Scripture Daily

Context No. 843 of 4322 · Mark

Context · Reflection

Mark 15:35-39: in context

35Some of those who stood by, when they heard it, said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” 36One ran, and filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Let him be. Let’s see whether Elijah comes to take him down.” 37Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and gave up the spirit. 38The veil of the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom. 39When the centurion, who stood by opposite him, saw that he cried out like this and breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

Mark's whole Gospel has been building toward a question of who Jesus really is, and it gets its clearest human answer at the worst possible moment, from the least likely person. Jesus hangs dying, mocked by the bystanders who think he is calling for Elijah and offer him sour wine to prolong the spectacle. Then he cries out with a loud voice and breathes his last. And two things happen. In the temple, the great curtain that veiled the Holy of Holies is torn in two from top to bottom, the barrier between God and people ripped open, and torn from the top down, as if by a hand no human arm could reach.

And at the foot of the cross, the Roman centurion in charge of the execution, a pagan soldier who has watched countless men die, looks at how this one died and says, truly this man was the Son of God. He is the first human being in all of Mark to say it plainly, and he is the enemy, the executioner, an outsider with no stake in Jewish messianic hope. What convinces him is not a miracle, not Jesus coming down from the cross as the mockers demanded, but the very thing that looked like total defeat: the way he died. The religious insiders jeered for a display of power and saw nothing. The pagan at the cross saw God, precisely there, in the dying. The truth about Jesus becomes clear not where you would expect strength but where there is only a man giving up his spirit.

The centurion recognized the Son of God not in a miracle but in the way Jesus died. Do I only look for God in displays of strength, and would I, like the insiders, have missed him entirely at the cross?

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