Matthew 27:51-54 - The Centurion - April 6, 2022

As we heard in the Passion History reading, it was dark on that first Good Friday (Matthew 27:45). But it wasn’t just a physical darkness; that the sun had stopped shining. This was a dark end for Jesus of Nazareth, the One the angel told Joseph was going to save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). Not only couldn’t he save others, he apparently couldn’t even save himself. The jealously and greed and cowardliness and utter wickedness of man had conquered the One who had claimed to be the Son of God (Matthew 26:64). If he couldn’t overcome the evil schemes of man, how could he possibly be the Son of God? That’s a dark thought. It’s even darker when you consider that the institution that we look to for physical protection – the government – and the institution we look to for spiritual truth – the Church – colluded to falsely condemn and unjustifiably execute an innocent man. It was a dark day, that first Good Friday. And yet, tonight we will see that out of the darkness comes proof that Jesus truly is the Son of God.

The darkness of Good Friday is a stark contrast to the bright hope Jesus brought with him into this world. He had come to take the place of God’s other sons; sons who had proven themselves unfaithful. Adam was God’s first son, a son who through his rebellion he brought the darkness of sin and death into the world (Romans 5:12). Israel, God’s adopted son (Exodus 4:22), had been unfaithful. They had prostituted themselves to false gods (Exodus 32). Now Jesus, who had been proclaimed to be the Son of God at his birth by an army of angels (Luke 2:11), by the Father and the Holy Spirit at his Baptism (Luke 3:22), and again on the Mt. of Transfiguration by the Father (Luke 9:28-36) had arrived. And, for a time, it appeared that the light was extinguishing the darkness of sin and death. The number who believed in him grew by the day: Peter, Andrew, James, John, the rest of the apostles, the crowds. Jesus left a wave of healing and freedom and forgiveness and faith in his wake through his teaching and preaching and miracles. When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the crowds acclaimed him as their King (Luke 19:38). The march of the light Jesus brought into this world seemed unstoppable.

Until it was brought to a sudden and abrupt halt – in just a matter of hours. The “church” – the religious establishment in Jerusalem – rejected Jesus as God’s Son and stirred up the crowds against him. Judas betrayed him. The other apostles abandoned him. Peter denied him. The Roman government, through Pontius Pilate, sentenced him to death. The crowds around the cross ridiculed him. Even the thieves being crucified with him insulted him (Mathew 27:44). Matthew only records one of Jesus’ words from the cross, words that are haunting even from the distance of 2000 years, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46) Even God had abandoned his only-begotten, beloved Son. And then he died. In darkness. Alone.

Well, not quite alone. There was someone there with him throughout the entire Good Friday ordeal: an unnamed Roman centurion. This Roman officer had likely been an eyewitness to everything that happened on that fateful Friday. He had seen and heard the mob shout for this man’s death while the governor maintained his innocence. He had viewed the whipping and humiliation of this man. He had ordered his men to drive nails through his hands and feet. He had ensured that he was dead by having a spear thrust into his side (John 19:34). And at the end of it all he came to a rather shocking conclusion: truly this was the Son of God. What can account for the change that took place in this hardened, Gentile soldier who specialized in executing humans in the most painful manner possible?

Three things. First, nature gave its testimony. Right in the middle of the day, at noon, the sun went dark – turning it’s back on this man. (And no, there is no natural, “scientific” explanation for this – solar eclipses last minutes, not hours and are impossible when it’s a full moon – as it always is at the Passover.) He felt the earth shake under his feet and saw rocks splitting open. He saw the world around him falling apart as the natural world bent its collective knee before its Creator and Preserver (Colossians 1:16-17).

He also heard testimony, not from Jesus’ friends but from his enemies. They were unwitting and unwilling witnesses, but they were witnesses nonetheless. His own boss, Pilate, had commanded that a sign be posted over his head, advertising not the crime he had committed – for he had committed no crime – but rather his identity: This is Jesus, the King of the Jews (Matthew 27:37). The chief priests, experts in the law, and elders mocked him from the foot of his cross, but even there they confirmed his identity as the King of Israel and the Son of God (Matthew 27:41-43). Even the passersby, who laughed at his claim to be able to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days called him the Son of God (Matthew 27:40). You might be wondering how this mockery validates Jesus’ claim. I’m not suggesting that the centurion would have known this, but – for us at least – this is fulfillment of OT prophecy; specifically, the words of Psalm 22 written by King David 1000 years earlier: I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me. They sneer. They shake their heads. They say, “Trust in the LORD.” “Let the LORD deliver him. Let him rescue him, if he delights in him.” (Psalm 22:7-8) For the centurion, the mocking, taunting, and ridicule proved that this was not your run-of-the-mill political insurrectionist hanging from this tree.

