?), but so that entering death as the divine Son He can destroy the final enemy -- which is death itself (1 Corinthians 15:20-28).  It is the veil of the temple, torn in two from top to bottom, that tells us of the significance of this death on the Cross:  the veil was a symbol of the separation between God and man.   Christ's death opens up for all human beings the access to the most holy of all:  God Himself.  This centurion is identified by tradition as St. Longinos.

St. Longinos is an interesting character of the Gospels.  He has presumably seen the display of darkness from noon to 3:00 PM.  He has stood keeping watch directly opposite Christ.  One presumes that he has seen many crucifixions and many die on their cross.  But what the text tells us literally is that he watched as Christ breathed His last.  In the Greek, this word translated as "breathed His last" is ἐξέπνευσεν/exepneusen).  That word is interesting for us, because the word for breath, πνευνα/pneuma, also means "spirit."  He has watched Christ exhale His "spirit," so to speak.  The word here implies a deepening of the sense of voluntary giving up on the part of Christ.  The centurion has watched Him die -- as He cried out with a loud voice, He gave up His spirit to God.  One can imagine that this image of Christ, praying the psalm, accepting His death, giving up His spirit to the Father, marks a severely powerful way of dying, one that so impresses the centurion that he exclaims, "Truly this Man was the Son of God!"  In Luke's Gospel, we are told that at this very end Jesus was praying Psalm 31, saying, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit" (Luke 23:46).  It must be extremely hard for us to really imagine the gruesomeness of a death by crucifixion, especially the final moments of a man's life.  Psalm 22 gives us something of a description of what the effects of this sort of a death must be like:  "I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; it has melted within Me.  My strength is dried up like a potsherd,and My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death."  But added to the physical effects of crucifixion are the torments of this time for Jesus, which the rest of the Psalm also describes well:  "Be not far from Me, for trouble is near; for there is none to help.  Many bulls have surrounded Me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me. They gape at Me with their mouths, like a raging and roaring lion. . . . For dogs have surrounded Me; the congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.  They pierced My hands and My feet; I can count all My bones.  They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.  But You, O Lord, do not be far from Me; O My Strength, hasten to help Me!
Deliver Me from the sword, My precious life from the power of the dog.  Save Me from the lion’s mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen!"  And the next line of the psalm replies:  "You have answered Me. I will declare Your name to My brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will praise You."  To transcend everything on the Cross, to die as He did, surely impressed this centurion who has no doubt witnessed many scenes of death on Golgotha.  Once again we take careful note that Christ does not gloss over His human feelings; instead, He prays them.  Everything here is also a sacrament, a gift to God -- it is all given to the Father for His way.  To understand this scene it is necessary to know that Christ took on all of human nature so that it is all transfigured, even our experience of death.  This is the one way in which death has been defeated, so that He being lifted up, lifts all the rest of us with Him (see John 3:14-18, 12:32).  The reality of this transcendence and transfiguration lies in one place:  our faith.  We go through what the world does and will do, but we are saved with our faith.  We may be changed by all that we experience, and rightly so.  We learn lessons, we take strengths, we become more aware and alert.  It is He who has taught us to be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves (Matthew 10:16).  But through all things, we give up our experience even as a kind of sacrament to God, even as thanksgiving, we pray, we hold fast to the work of our faith -- and on the other end is transcendence, transfiguration, the life that persists through all things, the "lifting up" with Him that He promises us.