Rev. Steven S. Billings
Lent 3 Mid-Week
Sermon
2-27-2008
St. Matthew 27:50-54
50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. 51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, 52 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. 54 So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, "Truly this was the Son of God!"
It was an unlikely statement from an even more unlikely source.
There was a little village in the Austrian Alps which, following World War II, decided to spend some of its foreign aid money on revitalizing its tourist trade. The war had left the village in shambles so they used the money for renovations and beautification projects.
In the center of the village was a park, and in the middle of this park stood a huge, ugly iron cross amazingly left undamaged by the war. The faith of many Europeans had been utterly shattered by the violence of war. This cross, which had once meant something to the citizens of this village, was now simply an eyesore which needed to be removed. The renovation project called for the disposal of the cross as its first item of business.
The day came for the removal of the cross and, as the workers plied themselves to the task, they discovered that, despite their best efforts, the cross wouldn't budge. As the engineers pored over their plans a small crowd began to form. About a stone's throw away, separated from the crowd, was an elderly man who most people thought was a lunatic. He sat there laughing to himself, almost hysterically, as he watched the "experts" scratch their heads trying to figure out what to do next. One of the engineers, fed up with the old man's laughter, decided to give the man a piece of his mind. But as he drew closer, he heard the man say something quite unlikely: "You can't dig it out. You can't dig it out. It goes to the center of the world."
An unlikely statement, don't you think? To imagine that old ugly cross having roots down to the center of the earth . . . that's a stretch for even the most faithful of Christians. Either this man was truly nuts - or he saw something nobody else could see.
Consider now the words of the centurion at the cross of Jesus. Like the crazy old man, the centurion seems disconnected from reality. He sees a man hanging dead on a cross and concludes that this man is the Son of God. Either he's crazy or he sees something nobody else can see.
"Surely He was the Son of God." These are some of the most profound words spoken during the Passion of our Lord. What makes them so is that there seems to be no end to the depth of their meaning. Something about the Centurion's perspective plumbs the depths of human existence. No other comment - apart from the words of Christ Himself - seems to cut to the heart more relentlessly than this one.
Jesus was dead, but still hanging there, when these words were spoken. Think about that! "That guy - that dead guy - is the Son of God." How can anyone say that? How can anyone look at a dead man, particularly in the shape Christ was in, and say he was the Son of God? It defies all logic. There's no way to explain that.
Besides, how was it that a Gentile figured this out? He had no belief in a Messiah. He probably didn't even buy into the notion of sin. He had nothing invested in this whole sordid affair - certainly not in the way the Jews and their religious leaders did. How could it be that he was the only one to figure it out?
Well, this little dose of perspective is brought to you by the Holy Spirit, who causes us to see the unseen, to hear the voice of God in His Word, and to believe what the rest of the world considers unbelievable.
The centurion had never seen anything like it. I mean, what kind of God gives up the life of His one and only Son? You could search the entire planet, you could fly to the moon, you could travel from one end of the universe to another, but you wouldn't find anything like this. The only place you'll ever see it is in the Scriptures and the Christian Church.
Allah, Buddha, and all the false gods of the world can't do this for you. All the self-help gurus whose books and videos fly off the shelves won't do it. No politician will do it either. There's only one. Only one who was ever willing. Only one who was ever able.
Brothers and sisters, you can't make this stuff up. No human author could possibly invent a god who would suffer and die for His own creation. All we've ever come up with are false gods who make you save yourselves.
But not the one true God. He chose to became one of us - to be born, crucified, killed and buried, and then to rise again on our behalf. He does the one thing we would never expect and can only grasp through genuine faith: He saves us by His death on the cross.
"You can't dig it out. It goes to the center of the world."
"Surely, this man was the Son of God."
The double-edged sword of this text is that it cuts to the heart of life itself, to the heart of human existence. We can't reasonably understand a God who would die to give us life. Only by faith can we comprehend it. That's how God likes it.
Thanks be to God He provided us with an example of an outsider who, by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, got it right. God grant us the same Holy Spirit that we may utter the same words: "Surely, this man was the Son of God." In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