But most powerful of all were the words that came from the victim’s own lips. His words of grace to those who had worked tirelessly to have him put to death and mocked him as he was dying: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34); and to the thief who had mocked him: Amen, I tell you: Today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43). He witnessed Jesus’ selfless love as he cared for his mother even as his life was being drained out of his body, drop by drop (John 19:26-27). He didn’t curse God, but cried out to him like an abandoned child: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mark 15:34) He heard him request a drink (John 19:28), not to numb the pain but so he could give the thunderous shout: it is finished (John 19:30). And, he witnessed something he had never, ever seen before: death did not take this man; this man summoned death: Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:46). The darkness had risen up to swallow up the light of life – but rather than drive this centurion into deeper darkness, this combined testimony brought him into the light; converting him from unbelief to faith in Jesus as the Son of God.

What does this centurion have to do with us? Well, the devil loves to sow the seeds of doubt in our minds regarding the eyewitness testimony of Jesus’ disciples, recorded in the Bible. “They were Jesus’ friends, of course they affirmed his teaching and his claims, you can’t believe them.” Or “The Bible is just a bunch of books written by men – many of them uneducated fishermen – how can you trust them more than the modern-day experts who allege that the Bible is at best contradictory and at worst just a myth?” Or maybe he takes a different tact; he uses our familiarity with the Gospel to deaden and deafen our ears to the astonishing claim that all four Gospel writers make: that on Good Friday, on that hill called Calvary, mankind – you and I included – mutilated, brutalized, and crucified the Son of God. If that claim makes no impact on you; if it doesn’t make you pause; if it can’t distract you from whatever is going on in the world out there or wondering about the weather or planning tomorrow’s schedule – then you’re even more lost in the darkness than that centurion.

It's good that tonight we have the opportunity to see and hear this all-important message from a new perspective. Tonight, we are looking at the cross through the eyes of a man who was an unbeliever, a Gentile, a Roman soldier. Tonight, we are looking at the core truth of the Bible’s message from the perspective of the enemy. And this adversarial testimony isn’t only found here. You can find it in the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus, in the accounts of the Jewish historian Josephus, and in the Babylonian Talmud. If you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with, go ahead and read them, they verify the claims of Jesus – just as much as the centurion does here.

What do they say to us? That Jesus really was a revolutionary activist who had unfortunately made himself some powerful and envious enemies? The centurion might have been a soldier, but he wasn’t dumb – he knew that the Jewish elites wouldn’t stay up all night to conduct a sham trial, wouldn’t willingly acknowledge Pilate’s authority, wouldn’t drag their fancy robes over the dusty road leading to Calvary just to mock a delusional fool. Do Jesus’ enemies tell us that Jesus was just a moral teacher? He may have taught about morality – but he claimed to be God – and moral teachers don’t tell lies of that magnitude. No, the eyewitness testimony of Jesus’ enemies like this centurion forces us to make a decision: is Jesus who he claimed to be or not? That is the challenge the Biblical witness issues to everyone who hears and reads it; that is the challenge the Biblical witness is issuing to you and me tonight. C. S. Lewis famously put it this way: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (Lewis, C. S., Mere Christianity, London: Collins, 1952, pp 54-56).

My job is not to change your mind; my job is merely to present the evidence. Here’s the evidence: on a dark Friday on an ugly hill outside of Jerusalem, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified for claiming to be the Son of God. Nature attested to this claim. Jesus’ enemies went far, far out of their way to mock this claim. Jesus’ strange behavior and words from the cross confirmed this claim. This evidence convinced the centurion who executed Jesus that his claims were true, that truly [he] was the Son of God. How about you? Carefully consider the evidence that has been presented to you this Lenten season; your eternity depends on it. Amen.