Mark 15:33-41 The Son of God

 

It’s Good Friday, a day when creation holds its breath as it watches Jesus take a totally unexpected journey to the cross. We, with two thousand years standing between us and the first Good Friday, have lost the sense of shock and horror that Jesus’ early followers and disciples experienced that day. This is not supposed to happen to the Messiah, to the one so many people have placed their hopes on for freedom.

We turn again to our question this Lenten season: Who is Jesus? Jesus has just been accused of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious court; he’s been sentenced to death by the Roman court for claiming to be King of the Jews, for which he’s also beaten, ridiculed, and now hangs on a cross. The one Peter called the Messiah has been betrayed and abandoned by his followers in his time of need and has walked this last part of his life journey alone. Jesus has been tortured and whipped, his body is torn and covered in dirt and blood, his eyes puffy and blood-shot with pain, hands and feet pierced by nails.

As we look at Jesus as he hangs on the cross, wondering if maybe we were wrong about who he is, we’re reminded of what the prophet Isaiah wrote about the coming Messiah, Isaiah 52:13–53:9, “See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him—his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness—so he will sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him… He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed… He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away.” According to Isaiah, Jesus is exactly who we should be expecting our Messiah to be.

At noon, after approximately three hours on the cross, “darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.” This is no normal darkness, it’s three hours long. Think of how alone Jesus must feel. The darkness works as a symbol of what sin does; it blocks out the light of the world in our hearts, it covers our whole life, infecting every part of our life with darkness. It gives us a feeling of what the brokenness of sin brings, the brokenness of relationships with God and others, the aloneness that sin brings as we try to hide our sin in darkness. Jesus enters this for us, drinking from the cup of wrath for our sakes, enduring for a time the unthinkable: separation from his Father and the Spirit: the essence of God broken for us so we don’t have to experience that separation from God ourselves, so we can experience life, full and abundant life.

As the darkness lifts, “And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).” This is the only time on Mark that Jesus does not call God “my Father” in Mark. Jesus cries out the words of Psalm 22:1, a cry of hurt, a recognition of where sin takes us, to a place of forsakenness.

Jesus cries out in a loud voice. This is a show of strength, showing us that Jesus has not been beaten by the physical suffering, by the emotional suffering, and that even now, though he calls God, God instead of Father, he is not a victim of either the Sanhedrin or of Pilate, but that he chooses to be there on the cross in our place. Jesus is not a victim but a conqueror. “With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.” What an understated way to describe Jesus’ death, the death of the Messiah. At Jesus’ death, the curtain of the temple is torn in two from top to bottom. The Holy Spirit flows out into the world from out of the Holy of Holies. Satan has not seen clearly who Jesus is and now has assured his own defeat even as he celebrates Jesus’ death. Only Satan could snatch defeat out of victory!

Is this the end of Jesus’ story? The Holy Spirit is flowing into the world, Jesus has finished what he came for, his last cry, as we hear it in John’s Gospel is, “It is finished!” Even the Roman centurion realizes that Jesus is no ordinary person. At Jesus’ death, he confesses, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” It’s always strange to me that it’s the gentiles and ordinary people who recognize who Jesus is while the religious leaders, the teachers of the Jewish law, and those in power keep missing it.

The centurion has been there the entire time while Jesus was tortured, unjustly condemned to death, ridiculed in the courts and on the cross, but Jesus still responds with forgiveness and grace, even arranging for his mother to be taken care by placing her in John’s care. Jesus’ cry to God and how he dies reveals to this centurion who Jesus truly is, the Son of God! The true meaning of who Jesus is, is revealed for all to see. Jesus is the Messiah who dies, the Messiah who gives his life for the many, the one whose death brings life to the many.

But Jesus’ story is not over. Even though Satan thinks he has snuffed out the light of the world, Jesus’ death is not the end of the story, but the beginning of a whole new chapter. What happens next? We wait in anxious anticipation for Sunday!